Seen recently, scrawled on a toilet paper dispenser in a Texas bathroom:

First, in black sharpie:

STOP BIG GOVERNMENT

Immediately beneath, in another's writing:

help each other then

I normally pass over toilet graffiti unmoved, but this one hit me so square on the nose I had to write it down. This seven word argument that smashingly undercuts a traditional conservative battle cry pretty perfectly sums up much of what I feel.

I'd love it if government institutions could be lean and un-invasive, and let us go about our lives unencumbered. But as the respondent on that toilet paper wheel so succinctly points out, we are not doing a good enough job of helping each other through difficulties and trials, sickness and disasters.

Some churches do good things, but as often as not, it seems, help comes with a hook. Those helped have to endure a proselytizing in the process. Free food on the condition of open ears is not charity, it's a sales pitch.

Individuals conversely seem to be accidentally or consciously swallowing Ayn Rand whole, looking out for number 1 and to hell everybody else. I can't tell you how many "stop big government" truckers I meet who, in the same breath, decry government intervention and panhandlers on the side of the road. The government's not supposed to step in, and damned if they'll spare a dime. Who's supposed to help keep these people from starving to death? I assume that the disease and death of these unfortunates while no help is offered them is not acceptable to you. If it is, I really don't care to discuss the social contract with you until you can pull your head out of your ass.

How can we have a society that protects its citizens from byzantine privation without either a government or a populace willing to make the investment?

A bleak scene from the Katrina aftermath is emblazoned on my mind. A string of people very vocally protested the fate of a poor elderly woman whose corpse was sitting in a wheelchair outside the superdome. The corpse was covered in a dirty bedsheet. "Look at the indignity of this" was the refrain. "How can people be treated this way?"

How indeed, when so many of those voices belonged to able bodied young people just as capable as the government of stepping in and taking a old woman's corpse somewhere decent to be laid to wait for its final rest. In that moment, I first understood the impossibility.

The government can't do it right, and the people won't.

This world is not a nice place to live.

Another, briefer gripe about misplaced American Christian zeal.

I have a little FM transmitter that I can plug into my iPod. It transmits a disappointingly wimpy signal on any of the four frequencies between 88.1 and 88.7, so that I can listen to the iPod over the radio in the truck.

An interesting pattern I've noticed in recent months is that often I'll run into radio stations whose signals will overpower the weak transmission coming from inside the cab. This is to be expected from Wimpy McTransmitter...however, what is not expected is the number of times I run across stations that absolutely blow out 88.5 or 88.3 (usually) and subsequently bleed signal onto the surrounding frequencies. These are strong towers, folks. A station booming on 88.5 will produce shadow signals on both 88.3 and 88.7, knocking down three of four of my choices to hear my own stuff. I'll hear the station on 88.5 as if my transmitter was not even on, and on .3 and .7, the buzz and rumble of the voices and music on .5 will overpower the clarity of what my iPod is quietly trying to play.

The common thread? All Christian stations, of one stripe or another. Since I started actively noticing this, it's been unfailingly consistent that if I lose three freqs, it's a Christian tower booming me out.

It's irritating, frankly.

And here's why. To me, this over-powered broadcast strength is a direct result of the misconception that people don't believe in Christ because they can't hear the message. Solution? Buy a tower that, like a blast cannon, launches the message a hundred miles in every direction. Then more people will hear it. Then end result is an extension of the functional stalemate between Evangelical Christianity and the Rest of Everybody.

Let me try to sum it up from the "Rest of Everybody" perspective: We've heard all of this. If we were interested, we'd listen. It just so happens we're not interested, and saying the same things you've already said, but saying them louder, and more invasively, does not increase the attractiveness of your message.

Let me also take a minute to point out that, in my opinion, Christian radio is dangerous. It goes out and honest, well meaning spiritual people listen to it, and because it got on the air, they take it for doctrinal truth. I've heard more things on Christian stations that are shaky, misleading, or just flat wrong than I can count.

So, if you happen to be thinking about buying a titanic broadcast tower in order to improve your evangelism, Mr. Christian Station Manager (and you happen to be reading this) let me make a couple of points.

