312. the body of Christ (part 1) - a radical hypothetical

[VERY IMPORTANT PREFACE]

Make note of that word in the title, "hypothetical."

A proposition or statement of, based on, or serving as a hypothesis; supposed but not necessarily true

I stress that word because I've been reluctant to put up this post because while it does serve as an extremely good, very fruitful thought exercise, it's NOT TRUE! As good as it is in stirring the imagination, it's theologically borderline heretical so please, please, please remember that I'm merely posing a hypothetical to make you think.

Maybe "hypothetical" is the wrong word. Maybe there's a better one for what I'm trying to do with this idea but I don't know it (feel free to leave suggestions in the comment box).

One last bit. I doubt I'm the first one to suggest something like this so if anyone knows of books or articles that share a similar idea, please let me know. Thanks.

[end preface]

Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 1 Corinthians 12:27 (TNIV)

One of the central teachings of Christianity is the idea that Christ will come again. It's in the Nicene Creed: "He will come again in glory. . ." And Jesus himself speaks of his return in Matthew 25 and 26 (among other places).

Unfortunately, because of a particular brand of end times teachings known as dispensationalism, starting with the teachings of 19th Century preacher, John Darby and later popularized by the Left Behind series of books, the traditional view of the second coming of Christ has been upended. I won't attempt to take on dispensationalism in this post but if you want to read an excellent critique I'd recommend Barbara Rossing's excellent book, The Rapture Exposed (if you want the gist of it you can read her entertaining interview here).

Anyway, for the purposes of this post, suffice it to say that when I speak of the second coming of Christ, I mean it in the more traditional sense: that he will return once back to this earth to judge and redeem all of creation.

In the New Testament, Paul often refers to the church as the body of Christ. There are many examples but here's one clear one:

Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you, and I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ's afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church. Colossians 1:24

Do you see where I'm going with this?

What if...

What if the idea of the second coming of Christ actually meant that the church (as his body) is supposed to be his second coming? What if that was what was meant by Jesus' return to earth? What if Paul wasn't using a metaphor when he called the church the body of Christ?

Let me state again that I don't believe this to be the case - I believe that the actual person Jesus will return in person ". . .to judge the living and the dead" (to complete the Nicene Creed quote I began above).

But.

But what if the church as the body of Christ was to be the re-incarnation, the second coming if Christ? What if we (as the church) were solely responsible to bring about the redemption and reconciliation spoken of by the prophets? How would that change the way we thought about church and how churches prioritized their budgets and their mission statements?

See here's the thing. I think there are segments of today's church who are playing a kind of waiting game. They think that because Christ will return one day that all they have to do is wait for that to happen. The only job to be done in the mean time is to save as many people as possible by getting them to ascent to the Four Spiritual Laws and pray the Salvation Prayer. After that, all that's left to be done is to hone their personal spirituality and to try and get their friends and family saved as well.

And I don't want to dismiss the importance of those things with my little thought exercise. I just want to point out that there are other aspects of being the church that are just as important as salvation - that the FSL and SP are not the end all and be all of Christianity, that there's more to be done before Christ returns.

By thinking about what the church would look like if it were the only bodily second coming of Christ we were ever going to have, I wonder if we can get a more holistic idea about what the church is supposed to be (even though he is, in fact, returning).

A few examples would do well here.

If the church were the second bodily return of Christ...

• We wouldn't be trying to create an alternate Christian entertainment subculture. Instead, we would be working to create viable works of art (in all forms) that existed and competed in the marketplace at large.
  
• We wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the claims of environmentalists by citing our mandate to subdue the earth. Instead, we would do our best to preserve the goodness of God's creation for all time and all generations.
  
• We would be far more active in trying to combat issues of poverty and suffering and injustice both locally and globally - because there's no way around the fact that they are our neighbor.
  
• We might see the church down the street as collaborators (instead of competition) and might work more closely with them by sharing resources and ideas. Because the task of being the body is far bigger than any one church or even one denomination can handle on its own.
  
• Despite the divisive nature of topics like abortion and same sex marriage, the church might work a bit harder at amicable solutions that do the most good for the people individually affected by these issues and work a bit less at shouting about which side is right.
  

