Dear Theology

by Lane Severson

Dear Theology,

I don't know what happened. I never thought I'd be writing this letter. But here I am, in the lobby of an enormous Hyatt resort in Orlando, Florida at a business conference, and I have to tell you that it is over.

Let's be honest, I think we both saw this coming. I was always trying to get you to do things you weren't comfortable with and you always ended up nagging me about things I just didn't care about. It wasn't fair to either of us.

We used to have a beautiful relationship back when I called myself a fledgling theologue and read everything you had to offer. And those three years together in graduate school were so passionate. But maybe it was too much too fast. I don't know.

After graduation we planned to keep studying together but I got a job. At first that was great. We both resented the job. It had come between us and gave us a mutual enemy. I kept meeting you in secret just to spite "The Man." (Remember when we planned to learn Latin together? We were so stupid.) The thing is, I had already stopped loving you then. I didn't love my work yet, not the way I do now, but I had started to resent you for the cruel, aloof way you carried yourself. You had so many important things to say but you never wanted to talk about my real life. That was too boring. Even when we went all ethical, you couldn't spend more than a few minutes on friendship, family, or work. And that's my whole life.

So you should have known when I didn't call that I was reading Batman comics and Rumi poetry. I can't explain why, but they connected with me in ways that you didn't anymore. I felt bad about us. But what could I do? I honestly couldn't take another discussion about any of your damnable "ologies."

Now, when friends ask how you are, I try to change the conversation. I had become a proxy between you and a lot of friends. But now, when they wonder what you would say about something, I just feel sick to my stomach. I want to shout, "Who cares? That poopy head doesn't care about anything."

That's the kicker isn't it? The empathy. Anytime you got some empathy you got all stupid-drunk hippy-dippy about the world and lost your substance. It was kindness without wisdom. And I couldn't handle that either.

You'll probably think this means I'm leaving "the faith." You are actually that vain. You would equate yourself with the faith. I'm shaking my head in disbelief as I write this. No I'm not leaving the faith, you pompous ass. I'm worshiping, training my children, celebrating Eucharist, and praying. But I'm leaving all the abstract meaningless questions to you. You can keep them. 

I'll be doing the work that God gave me and raising the children he blessed me with. And when I want to read something, it will have to do with either them or Batman.

Goodbye, Theology. I won't miss you. 

Lane Severson blogs at On Pop Theology and Out of Ur. He likes charismatic liturgy and listening to Kanye West or Jay Z with his wife and five children. Lane can be found at about.me/lseverson or on Twitter @_lxnx.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.

Image Credits:
Image #1
Image #2

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On Love

by Lane Severson

As a Christian, I find it very difficult to say anything about love that is both true to experience and true to my religious convictions. The Bible seems to indicate that God is love and that we are identified as part of God's people by being loving. The entire law boils down to loving God and loving our fellow man. At the same time we seem to only experience love in a glimpse here and there and even then, it seems to be enveloped by the rest of life – there, but indistinguishable from everything else. Or, on our worst days, it seems to have only been a cruel illusion that was never true at all.

The worst way to talk about love is when we reduce the word to the idea of “niceness.” Loving our neighbor then means that we are nice to people even when they are mean to us. The result of this is usually that we begrudgingly “take the high road” and subsequently feel self-righteous about it. No one actually says that this is what love is, but this is what often passes for “loving our neighbor.” In my experience, this kind of love makes me more of a dick and less like Jesus, and that makes me think it isn't love at all.

What does love look like? (If you just answered “Jesus” in your head, I'm going to smack you.) I have a couple stories that sound like love to me.

Once upon a time, a friend of mine broke up with his on-again-off-again girlfriend of what seemed like decades. Then, they both signed up for eHarmony and were matched with each other. And now they’re married with a couple of kids. I haven't seen them in years, so it’s entirely possible they now hate one another. But when I think of that story, I feel like love won. 

