Max Andrew Dubinsky's Blog, page 16

Dear Me and You and You and You, We’re All Screwed Up, Forever and Ever, Amen

PART I

I no longer know what it means to be a Christian.

While everyone, everywhere else was going to church this past Easter Sunday, I intended to stay in bed eating marshmallow Peeps, and perhaps starting work on my new screenplay idea starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Franco, and Ryan Gosling. I could have finished it that afternoon too. My pitch is the three of them standing around, dressed well, smoking cigarettes, and squinting. People will tell you to write what you yourself would read or watch. I’d watch that.

I’d heard enough Easter Sunday messages over the last twenty-some-odd years. I could afford to skip one.

Unfortunately, at the last minute, I was invited by a dear friend of mine to join the most unpretentious, stripped down, poorly organized gathering of individuals I’ve ever seen who get together on Sunday mornings and refuse to call their building the church, but rather, “The Building.” If the congregation only brewed Stumptown Coffee, I’d tell those borderline Anarchist-turned-Christian-hipsters in Portland to eat their hearts out.

If they didn’t consider the building they were gathered in an actual church, did I really go to church on Easter Sunday?

PART II

When I became a Christian my life was suddenly filled with weekly conversations between other Christians over coffee and clove cigarettes; C.S. Lewis and Kerouac novels amongst our Bibles on the table, discussing relationships, dating, sex, pornography. I spent two years doing nothing but talking, talking, talking because iron sharpens iron. A fellow writer, Dominic Laing once wrote, “…talking about ‘love and relationships’ as a Christian always came off, for some reason, as braver than talking about Moses or predestination.” Talk long enough and your iron becomes sharp enough to be a weapon wielded with the wrong intentions.

I had so many of the same conversations with the same Christian vocabulary, I nearly pierced my eardrums and gouged my eyes out with that stupid piece of iron. Everyone around me talked about sin and relationships as though they were something to be cured through classes, community, and communion.

Why are we as Christians so obsessed with nailing the perfect relationship? (Take that as a euphemism or leave it.) Every single example of a relationship we have in the Bible is totally jacked up. They all deal with infidelity, same-sex attractions, multiple sexual partners, lying, cheating, and stealing. Not to mention the very first couple in the history of couples is responsible for the fall of the human race. And we think we’re going to get it right? All I know is there is no absolute instruction manual for dating and abstaining, and what to do with your pulsating libido if you’re 40 and single. We are all going to screw it up, one way or another.

Wasn’t I supposed to be building orphanages in Africa, or choking the life out of Kony with my girlishly-soft and moisturized bare hands? Shouldn’t I have been starting underground churches in China? Or was I called to just give generously to those specifically called to start underground churches in China? If these are the things Christians are to be doing, why were we sitting around like a college study group discussing theology and dating as if it was the key to saving the human race? Because that’s also what Christians do. I played it safe within my community because the world out there was a scary place and hated me. If I could create the illusion of doing what Jesus had supposedly called me to do, and surround myself with likeminded individuals equally afraid of the world, I knew I’d be just fine.

PART III

I recently started reading the book of Genesis for the first time. I never gave it a read because I thought all the important stuff happened right at the beginning. God created the Heavens and the Earth, blah, blah, blah, made man in His image, and so on, and so on, a talking snake gave Eve an apple, and Adam, like any good man, goes down with his beloved.

Three chapters in and it’s not long before murder, envy, and adultery show their ugly faces. God says, “No, this is all wrong. I’m wiping everyone out.” Cue the great flood. But not before God puts Noah and seven others on a boat because Noah is the most righteous man alive, and is now in charge of restarting the human race with his righteousness. Noah does what any self-respecting, warm-blooded American male would do with such a responsibility: the moment he gets off that bloody boat and back onto dry land, he gets drunk, gets naked, and passes out. (More recently, if you can recall, another man’s story strikingly similar to this one of responsibility gone haywire has been in the news. The Devil has been playing the same tricks on us since Genesis.)

Then God proceeds to rain burning sulfur down on a city where every man in a fifty mile radius gathers around a house occupied by Lot, a man with two daughters who has just been visited by two male Angels — Biblical Brad Pitts, I’m certain — and the men of the town demand, “Hand over those men to us so we can have sex with them.” (Sidenote: I’m not taking fictional liberties here for entertainment value.) And Lot, he says, “You can’t have sex with these men, but you can have my two virgin daughters.” (Still no liberties taken.) The men are not pleased with this, and Lot’s daughters, after they see their mother turn to a Pillar of salt for disobeying God’s command, get their father drunk and have sex with him in a dark cave so their bloodline can be protected. But who can blame them? Traumatized somewhere between being offered up by their father as sex toys, their city burning to the ground, and watching their mother turn to a literal pillar of salt can probably have that sort of affect on people.

Would I hand this book over to someone who didn’t believe in God? “Welcome to Christianity. When you get to the daughter-father rape scene in the cave, just keep reading, it gets better. I promise.”

Truth is, it does get better. The Bible is a dark and twisted story full of murder, rape, and incest. Surprise. We’ve been rebellious, lustful, gay, prideful, and stark-raving idiots since the dawn of time. There’s nothing new under the sun. Or something like that. Which makes Christ’s crucifixion all the more incredible. Why would he do that for us? We were (and still are) so far gone. We definitely didn’t deserve it.

PART IV

I know people coming back form the dead is the stuff of George A. Romero, but if you ask me why I’ve chosen to believe in the Resurrection, I would ask you the following in return: If the stories in the Bible are not real, why would anyone creating this false religion kill all the good guys? Jesus aside, all of his disciples are murdered too. Some say this is simply to glorify these men, but really it does just the opposite. It makes me think they are fools. In every other religion, the good guys win. Christianity is the only religion where its leader promises, “If you follow me, people will hate you, you will be persecuted, and chances are good you will die.”