1) The message of Christ is a message intended to be communicated from individual to individual, based on the way God uses the disciple to show the un-disciple how transformative redemption can be. Mass media will never replace this. Indeed it might be that mass media has made the individual completely oblivious to the need for personal relationship.

2) You overestimate your own role in God's purposes for redemption if you think that people are saved because they can't hear your programming. Very poignantly, I just heard today Magaret Atwood give one of the most concise (and deadly accurate) descriptions of Christ as the propitiation for sin I've ever hear anybody give, churchman or not, and she doesn't believe it personally for a minute. She understands the principle, but does not believe. It's not an issue of not having heard for her.

3) And I reiterate here, bits and blurbs of your programming, heard far and wide, taking out of context or in, can do damage the health of those on your own "team".

4) Always and always, a message delivered when the receiver does not desire to listen falls on deaf ears.

In the search for truth and ordered, responsible living, Christianity has a tendency to act like it has a leg up on the rest of the world.

Ostensibly, it does. Biblical texts speak unambiguously of God's Truth, and the veracity of scripture as the revelation of God. If you're starting from a place where a personal God can be relied upon to exposit the important points of His interactions with humanity, and what He considers critical to healthy, successful living, as well as lay down His very detailed description of the plan for your redemption...well, then that's quite the head start.

But there's a problem. It's a problem I see repeating itself (without exaggeration) daily. For some reason, perhaps just in America, Christian Churches have stalled on the idea that the Bible is Truth. The potential fact that the Bible is Truth is implicitly useless if you and your cohorts are totally incapable of or unwilling to keep to said Truth with integrity, and to spend time and thought on discerning its appropriate application in day-to-day life.

We're very classically spotting the trees and missing the forest.

On one side, there's politically active Christian task forces campaigning against gay marriage, on the other, massive mainstream denominations are giving the nod to professing homosexuals in leadership and ministry. What the hell? Have we gone completely insane?

On the one hand, anti-gay marriage is energetically co-opting what is a personal, relational religious ideal into a belligerent, populist moralism, that seeks to dictate behavior on the same grand scale as DARE did with "just say no". Don't-do-it-because-it's-wrong-because-I-say-so has always been a shitty reason to do (or not do) anything. It's a cop out. It's an easy exit for those in authority (or trying to exercise authority) to avoid justifying their mandates.

On the other hand, we have established, long-lived embodiments of Christian doctrine farcically ignoring the biblical exposition (in both testaments) that unequivocally outlines the fact that homosexual lusts (and in fact all extra-marital sexual lust, I might point out) are the end product of the corruption of the human spirit. These things are on the long list that includes greed, pride, deceit, malice and a whole host of other human behavior that often feels GREAT in the moment but does us damage in time. And these churches are very casually dropping this from their consideration of the qualifications for church leadership.

It's two sides of the same coin, really. Coming back to the original points about integrity and thoughtful application, you've got the political crusaders applying their beliefs in an unthoughtful and disintegrated fashion, trying to enforce behavior on people who have never felt any call nor made any commitment to follow God's instruction on how to live and Who to look to for salvation. On the other hand you have people opening their hearts and understanding that American Christianity has been, for decades, stuck in a morass of unsympathetic, dogmatic monasticism and in the alarm of waking up to this tragedy, throwing out basic Christian doctrine with the ugly, ungodly censoriousness.

So I suppose I can make sense of it. The point of writing this? Well, perhaps I hope some folks can get something useful from it. For those on the outside looking in, if you're thinking that Christianity is, by and large, a bamboozling maze of contradictions, you're certainly not far off the mark, given the external behavior of a whole myriad of different groups. It's not supposed to be like this, but then, when humans are involved, how often does anything turn out the way it's supposed to?

I have faith that God will preserve His Truth on through this spate of abject silliness, if maybe only underground and out of sight. He can see the end, I trust, so I'm not really worried...but I do feel very moved to point some of this stupid shit out.