Or, I think of the woman in my Dad's church who got remarried to her first husband after 25 years of separation. That is the most romantic story I know.

I can also tell you stories about how I've hurt the people I love and how they have hurt me too. Obviously, I know the difference between doing something hurtful to a person that I love and doing something loving toward them. But I don't know what being loving looks like outside of a relationship that includes being hurt and forgiven.

A couple years ago, I found myself walking wounded, struggling with inner turmoil. A part of it had to do with a difficult encounter with my parents; they’d dropped the ball on some stuff in life that was deeply important to me. I finally brought it up to them, and they realized then that they’d not held onto that ball very tightly at all. They apologized; they asked if there was anything they could do to make it up. But emotional scars aren’t exactly the sort of thing that can be patched up with a gift card to Banana Republic. I answered honestly; I told them I didn’t think so. Now, they weren’t trying to hurt me. I just got hurt. They couldn’t fix that fact, and neither could I.

“What now?” my Dad asked.
“I think this is where grace happens.” I said.

One of the things I can tell you about grace is that it’s something totally beyond what we’re able to offer on our own, even to people we think we love. Grace is God being sufficient in our weakness. It is a divine help that is sent to us when we need it. Or, to be more accurate, it is sent when someone else needs it from us.

The moments in my life that seemed the most like love had almost nothing to do with me or with my ability to love. They all seem like the story above: the unlikely overcoming of things that were going wrong. I'm obviously not talking about the vapid idea of “falling in love,” which is just total bullshit. I'm talking about an idea of love that could somehow be a connection with the love that God is, a love that requires his presence because it requires us to be weak and him to be strong.

Loving our neighbor can't just mean “be nice, even when they don't deserve it.” As I mentioned above, this is a surefire recipe for becoming a huge d-bag. Loving our neighbor has to mean that we don’t hide our weakness anymore. It means that we can be vulnerable with people who are different, even repulsive, to us.

Love can only be this way, this deep and radical vulnerability, when it is grounded in a faith that God’s strength really is motivated by love and really will be present in our weakness. This means that exactly at the moment when we assume love hasn’t happened – when we have exposed our weakness and actually been a dick - that God’s grace can happen and we can finally experience what we believe to be true, that God is love.

Lane Severson blogs at On Pop Theology and Out of Ur. He likes charismatic liturgy and listening to Kanye West or Jay Z with his wife and five children. Lane can be found at about.me/lseverson or on Twitter @_lxnx.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.

Image credits:
Image #1 via Pink Sherbet Photography
Image #2, Love is just a game II by carunderwater-x
Image #3, Grace by davespertine 
  
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On Breathing

by Lane Severson

When I was a child I would sometimes think intently about the process of breathing. When I would do this, it would seem to remove the breathing auto-pilot, so that I had to consciously decide to inhale and to exhale and to inhale again. The manual process of breathing terrified me. It seemed inevitable that I would become distracted by something else, would forget this rhythm of breath, and then I would die of asphyxiation.

We all know that you don't die when you forget to breath; your body just takes over again and lets you get back to eating cheese and/or reading Calvin and Hobbes. Literally everything you've done in life depended on breathing, and most of the time you had nothing to do with it.

Nobody has ever lectured me on the importance of regular breathing. I've done it ever since a doctor slapped my ass in the delivery room. And I don't think that, once I learned how oxygen is moved through the body by the blood, I then decided that I should start doing that rather than just keeping it in my lungs. I think that was already happening. I am fairly certain that the most vital process that is keeping me alive has nothing at all to do with my understanding of it.

I wonder if my soul works the same way as my body. Does it breathe the Spirit of God each moment despite my understanding it? Is it ingesting divinity and growing holy without any brilliant mental insights from the books I read or great experiences from the worship services I attend?

It would be easy to beat this to death and ask about smoking and lung disease and whatever. I'm sure you could have a fun discussion about that. The point I'm trying to make is that maybe God designed our soul to feed on him despite our all-powerful mental faculty supervising it. Maybe more of our spiritual life is out of our hands than we like to think. And maybe that’s a good thing, the same way that having the moment-by-moment task of breathing be set on default is a good thing.

