Category Archives: Culture

I Hope Your Dreams Never Come True

5 Replies

Call me Captain anti-motivation and the King of Killed Esteem, but in a genuine sense, I hope my dreams never come true.

I hope your dreams never come true too.

dreams

CS Lewis’s wild eyed sea wanderer of “The Dawn Treader” gives a cautionary story to Caspian and his crew. They must turn back from the track they are on, the “Dark Island” awaits them beyond the fog:

“Fly! Fly! About with your ship and fly! Row, row, row for your lives away from this accursed shore.”

“Compose yourself,” said Reepicheep, “and tell us what the danger is. We are not used to flying.”

The stranger started horribly at the voice of the Mouse, which he had not noticed before. “Nevertheless you will fly from here,” he gasped. “This is the Island where Dreams come true.”

“That’s the island I’ve been looking for this long time,” said one of the sailors. “I reckoned I’d find I was married to Nancy if we landed here.”

“And I’d find Tom alive again,” said another.

“Fools!” said the man, stamping his foot with rage. “That is the sort of talk that brought me here, and I’d better have been drowned or never born. Do you hear what I say? This is where dreams -dreams, do you understand, come to life, come real. Not daydreams: dreams.”

After a short moment of thought, the crew scrambles to turn back the ship in manicked desperation. Why? Because it only took a few seconds for them to recall, “certain dreams they had had – dreams that make you afraid of going to sleep again – and to realize what it would mean to land on a country where dreams come true.”

Terror by night

As a child, I used to get night terrors. These are like nightmares on acid and steroids. I only vaguely remember them. I’d bolt upright in bed eyes wide open and crippled by an insane fear. I was inconsolable. Cold feverish sweats. Squirming. I seemed there, but wasn’t. Mom would take me outside on the front porch to look at the moon and stars and coax me out of this nocturnal horror.

I never could remember the exact plotline of those dreams, but I did know that something harrowing, unnatural and inevitable was coming after me. Running in quicksand would give way to terrified acceptance. To be “got” by such a brooding dark force was the hell of a six year old.

For my four-year old, Josiah, it’s spider nightmares. Big nasty black ones knee-high. Crawling up his leg in droves. This may be why his favorite superhero is SpiderMan. His greatest fear has become a force for good, a character he can adorn himself with without worry of poisonous bites. SpiderMan helps take the fangs out of spiders.

Spider Man Dreams

But Spiderman still needs to sleep in daddy and momma’s bed from time to time.

Studies show a healthy majority of dreams are nightmares. We romanticize good dreams, where we fly like an eagle over a disco beach party, or reunite with old family and friends over Merlot and T-Bone. But those are few and far between. Most dreams promote a tinge of foreboding and uneasiness. They aren’t just comedies, they are comedy-tragedies, where the other shoe drops on us and jars us awake.

The Deadly Daydream

Nevertheless, to “dream” holds a positive connotation in modern culture. Walt Disney World is a delightful kingdom where “All Your Dreams Come True.” “If you can dream it, you can achieve it,” says the motivational movers and shakers of Self Help fame. From a young age kids are indoctrinated to fearlessly follow their hearts and pursue their dreams into the great future abyss.

Selling the “American Dream” has become a multi billion dollar industry. Coats and boats, vacation homes and 2.3 kids, all have become synonymous with self actualization. Our dreams are filled with stuff and affirmation from people we don’t even like. We live vicariously through the beer commercial, like hot tubbing on a mountaintop or playing volleyball on a beachhead will cure our soul ills. This utopic nationalistic fantasy is just that:  fantasy.

When used in Hallmark Card terms these are daydreams, not dreams in the nocturnal sense. Even these fantasy daydreams have some unspoken darker themes. We dream up a land where we’re the King, where all manner of pleasures bow before our whims, where our closest family and friends would be marginalized and forgotten. If we’re honest, there are certain aspects to our daydreams we would never dream of sharing with our most intimate confidants.