Not exactly a Presidential campaign speech, is it? Who in their right mind would join this movement? Even the men closest to Jesus didn’t believe in his resurrection until they saw him with their own eyes. One of these knuckleheads even sold Jesus out for a couple extra bucks. Jesus knew he was going to do it, and still! let this guy roll with him and his crew. Think about that, my brothers and sisters, next time your sin causes your church, your friends, your family to cast you aside. These are the men who wrote half the Bible. This speaks volumes about us, yet we never seem to speak about it.

PART V

Remember a few years back the story of the man at a Gay Pride Parade in Chicago named Nathan who simply held up a sign which read, “I’m Sorry.”? A gay man named Tristan in the parade wearing only his underwear approached the perplexing sign-holder and said, “Why are you sorry? It’s Pride!” The back of Nathan’s sign read, “I used to be a Bible-Banging Homophobe, and I’m sorry.” Tristan jumped off his float, hugged Nathan, and thanked him through tears.

How many of you can recall this story? Or when you think of Gay Pride do you simply think of churches like Westboro Baptist and all those Christians holding signs declaring, “God Hates Fags,” and, “Homosexuals will burn in Hell.”

Who made Christians the authorities on judgement? If the Bible is anything to go by, we don’t know jack shit.

If you’re a part of the gay community and you’re reading this, I want you to know I am sorry too. I’m beginning to suspect Christians everywhere have it wrong. There’s something wrong with all of us, but you don’t need “fixed.” You are loved just the way you are. We claim your sins are the worst, but my friends, God sees all sin as equal. The moment you and I were born, gay or straight, we entered this world as sinners. Christ himself says, “He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” I am just as ugly on the inside as you are. Believe it or not, we are in this together.

This letter is me setting down my stone in the dirt.

If you’ve ever been ostracized from the church because of your sexuality or told that you can be fixed, I am sorry. If you’ve ever been asked to step down as a leader or criticized because of your addiction to and desire for pornography, I am sorry. If you’ve ever been told that sexual sin is the worst sin and you’ve been condemned with shame and guilt, I am sorry. If you’ve ever felt unwelcome because of the way you dress, I am sorry. And if you’ve ever been told grace and forgiveness requires work or that you must earn the forgiveness of Christ, I am sorry. For grace is the most magnificent force on the planet, and it is not to be reckoned with. It is intangible, yet smothering. It is the only thing which must first drown us before it can rescue us.

PART VI

Dear Atheists, homosexuals, transexuals, lesbians, Christians, Catholics and Muslims. Dear widows and orphans and slaves. Dear homeless man living in the garage beneath my apartment. Dear terrorists, anarchists, and marxists. Dear Mr. President and North Korea. Dear every woman I ever dated, and every porn star I ever saw naked. Dear Comic-Con fanatics, artists, and anyone who still owns a Dell. Dear home-schooled children, bullies, nerds, jocks, heads, geeks, squares, popular kids, and unpopular kids everywhere. Dear Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Franco, and Ryan Gosling.

Dear Everyone.

Dear me.

You are imperfect and judgmental. You are self-addicted and lustful. You are full of hate and sin, pride and secrets. Yet God sees you through the lens of Christ’s Crucifixion: forgiven and without scars, perfect and fulfilled, destined with a purpose the way He intended you to be.

Now put down your stones and go be.

Sincerely,

Just another sinner.

Copyright April 2012, Max Andrew Dubinsky || Make It MAD

I write fiction too. Read the Dislocated Experience.

View more on Max Andrew Dubinsky's website »

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Published on April 11, 2012 00:01

Dear Me and You and You and You, We're All Screwed Up, Forever and Ever, Amen

PART I

I no longer know what it means to be a Christian.

While everyone, everywhere else was going to church this past Easter Sunday, I intended to stay in bed eating marshmallow Peeps, and perhaps starting work on my new screenplay idea starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Franco, and Ryan Gosling. I could have finished it that afternoon too. My pitch is the three of them standing around, dressed well, smoking cigarettes, and squinting. People will tell you to write what you yourself would read or watch. I'd watch that.

I'd heard enough Easter Sunday messages over the last twenty-some-odd years. I could afford to skip one.

Unfortunately, at the last minute, I was invited by a dear friend of mine to join the most unpretentious, stripped down, poorly organized gathering of individuals I've ever seen who get together on Sunday mornings and refuse to call their building the church, but rather, "The Building." If the congregation only brewed Stumptown Coffee, I'd tell those borderline Anarchist-turned-Christian-hipsters in Portland to eat their hearts out.

If they didn't consider the building they were gathered in an actual church, did I really go to church on Easter Sunday?

PART II

When I became a Christian my life was suddenly filled with weekly conversations between other Christians over coffee and clove cigarettes; C.S. Lewis and Kerouac novels amongst our Bibles on the table, discussing relationships, dating, sex, pornography. I spent two years doing nothing but talking, talking, talking because iron sharpens iron. A fellow writer, Dominic Laing once wrote, "…talking about 'love and relationships' as a Christian always came off, for some reason, as braver than talking about Moses or predestination." Talk long enough and your iron becomes sharp enough to be a weapon wielded with the wrong intentions.

I had so many of the same conversations with the same Christian vocabulary, I nearly pierced my eardrums and gouged my eyes out with that stupid piece of iron. Everyone around me talked about sin and relationships as though they were something to be cured through classes, community, and communion.

Why are we as Christians so obsessed with nailing the perfect relationship? (Take that as a euphemism or leave it.) Every single example of a relationship we have in the Bible is totally jacked up. They all deal with infidelity, same-sex attractions, multiple sexual partners, lying, cheating, and stealing. Not to mention the very first couple in the history of couples is responsible for the fall of the human race. And we think we're going to get it right? All I know is there is no absolute instruction manual for dating and abstaining, and what to do with your pulsating libido if you're 40 and single. We are all going to screw it up, one way or another.