Those are just a few examples and I honestly don't know how things would look in practical terms if my hypothetical were true (which, again, it's not) but here's the thing: I think the church would do well to organize its values and priorities as if it were true. Because we aren't called to sit and wait for the second coming. We're called to live our lives as citizens of the Kingdom of God here and now.

I've been saying over and over that my hypothetical isn't true but here's the thing. We really ought to be living as if it were true on both a large, church-wide scale as well as on an individual basis.

This is what it is to bring about the Kingdom of God. Being a Christian means representing the future, redeemed world today, here, now in this broken world.

Take a look at this bit from 2 Corinthians:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! . . .We are therefore Christ's ambassadors. . . 2 Corinthians 5: 17 and 20a

Take note of the phrases, "the new creation has come" and "the new is here!" Paul is speaking in the present tense. These things have already happened. When a person becomes a Christian, they become ambassadors of God's new creation. N.T. Wright puts it succinctly in the appendix of his new book, Surprised by Hope: "Jesus's resurrection is the beginning of God's new project not to snatch people away from earth to heaven but to colonize earth with the life of heaven."

And that's an amazing way to put it - "to colonize earth with the life of heaven."

But one very important thing needs to be made very clear if we aren't to misunderstand this way of reading the Gospel or what Bishop Wright is trying to say about it.

According to conventional wisdom, if you have a kingdom that you think is good and great and gosh, wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone were a part of it, the way you spread your kingdom is through force, violent and bloody. This is where the crusades missed the point entirely. According to what Jesus taught and the way he lived his life, the Kingdom of God spreads, not by force but by loving example - by turning the other cheek, by going the extra mile, by loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you (Matthew 5:38-44).

In a way, part of this hypothetical case is true. Part of the mission of the church is to become, in every way possible, the physical presence of Christ here and now on earth. But though we, as parts of the church, are citizens of heaven we are not yet wholely redeemed - we still only see part of the picture, not the whole. And so we'll mess up and we'll get parts of it wrong. We'll swing from being too strict to being too lenient when it comes to the law. We'll emphasize certain bits of scripture while ignoring other bits (because when's the last time you heard a teaching about wearing hats in church?). We are redeemed and made new but not entirely, not yet. And so we'll never get it all completely right.

And that's where my idea breaks down. But that's where the truth of the matter comes in and rescues me (us). One day Jesus WILL return to fix things front to back, top to bottom. And so while we'll get things wrong, he'll make all things right again.

Well, someone might ask, why not just wait 'til Jesus gets it right - why get it wrong in the meantime?

There's a parable in Matthew (21:33-44) that tells of a landowner who plants a vineyard. He puts some farmers in charge and then goes away to other business. When harvest time came, he sent some of his servants to get the fruits his vineyard had produced. Well the farmers greedily come to the conclusion that if they beat up and kill the servants that the will be able to keep the profits for themselves. The landowner sends more servants but the farmers do the same thing again. Finally he sends his own son thinking that they will have no choise but to listen to him but the farmers kill him instead. Jesus asks his disciples what they think the owner will do at this point. They respond that he will go himself to the farmers and dole out a beat down.

The parable ends with this ominous warning from Jesus: "Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit," (Matthew 21:43). This statement is given to the Pharisees but I don't see why anything Jesus says to the Pharisees shouldn't apply to everyone else. Besides, earlier in Matthew Jesus says that our righteousness is to "surpass that of the Pharisees." So I don't think it's a stretch to say that those who aren't working to produce the fruit of the kingdom are doing so at their own risk.

And I know this gets into the thorny arena of faith vs works and other really theologically overworked issues. I have my own thoughts about this (which I suppose are hinted at in the above paragraph) but a fuller treatment will have to wait for another post. Suffice it to say that I would personally rather err on the works side of the debate.

311. it's a whole new world out there

Okay, there's no cute or easy way to say this. I lost my job this week.

As I understand it, the company I was working for had been operating under the assumption that a huge venture capital investment was basically in the bag. But the execs got a call from the VC people on Monday that said despite all promises to the contrary, they weren't going to fund us. Our exec fought hard to keep the funds coming but he said all the VC guy could tell him was, "it's a whole new world out there," referring, of course, to all the drama in the financial markets.