If such recesses of our imagination came to flesh it would shipwreck our life.

We should hope and pray all of our dreams never come true.

That’s why Christ appeals to a Kingdom outside of us as a King over us. All while gently placing His Kingdom reign within us through the Holy Spirit (Luke 17:21). No man can know his own heart fully (Jeremiah 17:9). That sickly hollow muscle must be remade. A world where individual fallen man’s dreams all came true would be a literal hell indeed.

So we chase not after our dreams.

But after a King and a Kingdom.

Where all HIS dreams will come true for us. And nothing but His ultimate glory and our ultimate good will be the standard for our future. Our fantasies. Our sleep.

Bryan Daniels

Related Posts

To Be Ugly and Strong Like John Wayne

17 Replies

John Wayne

He didn’t walk, he ambled.

He had “swag” before the stupid word was invented.

For over thirty years in Hollywood film, John Wayne was the American icon of rugged masculinity and the consummate good guy. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin ordered Wayne’s assassination as a result of his frequently-espoused anti-communist politics.

Awesome.

Before dying of stomach cancer Wayne requested his tombstone read “Feo, Fuerte y Formal”, a Spanish epitaph for “ugly, strong, and dignified.”

Awesome.

My dad, a roughneck country boy in his own right, has an obvious man crush on John Wayne. Growing up, whenever a John Wayne movie was found on the old movie channels, pops was transfixed instantly like a moth to a flame. He’d seen every one of the Duke’s movies 23 times…at least.

The modern movie stud is a little more metro sexual and sanitized. You wouldn’t want them to have your back in a bar fight anymore than you’d want SpongeBob Squarepants to cater your dinner party. Bradley Cooper is a good actor, but don’t tell me you see him taking on Iran’s Ahmadinejad in a heated war of words.

To be sure, there were always the more domesticated winky eyed Cary Grant’s and James Stewart’s on the scene. But they were nicely balanced by the rough and tumble Rooster Cogburn. That leather face and razor wit. If you were the bad guy, he felt just as comfortable cracking a joke at you as shooting you.

Your choice.

So here’s to a simpler time. Where the line between good and evil was drawn with thick black paint. Simpler is not synonymous with dumber. We like our heroes to be a little more twisted and torn nowadays.  Like the modern Christopher Nolan protagonists, Batman and SpiderMan wrestle with their darker tendencies while fighting for good.

But maybe we need a straight shooting straight talking Cowboy who will open up a can on society’s evil degenerates and restore order and justice for the victims.

I believe one day we’ll get that. 

But here’s to the late John Wayne and the era of manliness that died with him. Where real men protected women with strong hands, fought injustice with a fierce chivalry, and rode into the sunset of uncertainty with boldness.

When I grow up, I want to be “ugly”, “strong”, and “dignified” like that.

Bryan Daniels

Related Posts

Dirt Wars and The Bane In Us All

3 Replies

(I’m considering on devoting some of my summer time to completing a manuscript, with chapters and such, out of the theme of this post. This would be the incomplete rough draft of Chapter 1)

When I come home from work everyday, I’m ushered into an epic battle royale. Spiderman and his sidekick, the yellow power ranger, have put me in their sights. It may happen right when the door is opened, after dinner, or after bath time. But the beatdown is inevitably coming, like a Mark Wahlberg face off with the Mickey Mouse Club. Their barrage of face racks, shin kicks, chest hair grabs and ear piercing squeals cripple me on the ground.

Their request is unrelenting, “You be the bad guy, you be the bad guy!”

Once on the floor I’m open game. From my mock fetal position the two year old Ranger slaps the back of head, the four year old Spiderman canonballs from the couch into my side. We all collapse into a heap of justice and giggles.

Once upon a time it was Cowboys and Indians, now it’s Transformers and Decepticons. The principles are the same. Little boys are hardwired to admire heroes and abhor villains. They know inherently both are required in any storyline worth playing out. Both are a reality.