Lane Severson blogs at On Pop Theology and Out of Ur. He likes charismatic liturgy and listening to Kanye West or Jay Z with his wife and five children. Lane can be found at about.me/lseverson or on Twitter @_lxnx.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.

Image credits:
Image #1 via TiloArte 
  
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Survival of the Guiltiest

by Lane Severson 

God has blessed me with a wife and five children. But when the zombie apocalypse happens, they are out of luck because this guy could never make a fire, or build shelter, or fashion a weapon to fight off zombies – much less figure out how to wipe our seven butts without glorious Charmin Ultra Soft. We would all cake ourselves in feces just to survive the cold, and then we would starve, and then, many days later, the zombies would find us and take a pass on cracking open our poop-encrusted heads. Even zombies would be smart enough to realize that our brains just wouldn't be worth eating.

Jack London would have never written a book about me.

There used to be this ad for Hummers, back before everyone owned one, and the copy read: "If your life was a movie, would it go straight to video?" And the idea was that you need to stop doing whatever people did back in '95, and get out and encounter nature...in your enormous luxury vehicle...with the A/C on. At least, I assume the A/C would be on. It gets pretty hot outside. Jack London would probably write a book about me if I hunted bear in my Hummer. (Picture me driving through the woods at top speeds, shooting at a bear with that gun from Predator, and screaming at the top of my lungs.)

But that’s not me. I am at the complete opposite end of the spectrum.

I'm not joking. The other day I almost sold my car for scrap metal, only to find out it hadn’t actually broken down; the battery was just dead. I ALMOST THREW AWAY A PERFECTLY GOOD CAR BECAUSE I COULDN'T JUMP THE BATTERY!

Image by Wtshymanski

My children, young as they are, already sense my utter dependence upon the modern world. They understand that my ability to "provide" is a step removed at best. When we ordered a pizza recently, they thanked the delivery guy, but not me. "But Dad, he's the one who brings us the pizza," they said. The vacuous act of purchasing the pizza holds no intrinsic value for them. 

Of course, I know that I'm perfectly well equipped to survive the modern world and that a zombie apocalypse probably isn't going to happen, but I still feel guilty that, if I was born ten thousand years ago, I would have been told to stay with the women and children to "take care of them," while the other men went hunting for our food.

Even as a child, I sensed the potential importance of being able to provide for myself should my plane crash into an ocean or my sled dogs all die, thereby stranding me alone in the Alaskan wilderness. I read a lot of books about how to build a shelter out of snow, or how to avoid sunburn when stranded in the ocean. I don't remember any of that now; a much more effective strategy for survival is to not explore the Alaskan wilderness with sled dogs in the first place. But I digress. 

Somehow, human evolution has produced me - a man who could have never survived at any point previously in all of history. 

Don't worry, dear reader, I'm about to go all David Blaine on this post and pull a heart-wrenching point out of this insanity and guilt.

Image by Natasha

Because the truth is, there are two kinds of guilt. Let's say that one kind of guilt is two chocolate cookies, and the other type of guilt is that delicious white stuff in the middle. They seem easy enough to tell apart: one is the guilt you feel from doing something wrong; the other is the guilt you feel because you don't measure up to the ideals society has set for you. It seems like it should be easy enough to tell the difference between the two. I mean, one is a cookie and the other is filling. But in our brains, the cookie and the frosting have been blended up into little pieces, and now there are gummy worms all over the place too for some reason, and it’s pretty hard to figure out where the filling starts and the cookie begins.

So, the idea that I need to be able to survive a zombie apocalypse without Charmin Ultra Soft is crazy, and obviously the kind of guilt that comes from other people or society or something. But I also feel the other kind of guilt too, because I'm an idiot and make bad decisions. And if that's the case, that's on me. On the other hand, maybe I’ve made the best decisions I could, considering the information I was presented with, and so I'm off the hook.