As a brief PS, hypocrisy is built into any Christian's life. By the nature of the faith, we aspire to and exposit values and behaviors that we inevitably fail to observe and act out. Take, for instance, my nearly lifelong disrespect for the principle of the mouth reflecting the heart. Even this post is littered with a brand of coarseness most folks find incongruous with pursuit of God. Individual hypocrisy, especially the endemic type, should be pointed out, but also forgiven. For my part, I'm rotten and busted, and I know it. Group hypocrisy, however, of the kind I decry in this post, is a different animal altogether. I am a man with poor self-discipline and some terrible habits. Denominations have no such cover of individual failing...avoidance of this kind of group departure is the whole point of the body of believers.

I often go through days feeling on the edge of something. On the cusp. On the brink. On the verge.

In keeping with the spirit of my last post, I think a good visual came to me today. So run with me on this for a minute.

I feel as though there is a great bottomless abyss of Truth. Unlike most abysses that you might think of, this deep, endless drop is not a descent into hopeless blackness, waiting for thermal currents to push you into an unforgiving wall and crush you. It is, rather, well lit and beautiful, and best experienced in free fall, at terminal velocity, allowing the totality of it to sweep by you, confident that stepping off the ledge was the best decision you've ever made.

I see this freefall, and I stand at the edge, pacing around it endlessly, trying to make the decision to dive in.

But there's a wrinkle.

You see, around this abyss there's a fence, and the perimeter is a long walk around. So as I pace the long distances around the lip of this epic fall, I encounter high fence walls, edged with razor wire, keeping me from jumping in even when I most desperately want to. These are the days when my angst or my selfishness or my self-destructive behavior are such that to really sally forth into a routine of creativity is impossible.

Then there are places where the fence is low, easy to vault, or even gated for easy entry, and inevitably I'm so absorbed in the path right under my feet I traipse right past these free opportunities, and when I look up, I'm back at the razor wire again...so only by looking forward or backward do I see the places where it would be best to jump in. These low spots in the fence come when my life is ordered and consistent, uncomplicated and relatively untaxing. These moments would be a perfect time to add a new discipline and start writing a little each day. But I don't because I'm happy; I'm looking at the end of my nose and appreciating the fact that life is going smoothly.

I need to take this leap when I'm not getting in my own way. This post is a part of that razor wire fence. This post and anything else dated today. This is all necessity writing. This is just to keep me sane. It's precisely when I don't need to that I am best suited to leap into a lifelong spelunk of truth.

I go in cycles. I've known this for quite awhile. I suppose cyclical behavior is inherent in the human condition. Like seasons, we come around to similar places for similar reasons again and again, based on the influences and outlets of our day to day lives. But as the 4^th anniversary of beginning to write a novel (that I planned to hammer out in a year) approaches, I can retrospectively see the bubbles and busts of my behavior almost as clearly as if they were neat DOW Jones tracking charts.

The metaphor that came to me for this life cycle (which is mostly creative in nature) came to me today in quite stunning clarity as I negotiated the high country between Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming. I suffer from a sort of creative bulimia.

I understand that it's a graphic comparison, but it's pretty functional. I intake, and intake, and intake (a long binge process) watching the world and listening to it breathe and groan, an organism of humanity trying to sort itself out. It's fascinating to me. Sometimes enlightening, sometimes depressing, this intake angers me, excites me, stimulates me, shocks me, tears me apart...but always encourages the constant state of analysis, of critical thought, that I see as crucial to an open mind.

But there's a balance issue here. The intake is often unregulated, and the outlet is dangerous overkill. Like a bulimic, I will often go long stretches (days or sometimes a week or two) completely avoidant of sustenance. I go dark to the human world. I go about my business, do my job, and generally "veg out". This is because I've been through a recent binge. It's not uncommon for me to go through 4 to 6 hours of podcast material in a working day, often for 3 or 4 days in a row. When I say podcast material, I mean shows like "This American Life", "To the Best of our Knowledge", "Left, Right & Center" and other thought oriented NPR stuff, and Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History". I also blast through hours of lighter shows like "Wait, Wait, Don't tell Me", or "Car Talk" (probably the lightest of the fare).