Children see it clearly with every nursery rhyme, cartoon, bedtime story and newsreel their parents watch. For them, it’s painted in disarming black and white. It’s expressed in unpretentious terms.

We need a hero.

Because

We have a villain.

When I was a child it was the Allies v Nazis. As the Cold War came to a crumbling end in the walls of Berlin, our youthful ire would also at times be directed to the “Commies.” Either way, we’d find the closest empty dirt lot in the neighborhood and quarter off our teams on opposite dirt hills. Armed with foot long PVC pipes we’d strategize our attack on how we’d take each enemy hill.

If you’ve never fought a dirt war you’re missing out. Stick the PVC pipe three inches in fill dirt and fling it towards your target like you’re throwing a football. The dirt will spread like buckshot and can be accurate up to 35 feet. If you’re a decent shot you can temporarily cripple your opponent with an eye blast for a good thirty seconds. Once you’ve taken the final Nazi hill a Dresden like bombardment on the cornered enemy will surely lead to total surrender.

Of course, instead of conducting war tribunals we’d go back to our buddy’s house and drink Capri Sun while playing NBA Jam (no way John Stockton could jump that high).

The bad guys always intrigued me. Whether it was Shredder, Darth Vader, The Joker or Wile E Coyote. Their dark motives fascinated me as a child. Other than that gut level attraction I didn’t have anything else in common with them. I was a suburban kid from a good family whose greatest crime against humanity was hiding his mom’s Victoria Secret under his bed. A diabolical scheme to rule the world didn’t quite resonate with me, but yet their twisted masterminding did in a way captivate me. The bad guys had layers of complex psychotic struggle that was supplemented by a brilliant maniacal laugh. The good guys were usually monolithic do gooders with a boring personality and cheesy smile.

As much as I love Captain America’s patriotism, his vanilla projection looks more comfortable playing in a ‘50s sitcom than battling the Third Reich. His pure All American motives and neatly parted hair made him a dull boy to me. In American cultural conscience, this is probably why a tormented protagonist like Batman exceeds Mr. Red, White and Blue in phenomenon.

How we view bad guys on the silver screen is one thing.

How we view bad guys in actual life is another.

When we hear the names Adam Lanza, James Holmes, or Dylan Klebold a romantic understanding of the word “villain” quickly wanes. But our collective fascination remains. When a heart rending tragedy like Newtown, Connecticut happens, our whole nation becomes transfixed not on victim, but perpetrator. Psychoanalyzing abounds, political posturing picks up steam, and prophetic voices lament a culture of violence in video games. Bystanders blame media, media blames the NRA, and the NRA blames Call of Duty. And the cycle descends into an incomprehensible shout match on network news between talking heads on opposing teams.

Surely, it’s okay to debate the state of our mental illness industry or gun control policies. But these are symptoms of a much greater disease. A disease that spreads and permeates into the recesses of our hidden dreams and nightmares.

Another word becomes apparent in all the intricate philosophizing of the tragic account. A word so blatantly clear we only mutter under our breath for fear of sounding like an ignorant child gripping dark age fairy tales dismissed long ago:

“Evil”

On public airwaves, this word is on the no fly list.

Not just evil in an abstract sense, “out there.” But evil in a tangible personal sense, “in here.” Not evil in the actions of sociopathic men, but evil in the heart of socially conscious me. This childhood intuition that intimates there are real heros and real villains is closer to truth than the educated meanderings of PhDs and lawmakers

And it’s not just something to curse out there.

It’s in me.

It’s in you.

There’s a Bane in us all. It can’t be excised by a surgeon’s scalpel or exorcised by a psychologist. This is always the world’s way. Manipulate and rearrange the outside and you have fixed and healed the inside. Like a zombie with an extreme makeover. For a time, behavior modification may work.

