There is a new movie coming out this year called Woodlawn.  Here’s the preview I saw for it this morning (it’s only two minutes long).  In the middle it briefly claims to be a true story, but I missed that on first viewing, so I didn’t immediately realize there was a real-life backstory to this.  Without that, my initial reaction was disgust and scorn.

Here we have the old trope, I thought, constantly trotted out, that Jesus Loves Football.  Jesus really, really cares about who wins The Football Game.  The preview is a nonstop barrage of insults to anyone who dares believe anything differently than the film’s creators, even going so far as to have a woman (of course it’s a woman; how could she know what she really wanted?) say, “I was an atheist last week.”  Clearly, the power of God In Football is so momentous that no stupid atheist can possibly withstand it, especially not a girl one.

It was obviously not a movie for me.  Indeed, it’s hard to conceive of a movie that could be less for me.  I was burning to give the trailer the Saving Christmas treatment, after which I figured I’d forget about it and retire to my Atheist Den to dine on the corpses of the unborn.

But dismissing this movie as God’s Not Dead with football would be a serious mistake.  There is a lot more going on here, and it warrants a much closer look.

Woodlawn is indeed based on a true story, about an interracial high school football team in Alabama circa 1973.  Tony Nathan, who went on to be a great running back for the Miami Dolphins, is the black player at the center of the story.  The state championship that year is practically legendary in Alabama, producing an audience of record size.  Cool, I thought.  I don’t watch football and I don’t care about sports, but I love games, and I get a kick out of stories like this even when they involve games I don’t play.

MiamiDolphins.com has an article up discussing the film with Nathan, which is definitely worth a look.  But interestingly, there’s no mention of Jesus or the Gospel in that Miami Dolphins article.  “It was during a time when people weren’t getting along very well,” Nathan says, “but as a football team we came together.”

Well, my heart softened.  This didn’t sound like a bible-banging, shove-religion-down-your-throat kind of story.  Hell, it was on the cusp of being a story I’d want to hear.  I did a little more searching and found the first official trailer for the movie (again, only two minutes, and the contrast with the other one is striking).

That’s when I realized precisely how deep this rabbit hole goes.

This first official trailer makes the religion in the film look more like window dressing.  The story is about an integrated football team overcoming racism.  “If you only love those who love you back, what kind of love is that?” the reverend at the start of the preview asks, and its a great question, a challenge to a deeper love that all of us could stand to hear.  How could you be opposed to that?  Of course, they meet the challenge through the power of the Gospel—but the preview practically dares you to take issue with that, tying the Christian Gospel so closely to the message of love that you can’t possibly accept one without the other.

Yes, there are Christians (I used to be one of them) who would say the Gospel is about love.  Of course the two messages are inseparable, they’d say; that’s the whole idea.  There is nothing sinister here, no reason for an atheist like me to get up in arms.  The story is about overcoming racial hatred in the deep south in 1973.  Surely that’s a common cause?

And it is, or it should be.  But modern Christianity is rarely willing to share.  All good things come from its god, and its presentation here drives that point home with a hammer.

“Make a decision to change, to forgive, to be forgiven,” Sean Astin pleads in a stirring sermon that anyone who’s escaped Christian Fundamentalism is painfully familiar with.  Great message.  I agree with it completely.  But in the second preview, the full quote is revealed: not just “to choose” but “to choose Jesus.”  The implication?  You can’t truly forgive or love your teammates without choosing Jesus.

In fact, it’s not actually about the forgiveness or the love at all.  This point is made over and over again by both previews.  “This is about the gospel,” one of the trailers states flatly.  “We’re not gathered here united tonight because of the names of our teams or of our schools, but because of the name above all names: Jesus,” Sean says at the start of the first trailer.  “The Jesus Revolution has a symbol,” he says at 1:46 in the second trailer, holding up a single finger, “because there is one way.”  The players later burst through a sign that pounds the point home still further: “One hope, one truth, one way.”  Without that one way, of course, you’re not really loving or forgiving.

The trailers do a fantastic job of claiming that Woodlawn is a feel-good story about overcoming hate, and maybe the true story that underlies it actually is.  But make no mistake: this movie is first and foremost a propaganda film for Christianity.  Non-christians who believe in the power of love are not welcome.