Even the light stuff keeps my critical thought going, though. The jokes, the solutions to problems, the human interactions and ideas that are inevitably laced into any kind of talk show reach into my mind, and my mind digests them, picking out bits and pieces that I reject, accept, or ruminate on at length. The first four shows in the list are heavy artillery, though. LR&C is blatant political debate, and doesn't pretend to be anything else. TAL and TTBOOK are both news magazines, objectively offering stories of human nature on thematic strings, telling stories, and more often than not, vaguely suggesting and editorial position on what underlying truth might be. So I'm doing multiple things simultaneously during these shows. I'm not checking my criticism at the door, because even as much as I might love these shows, carelessness could easily leave me open to thoughtlessly swallowing a social or theological premise with which I don't agree, merely because it's subtle (and probably unconsciously) woven into the text of the presentation. I'm also imbibing stories of human nature, often in first-person interview, that shed light on the internal machinery of individual people, and give me very precious windows into the assumptions, beliefs and objectives of my fellow humans. Thirdly, I'm learning critical information about the way the world actually works...things that runs our day to day lives that generally get missed, misinterpreted, or ignored in most discussion and debate about "the way things are". TAL is especially good at this. Their shows on health care reform and the financial kaboom have taught me ten thousand little things that news blurbs haven't got the chronological budget to spend explaining.

And I'm not done imbibing. On top of the vast swath of Public Radio, there's "Hardcore History" that I've just torn through. Dan Carlin tries to make a point of manipulating what often becomes compressed recitation of critical events (history, that is) and unpacking it into human experience. He follows little seams of precious human reality that often get glossed over or forgotten in the grand sweep of thousands of years. To that end, I'm germinating and nourishing seeds of belief about human nature that have been (perhaps blissfully) undeveloped until now. The horrible brutality of human existence has seldom been so vividly unfolded in my mind's eye...and this even from me, a person who can humbly and honestly claim a broader and deeper understanding of military history than most.

And then...then I step back and set our bestiality against the beauty of our art, and the joy of our festivity...and I start to get a little dizzy trying to digest it all.

And I'm overfull. I've ingested too much, too quickly, and I've not even saved space these last weeks for Alistair Begg and the brilliant Biblical exposition he does on "Truth for Life". Add to the mix my fundamental belief that Jesus stepped in to pay human debt so that we can meet God judgment free, and you have an unlit Molotov waiting for a flame and a strong arm.

And now, not only am I mixing metaphors, I understand I'm in a dangerous place. I'm got too much in me. It's making me swell uncomfortably...

And the imbalance still reigns supreme. I purge. I either spend long hours at the keyboard, hammering away at something or other, this book or that essay, none of which ever survives the night, or I check out...listening to the best classic rock station I can find on the radio, or gaming obsessively, or just surfing the internet.

But even then, the cycle has begun again, because the games and music and websites all have messages too. Nothing that man creates is message free. It's a bold statement, but I believe it's true. Even the most practical of things transmits some information that the maker or harvester or gatherer values.

It's an issue of discipline, and I know it. If I were slowing my intake and regulating my output, I could feed and bleed my creative mind on a sort of predictable schedule that it could tolerate. Instead of puking out all of this half formed philosophy, I could actually digest ideas in turn, and spend unhurried days formulating a response that I could believe in.

It would make the blog more interesting, I'm sure (not mentioning that the whole point of the blog is to do exactly the kind of short form writing that keeps these disciplinary skills sharpened), and it would certainly enrich the longer term projects, not least that massive, hairy, Yeti of a book that keeps outgrowing my abilities. I might actually start new projects and feel equipped to come back to them again the next day, confident that they were begun on a critical and valuable premise, not on a vomitous blurb of pressure release.

And last of all, it would make me less dark of a person. Most of my adolescence and early adulthood is characterized by grim weariness, brought about almost solely by this very kind of unexorcized emotional response to my instinctive and constant contemplation of the human condition.

I'm a grump because people get to me, and I'd be less grumpy if I did something deliberate about it.