In this past month or so, listening to and watching the news, I had a really hard time understanding all the doom and gloom about the economy. It seemed like something that only investors and bankers and retirees or those who had signed one of those shady mortgages had to worry about, not something that would hit me. The pundits kept saying that this crisis would have dire and far reaching effects for great swaths of the population and I kept thinking to myself, "bummer for those people." I didn't think this credit tsunami would hit me.

Until it did.

So how am I doing? Well, I loved that job. It was probably the most fun I've ever had working somewhere, so I'm kinda bummed about losing it.

But.

But I'm also very grateful.

I'm going to have to go on a major financial diet but in general my monthly expenses are low. I've applied for unemployment and worst case scenario, I'll take some entry-level rudimentary McJob to get by until I find something more promising. So as bad as the job market looks, I know I won't need a lot to make ends meet and so while I'm not glad, I am grateful.

There are other people at my old workplace who aren't as lucky as I. I know some of them just had babies and that's a huge expense. And I'm sure many of them have fixed monthly expenses that are FAR higher than mine and so their job options are far more limited. Also, because of all the layoffs that are happening all over the place and the fact that the venture capital market is closed up now, they're probably going to face a very arduous tech sector job search.

While I was packing up the things from my cubicle I caught a glimpse at the guy across the hall from me. He was sitting in his chair, arms dangling at his side. He was staring down at the floor as if the unholy maw of a black hole were opening up in front of him.

Me? If I went into full-on lean, mean, borderline-ascetic budget mode, I could probably get by on an hourly wage of $10 or $11. That wouldn't be much fun but still, if that's all I need to get by, I can find a job that at least pays that.

And so I'm grateful.

But I am a bit wary about the job hunt.

I'm a strange sort of creature. I think most of my friends would say that I'm a pretty bright guy. I'm no Mensa candidate but I like to think I know a thing or two about a thing or two.

And I'm a relatively handy guy. I'm no Bob Villa but I know how to operate a few power tools and can perform some basic house maintenance/repair jobs. And I can usually find creative solutions to problems. At my last job I turned the rubber end of a plunger (the kind you use on clogged drains) into a headphone coupler. And back when I used to script/shoot/edit a weekly video for a church I attended back in Hawaii, I used almost every trick in the guerilla filmmaking handbook to create some really (I think) entertaining videos with basically no budget.

There are lots of little things I know how to do but none of them translates very well into a job.

On the other hand, I'm pretty open to doing almost anything. And like I said above, I don't need a lot when it comes to salary. I totally lucked out with my last job - it was a niche market of a niche market - and I doubt I'll find something as sweet again but I'm willing to do almost anything. My job hunt game plan is to spend the first month or so looking for another golden opportunity. The next months after that will be looking for something in the ballpark of meaningful work. After that I'll take any job that will have me.

I'm a strange sort of creature when it comes to the job market. I have a lot to offer an employer but my skill set doesn't fit into any neat category. And so I'm a bit wary about the job hunt.

But I'm also excited.

They say that when you're unemployed, your full time job is finding a job. And I agree. Craigslist and other job hunting websites are my first clicks in the morning. My resume is updated and polished up, ready to go (customizable per submission along with cover letter). I'm all about being a job search machine.

But that's not what's got me excited.

Although I plan on thinking of my job search as a job in itself, it's not really a full time job, you know? And that leaves time for me to get back at writing and that excites me.

Last night at my c-group (Bible study) when we broke up into prayer/discussion groups I shared the news about losing my job. One of the people in my group asked me if I had considered writing as a job and I told her that that would be too good to be true. Because I know there are jobs for writers out there but here's the thing. Writing is something that I love, but its only a specific kind of writing that I love - the random writing I do for this blog and the little short story things I toy with every once in a while. I love writing so much that I don't want to "waste" it on a writing gig that may lead me to hate writing. What I mean is, I love writing so I'll write whether I get paid for it or not. So if I do get paid for it, I want it to be on my terms. And that's not a very reasonable posture to take in the hunt for a job, but when it comes to writing as a possible career, that's that.

But like I said, I don't need to get paid to write. And so being unemployed will allow me the time I need to get back to writing - my writing, my way.