Wasn't I supposed to be building orphanages in Africa, or choking the life out of Kony with my girlishly-soft and moisturized bare hands? Shouldn't I have been starting underground churches in China? Or was I called to just give generously to those specifically called to start underground churches in China? If these are the things Christians are to be doing, why were we sitting around like a college study group discussing theology and dating as if it was the key to saving the human race? Because that's also what Christians do. I played it safe within my community because the world out there was a scary place and hated me. If I could create the illusion of doing what Jesus had supposedly called me to do, and surround myself with likeminded individuals equally afraid of the world, I knew I'd be just fine.

PART III

I recently started reading the book of Genesis for the first time. I never gave it a read because I thought all the important stuff happened right at the beginning. God created the Heavens and the Earth, blah, blah, blah, made man in His image, and so on, and so on, a talking snake gave Eve an apple, and Adam, like any good man, goes down with his beloved.

Three chapters in and it's not long before murder, envy, and adultery show their ugly faces. God says, "No, this is all wrong. I'm wiping everyone out." Cue the great flood. But not before God puts Noah and seven others on a boat because Noah is the most righteous man alive, and is now in charge of restarting the human race with his righteousness. Noah does what any self-respecting, warm-blooded American male would do with such a responsibility: the moment he gets off that bloody boat and back onto dry land, he gets drunk, gets naked, and passes out. (More recently, if you can recall, another man's story strikingly similar to this one of responsibility gone haywire has been in the news. The Devil has been playing the same tricks on us since Genesis.)

Then God proceeds to rain burning sulfur down on a city where every man in a fifty mile radius gathers around a house occupied by Lot, a man with two daughters who has just been visited by two male Angels — Biblical Brad Pitts, I'm certain — and the men of the town demand, "Hand over those men to us so we can have sex with them." (Sidenote: I'm not taking fictional liberties here for entertainment value.) And Lot, he says, "You can't have sex with these men, but you can have my two virgin daughters." (Still no liberties taken.) The men are not pleased with this, and Lot's daughters, after they see their mother turn to a Pillar of salt for disobeying God's command, get their father drunk and have sex with him in a dark cave so their bloodline can be protected. But who can blame them? Traumatized somewhere between being offered up by their father as sex toys, their city burning to the ground, and watching their mother turn to a literal pillar of salt can probably have that sort of affect on people.

Would I hand this book over to someone who didn't believe in God? "Welcome to Christianity. When you get to the daughter-father rape scene in the cave, just keep reading, it gets better. I promise."

Truth is, it does get better. The Bible is a dark and twisted story full of murder, rape, and incest. Surprise. We've been rebellious, lustful, gay, prideful, and stark-raving idiots since the dawn of time. There's nothing new under the sun. Or something like that. Which makes Christ's crucifixion all the more incredible. Why would he do that for us? We were (and still are) so far gone. We definitely didn't deserve it.

PART IV

I know people coming back form the dead is the stuff of George A. Romero, but if you ask me why I've chosen to believe in the Resurrection, I would ask you the following in return: If the stories in the Bible are not real, why would anyone creating this false religion kill all the good guys? Jesus aside, all of his disciples are murdered too. Some say this is simply to glorify these men, but really it does just the opposite. It makes me think they are fools. In every other religion, the good guys win. Christianity is the only religion where its leader promises, "If you follow me, people will hate you, you will be persecuted, and chances are good you will die."

Not exactly a Presidential campaign speech, is it? Who in their right mind would join this movement? Even the men closest to Jesus didn't believe in his resurrection until they saw him with their own eyes. One of these knuckleheads even sold Jesus out for a couple extra bucks. Jesus knew he was going to do it, and still! let this guy roll with him and his crew. Think about that, my brothers and sisters, next time your sin causes your church, your friends, your family to cast you aside. These are the men who wrote half the Bible. This speaks volumes about us, yet we never seem to speak about it.

PART V

Remember a few years back the story of the man at a Gay Pride Parade in Chicago named Nathan who simply held up a sign which read, "I'm Sorry."? A gay man named Tristan in the parade wearing only his underwear approached the perplexing sign-holder and said, "Why are you sorry? It's Pride!" The back of Nathan's sign read, "I used to be a Bible-Banging Homophobe, and I'm sorry." Tristan jumped off his float, hugged Nathan, and thanked him through tears.

How many of you can recall this story? Or when you think of Gay Pride do you simply think of churches like Westboro Baptist and all those Christians holding signs declaring, "God Hates Fags," and, "Homosexuals will burn in Hell."

Who made Christians the authorities on judgement? If the Bible is anything to go by, we don't know jack shit.

If you're a part of the gay community and you're reading this, I want you to know I am sorry too. I'm beginning to suspect Christians everywhere have it wrong. There's something wrong with all of us, but you don't need "fixed." You are loved just the way you are. We claim your sins are the worst, but my friends, God sees all sin as equal. The moment you and I were born, gay or straight, we entered this world as sinners. Christ himself says, "He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone." I am just as ugly on the inside as you are. Believe it or not, we are in this together.

This letter is me setting down my stone in the dirt.

If you've ever been ostracized from the church because of your sexuality or told that you can be fixed, I am sorry. If you've ever been asked to step down as a leader or criticized because of your addiction to and desire for pornography, I am sorry. If you've ever been told that sexual sin is the worst sin and you've been condemned with shame and guilt, I am sorry. If you've ever felt unwelcome because of the way you dress, I am sorry. And if you've ever been told grace and forgiveness requires work or that you must earn the forgiveness of Christ, I am sorry. For grace is the most magnificent force on the planet, and it is not to be reckoned with. It is intangible, yet smothering. It is the only thing which must first drown us before it can rescue us.

PART VI

Dear Atheists, homosexuals, transexuals, lesbians, Christians, Catholics and Muslims. Dear widows and orphans and slaves. Dear homeless man living in the garage beneath my apartment. Dear terrorists, anarchists, and marxists. Dear Mr. President and North Korea. Dear every woman I ever dated, and every porn star I ever saw naked. Dear Comic-Con fanatics, artists, and anyone who still owns a Dell. Dear home-schooled children, bullies, nerds, jocks, heads, geeks, squares, popular kids, and unpopular kids everywhere. Dear Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Franco, and Ryan Gosling.