The clues are there, as they always are.  The premise is that the whole team comes to Jesus after Sean Astin comes to the school to preach at them, and as a result, they become much more loving and much better at football.  But in one of the previews posted on the movie’s website, the coach character lets the truth slip when talking about how his team came to Jesus.  “Almost my entire team gave themselves to love,” he says.

Almost?  Hmmm.

One or two kids, then, must not have agreed to join Jesus when Sean came to their public high school to preach.  Is that because they were atheists?  Maybe their families were secular?  In the universe of the film, it’s far more likely that they were cold-blooded racists.  Then again, the film is unlikely to draw a distinction between the two.  “Atheist” is code for every terrible thing a human being can be, a boogeyman unmatched by any other evil label, so why split hairs?

In any case, anyone who didn’t accept Jesus that day didn’t “give themselves to love.”  Love and Jesus are synonymous; rejecting one means rejecting the other.  To put it another way: Accept Jesus, or be known as a racist.

Can you imagine this story if the Nathan character was an atheist?  God’s Not Dead and its ilk have made it clear what kind of treatment atheists can expect from Christian filmmakers: the entire film would have pilloried him. Far from being a story about love and acceptance, it would have been full of Christian hate at its finest.  Because, of course, that “love” and “acceptance” is conditional, no matter how many times they claim it’s not.  You don’t get it unless you say the magic prayer.  You don’t get to experience the “real love” unless you take a dunk in the pool.

The atheist hate ramps up in the second trailer, when the boogeyman of Big Government comes to try and crush the team’s religious freedom (freedom which, of course, only extends to Sean Astin’s right to come and proselytize at them on public school grounds, and not an inch beyond).  An investigator asks a teacher if she’s “leading this.”  She responds, “I was an atheist last week. [The kids] are leading me.”

It is difficult to express how insulting that statement is, but I’m going to try.

It is the same old thing Christianity always throws out: a constant deluge of invalidation of all other worldviews except its own.  Not just that the other worldviews are wrong, mind you, but that the holders of those views don’t actually hold them at all.  That if Sean Astin would just come to their school and force a reckoning, the wool would be pulled from their eyes.  No one’s an atheist because they’ve looked rationally at all the options and come to a measured conclusion.  Atheism is just a placeholder; it will burn away the second Sean opens his mouth.

Your beliefs, your sexual orientation, your happiness, even your love of your children—none of it is authentic unless it matches identically to what they believe.  You might think you love your kids, but if you aren’t a Christian, you don’t know what love is.  Remember, there is only one way.  The YouTube comments section, in a rare display of utility, cemented this point for me when one commenter said, “Only god’s love in our heart can make us love others.”  Take a second to internalize that.  The ugly, pernicious underlying message is that non-Christians can’t love.  They cannot think, they cannot have their own opinions, and they can know nothing but hate.

This is not a film about coming together despite our differences.  Quite the opposite.  It is exclusion masquerading as inclusion.

Woodlawn powerfully exemplifies both the good and the bad of Christianity: its power to bring people together with a message of unity, and its power to ostracize those who may seek love in another way.  I understand that Birmingham was a religious town in 1973.  I understand that this is based on a true story, and that you can’t change the facts.  I even understand that the Gospel can be a powerful force for love in the world and will gladly acknowledge that it may have played a pivotal role in the real-life events the movie depicts.

But why all the atheist hate?  Why the absolute insistence that no one can experience love without subscribing to this one religion?  Why the exaggeration and glorification of private religion in a public school?

Something good happened at Woodlawn high school in 1973, something that transcended racial prejudice.  There is a powerful story here, one that America needs to hear, being poisoned and twisted for the ends of a Christian propaganda machine.

“This is what happens when God shows up,” Astin opines at the end of the first trailer.

Yeah.  I’ve noticed.

I can’t describe the feelings that the events in Sandy Hook have triggered in me.  There are so many simultaneously that they’ve just melted into a thick stew.  I want to rage, I want to weep, I want to scream.  I want to bring the guy who did it back to life (I won’t use his name; no one should know it) just so I can inflict incredible pain on him.