But then, there’s this other layer here where the idea of self-sufficiency is to be lauded, and is the measure of being wise and responsible in America.  Except maybe that has nothing to do with the things that should be important to me as a Christian. Yet, being wise is a big deal in the Bible, at least in Proverbs.

And then there is that entire part of me that is obsessed with the idea that, if I'm not providing "value," people will abandon me. Actually that's the worst fear of them all. The zombie apocalypse I'm really worried about is the one where I'm alone, not the one where I can't provide. This whole line of reasoning is a messy, messy thing. That’s because it’s the Oreo-Cookie-dirt-pie that is guilt. You can't pull these strands apart cleanly any more than you can reconstruct a whole Oreo cookie out of dirt pie.

Image by ProtoplasmaKid

Maybe this is why I love the Christian practice of confession so much. Some people have told me that they find ritual confession depressing. But for me, it is the place of freedom. In the Anglican Church, we have a phrase during the prayer of confession wherein we ask forgiveness for "the things we have done and the things we have left undone." It is "the things we have left undone" that seems to cover that dirt pie mess of guilt in my head.

So when the priest stands up to absolve our sins I hear something like: 

May the Almighty God have mercy on you, forgive you all your sins – even your stark dependence upon Charmin Ultra Soft, and your persistent navel gazing, and fear of failure, and persistent longing for affirmation – through our Lord Jesus Christ, strengthen you in all goodness to go live a Christian life – despite the dirt-pie of guilt in your brain – and, by the power of the Holy Spirit, keep you in eternal life. Amen. 

And I say, “Amen.” And then, I believe a double miracle happens. Miracle one: I'm forgiven for my guilt and my insanity. Miracle two: God uses me, in my weakness, to help other people. And the coolest thing for me is when I say all of this and it’s actually helpful for another person, because they feel the same way about their guilt and insanity but have had bad experiences with confession in the past, or else have never really done it before. Because God has made us as communal creatures, and has called us to bear one another’s burdens, and when we go through public confession together, we’re doing just that; we’re helping one another. Oh, and also, if I can help you by giving you info on how to jump a car battery, I totally know how to do that now. 

Lane Severson blogs at On Pop Theology and Out of Ur. He likes charismatic liturgy and listening to Kanye West or Jay Z with his wife and five children. Lane can be found at about.me/lseverson or on Twitter @_lxnx.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  

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Your Favorite Movie Needs More Pandas

Image by J. Patrick Fischer

by Lane Severson

What would make every movie from Citizen Kane to China Town better? Pandas.

Have all of the main characters be played by Pandas. Keep everything else exactly the same.

Remember Beverly Hills Ninja with Chris Farley? Now, remember when they redid it with a Panda and called it Kung Fu Panda? Yeah, exactly.  BHN is a depressing display of Chris Farley jumping the shark. KFP redefined children's animated martial arts comedy.

The appeal of the panda is hard to quantify. But by using some advanced BS technology we've recently developed, we now estimate that any film remade with a Panda would gain an instant "Two Decomposed Thumbs Up" from Siskel and Ebert. Here are some potential reviews:

1. No Country for Old Pandas

The original film raised questions about the depth of evil and cruelty that exists in the world, personified by Anton Chigurh, a killer with no respect for persons, a murderer of the innocent. But we also feel, deep inside, that no person is truly innocent, which tempers our outrage at the acts. Yet, once the film was updated to show Chigurh mercilessly hunting and brutally murdering the upright and adorable Llewelyn Panda, we saw what true evil really looked like. The Coen brothers couldn't even bring themselves to show Panda's murder, or his dead body. And for that, we are certainly thankful.

*This reviewer thought Tommy Lee Jones had been replaced with a bloodhound. But after consulting with his wife, he was told that “Jones just looks like that.”