Dear Everyone.

Dear me.

You are imperfect and judgmental. You are self-addicted and lustful. You are full of hate and sin, pride and secrets. Yet God sees you through the lens of Christ's Crucifixion: forgiven and without scars, perfect and fulfilled, destined with a purpose the way He intended you to be.

Now put down your stones and go be.

Sincerely,

Just another sinner.

Copyright April 2012, Max Andrew Dubinsky || Make It MAD

I write fiction too. Read the Dislocated Experience.

View more on Max Andrew Dubinsky's website »

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Published on April 11, 2012 00:01

No More Sad Days

Note: The following is my submission to Trifecta's weekly one-word prompt where the writer is asked to use the word in its third definition, in a 33 to 333 word response. This week's word is brain.

brain (noun) 3: something that performs the functions of a brain; especially an automatic device (as a computer) for control or computation

–

"This isn't going to hurt a bit," he lied.

Her time had come. She'd been on the wait list since January.

"An artifact," her mother had said, stroking her hair before bed. "My darling artifact. I cannot wait to see you smile."

Original memories were so last summer.

She walked around with a frown. She was upside-down to everyone else's right- side up. That's what gave her away. She rarely smiled.

When you received your new brain, you had nothing to frown about. No more sad days. Only memories you've chosen and created. Kissing celebrities on rooftops in the rain. Doing 110 down the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down, the rush of the wind still in your hair and the taste of the ocean, all its salt still in your mouth, the memory so fresh even if it's chronologically halfway down the list of your brand new fake past.

But you'd never know the difference. That was the beauty of The Brain. A chip the size of an almond, flat as a piece of paper, inserted into that atrocity of a thing you're forced to be born with. The tangle of ground beef coated in dopamine stupid enough to remember the bad.

No more memories of summers in one piece bathing suits, ridiculed by Heather and Jennifer and Amber. No more recollections of the word, "No." No more closed eyes, seeing the boy she'd drunkenly given herself to, and can never get herself back. No. When she woke, she'd be exactly who she'd always wanted to be.

She asked what happened when something bad occurred after the procedure. An F on a test, a grandparent dying. "Don't be silly," her mother told her. "People who accept The Brain don't have bad days."

"But I want to feel something," she replied to the doctor's lie. "That's why I'm doing this."

"No you don't sweetheart. If you wanted to feel, you wouldn't be here at all."

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Published on April 05, 2012 16:16

I Wouldn’t Read This If I Were You

I have recently and rather unintentionally fallen into a sabbatical regarding writing about my life and my faith in intelligent design, immaculate conception, Bigfoot, and his Arctic cousin Sasquatch. Please don’t be alarmed. This is not a cry for help. I am not depressed. My faith is not in crisis. However, my ability to write about it currently is. I am unable to produce the voice you are looking for without sounding tired and worn out. Even writing fiction, which I hold dearest to my heart, makes me queasy and sea sick upon this unsinkable Titanic that is the Internet. So I wouldn’t read this if I were you.

My otherwise loquacious nature has been subdued in recent weeks from not what one would call writer’s block – something I believe was invented by my fellow writers to excuse our over-indulgent drinking habits and often depressing auras – but from what could very commonly be said is a lack of something to write about. It could also be uncommonly said for those of you who are writers of the religious: a lack of desire to write about anything Christian ever again.

I could certainly talk about my wife, the challenges of being married, our sex life, and what it’s like adjusting to living in an apartment after nearly 14 months of homelessness on the road. However, not only do I have no interest in writing about these self-help topics, I also talk about these quandaries enough in therapy each week that I don’t quite have the energy to recant them here a second time.

I know, I know, maybe I should go read my Bible, plug into community, and pray about it. But I am feeling very un-Christian lately. Not by my definition of the word, but by society’s definition of the word.

Mind you, I am not attempting to make up my own version of Christianity here. I just like to keep things simple, and I am finding it very, very complicated here on Planet Social Network. Someone once asked me what my theology was to which I sat tongue-tied and unresponsive. I barely understood the word and couldn’t deduce in the damnedest why it mattered. My then-girlfriend, now-wife, spoke up in my defense, “Max doesn’t have a theology,” and I knew I loved her right then with all my heart and limited brain capacity for maintaining conversations about Zeus-Almighty, Evolution, and Hell, whereupon I mustered up the response and macho bravado to answer semi-intelligently in hopes of making my beloved swoon and this Biblical Investigator nauseas, “Jesus is my theology.”

I thought right then, for a fraction of a second, I’d started a revolution. I half-expected the patrons of Starbucks to stand up and start applauding. And I waited, smug and smiling, for the rebuttal.

It never came.

He just nodded and the conversation moved on. I wasn’t challenged, scolded, scoffed at, or ridiculed for speaking such blasphemy. I like to think right then he accepted the fact that what I believed about my relationship with God was exactly that: My relationship with God. And who was he to judge it? In the end it’ll be God’s business to deal with me, not his.

A few weeks back someone poetically told me, and I quote, “I’ll take an axe to your face,” because of my belief in the Gospel, and I didn’t even mention the word, “theology,” to him.

I fear being a writer who is so open about his faith on the Internet isn’t bringing us together, but it’s tearing us apart. Just look at the articles on Relevant Magazine, The Good Women Project, my own blog, or everybody’s favorite pastor to hate, Mark Driscoll. We call ourselves Christians, but we aren’t responding with love when we disagree with someone. Myself included. We’re responding with a disgusting dosage of desperation to be right.

I haven’t been writing on Make It MAD because I’m officially praying about taking myself out of the equation.

I’ve intended to make you uncomfortable here from the very beginning, but I never intended to pretend I know better than you. “I have a blog and a lot of people read it so that makes me an authority on the subject,” is how I’ve secretly lived the last year of my life. But I don’t know better. My heart is a time-bomb. I’m just as fucked-up as the rest of the world. The only difference between any of us is who is and who isn’t trying to prove they’re okay.