I don’t know where I stand on gun control.  I don’t know where I stand on conceal carry.  I’m not even sure where I stand on the second amendment anymore.  I do know one thing.  What we are doing is not working.  I’m prepared, personally, as a US citizen, to condone drastic action.  This situation is untenable.  I also know that I am sick of cowardice: the cowardice of the gunmen who keep taking their own lives, the cowardice of the governments that don’t take action to prevent things like this from happening, and the cowardice of this country’s citizens (including myself) in not demanding more action.

A friend of mine, trying to deal with his feelings on the situation, wrote a short piece.  It helped me to read it.  This person asked to remain anonymous, so I won’t name him.  But I felt his thoughts were worth sharing.  I hope it feels the same way to you. Read more →

After much deliberation, I settled on the title for this post as a series of exclamation points, because for me, no words can really do justice to the announcement I’m making.

My last day at work will be 12/3.  From that point forward, I will be writing full-time.

Now, for those who have been following me from the beginning, when Children was still called Witch and I thought self-publishing was for nubs, I do feel the need to talk a bit about how I got here.  Alex has made more money than I thought it was going to, certainly, and if I was a single, childless guy living in an efficiency apartment, I’d probably be able to live off of what it’s bringing in.  Thankfully, I’m not.  So if Alex was the only factor, I wouldn’t be able to do this right now.  But there are two reasons I can.

1) My wife, Joy, who is continuing to work full-time for the man and is making the financial sacrifices necessary for us to give this a shot.  She has, by far, the most to lose if I screw this up, but she is not grudging.  She is not worried.  She is eager and excited and wonderful.  Her faith counts more than just about everyone else’s combined.  If you read this, Joy, thank you a hundred times.  I love you.

2) We have been lucky enough in the last year or so to develop a second income stream for the family.  That stream combined with the money Lone Road is making from Alex is enough for me to replace the lion’s share of my regular day job salary.  I don’t want to go into detail about it just yet, but you can think of it as a part-time job that I’ll be keeping as I go into this.  Sometimes, when obligations to it spike, my writing will have to take a brief back seat.  But its demands are nothing compared to the job I’ve been working during the day.

So this is not, “WOOOOO LOOK AT ME I GOT RICH FROM SELF-PUBLISHING.”  It’s more, “Wow, this publishing thing can actually make me some good money; I better refocus my energies on something I love to do that could actually be lucrative.”

In other words, yeah, it’s a bit of a risk.  It’s a big step.  But like so many people at work have told me over the last few days, “You have to go for it.”  I don’t want to ever have to say I missed my chance.  I’d rather try it and be proven a fool than never try it at all.

So what does this mean for my readers?

First and foremost, it means that barring an act of nature, Rebecca will be published January 8th, and Children will follow later in 2013.  My goal is to publish two books a year through Lone Road.  Once I get a feel for exactly how hard I can whip my muse without it going on strike, three books a year may be doable.  We’ll see. Read more →

Marriage is about love.  Yeah, occasionally people get married for other reasons, but in our society, the average person is going to say marriage is about love.  Certainly the homosexual couples I know would say that.

Now, there are plenty of other reasons to want to be married: financial advantage and the ability to speak for one another in legal and health matters come immediately to mind.  But even those stem off of the love and trust that a couple needs to possess in order to make them tenable. 

People – particularly Americans – don’t like being told that their love for someone will not be recognized.  They dislike being told that their love is invalid even more.

If someone told me that my love for my wife was invalid, sinful, and would get me sent to hell – that they will do everything in their power to make sure my love for my wife was unrecognized by the country I live in and will fight every effort I make to speak out – it would galvanize me to action like few other things in this world have the power to do.  My love for my wife and my family is the truest and most intense passion I have.  When I see other people – people I am related to, people I’ve been lifelong friends with, people I respect – given this treatment, it makes me want to fight on their behalf.

Let’s cut the BS.  This has nothing to do with religion.  It has nothing to do with “preservation of marriage.”  It’s really easy.

One position is about hate.  One position is about love.

How am I voting in November?  That’s easy.

I’m pro-love.