And you know, there's a feeble voice inside of me that is saying that this jobless situation could be exactly what I need - that maybe writing is my true calling and that I should take full advantage of the time that I have to do it - that my unemployment is actually a precious, divine gift from God.

And that has me excited.

In conclusion, I wanted to let you all know about my job situation. Some of you already knew either through phone calls or through my status update on Facebook, but some didn't. I also wanted to let everyone know that I'm doing well. I'm grateful, I'm wary, but I'm also excited. Which isn't too bad of a place to be.

Of course I can say this because I've only been unemployed for a few days now. I may be in an entirely different mind space in a few months but I'll deal with that when the time comes.



PS. prayers appreciated, thanks.

PPS. for anyone else caught up in the throes of or worried about this financial crisis, my pastor had been doing an AMAZING series about Faith and Money. Read his blog posts about it here or listen to his sermons here (look for sermons with the title, "Faith and Money."

310. "sermon" on the Kingdom of God

[preface]

So a couple weeks ago I spent a few days in Hawaii visiting friends and family and stuffing myself full of poi and lau lau and katsu curry and ramen and other foods I missed. One thing I was really looking forward to was visiting the house church I used to attend before moving to Seattle. And a few days before the Sunday service, Blake, the guy who heads up the church, asked me to give a little message to the house church about what I'd learned since moving away - what had God been showing me about Christ and church and Christianity.

And I was stoked that he asked me because before I left the house church, we had been wrestling with a lot of big questions about what it meant to be a follower of Christ and what it meant to be the church and what it was that we were supposed to be doing with ourselves here on earth. And I felt as if I've been able to come up with...not exactly answers but some really promising and interesting ideas along those lines and was eager to share it all with them.

Anyway, what follows are from the notes I took for myself in preparing for what I shared that night at house church.

And it's a good way for me to get back to the Layman's Theology series I started more than a year ago.

[end preface]

I remember a bit before I left for Seattle, we as the house church were talking a lot about the Kingdom of God or as Matthew puts it, the Kingdom of Heaven.

I remember we spent many nights talking about this kingdom - what does it look like, how does it work, is it already here or is it yet to come, what's our role or place in this kingdom?

I remember that we spent a lot of time thinking about the Kingdom because Jesus seemed to speak about it all the time. Almost all of his parables are about this kingdom in one way or another but he’s often frustratingly open ended when talking about it. He calls it a pearl, a party, a net, like seeds and like virgins. And all of the metaphors seem to be pointing towards something that Jesus sees quite clearly but either because we can’t understand or because he can’t put it into words that we can understand, these metaphors aren’t entirely clear to us (and the gospels tell us that they weren't clear to many he was speaking to at the time - even to his disciples).

And I remember being frustrated by this because I was in search of a new understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. See, I was raised with the idea that Christianity and being a Christian was only and all about getting people to accept Christ as savior so that they would spend eternity in heaven instead of hell. And while I understood the importance of that, I couldn’t help but think that there was more to Christianity than that - a lot more. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were somehow missing the point of the Gospel.

And so I remember being frustrated with this whole Kingdom of God idea because I felt that it was pointing us towards something vital and important - something that could expand our ideas of what it meant to be a Christian. But at the house church, although we had lots of discussions about it, we never seemed to be able to get at what this Kingdom was about - how it works for us today.

I ended up taking all of these Kingdom questions with me up to Seattle and partly because of an amazing church that I found there and partly because of some really key books¹, I finally came to a new kind of understanding about what being a Christian is about and how this Kingdom metaphor works.

And so here it is - my thoughts so far on what it means to be a part of the Kingdom of God.

First of all, it helps to get into the mind of the people Jesus was speaking to when he spoke about this kingdom. See, part of the reason it’s hard for us to understand the Kingdom of God is because here in America, we’ve grown up in a democratic republic. On top of that, because of contemporary critiques of colonialism and imperialism, we’ve come to view the word "kingdom" (and the ideas of conquest and oppression that it implies) with a great deal of skepticism.