But the way to reach and conquer evil in hearts of men like me is not outside in.

It’s a track altogether impossible.

It’s from inside out.

Thankfully, there is one who majors in the impossible realm. He flows (super)naturally and effortlessly through the hidden recesses of the dark heart.

Jesus is the only lasting answer for terrorism and terrorists, wars and rumors of wars, fanatics and bigots.

Jesus takes the impossibly hardened heart and melts it like wax with his blood covered grace.

It’s before him that all superheros and villains and everyone in between must bow in awe.

Where perfect justice and hope for a better world is not just a comic plotline, but eternal reality.

Bryan Daniels

Related Posts

How Football Makes Warriors Out Of Peter Pans

1 Reply
Mosley Football Dline

My D-Line from last year

I’ve been an assistant football coach at the high school level for four years now. I played the sport in high school. I appreciate the benefits of football now as an adult coach much more than I did as a player.

If my two sons have an inkling to play football when they get a few years older, I will encourage it.

Here’s why:

Football makes boys become warriors

I don’t want to over-exaggerate my case with legitimate military vocabulary, but I believe this is true: Football instills a level of toughness most modern boys would not experience in their natural climate. Especially considering when their natural climate is playing Call of Duty 24/7, eating Cheese Puffs, and being coddled by an over protective mother.

There are too many Peter Pans living in a fantasy world who should be young men taking real initiative and responsibility to protect and provide for their family and futures. With the passing of World War Two’s “Greatest Generation”, football is the closest most boys will come to experiencing a battlefield.

There is a fierce fighter lying latent in every chubby adolescent couch potato. That warrior inner man can be beckoned by the stiff demands of sweltering two a days. That future responsible family man can be refined by the daily grind of stingers, head aches, and swollen knees.

Football makes individuals become a team

When done right, a coach can tear down an individual in the heat of battle and build him up afterwards. Tough coaching can help kill ego, laziness, and general selfishness in boys who sincerely believe they are the center of the universe. Football is a constant reminder that players belong to their teammates, coaches, and community.

It helps cast a vision greater than self.

No player is an island. Every player needs the cooperation of his weakest teammate to be succesful. In a generation that is becoming increasingly isolated by the dull glare of a smart screen, boys need community more than ever. They need interpersonal life skills that will help them become better teammates and co workers.

Football makes boys witness and model men

Ask any grown man who played sports: “Who affected you most in early life?” I can almost guarantee a coach will be mentioned. In a modern society replete with absentee dads (physically and emotionally) coaches are often the only solid male authority figures young boys will ever see growing up.

Coaches are the men who will help raise up the potential men who will serve the next generation.

Coaches have a ripe opportunity to speak life, encouragement, structure, and discipline into a boy’s heart very few parents even do. The coach takes a natural authority position most boys will respect, even when they have little respect for the rest the world.

Lost boys fed a steady cultural diet of women chasing, drug consuming, and stuff gathering have a complete lack of father figures to steer them towards true wisdom.

Football (and team sports in general) can help fill that void.

Bryan Daniels

What are some positives (or negatives) you see that team sports may play in an individual’s development?

 

Related Posts

The Gosnell Abortion Trial And The Blood That Speaks For Us All

4 Replies

Abortion Doctor Kermit Gosnell

Yesterday Dr. Kermit Gosnell, the maligned Philadelphia abortion doctor, was found guilty of murdering three babies who survived botched abortions in his clinic. The testimony of co-workers and patients about the clinic’s grimy condition was chilling and brutal: Blood everywhere, severed infant body parts in jars, even cats roaming the premises.

We seem to have some wicked inconsistencies when it comes our threshold for such news. Thousands of Infants were killed in the womb within American “health clinics” yesterday. No word was uttered for them, partly because the clinic they perished in was “safe” and “sanitary.”

Safe for whom?