I need a break because Make It MAD is becoming more and more about me than anything else. Maybe from the comfort of your chair it doesn’t seem that way, but I can’t go to sleep one more night wondering how many “likes” my post will have in the morning, or how many comments will be here. Ah, the crux of the matter. If you’re a fellow blogger, I commend your resilience to keep going and reach thousands, but I don’t envy the stress of expanding your readership. I’ve got enough of my own over here. I have become so obsessed with reaching millions of people at once that I am neglecting my own relationship with the very God I am trying to introduce you to.

I had no intentions of writing on here today until my friend Nick from Salem, Oregon passed through Los Angeles for 48 hours on his way to Taiwan this weekend. Over conversations of the impending-Apocalypse, conspiracy theories, and coffee, I found myself telling him of a woman I met in South Carolina. Her name was Alexa, and on my last evening there, Alexa told me I could have turned around and gone home after my first week on the road because God used my very first blog from that trip to change her heart.

As though the entirety of my 10 months on the road happened simply so God could encounter the heart of one individual on the other side of America. When Nick and I first met, he told me he believed God was that big. Big enough to send one man across the country to impact the life of one person. “What if God loves us that much?” he had pondered. All of this while I was still 3,000 miles away from Alexa in South Carolina.

Maybe it’s not about reaching thousands of people in church on a Sunday morning, or reaching millions of people through the Internet. Maybe it’s about reaching each other one at a time.

Make It MAD doesn’t need to impact all of you. Maybe just one of you.

I made a promise to a friend once that I’d never change my voice on this blog, but I clearly broke it. If you followed my adventure across the country, you know I experienced a multitude of mental breakdowns and forgot who I was as I muddled out sorry excuses for blog posts like, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Periods, Punctuation, and Communication” because I thought I was funny. I’m sorry for all the times I took my writing back from God because I thought I knew what you guys wanted better than He did.

If you’re reading this today and something within this incoherent verbal mind vomit stirred your heart, fantastic. And if it impacts a million of you, brilliant. But I’d question the lot of you because I’m pretty sure none of what I wrote here makes any real sense at all.

I guess what I am trying to say here is my problem isn’t really with Joel Osteen or Christianity or fame. The problem is with my own blackened heart.

Because you, me, Joel, and the rest of these carbon-based bodies calling this place home are equally responsible for the mutiny of the human race against God. Every last one of us. We’re just too afraid to look inward because it’s scary in there. It’s easier to point fingers and say this wasn’t our fault.

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Published on March 20, 2012 22:37

I Wouldn't Read This If I Were You

I have recently and rather unintentionally fallen into a sabbatical regarding writing about my life and my faith in intelligent design, immaculate conception, Bigfoot, and his Arctic cousin Sasquatch. Please don't be alarmed. This is not a cry for help. I am not depressed. My faith is not in crisis. However, my ability to write about it currently is. I am unable to produce the voice you are looking for without sounding tired and worn out. Even writing fiction, which I hold dearest to my heart, makes me queasy and sea sick upon this unsinkable Titanic that is the Internet. So I wouldn't read this if I were you.

My otherwise loquacious nature has been subdued in recent weeks from not what one would call writer's block – something I believe was invented by my fellow writers to excuse our over-indulgent drinking habits and often depressing auras – but from what could very commonly be said is a lack of something to write about. It could also be uncommonly said for those of you who are writers of the religious: a lack of desire to write about anything Christian ever again.

I could certainly talk about my wife, the challenges of being married, our sex life, and what it's like adjusting to living in an apartment after nearly 14 months of homelessness on the road. However, not only do I have no interest in writing about these self-help topics, I also talk about these quandaries enough in therapy each week that I don't quite have the energy to recant them here a second time.

I know, I know, maybe I should go read my Bible, plug into community, and pray about it. But I am feeling very un-Christian lately. Not by my definition of the word, but by society's definition of the word.

Mind you, I am not attempting to make up my own version of Christianity here. I just like to keep things simple, and I am finding it very, very complicated here on Planet Social Network. Someone once asked me what my theology was to which I sat tongue-tied and unresponsive. I barely understood the word and couldn't deduce in the damnedest why it mattered. My then-girlfriend, now-wife, spoke up in my defense, "Max doesn't have a theology," and I knew I loved her right then with all my heart and limited brain capacity for maintaining conversations about Zeus-Almighty, Evolution, and Hell, whereupon I mustered up the response and macho bravado to answer semi-intelligently in hopes of making my beloved swoon and this Biblical Investigator nauseas, "Jesus is my theology."

I thought right then, for a fraction of a second, I'd started a revolution. I half-expected the patrons of Starbucks to stand up and start applauding. And I waited, smug and smiling, for the rebuttal.

It never came.

He just nodded and the conversation moved on. I wasn't challenged, scolded, scoffed at, or ridiculed for speaking such blasphemy. I like to think right then he accepted the fact that what I believed about my relationship with God was exactly that: My relationship with God. And who was he to judge it? In the end it'll be God's business to deal with me, not his.

A few weeks back someone poetically told me, and I quote, "I'll take an axe to your face," because of my belief in the Gospel, and I didn't even mention the word, "theology," to him.

I fear being a writer who is so open about his faith on the Internet isn't bringing us together, but it's tearing us apart. Just look at the articles on Relevant Magazine, The Good Women Project, my own blog, or everybody's favorite pastor to hate, Mark Driscoll. We call ourselves Christians, but we aren't responding with love when we disagree with someone. Myself included. We're responding with a disgusting dosage of desperation to be right.

I haven't been writing on Make It MAD because I'm officially praying about taking myself out of the equation.

I've intended to make you uncomfortable here from the very beginning, but I never intended to pretend I know better than you. "I have a blog and a lot of people read it so that makes me an authority on the subject," is how I've secretly lived the last year of my life. But I don't know better. My heart is a time-bomb. I'm just a fucked-up as the rest of the world. The only difference between any of us is who is and who isn't trying to prove they're okay.