But put yourself, for a moment, into the feet of those in first century Israel. For them, being a citizen of a kingdom was all they knew. Their entire history was made up of good kings and bad kings and being taken over by other nations and living under the thumb of foreign kings. In fact, as we begin this story, Israel is yet again living under the rule of a foreign, pagan nation - this time, it was the Romans. And so while it's hard for us to understand what life was like in these (earthly) kingdoms, it's important for us to try to keep this in mind if we are to see the radical, revolutionary nature of the Kingdom of God. More importantly, it's only in this context that we can begin to talk/think about how this Kingdom metaphor works for us today. But more on this later.

Now as an extremely religious nation, there were various segments of the Jewish religious leadership who had different ideas about why it was that Israel was being ruled by the Romans. They also had different ideas about why God wasn't getting them out of this situation.

Some, like the Pharisees, thought that the reason Israel was under foreign dictatorship was because Israel was not living up to the standards of God - they were failing to obey the laws of the Bible. There were others, like the Saducees, who thought that the best we could do in this situation was to coddle the Romans - to try and work them as best we could. Then there were others like the Zealots (some of the twelve disciples were Zealots) who wanted to band together and take back Israel by force and bloody revolution. And there were the Essenes who moved out to the desert and isolated themselves from society - they were the ones who wrote and hid away the Dead Sea Scrolls.

This is the immediate social/historical context of Jesus' time, but before I get into what Jesus did when he entered the scene, I want to bring up one other bit of history. This time, we go all the way back to Genesis 12:1-3.

¹ The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. ² I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. ³ I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” (NLT)

This is basically the moment that the nation of Israel is born. It is because of this promise that Abram leaves his home and sets in motion the events that will lead to the nation of Israel. To me, the key parts of this promise to Abram are the lines about blessing - at the end of verse 2 God says, “I will make you a blessing to others. . .” and then again at the end of verse 3, “All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.”

I mention this because I think the main reason Israel got taken over so many times in the past and the reason why they were being ruled by Rome in Jesus' day was because they had forgotten this part of the blessing. They knew that they were God’s chosen people but they had forgotten that they were chosen so that they could be a blessing to the other nations...but again, more on this later.

So then, Jesus enters the scene and some believed that he was the Messiah - the one who would deliver Israel from the Romans and return Israel to a place of power in the world. These people are looking for an earthly, political revolutionary. What Jesus preached instead was an entirely different sort of world order. They wanted someone who would kick some Roman ass. What they found was someone who told them that if someone (like a Roman soldier) told you to carry their pack one mile, that they should carry it two miles. He told them to love their enemies and to pray for those who persecuted them.

And then just when he made his way to Jerusalem and people thought that he was finally going to take his rightful place on the throne and oust the Romans, he died on a cross.

Three days later, he rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples as well as to other witnesses. Some were still looking for a political Jesus - a Jesus to overthrow the Romans. Instead, Jesus tells them two basic things. Wait for the Holy Sprit and then tell everybody about me. And then he’s gone again.

And I’m not sure how exactly it happened (perhaps this is part of what happened at Pentecost?), but eventually the disciples and the followers of Jesus came to understand that this Kingdom that Jesus kept talking about wasn’t a political sort of Kingdom. It was, indeed, unlike any kingdom that had ever come before it.

His is a kingdom, not of physical, political power but a kingdom of love and forgiveness and reconciliation...wait, let me expand on that. The Kingdom of God can/should/will have physical, political effects but these effects do not come about through physical power (war). It isn’t a kingdom that comes about by force or violence but by sacrificing one’s self.

So then, finally, I can begin to talk about what I’ve come to understand about this Kingdom of God.

If you want a quick glimpse of what the Kingdom of God looks like, there are three places where it is especially clear. You can look to Eden before the fall of Man or you can look to the prophets when they talk about what the world will look like once God returns and redeems all of his creation. However, the clearest example of what this kingdom looks like is found in Matthew 5 - 7 (the sermon on the Mount). In those three chapters, Jesus outlines a radical new outlook on what it is to be a human being, on what our priorities should be and how it is that we live out our kingdom citizenship.

I said earlier that although it's difficult, the Gospels must be read through the lens of those for whom monarchy was the only political structure they knew. For them, if they were living under the rule of an unjust king, they had two choices - live with it or overthrow it. In the Gospels, Jesus offers a fascinating, new alternative. Jesus offers his followers citizenship in a kingdom not of this world but a Kingdom of God/Heaven. And Jesus spends his time on earth teaching and modeling how a citizen of this Kingdom behaves here, today, now.