2. The Panda Wears Prada

A young Panda graduates from journalism school and scores a job working for Cruella de Vil, who has seemingly given up on the whole killing puppies thing, and now spends all her time trying to ruin Panda's life.  Panda attempts to make the best of the situation and, to be honest, I have no idea how this ends because, I just can't...

Image by Jeff Kubina

3. Broke Back Panda

Once Pandas were cast in the remake of Broke Back Mountain, it became apparent to everyone that they were just making a documentary about Pandas. (Seriously. Pandas are gay. Ask Robert P. Golouski)

4. Citizen Panda

This film opens on a dying Howard Panda, alone in his baller mansion. With his final breath he gasps, "Sugar Cane." Flashback follows flashback after flashback, until we realize that all Howard Panda ever really wanted was a piece of sugar cane he was deprived of. But he also treats every other panda in his life like they are worthless. I don't know that there is any real excuse for that. Is there anything more depraved than a selfish panda? But the poetry of the tale strikes a deeper chord as well; if sweet and cuddly Howard Panda can become a monster, what chance do we mere humans have at living a carefree life chewing sugar cane? By the conclusion of the film, we are beating our chests with a our fists and yelling, "Give it up, Mr. Panda! Run back to the mountains and eat sugar cane. What is you panda innocence worth?"

*The only weird part of this film was the choice to have Howard Panda wear a mask of a really old Orson Welles. This reviewer thought that was tacky.

5. The Passion of the Panda

Mel Gibson has gone too effing far this time. I understand that Panda-monium is sweeping the country, but did we really need a three-hour film about the brutal torture and crucifixion of a panda? I couldn't even watch it; the entire idea is abhorrent. Still, this movie is better than the original since, by making it, Mel Gibson went a step too far and was finally excommunicated. I'm not saying that anything justifies this kind of anti-pandite film, but if a panda did have to die a horrible death on a cross, at least Mel Gibson was damned to hell as a result.

6. The Panda's Bride

With classic lines like, "My name is Pandito Panda; you killed my father; prepare to die." And "You keep saying panda; I do not think it means what you think it means."

This film also contains some mild Panda torture. But it is done in such a tasteful and magical way that it improves the romance of the story. Even so, you might want to look away.

7. The Panda, The Witch and The Wardrobe

Hey Mel Gibson, you sick freak, this is how you make a movie showing that comparing a Pandas are like to Jesus Christ. You make them it the protector of young children and hero of a magical land; you don't beat the crap out of one it until everyone in the audience has puked their guts out. I still get goosebumps every time I hear, "Panda is on the move."

Image by Raphael Labbe

8. Reservoir Pandas

Quentin Tarantino maintains his position as the master of style. Heis decision to replace only Joe Cabot and Nice Guy Eddie with pandas is both tasteful and genius. The brutal, ugly, violent nature of the film is reserved only for the human characters.  Panda Cabot flips through his address book muttering, “Toby? Toby Chow?”  And the wrestling match between Nice Guy Panda and Michael Madsen is so heartwarming, this reviewer wept for a solid five minutes afterwards.

9. A Panda Runs Through It

This is one where the movie’s plot was radically changed (and for the better) by introducing a panda. Instead of watching Kevin Bacon be a total frickin’ creeper, you get to watch a panda just run through different things. My favorite scene was either when the panda ran through a waterfall only to roll onto the set of the David Letterman show, or when Panda ran through the airport to catch a late flight.

10. Panda's Inc.

The only change to the movie that this reviewer could discern was that Sully is now white and black, instead of blue and purple. Four stars.

Lane Severson blogs at On Pop Theology and Out of Ur. He likes charismatic liturgy and listening to Kanye West or Jay Z with his wife and five children. Lane can be found at about.me/lseverson or on Twitter @_lxnx.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.
  

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An Announcement About the Future of On Pop Theology

by Ben Howard

Things have been a bit quiet here over the last few weeks. You may have noticed.