I need a break because Make It MAD is becoming more and more about me than anything else. Maybe from the comfort of your chair it doesn't seem that way, but I can't go to sleep one more night wondering how many "likes" my post will have in the morning, or how many comments will be here. Ah, the crux of the matter. If you're a fellow blogger, I commend your resilience to keep going and reach thousands, but I don't envy the stress of expanding your readership. I've got enough of my own over here. I have become so obsessed with reaching millions of people at once that I am neglecting my own relationship with the very God I am trying to introduce you to.

I had no intentions of writing on here today until my friend Nick from Salem, Oregon passed through Los Angeles for 48 hours on his way to Taiwan this weekend. Over conversations of the impending-Apocalypse, conspiracy theories, and coffee, I found myself telling him of a woman I met in South Carolina. Her name was Alexa, and on my last evening there, Alexa told me I could have turned around and gone home after my first week on the road because God used my very first blog from that trip to change her heart.

As though the entirety of my 10 months on the road happened simply so God could encounter the heart of one individual on the other side of America. When Nick and I first met, he told me he believed God was that big. Big enough to send one man across the country to impact the life of one person. "What if God loves us that much?" he had pondered. All of this while I was still 3,000 miles away from Alexa in South Carolina.

Maybe it's not about reaching thousands of people in church on a Sunday morning, or reaching millions of people through the Internet. Maybe it's about reaching each other one at a time.

Make It MAD doesn't need to impact all of you. Maybe just one of you.

I made a promise to a friend once that I'd never change my voice on this blog, but I clearly broke it. If you followed my adventure across the country, you know I experienced a multitude of mental breakdowns and forgot who I was as I muddled out sorry excuses for blog posts like, "A Gentleman's Guide to Periods, Punctuation, and Communication" because I thought I was funny. I'm sorry for all the times I took my writing back from God because I thought I knew what you guys wanted better than He did.

If you're reading this today and something within this incoherent verbal mind vomit stirred your heart, fantastic. And if it impacts a million of you, brilliant. But I'd question the lot of you because I'm pretty sure none of what I wrote here makes any real sense at all.

I guess what I am trying to say here is my problem isn't really with Joel Osteen or Christianity or fame. The problem is with my own blackened heart.

Because you, me, Joel, and the rest of these carbon-based bodies calling this place home are equally responsible for the mutiny of the human race against God. Every last one of us. We're just too afraid to look inward because it's scary in there. It's easier to point fingers and say this wasn't our fault.

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Published on March 20, 2012 22:37

Every Writer’s Dream

A few weeks ago I crossed paths with an older homeless man wearing headphones and a skull cap. He looked like Morgan Freeman without the questionable earring and black glove, or the dignified gray in his beard. This caused me to stumble before him as I surreptitiously tried to decide if Mr. Freeman was so bored with fame and fortune, he spends his Saturday afternoons as a homeless man counting change. (In which case, I had my phone out prepared to snap a photo and contact TMZ. Hello rent check.) Or if this was, in fact, just another homeless man counting the last of his change to buy lunch.

Catching me looking, he asked me how I was doing in a voice that sounded more like Bob Marley than Morgan Freeman. I frowned, nodded, said I was fine, called him Morgan to which he didn’t respond, and asked if he needed some extra cash.

“What do you think? Look at me. I’m out here countin’ my change. We could all use some extra cash.”

I took out my wallet and pathetically handed him the three dollars I had in there. I told him to take it and buy himself a cup of coffee or something.

“Aw, thanks brother…You want to smoke some pot, my man?”

I hesitated for a fraction of a second before telling him, “Maybe in another life, brother,” and quickly drifted off into thoughts of another life. One where I smoked pot with a jaded and homeless Morgan Freeman on the sidewalk.

It was tempting. Since moving back to LA, I’ve been waking up depressed. I have remained uninspired these last few weeks. I feel repetitive. Most days I don’t want to talk about myself, my wife, or my relationship with God. Sitting down to write is comparable to taking an axe to a wall in hopes of creating a doorway. I don’t desire to exhume the energy. However, this is how I must think of it, otherwise I will remain trapped in this unimaginative room.

Maybe I just miss living on the road.

I’m also pretty sure I missed a perfectly good opportunity to hear (stoned or not) what I am sure would amount to be a fantastic story from Mr. Freeman.

I didn’t realize this until I had the chance to speak to a guy named Jeff Goins. If you’re a writer, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of him. Jeff is a unique guy. As a writer, he’s done things I’ve been too scared to do. And as a man, he’s done even more terrifying things. He’s prayed with total strangers in other countries. He’s taken the time to get to know the men and women he’s encountered on the street. And he’s discovered they all have a story to tell.

After reading We Can’t Go Home Again, Jeff decidedly sent my way a book he’s currently in the midst of working on — a collection of nonfiction stories about these encounters. He believed I might enjoy it, and wanted to know what I thought.

I responded by dutifully forgetting about his book. It got lost in my emails until I was back in LA, aimless and settled into my empty apartment. Organizing my inbox because I was just that unmotivated to write, Jeff’s email resurfaced. A perfect time killer. I settled in, and 42 pages later I was in tears as I digested Jeff’s words. The stories the broken and homeless shared with him embedded themselves into my skin. I regretted the way I crossed the country. I didn’t collect enough stories. I didn’t see enough. I didn’t pray with enough people.

“Why was truth so elusive?” Jeff asked. “Where was contentment?”

Every Writer's Dream

A few weeks ago I crossed paths with an older homeless man wearing headphones and a skull cap. He looked like Morgan Freeman without the questionable earring and black glove, or the dignified gray in his beard. This caused me to stumble before him as I surreptitiously tried to decide if Mr. Freeman was so bored with fame and fortune, he spends his Saturday afternoons as a homeless man counting change. (In which case, I had my phone out prepared to snap a photo and contact TMZ. Hello rent check.) Or if this was, in fact, just another homeless man counting the last of his change to buy lunch.