What does that mean for us? As followers of Christ in America, although we live in and pay taxes to our government, we are actually citizens of the Kingdom of God - our lives, are to be lived out as citizens of God's Kingdom. And for me, the easiest way to understand what this means is to live now the way we would if the fall had never happened or the way we will when God returns to redeem his creation. The more we live this way, the more the Kingdom of God enters into, redeems, and blesses today’s world.

And that last bit about blessing is especially important. Remember earlier when I talked about how I thought the reason Israel had so much trouble through its history is because they forgot that they were chosen so that they could be a blessing to all the nations? In a sense, part of what happened through the cross and the resurrection is this task of blessing got transfered from the one specific nation of Israel onto all who called Jesus Lord - we Christians.

And while this will probably get me into trouble, I really want to emphasize this idea of being a blessing to all nations because I think large segments of the church today are in a similar position to that of the Jewish religious leaders in Jesus' time who thought too much about being God's people and not enough about being a blessing to those around them.

There are segments of today's church that, like the Pharisees, think that the reason why Christianity isn't the force they think it should be is because our nation has lost its moral compass. Then there are other segments (I'm thinking of the Christian entertainment industry here) who, somewhat like the Essenes, seem to think that what we need to do is to withdraw into a subculture - in this case, it's not a geographic withdrawal, but it is still an escape from or alternative to the culture at large. And then there are those like the Zealots who use the language of war when talking about the duty of Christians (think of those who wave those "God hates fags" signs or those portrayed in the movie Jesus Camp). Other parallels can be made but those most readily come to mind.

These segments (and, really, the church at large) can be seen as putting too much emphasis on being God's people and not enough on remembering that we are God's people so that we can be a blessing to all the nations. What I'm trying to say is that while it is true that Christians are God's people, our task as the people of God is to be a blessing. And this blessing comes about most naturally and readily as we live the kind of sacrificial life that Jesus taught and modeled for us - as citizens of the Kingdom of God.

¹N.T. Wright, Simply Christian
N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope
Brian McLaren, The Secret Message of Jesus
Shane Claiborne, Irresistible Revolution

309. today's black plague

Yeah, haven't been blogging lately.

But I will...soon.

In the meantime, just want to say that I'm writing from lovely, balmy Hawaii. More on that in a post to come.

And I wanted to call your attention to a website that aims to tackle the problem of XDR-TB - extensively drug resistant tuberculosis.

It's a pandemic waiting to happen and while I normally try to refrain from making the-sky-is-falling type statements, in this case it could very well happen. Here's why this issue has my boxers up in a twist:

1.The World Health Organization estimates that one person in three in the world today is infected with TB.
2. The average person infected with TB will likely spread it to 10-15 people per year.
3. This person might not even know he/she is sick.
4. The disease is most common in areas that lack the financial resources to prevent, diagnose, treat, and/or educate people about the illness.
5. Drug resistant strains of TB develop when treatment is mismanaged (not uncommon in these low-income, often third-world-type countries).
6. If this treatment mismanagement continues, a patient's TB can mutate into a from that is basically untreatable - it becomes resistant to any/all drugs thrown at it.
7. Because TB infects the lungs and can be spread through the air, it is HIGHLY contagious.
8. If XDR-TB becomes widespread (not unlikely) and makes its way into densely populated, industrialized nations (also not unlikely), we could very well become today's black plague or Spanish Flu. And a highly mutated form of XDR-TB that is able to infect people who were immunized against TB while young is not out of the question.

The really sad fact of the matter is when it comes to TB, an ounce of prevention is worth a king-kong-ton of cure. The vaccine is not expensive. But a poor country is a poor country and for them, even inexpensive drugs are out of reach (not to mention problems of infrastructure and distribution).

But we're not a poor country (not yet). The money spent in one day in Iraq (hell, a few hours of that would probably be enough) could wipe the problem of TB off the face of the earth.

Anyway, take a look at this video. Sign up on their site. Make your voice heard. Make a difference.