I thought it might be time to explain that, because that silence is about to come to an end.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working behind the scenes with my friend and editor, Sebastian Faust, as well as a number of others, to re-imagine what exactly On Pop Theology will look like for the next month, for the next year, and what we hope to achieve going forward.

The blog will remain very similar. We have a wonderful team of regular contributors working with us. Some, like Charity Erickson, Lyndsey Graves, and JaneAnn Kenney, you’ve read here often. Others, like Lane Severson and Jared Byas, will be newer to you.

The podcast is where we’re really hoping to shake things up.

As always, there will still be interviews with people we find interesting and noteworthy. In fact, we would very much love to hear your suggestions on who you’d like to hear us interview. I can’t promise anything, but I’ve tried some bizarre things in an attempt to get a guest before. Aim high.

Also, our more avant-garde studio shows with Jesse Moon, Sebastian, and myself will still be a monthly feature. If you’ve listened to those episodes, you’ll know we’re game for pretty much anything.

More importantly, we’ll be bringing you two different types of podcasts this year.

In the first, we’ll be trying to explore difficult and complex societal issues. We want to learn about and talk about the hard things and we want to work with the people who understand those topics. 

For the second, we’ll be focusing one episode a month on a particular book of the Bible. Our goal is to bring in some of the most knowledgeable Biblical scholars to lend us their expertise as we try and understand how to read the Bible responsibly, respectfully and justly. 

Here’s the part where we need your help, and it’s two-fold.

First, we need your ideas. What do you want to read about? What do you want to learn about? What questions do you have? You can leave a comment here, contact us on Twitter at either @BenHoward87 or @OnPopTheology, or send us an email at onpoptheology@gmail.com.

Second, we’re asking you for money. While the podcast isn’t expensive to produce, it’s also not cheap. Our budget for the show this year is almost $400 which covers web hosting and equipment. If you like the show and can spare $5 or $10 to help us cover the costs, we would be deeply grateful.

We’ve added a "Donate" button to the sidebar on the right. Just click there and you can donate whatever amount you’d like via Paypal.

I’ve said before that On Pop Theology, both the blog and the podcast, is one of the most enjoyable things I’ve ever done. I love doing this. I love being creative, I love working with creative people, and I love being able to share that creativity with you.

You are all wonderful! Happy Thanksgiving!

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.  

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Chicago Area Man Watches Breaking Bad Finale To See What All The Fuss Is About

by Lane Severson

Last Sunday night, a Chicago area man chose to watch the series finale of the critically acclaimed AMC show Breaking Bad. He claims the decision was made on a whim, having never once felt the need to watch anything more than the show’s pilot.

"Yeah, I watched the pilot when it came out, but it didn't really grab me," said Lane Severson with a vapid grin. Obviously pleased with himself for ignoring one of the best pieces of dramatic television in the last five years, he continued, "But people seemed to be really into the show, and I didn't have any fantasy players in the Sunday Night Football game, so I thought, ‘What the heck, let's see how this wraps up.’"

Breaking Bad has been nominated for forty-two Emmy Awards in its original run, but not once did Severson ever consider that he was missing out on a unique cultural phenomenon. "Have you ever seen that show Kenny VS Spenny?" Severson asked, referring to a reality-style television show featuring two Canadian friends who dare one another into asinine situations. "The one where they see who can stay tied to a goat the longest? That’s a classic!"

Severson, a graduate student in theology, attempted to position his cultural naiveté as social commentary, calling it an act of prophetic symbolism. "Pop culture is basically the modern church. We don't actually say this, but it is true. And watching shows in order, that’s like liturgy.  By taking the ‘eucharist’ of the finale, without attending the rest of the show’s ‘symbolic journey,’ I spit in the face of this false god."

Before viewing the episode Sunday, Severson crafted both a tweet and a Facebook post to announce his plan. "That'll get people wound up," he told his wife smugly. At the time of printing, not one of Severson's nearly two thousand connections had so much as ‘liked’ these self-obsessed pleas for attention.