In America alone, over 100 infant lives were terminated this past hour with no court proceedings or justice for their spilled blood. Their doctor wasn’t a cold heartless monster in the ilk of a Gosnell. He was probably nice and professional. He stabbed the infants in the neck or suctioned their brain with a gentle smile.

That the child’s life begins at some arbitrary 24 week standard, or in the inches of proximity to the womb, is a sad attempt of justification. The death is just as painful for that child no matter where or when it happens.

I’m not merely trying to be provocative.

I just want to bring to light what I believe to be a torrential infanticide of tiny souls. Modern day abortion was born in the twisted barbaric pseudo science of negative eugenics and spread with the racially charged propaganda of Planned Parenthood’s founder, Margaret Sanger. Logically and scientifically speaking, hardly anyone can deny abortion is the taking of a unique human life anymore. But “education and care for the mother should be the focus, not Roe V. Wade,” they may say.

Education and care for the mother is not contradictory to caring for the unborn. The only teen pregnancy resource centers I know of in my area are also staunchly pro-life Baptist and Catholic ministries.

We can speak grace to the mother while speaking life for the child. There should be basic constitutional rights that protect all of life, especially the voiceless innocent kind.

Telling a black slave in the antebellum South that the law that made them “subhuman” was inconsequential to the slavery debate would be a bit disingenuous. Imagine if abolitionists only posited the “education” of slave masters as the best tactic to end slavery. How much longer would America have tolerated this abusive form of chattel slavery?

Was the “Emancipation Proclamation” necessary or not?

Our laws must reflect our value for all life.

The preborn child is a precious life with unique DNA

a unique heartbeat

a unique calling. (Psalm 139:13-14)

If it takes the Gosnell trial to capture the public’s attention about this ongoing tragedy, so be it. If it takes a shop of horrors so brutal and horrifying and real, worse than any “Saw” or “Texas Chainsaw” screening, then God use it for Your glory.

The light shining onto the utter ugly works of darkness will not reveal a bed of roses. Initially, it will be painful to watch.

So I’ll continue to strive to plead the blood of Christ over the blood of millions lost. That His perfect blood would continually “speak a better word” on our behalf than the blood spilled in murder (Hebrews 12:24).

For this nation.

For the infants.

For the broken mothers.

And for the souls of doctors like Hermit Gosnell.

God’s mercy is the only hope we all can cling to.

Bryan Daniels

Related Posts

The Sad State of Fred Phelps And Me

6 Replies

 Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church

America’s favorite villans, Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church, have committed through press release to visit my sleepy neck of the woods: Panama City, FL. They have three large churches, Tyndall Air Force Base, and Bay High School in their incoherent sights.

Some well-meaning souls have planned peaceful counter pickets against them. Instead of “God hates dead soldiers” posters, “God Loves You” posters and the like. Instead of handing out condemnation, handing out reconciliation and a bottle of water.

The local media, for the most part, has taken a discerning stance: Ignoring is the best policy. The less press WBC gets the less likely they even come. Half of the “church” has law degrees. These aren’t just a few dozen ignorant sheep being duped by one shady wolf patriarch. Most of them know exactly what they’re doing to maximize public and monetary impact.

So much is wrong about WBC’s message. So much is wrong about WBC’s tactics. Namely, everything.

But my anger can only go so far with that maligned family. The temporary spike in blood pressure inevitably gives way to a lingering sadness.

Not just for Fred Phelps.

For humans.

For me.

On my worst (and maybe even best) days I have a little incoherent red-faced Fred Phelps bottled up inside me.

A little Westboro Baptist Church trouncing and soap boxing around my cerebral cortex.

Sure, I dress it up and mask it better than they do. I’ve figured out how to soften my critical spirit with just a careless glance or unspoken thought. My personal mode of self-expression would be seen as socially acceptable by the majority.

But I have my own sick fascination with the Law’s demands, especially when applying it to others. Grace is not the default mode of my life projection, and it’s easier to speak as a distant armchair prophet than get dirty as an involved burden sharer and fellow sinner.