E-publishing is changing everything about the publishing industry, and the trend is only going to continue.  I used to respond to such sweeping changes with abject terror (probably something to do with my deeply-held belief that everything was a sign of the impending apocalypse), but I’ve grown enough as a person that I can now react to predictions of vast technological changes by appreciating how cool they are instead of feeling an urge to stock canned goods. 

Shit, if the rapture doesn’t take me because I haven’t been forgiven enough, and civilization collapses, how will I eat?  I must learn to hunt!

*ahem*

I no longer believe any given technological change will spell the collapse of human civilization, but I do still try to keep a critical eye on new developments.  I despise the mindset that all change is good as much as I do the mindset that all change is bad.

All the typical criticisms of e-publishing – bad editing, opening the floodgates, no quality control, no marketing outlet – have been beaten to death elsewhere.  But a new one occurred to me the other day (or at least, it was new to me), and I wanted to share it.

When I first uploaded Alex, I was able to rush it just a bit (read: push myself to do it, do it now) because I knew if there were any glaring issues, I could always upload a new version.  I got feedback from a couple of my beta readers later that day about the final action scene, and their feedback seemed solid, so I made changes to the scene and did just that: re-uploaded with the book with the changes.  It was only a few word tweaks (a gun “coughed” sparks instead of “vomiting” them, etc.) that did nothing to change the actual content of the scene, so I wasn’t particularly worried about it.

Later, I updated the Acknowledgements section as well, to include the names of all the people I was thanking instead of just my relationships to them (“thanks mom, thanks wife, thanks kids”), and to add a new one thanking my high school Humanities teachers, Brad Olson and Sue Hein.  Again, not a super big deal.

Now, since the end of November one of my favorite pastimes has become to open the Alex sample in Amazon and just sort of stare it, trying to convince myself that it’s real.  This usually involves a little scrolling, a little reading of my favorite parts, a little admiring of the cover shot (when it was still there… grr… that’s a story for another post).  In the many times that I’ve done this, I noticed something that bugged me.  The last sentence of the second paragraph read, “He had no urgency in the morning….” and I felt that the pronoun was a little ambiguous.  This particularly bugged me because that pronoun ambiguity was something I struggled mightily with when writing Alex.  When your book has one male main character, and he is typically interacting with another male character, “he” is a pretty dangerous word and has to be used carefully.

I wanted to change it to “the boy.”  But then I remembered something from my childhood.

My friend, Ryan, and I read The Hobbit as kids (we were just those kinds of kids) and there was a typo in our particular edition which spelled Bilbo’s name as “Biblo”.  Now, you may not find that hysterical, but we did.  I remember chortling over it until I got tears in my eyes.  Looking back, I don’t think it was so much that the name sounded funny (though it did), I think it was also a bit of glee/pride on our parts that we had found an error in a real, printed book.

I’m not saying that errors have a right to exist, or anything like that (dear god, that sounds like a DS9 episode waiting to happen), but it made me think: at what point does my shady use of the “he” pronoun stop being an error, and start becoming a mark of my writing style at the time I wrote the book?

Or, put another way, at what time does my meddling with my own work become screwing around with an established piece of literature?

Yeah, yeah, I’m not Mark Twain or Stephen King.  No one’s probably even gonna notice that I did eventually sneak in there and change that pronoun.  But that actually makes the question more poignant to me, not less.  I plan on doing a lot more writing, and at some point Alex won’t just be “my first novel” – it’ll be a record of my early writing style.  In screwing around with it, I’m changing that record.

Does this matter?  Well, take it to an extreme to see what’s got me bothered.  Say I never stop screwing around with it.  It’s mine, after all.  I can do whatever I want with it.  What if in a few years I decide that I’m not happy with the way a scene went, or the way Ian’s relationship with his wife resolved?  What if I want to change the ending?  I can do it, and no one can really stop me.  Isn’t this intellectually dishonest?

If it’s just me, that’s one thing – but now extrapolate this capacity to the entire writing world.  If e-publishing becomes as prominent as I suspect it will, at some point nearly every author will have this ability to modify their work at whim – and with your average e-reader always or almost always connected to the internet, e-book providers can replace the old copy wirelessly without the readers even knowing.

There are ramifications there.  I’m not sure what all of them are.  I think it would be a very interesting topic to explore in more depth.