Friends and family say that this barely scratches the surface of Lane Severon's neurosis. "He'll probably have the balls to write a long diatribe about how Walt never actually says he's sorry, or what Breaking Bad teaches us about the human condition," said long-time friend, Al Cedeno. "Lane loves to talk about stuff he doesn't know anything about,” added Severson’s wife, Laura, “which is basically everything."

Despite skipping sixty episodes of intense interpersonal drama, manipulation, murder, the rise and fall of a drug empire, and a lot of other stuff Severson doesn't know anything about, he said he didn't feel like he missed too much. "You know, the only flashback in the finale was back to the pilot," Severson said, puckering his lips for some reason, "and I saw the pilot."

Is Severson on Team Walt? He doesn't know what that is… but sure.

How does Severson feel about the conclusion to Jesse's story? "It was pretty good," Severson said. "He was in the first episode, so I was kind of wondering whether he would show up in this one or not."

"Mainly, I'm glad Walter White got out of that car wash," said Severson, referring to Walt's second job in the opening episode. "His boss there seemed like a real jerk."

At the time of writing this article, Severson was strongly considering catching up with the rest of the episodes on Netflix, something he could have done easily at any time over the past year, but just never got around to.

Lane Severson is a former child prodigy, current father of five, and Anglican. He blogs regularly at The Guilty Conscience. You can follow him on Twitter @_LxNx.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.
 
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How to Get Abs Like Jesus

by Lane Severson 

Ever since the Disciples asked Jesus how to pray people have been changing up the pattern to work better for their schedule, personality, or just to get better results. In fact, prayer styles are a lot like workout routines. Take a look.

The Lord's Prayer - 8 Minute Abs 

Jesus' instruction to his disciples is the 8 Minute Abs of prayer. The Lord's Prayer is super fast. It is consistent. And it will never, ever, let you down. In just a few short minutes you can cast your cares upon him, confess your sins, and bring a sacrifice of praise. If you want to cut up your spiritual abs effectively this is the way to go.

The Jesus Prayer - Marathon Training 

In less than 70 years Paul left Jesus' short and sweet model and began telling his followers that he "prayed constantly." The Greek Orthodox in typical bad-ass fashion figured out a way to pray all the time. They called it The Jesus prayer. You just repeat a short prayer over and over and over and over for the rest of your life. It is just like running a marathon, except instead of putting one foot in front of the other in a never ending cycle you put one prayer in front of the other in a never ending cycle. Also breathing is very important for both.

Mass - Cycling Class 

Cycling classes and Mass are great for the exact same reason, there are a bunch of other people there and no one can tell how hard you are trying. If you want you can prop your butt up on that pew/saddle and space out for a good 20 minutes and hit the showers. Now you could also get a really good workout and lots of people do. I'm just saying, it is a great place if you don't feel super motivated yourself.

Book of Common Prayer - Nautilus Machines 

Nautilus machines were invented at least in part to kill the personal trainer. Each machine trains one muscle and it is easy to use them without hurting yourself. The Book of Common Prayer works in similar fashion. It is basically impossible to hurt yourself using it. It can also get pretty dull, so have a good playlist ready on your iPod.

Pentecostal Prayer - CrossFit 

What do CrossFit and Pentacostal Prayer have in common? Intensity. you don't really need to know what is going on, you just need to get out there and give it everything you have. It is also not uncommon for someone to black out during a session of either.

Popcorn Prayer - Pick-up Basketball  

Popcorn prayer is the Evangelical stand-by. Everybody shares their requests and then you spend a couple minutes popping some prayers up. You don't have to do much if you don't want to. But everyone is encouraged to take a few shots. There's not a daily requirement to show up like mass or anything. It's laid back and perfect for any time you and your dudes are hanging out and need to kill some time. 

Lane Severson is a former child prodigy, current father of five, and Anglican. He blogs regularly at The Guilty Conscience. You can follow him on Twitter @_LxNx.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.
 
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