The Lingering Lemon of Death

An Open Letter to Prospective Employers

Dear Prospective Employer,

Thanks for being interested in me enough to want to know more. I appreciate that.

I don't think the things I blumble here on my blog or what I twittle about on the facespage are that pertinent to your decision to offer me a job or not, unless you are considering offering me a job in which my main task will be to have purposefully contrarian opinions about as many things as I have time and energy for.

For some reason, you are here, so I might as well take this opportunity to say the things that I would never say in a job interview.

If you want consistent measurable progress towards a well defined goal, you would be a crazy fool to hire me. If you hire me, you will spend long months wondering why you did, and you will have exploratory conversations with HR about putting a performance plan in place, and then there will be this six month period when I will do three things which will transform your business for good in ways you could never have imagined.

I have an enormously high opinion of myself, and of my opinion. I enjoy a good argument, and the people who can make me change my mind are my favorite kind of people. Sometimes it is only in the middle of a good argument that I can figure out why it is that I have this gut feeling that things need to be a certain way.

I like to think the things I am working on are a good idea, and sometimes it will take some arguing before I could honestly think that. If you don't put in that time, things are much less good.

I have a fanatical devotion to reality based decision making. One of my ancient catch phases is "Reality is a Good Thing". This phrase is meant to address the tendency to treat criticism of product or process as some sort of attack or distraction. This means that I will give voice to truths that some people would prefer that we didn't notice, because I think it is always better to start with the actual truth. This will be annoying an uncountable number of times.

You will find on reading the TwittlePages, that I am a Christian Person. I am not a Fox News Following Christian Person ( which may either be a relief or a disappointment ), but I am a Christian Person. It is all over my blog and my HeadBook because the task of being a Christian Person at this place in history is a mystery worth some long wrestling.

Anyway, thanks for caring. If you are a person or company that I liked when we spoke, I hope this has been helpful and has not frightened you away, but "Reality is a Good Thing", if you read this and don't want to hire me, I understand.


-Michael

"hellbound" the movie, and me on my soapbox

At the Wild Goose Festival, I had a chance to preview a film, "Hellbound".  This is a "conversation starter" movie, which examines a variety of approaches that Bible reading Christians take on the idea of Hell.  I did not like the movie, but this is the kind of dislike that is worth talking about, even for people who are completely uninterested in what any person silly enough to read the Bible thinks about hell, so please bear with me.

There are three really interesting possible movies that I saw inside of Hellbound.  One is about three biblical views of hell, with a strong slant towards one of them as the best choice. One is "rhetorical burning" ( a phrase from an article by Frank Schaeffer which I will get to in a second ) against particular reform theologians.  One is about how certainty can turn reasonable people who try with all their hearts to serve Love, into raving lunatics.

Hellbound, when it is the first movie, is excellent.  It lets the holders of the various views speak their piece, it makes room for you to disagree, it gently but honestly suggests that the film makers prefer one of the three, but leaves you with a human and acceptable choice to disagree.

When it is the second movie, it makes me sad.  In the article "Resisting Condemnation to Save America", an ex right-wing mouth piece talks about having to leave behind not only his theology, but also his previous mechanics of argument, in order to find a hopeful way.  I'm with Frank Schaeffer on this one when he says

Instead of damning each other, maybe we can learn to show mercy to those with whom we disagree, taking our cue from a teacher who said that love of enemy -- not correct theology or politics -- is all that can make us whole.

( this is me getting on my soapbox )

When "Hellbound" is the third movie, I want it to be much much better.  It is only 1/2 finished.  It shows raving lunatics, it shows reasonable sounding people becoming lunatics, and it demonstrates a beautiful way to consider a divisive topic, and still hold an opinion.  However, it fails to make the most important point, that it isn't only the people that we disagree with that do this, that we are all in danger of letting our certainty turn us into monsters.

The real "Hell" that we are bound for is the world we create when we fail to acknowledge our own eagerness towards this evil.

( now climbing down from the soapbox )

I liked Kevin Miller ( film maker who made the movie ), and I hope his film does well. It isn't really fair for me to dislike his movie because he made the movie that was interesting to him and not the one that is interesting to me.  So I guess I am giving thumbs up to "Hellbound", it does cause conversation.

If anyone wants a writer to work on a script for a film about the dangers of certainty, I'm interested in that job.

UPDATE!  I traded some e-mail with Kevin Miller, and while I still think that the third movie that I wanted Hellbound to be wasn't very well made, Kevin makes a a strong defense of his telling of that third story:

I appreciate your honest response, Michael--and for dialoguing with me personally. I'd urge you to watch the film again, because to my way of thinking at least, it is an argument against certainty. But not just in "the other." As Michael Hardin points out in the film, any time any of us is pointing the finger, we become "the Satan," the accuser. I agree that we are somewhat hard on certain types of theology, but once again, the purpose is to reveal the paucity of their certainty--and its potentially destructive real world outcomes.