Catching me looking, he asked me how I was doing in a voice that sounded more like Bob Marley than Morgan Freeman. I frowned, nodded, said I was fine, called him Morgan to which he didn't respond, and asked if he needed some extra cash.

"What do you think? Look at me. I'm out here countin' my change. We could all use some extra cash."

I took out my wallet and pathetically handed him the three dollars I had in there. I told him to take it and buy himself a cup of coffee or something.

"Aw, thanks brother…You want to smoke some pot, my man?"

I hesitated for a fraction of a second before telling him, "Maybe in another life, brother," and quickly drifted off into thoughts of another life. One where I smoked pot with a jaded and homeless Morgan Freeman on the sidewalk.

It was tempting. Since moving back to LA, I've been waking up depressed. I have remained uninspired these last few weeks. I feel repetitive. Most days I don't want to talk about myself, my wife, or my relationship with God. Sitting down to write is comparable to taking an axe to a wall in hopes of creating a doorway. I don't desire to exhume the energy. However, this is how I must think of it, otherwise I will remain trapped in this unimaginative room.

Maybe I just miss living on the road.

I'm also pretty sure I missed a perfectly good opportunity to hear (stoned or not) what I am sure would amount to be a fantastic story from Mr. Freeman.

I didn't realize this until I had the chance to speak to a guy named Jeff Goins. If you're a writer, there's a good chance you've heard of him. Jeff is a unique guy. As a writer, he's done things I've been too scared to do. And as a man, he's done even more terrifying things. He's prayed with total strangers in other countries. He's taken the time to get to know the men and women he's encountered on the street. And he's discovered they all have a story to tell.

After reading We Can't Go Home Again, Jeff decidedly sent my way a book he's currently in the midst of working on — a collection of nonfiction stories about these encounters. He believed I might enjoy it, and wanted to know what I thought.

I responded by dutifully forgetting about his book. It got lost in my emails until I was back in LA, aimless and settled into my empty apartment. Organizing my inbox because I was just that unmotivated to write, Jeff's email resurfaced. A perfect time killer. I settled in, and 42 pages later I was in tears as I digested Jeff's words. The stories the broken and homeless shared with him embedded themselves into my skin. I regretted the way I crossed the country. I didn't collect enough stories. I didn't see enough. I didn't pray with enough people.

"Why was truth so elusive?" Jeff asked. "Where was contentment?"

The Most Ungrateful Human Being on the Planet

This is the story of how I tend to be the most ungrateful human being on the planet, and a young guy named Josh.

I wake up every morning, my head protected from the rain and my body protected from the cold outside because of the roof I sleep under. When I wake up, I wake up warm and rested because of the 350 thread count Egyptian cotton sheets burying me into a deep sleep each and every night. Soon after being awakened by my cellphone that conveniently doubles as an alarm, which also functions as a camera and a computer and a GPS, I walk to the bathroom on my well-functioning feet to relieve my healthy bladder.

I then use those very capable legs to walk into the kitchen to make coffee with the endless amount of running water pouring from my faucet, and my gas stove that produces fire and heat because I have enough money at the end of each month to pay the gas bill. Not to mention enough money to buy those Stumptown beans from the only place in LA that sells this near-perfect Portland coffee.

Next I usually eat breakfast with my coffee. Often gluten free pancakes or gluten free cereal because I have the luxury to be so picky with my diet.

And I get to do all of this with a woman who is my best friend and with whom I have chosen to spend the rest of my life.

But sometimes I forget…

A few days ago I met an incredible young man named Josh. Josh is 19 and runs a website called Optimistic Wellness where he interviews inspirational people via Skype, sharing their stories with the world. I was recently and very undeservingly contacted by Josh, and asked to participate in one of these aforementioned interviews. Flattered and always excited about meeting new people, I agreed.

I was immediately enraptured by Josh's charm and infectious personality. He's easy to talk to, unafraid of questions, and, most importantly, unafraid of answers.

So 26 minutes after Josh interviewed me about Make It MAD, traveling across the country, meeting my wife on the road, and writing such dark fiction in We Can't Go Home Again, I decided to interview him. Josh had a tube running out of his nose, snaking its way around his face and down his shirt.

"It's mad sexy, isn't it?" Josh said when I asked him about it.

Josh was diagnosed with Crohn's disease when he was 15.

I had no idea what Crohn's disease was. I tend to shy away from researching these topics given my highly sensitive hypochondriac tendencies. You sneeze, I have the flu. Talk about a brain tumor, my head starts to hurt.

For those of you who, just like me, don't know a thing about Crohn's disease, here's the skinny: it's an inflammatory bowel disease that infects and debilitates the large intestine and colon causing a brilliant symphony of stomach pain, vomiting, and bleeding.

I asked Josh just how painful it was.

"I was throwing up a lot of blood and losing a lot of blood through my colon. It hurt a little bit, yeah."

Josh spent 140 days in the hospital when he was diagnosed. He dropped out of high school, had his colon completely removed, and part of his intestines are now outside his body. As a result, he now has to use an Ostomy bag. (You can look up how that works on your own time.)

"It's cool. I swallowed this pill with a camera in it. Basically, it made an .avi of my digestive track."

140 days in the hospital at the age of 15 and learning I will never be a regular teenager, I'd have an extremely difficult time finding anything to be cool.

"God's plan was different for me," Josh said. "I guess I just had other lessons to learn."

Josh is a different breed of human with his faith and optimism. The kind of human I think God intended us all to be no matter our circumstance.

"When I was 15, I had a conversation with God. I said, 'I will not lose my faith in you.' Then lots of tough shit happened after that."

I know a story just like this. Mine, as well as many others.

Josh was warned that he'd never again live a normal life. He can come down with infections far more easily than the rest of us. He's fragile. And like most people forced into his situation at such a young age, he ought to be lying in bed depressed and hating himself as well as God.

Instead, Josh does ballet. He stretches every morning for 10 minutes, and can do a full split. He can touch his toes with ease. He taught himself calculus, attends college online, and will be physically going back to school soon.