I have my own knee jerk judgments:

That people have the audacity not to live out my strict interpretation of the law and Christian ethic.

That my preferential truth is the standard God adopts to judge others.

That mercy is something I love to receive yet rarely express.

The WBC doesn’t just highlight how so many modern expressions of the “church” are un Christlike. If anything, the WBC highlights how un Christlike I am. We may reject their message while simultaneously rejecting any claim to our own self-righteousness.

The distance between opposing picket lines is narrow as a sidewalk. And it’s wide as an ocean.

It’s grace.

Only grace that separates, and reconciles, those two ends of the same fallen human spectrum.

Bryan Daniels

Related Posts

My Pithy Answers To Anonymous Googlers

11 Replies

Is Tim Tebow a bad Christian

One of the mysteries of blogging involves the enigmatic role of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in sending internet searchers your blog’s way. Many come with disturbing dark searches I’ll leave unmentioned, some come with weird puzzling searches that leave me wondering for more (IE “Rastafarian Polygamous Women”).

Many are in the form of questions, questions I’m not sure they received clear answers for in my disjointed ramblings. So here’s my attempt to pithily answer a few random search engine questions that have popped up on my stat radar the past month. I’ll keep it short and non nuanced. If you need clarification ask and a longer post shall be heretofore granted to you.

What does the gospel of grace say about leaving a church that preaches the law?

If it strictly ONLY preaching law (like women being unclean in their time of month, or shrimp being off-limits to Christians) then lovingly share the gospel with the leadership while you share your reasons for leaving (first of all, any kind of shrimp makes me rejoice).

If it preaches what seems like a mixture (which is what I think you’re saying) then sit down with the leadership of the church over coffee and learn about their story and testimony. See where they’re coming from. Most preachers see the ten Mosaic Commands as a rule of life for believing Christians, and as a result sound more behavior modification than grace in their public speech. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re placing the cart of works before the horse of faith. It may mean they haven’t found how revolutionary, freeing, heart changing, and permanent the undiluted gospel of grace is for all of life. Help them with that by modeling it.

Why be an educator?

It’s challenging, rewarding, discouraging and incredibly interesting. Teachers (and coaches) will absolutely have a greater impact on youth than physically or emotionally absent parents. You want to be a light in the midst of the demonic darkness? Come to public education. Future lost generations need mentors to sow love and time into them.

What has been done for justice to the holocaust victims?

I don’t know if anything can be done on this side of eternity concerning real justice for over 20 million lives brutally cut short. Tribunals? Reparations? Band Aids on gaping flesh wounds. My best offer of justice is that of a coming perfect Judge and King, who can make indescribable beauty out of the most ugly heap of ashes (Isaiah 61:3). King Jesus will judge rightly those criminally guilty, and comfort perfectly those lives shattered by tragedy.

I was a bad witness as a christian can i fix it?

Absolutely not. But God can. That’s where grace comes in and murders the shame of being a “bad witness.” You will continue to fall short in your life and that will continue to highlight your continual need of Christ and his daily grace. The best you can do is point to his perfect life and death and life again on your behalf. His gospel doesn’t make you better, it gives you life. This living mercy is new every morning, which is the greatest news for mess-ups like me (Leviticus 3:23)

Is Tim Tebow a Bad Christian?

No. He seems like a bold, genuine, pleasant Christian young man. He seems like the type of positive role model kids need in this day with replete cautionary tales like Snooki or Lindsey Lohan dominating culture. Tebow relies on the same grace we all must be given day to day. Reference “Tim Tebow and How to Be a Bad Christian Witness” for more thoughts.

Should 55 yr old men wear skinny jeans?

No. Never. Absolutely Not. No comprende. What is wrong with you people?!

Hope that helps some of you Internet searchers and lurkers.

Peace and grace,

Bryan Daniels

Related Posts