It's been a while for Growing Up Goddy - the blog's been on hiatus for a little over a year now, due in part to some technical hiccups that necessitated some restoration work. But mostly, I've been dragging my heels because I've been grappling with the question brought up a few posts ago: If I no longer consider myself a Christian, and other posters do, will it become a source of conflict? Will it undermine the original purpose (to act as a middle-ground for the curious)? Will my morbid fascination with bad religious kitsch seem, well, meaner if I can't clarify that I'm actually one of the faithful? I'm not sure, really.

But I'm back and the blog is back and hopefully things can get rolling again. I'm looking forward to it.

Just a few months ago, I wrote about Hal Lindsey's 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon. Little did I know that an even sparklier gem was waiting for me in the Batavia Library's dusty shelves: Blood Moon, Lindsey's one and only work of fiction.

According to the back cover, "Hal Lindsey's Jeremy Armstrong is an all-American hero for the new millennium. Another literary triumph for America's own Jeremiah, Hal Lindsey. The best selling author of the decade has broken new ground with his first work of fiction. Hal Lindsey has done it again!" That isn't a list of quotes from reviewers, mind you -- it's publisher's the copy on the back of the jacket.

I'm going to be as gentle as I possibly can and say that those who read the back cover may be disappointed.

At last night's debate, John McCain directly challenged Barack Obama's position on abortion, articulating a clearly pro-life position without the "Culture of life" euphemisms that we've been used to for the last few years.

For a lot of pro-lifer voters, I imagine the moment with McCain was encouraging: high visibility, direct, and unapologetic. Also, utterly unsuccessful. As best as we can tell from polling results after the debate, his comments on abortion alienated and annoyed far more voters than they convinced. The pivotal moment, at least in my mind, was when he replied to Obama's statements about allowing abortions when a mother's health was threatened.

I've frequently admired the writings of The Ochlophobist, even if they make me painfully aware of the gaps in my classical knowledge.

His writing during this year's Dormition fast is no exception, linked without trite commentary:

Dormition fast, August 2; usual Dormition topics: Tom Waits (america's final prophet), Georges Rouault's well-bred ladies, and smoking.

Much ink, physical and virtual (including on this site), has been spilt discussing, making light of, or just plain despairing over the modern American obsession with the "end times". An obsession American evangelical Christianity seems intent on infecting the rest of the world with.

Even if one discards the recent theology or paradigm of dispensationalism, it's still easy to get hung up on, well the end of all things.

Whether or not the issue is even applicable to Christians can boil down into another one of those interesting divides of what we believe versus what we say we believe. One of the most profound experiences for me of the past year is coming to grips with the implications of things I had supposedly professed all my life.

I didn’t intend on making a couple posts and disappearing into the aether for months. To say this summer has been long and strenuous would be an understatement. I do have some reflections to write up, but those will have to wait until I can attempt to do them a bare minimum of justice.

In the meantime, some brief thoughts concerning current reading materials. Most of us who “grew up goddy” cut our teeth on the Picture Bible, among other things. We were saturated in the Bible, read it, heard sermons of it, did studies in it. That said, I’ve come to realize much modern Christian understanding of the Bible is a mile wide and an inch deep. We’ll hand it to unbelievers and tell them to read it when we don’t even know how to deal with much of it ourselves. The Old Testament comes to mind.

For those who don't sift through the storied history of apocalyptic fiction like Left Behind, the name Hal Lindsey might not mean much. He's an important guy, though -- in the 1970s, he wrote a relatively influential book entitled The Late Great Planet Earth that laid out his vision for a grim post-Christian future. It was a critical bridge between old-school rapture-watching movements like the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the post-hippie Jesus Movement that was starting to transition into broader American culture.

My wife and I saw Prince Caspian on the big screen this afternoon. It was worth a matinee, and it's cool to see the special effects team that brought the Middle Earth trilogy to life use their talents to realize a series that always been closely related, at least to me. In Narnia, as in Middle Earth, the first rule of warfare is to make sure the forest full of sentient, angry oak trees is on your side.

Aside from the slightly wooden performances from the children who play Narnia's kings and queens in exile, it was an enjoyable film that will probably ensure that the franchise makes its way to at least the fourth or fifth book. The Last Battle is unlikely to ever make it to screen due to its relatively grim and disjointed apocalypse theme, but A Horse And His Boy would still be pretty cool.

Wouldn't your youth group been at least 125% better if it had had one of these names?

10. Defenders of Ai
9. Mission: Apostleble
8. The Convictkids
7. Dort
6. iPles
5. 7th Bowl
4. Sola Deo Volleyball
3. Grace 2008: Student Edition
2. Eschaton
1. Thunderdome

Just imagine the retreat t-shirts.

I grew up goddy. To be sure, I never reached such august heights as co-hosting an episode of the 700 Club, that’s an impossible act to follow. But I grew up deeply steeped in American Evangelical Christianity. Vacation Bible School? Check. Being on the vanguard of the home-school movement complete with science curriculum that thought Young Earth Creationism was the result of proper Bible interpretation and scientific observation? Check. Not being in the Boy Scouts but the far more obscure Christian Service Brigade? Check. Doing a post high-school Youth With a Mission “Discipleship Training School”? Check. Moving to California at age 20 and joining a safe non-denominational church out of habit? Check. Spending several years being a junior high youth group leader, in part driven by my own poor experiences in such groups? Well, now we’re heading off the checklist. We’ll also leave out the part about starting to volunteer in said role, way back when, to try and get to know a cute girl, as that transcends both religion and culture (and it also never works).