I'm a college dropout.

I can't do calculus.

I can't touch my toes, and I can't do a split.

Josh is forced to use an Ostomy bag to go to the bathroom, and I can't do half the things he is capable of.

"Now I get mad when the Sixers lose a basketball game," Josh laughed. "You just forget, you know?"

I know.

Every single morning I forget that I have just woken up with a roof over my head. It often slips my mind that I am warm and comfortable because of my 350 thread count egyptian cotton sheets. When I thank God, I don't thank Him for my ability to urinate without pain nor for my legs, which allow me to stand and walk to the bathroom on my own. I don't think about the money I use to buy coffee, and almost every morning I leave the faucet running while I brush my teeth.

Today, join me in taking a look at what you truly have to be grateful for in your life. I know your car might be in the shop, your grades might be suffering, and you might not know where rent is coming from on the 1st, but just consider that today you might have more to be grateful for than you recognize.

And if my friend Josh's story along with his optimism have inspired you the same way he inspires me, then please consider giving Josh some love down here in the comment section. He'll be reading this later today. Or stop by his website and check out his interviews. You can watch the interview he did with me right here.

Stay MAD.

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Published on February 15, 2012 07:59

I Am Going To Use The F Word In This Post

A lesson in grace: A homeless man charges up to you while you're on the phone, asks if you're mocking him, informs you how "fucking good it's going to feel to kill you right here on the sidewalk," (that happened sooner than you expected, huh?) then spits in your face for being on the aforementioned phone while in his presence. Tell him you love him, or go Jason Bourne on his face and kick his teeth in?

"What are you doing? Huh? Are you mocking me!"

Walking down Highland Avenue in Los Angeles, lost in an iPhone app, I looked up and saw a short, stout man wearing sunglasses which could have doubled–or in fact been–tanning goggles, and his hair looked like he'd just jammed a fork in an electrical outlet.

By the time I registered him, he was 2 inches from my face screaming incomprehensible demands in hopes of an act of reparation against the atrocities I was apparently in the midst of committing.

I've lived on the road for over a year, and in Los Angeles for three. I've had plenty of encounters with the homeless. The majority of them peaceful. My heart breaks for the homeless. I do everything in my power to fight for those I come across. I've been in far more dangerous situations, so I made the decision to keep walking. Maybe he just needed a place to vent. I was happy to be that for him. I smiled, nodded, and continued about the day's affairs.

"You deserve to die! Do you know that? I will kill you if you keep walking!"

This particular word choice got my attention. He'd started moving right along with me, and I'd disregarded him believing he'd tire himself out soon enough.

"It's going to feel so fucking good to kill you right here on the sidewalk."

Now out of a general fear of being stabbed with a rusty piece of metal, I increased the length of my stride. When my life is actually threatened, the natural instinct to kick in is not to stay and fight, but to flee. This guy looked like he was a dirty fighter anyway. He was raving mad, and I was in no mood to be scratched and bit by patient zero of the Zombie Apocalypse.

The moment I picked up my pace, he charged to catch up with me from behind and I braced myself for impact. But he didn't attack. He simply spit in my face with such gusto and enthusiasm, Babe Ruth would have been embarrassed. His dirty saliva pooling in my ear and dripping down my neck. He finished me off by informing me I deserved it for being on my cell phone before tumbling away down the sidewalk in circles like Tazmanian Devil.

Now I don't have a violent bone in my body. I have a difficult time staying angry, and I rarely yell. But for one fleeting moment, I wanted to be responsible for disabling this man's ability to breathe.

I know this isn't a very Christian thing for me to do or think, but I've already said the F word twice in this article so you know how my week's going. Congratulations if you're still reading and not already down in the comment section rebuking me. I've got a book you might enjoy. It's called We Can't Go Home Again. I use expletives in there too.

What I don't need is you to tell me you can't share my articles with your church or your youth group because of the smattering of colorful language which appears throughout.

You can't tell me that I don't have a relationship with Jesus because of the way I write. I don't need to be told I am not a Christian because I have tattoos and talk so bluntly about sex.

What I don't need–what we don't need–is to constantly be ridiculing and attacking each other when we screw up. And I'm just as guilty of this as you are.

"By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:35

Not by how many books you write on on the topic or how large your congregation is, nor by your sexual orientation, your wealth of knowledge, or how many people you can prove are wrong; not by being caught doing something awesome for all to see, and certainly not by how many hits you get on your Christian blog each month.

Now I'm not trying to be some mainstream alternative Christian either who recounts his gritty tales of stories from the streets. I don't want to be that. In fact, I don't even like to cuss. I believe that words give life and they bring death.

I am just a man who is learning. Who is trying to watch his tongue and figure out where God fits in to his new life off the road.

I am learning what it means to be a married man and simultaneously bombarded with sexual images of lingerie models and magazine ads on both the television and the Internet.

I am learning that not every thing I write has to come with a message, that I don't have to post here every Wednesday, and that sometimes I need to write what I want to write, not what I think you need to hear.

I am learning that my wife loves my hair no matter what it looks like even though it drives me absolutely mad.

I am learning how to be one with her yet simultaneously remain myself.

I am learning that there is a difference between Cappuccino White and Country Linen White when it comes to painting your living room walls.

And I am learning to extend grace to even those who spit in my face and threaten my life.

Most importantly, I'm just a man who is learning how to love.

This is me on Twitter: @maxdubinsky

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Published on February 07, 2012 19:40

The Randle Thomas Story

As a writer, it's my job to tell stories. Make It MAD is about storytelling. It was the story of my life as a single man without a job and without a home living in LA trying to find his faith. I set out across the country to search for it, and for yours. I never started this blog because I had the answers. I started this blog because I was looking for them. And I didn't want to do it alone.

I told stories of my adventures, and stories inspired by my adventures.

Today, however, is a different story.

This is the story of Randle. A failed actor who can't hold down a steady job, is in a relationship he can't keep track of, and at the age of 28, has just met his dead father for the very first time.