One of the big no-no's that gets tied to post-modernism is moral relativism - the idea that its all about 'what works for you' - which, by the way, is one massively powerful idea in our current culture. The frequency and subtlety by which relativism is communicated is really very concerning.

One great example is the current commercials for Wendy's Hamburgers. They spent no time attempting to post-modernize their message after Dave Thomas' death. After a few failed advertising efforts (remember the strange man that appeared outside of people's houses in the middle of the night to tell them about Wendy's?), they've settled on a catchy, artistic campaign that ends with the message 'Eat what tastes right'.

Firstly, I'm glad I don't live by that message, or I'd probably look like an upright cow. The message is a convenient one for a fast food chain, since the 'eat what tastes right' mode of thinking is the only reason anyone eats fast food, and for its foolishness is the last argument one would (or should) use to justify such a habit. The funny part is, this is the exact argument we see used among our beloved fast food junkies! And why? Because the worst conceivable defence of a fast food obsession is also its only defence. Our burger-happy hedonists shape their diets around their taste buds at the neglect of every important part of their digestive system (and no, taste buds in fact don't make that cut). They satisfy the surface level at the cost of everything beneath.

Big question: Do we know people who are actually like this with their food choices? Maybe. There are people like this who do exist.

Bigger question: Do we know people who are like this with their spiritual choices? The answer is almost assuredly yes.

I wrote last night on my blog about our tendency to replace the God of the Bible, who is beyond our feelings and desires, with an 'improved' version of God - a deity far more tolerant of what we want and when we want. While this goes a long way to justify our pleasures and desires of the moment, and perhaps reduce or whitewash any sense of guilt we might otherwise have for pursuing first our own happiness, we starve our souls, which can only feed on the real, active, and unmoving Father.

If I may digress back to the food illustration once more, I remember hearing an amazing fact, I believe in the movie 'Supersize Me', which stated one of the facets of many fast foods is their tendency to act as a drug, causing the body to release a certain level of endomorphines, creating a relaxed and slightly euphoric sense about the individual. Once the meal is finished, the chemical release subsides, along with the happy feeling, causing the individual to 'crash'. The easy solution fast food provides to this crash is the further consumption of additional fast food, re-establishing the good feeling created by the chemicals stimulated. This is as close to the characteristics of a drug as I can describe.

This drug creates a false sense of sustenance, and in time, creates quite a dependency to maintain an energy level that was never really there. All the while this drug stands in place of what the body really needs and actually requires to survive, and such is our self-customized God which stands in place of the Living Heavenly Father in our faith practice... And you know, salads don't get a lot of commercial time either, except those you can get from Sonic, which is just as bullshit as their incredibly tasty burgers.

So what does all this have to do with post-modernism? Honestly, I suggest not that much at all. What many people assert as problems with post-modernism, I assert as the same overriding human problem that happens to have the current cultural skin of post-modernism on top of it. From the time Adam munched his Sonic salad thinking what looked cooler than the original could only be a good thing, we have all carried this wonderful knack of substituting God and all His goodness with a Deity that, like the God of Old, has but 1 commandment.

God of the Bible: "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

New God: "Eat what tastes right.”

So here's my plug for the week.

Pandora.com has to be the coolest thing I've straight up ever seen. Based on a very few artist selections, Pandora created a custom radio station that plays songs based on the initial styles and elements I select, and then refines the play selection based on my feedback of each song. The result is a constant stream of songs I've never heard, and all of which I love.
Don't even get me started on the tone quality, which is crystal clear. This is simply the neatest thing I've seen come across in a long, long time.

Finally, a radio station I don't have to hate. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

So today is Memorial Day, and at 9:08pm, I think I'm just now making my first attempt at productivity today. Actually, I did attempt to work on my car this morning, with zero success, and spent most of my time from that point sleeping, watching movies, and sleeping. Maybe that kind of time was needed, but I tend to think waste probably found its home somewhere in there, too.

So now I figure I have about two more hours of productive time, keeping in mind the alarm that will go off 8 1/2 hours from now.

What to write...what to write....

Song notice for today. If you haven't heard it, I highly recommend 'Toxic' by Nickel Creek. It's currently listenable on my myspace account: www.myspace.com/casadean. Fantastic song.

I'm beginning to hit that 'I'm fading' stage. It's now 10:27pm. I don't know what's happened to the last hour. I wish to death I had something big and meaningful to write about, but I'm not sure I do. I suppose, however, I can certainly take my best shot at it and see what happens.

I am continually amazed at how gracious God is in his patience with us. Of course, in saying this I really mean I'm amazed at how patient He is with me. I know my heart and the struggles that happen within it, and how petty they are when set against the words He's provided and the experiences He's given me. This all came to a point yesterday when, for the first time in any recent memory, I gave serious thought to the big 'is this Christian life, the pursuit of God, really worth it?'

Now, before I start getting random calls from sympathizers who're really questioning the condition of my soul, let me explain, because those big 'is all this really worth it' questions are borne out of a really important part of everyone's walk, and that is the part where we separate the active and present nature of God in relation to our lives from the practice and pursuit of His heart, His law, and His love. What do I mean by 'separation'? By this, I mean when we forget, or neglect, the reality of the character of God with all his personality and character traits, from our faith practice.

This can take shape in one of two ways. The first, and maybe the more uncommon and less-dangerous of the two, is when we remove the sense of an active God from the equation alltogether. In doing this, we heap our entire faith practice squarely upon our own shoulders, leading to a certain burnout. The second, more common and dangerous than the first, is when we replace the actual existant God with a more personalized version of the Most High. I think this is incredibly common among the most devout of Christians. As long as we have this sin influence involved with our thoughts and actions, we're always going to struggle with maintaining a true biblical image of our Father, Creator, and Saviour. Our sin likes to cloud these images, and substitute out certain character traits that conflict with today's self-pursuits. In this way the second possibility becomes far more dangerous than the first, which simply holds both our faith practice and our sin out in the open, both unjustified and un-supported by anything bigger than ourselves. In this light, a person can discover the emptiness of both pursuits, and perhaps re-discover the true, loving, and active God. The second substitutes our version of a new and improved God who amazingly lines up in accordance with what we want. To rediscover our true Father, we must forsake our images and perceptions of that false God, and the longer a person has held to those images, the harder they are to let go.

So where did I fall yesterday? Where am I still falling today? Probably under the second example. I really like to cloud God up with my own revisions to His character. Amazingly, while this helps me justify my sin, it also makes Him (or my image of Him) seem pretty lame. So after I go through my period of doubt and reconsideration of this whole faith-thing, I begin to consider this image at the heart of the faith I'm questioning. What I discover is perhaps the holiest thing happening was the questioning itself, because it makes me re-evaluate the image behind my faith, an image I find is inconsistent with Scripture, the liturgy of those God used to build His church, and with my own limited experience and understanding of who this God is really supposed to be. Fortunately, the next step is pretty clear. Once the falsity of our faith-image is realized, its back to Scripture to refine our image back to our true Father. Maybe He's not as accepting as we'd like, and maybe His agenda is somehow different than ours. But seeing as how we're pretty stinking small blips on a blippy planet anyway, His agenda might not be so bad. So that's where I'm left off, and its back to the Bible for me tonight. I promise I'll follow through and report how He's refining my image of Him.

So there we are. It's 11:06pm, and that alarm is a cruel 6 1/2 hours away. God bless. Goodnight.