Have you ever taken a college class where the professor was downright incompetent? As a linguist, I sometimes find myself stuck in language classes which were very arbitrarily thrown together. While the Defense Language Institute is famous for its breakneck pace and rigidly structured curriculum, some of the smaller language schools the Navy subcontracts to for shorter classes are abysmally poorly prepared. I don't ultimately blame the school; the fact is that many of the languages I'm expected to learn are relatively unknown to non-natives, and finding a local native speaker who actually has professional teaching experience is almost a one-in-a-million shot. Sometimes I'm literally placed into a classroom with nothing but a notebook and a foreign immigrant and ordered to learn. 

In situations such as this, it behooves one to be proactive about one's learning. When a "teacher" is woefully unprepared to provide structured learning, it becomes your job to ask smart questions, seek out supplementary resources, and ultimately to take control of your own learning process rather than passively waiting to be fed. Some teachers take it as a personal affront if you suggest to them that perhaps their teaching style, or lack thereof, could be improved upon. In those situations, cultural and interpersonal differences can sometimes turn ugly.

While it can be a tolerable inconvenience to have a bad teacher in a collegiate setting, in my current line of work people's lives may very well depend upon my ability to provide accurate and timely translation. There simply isn't time to waste when learning a new language for the military.

We have all dealt with bad instructors at some point in our lives. Unfortunately, some of them mistake their role as a teacher for the idea that they somehow control us, or that they are the infallible lord of knowledge to whom we must bow if we expect to receive any of their precious insights. One place where I see this often, sadly, is in church.

I've heard it said that the ice bucket challenge is another case of "slacktivism," like the failed KONY2012 and other wanton attempts to make the public feel empowered whilst simultaneously demanding little to no action in return. While it can hardly be disputed that flippant cash donations are probably not going to change the world, I think some action on a given subject is better than no action at all, don't you?

When it comes to raising awareness for ALS, I'd say the ice bucket challenge has been an overwhelming success. Not only have they filled up your news feed with their viral marketing strategy, they've actually raised a very respectable amount of money for research, and in doing so have also made this formerly virtually-unknown disease now a household name. That sounds like a win to me.

When it comes to church life, I find a similar trend of slacktivism at work in almost every corner of the Body. It seems every week a new outreach ministry or building project is announced, to the joy of many members of the congregation. Worse still, there are even more people, like the ice bucket naysayers, who are content to simply sit at the back of the church and roundly criticize anything and everything going on at the front. When the church announces some new pet project, it's all too easy to sit at the back with folded arms and wonder aloud how that money might better have been spent. To be sure, I too have been guilty of such a crime. 

In Philippians 1, Paul mentions that there are an entire faction of preachers within the upstart church who, frankly, are terrible. While Paul is quick to point out that their outward appearance of piety is not at all genuine, he also acknowledges what I believe is a very important point: they're still preaching Christ.

Even though I have at several times in the last few weeks and months taken aim at the motives and methods of several people who claim to be doing God's work, I think it bears acknowledgement that, at the very minimum, these people are all behaving in line with what they believe to be God's Word. Though their interpretation of God's commands may drastically differ from my own, it would be unbecoming of me as a believer to say that their interpretation of the Scripture is wholly wrong.

When it comes to church ministry, as when it comes to raising money for medical research, I think that some action is better than no action, and half-hearted support of a semi-worthy cause is far better than idle naysaying. Better still, would be to put your money where your mouth is, if you'll pardon the pun, and come up with what you believe is a suitable alternative.

As stated previously, I have concocted a summary list of my reformative demands for the American church. Note that the use of the word "church" which follows herein contains two distinct meanings. In the case where I capitalize it, I refer to the body of believers. In the case where it is lowercase, it refers to the institutions of organized religion. 

1. A church is not a business. The goal of a church's leadership structure is to provide insightful exegesis and develop the faith and doctrinal understanding of its parishioners, never to grow simply for the sake of numerical growth. 

2. Building projects are the product of churches who develop large business models and maintain tremendous overhead costs. Therefore, any church who embarks on one is inherently suspect.

3. A Church is a body of believers; it is not an organization, it is not comprised of paid staff members, and it is not a brand name controlled by its founding pastor.

4. Legalism about any supposed "no-no" in the bible will not be tolerated from any church member, whether paid staff or congregation member.

5. The Church shall not support any political party or candidate. The eternal message of Jesus Christ shall not be cheapened or affixed with any political label of temporal, human invention.

6. "Christian dating" is stupid. The idea that the Church has any right to implicate themselves in the lives of two grown adults, with the possible exception of cases where bonafide and documented abuse has occurred, is laughable.

7. Any church staff member or congregation member who implicates themselves in the personal lives of adult members of the congregation without invitation will be subject to the labels of "self-righteous" and "meddlesome," and their subsequent exegesis will be labeled as suspect.

8. Anyone who acts irrationally happy at all times and attempts to convince me that the "joy of Jesus" is their constant companion will be ignored. If they continue to maintain their irrational happiness, they will be branded mentally insane.

9. Slaps will be handed out liberally to anyone who tries to convince me that the church, and not the Bible, is the ultimate authority in my life.

10. Third-world churches shall at all times be the paradigm by which first-world churches are judged. A third-world church pastor seeks nothing in life other than the well-being of his congregation. If a first-world pastor places anything ahead of the flock's well-being, s/he shall be canned.

11. A house church is the ideal form of corporate worship and gathering. Not only is it thoroughly biblical, it also has the advantage of preventing large, clique-y congregations, and generally negates the possibility of a large leadership structure with a huge operational budget.

12. Simplicity was always the model of the early Church. Although times and circumstances have changed, the early Church was the closest model of biblical Christianity which has ever existed, and therefore is to be emulated as much as humanly possible.

13. Matthew 24:9-13 explicitly states that the Church will suffer global, physical persecution before any form of rapture will ever occur. Any church that is not actively preparing its believers to encounter hardship and plan accordingly shall be branded as a self-help group which promotes feel-good nonsense.

14. Matthew 24 is a chapter of the bible which needs to be interpreted literally. Jesus was addressing his disciples, whom he promised he would not speak to in riddles. Because this is the case, and based on some cursory correlation with 2 Thessalonians and Daniel, the rapture will most likely not occur until at least the middle of the Great Tribulation.

15. Because we as a Church will likely have to endure some part of the tribulation, it is recommended that all churches devote themselves as much as possible to the concepts of recognizing false prophets and persevering through hardship.

16. With the inevitable decline of worldwide tolerance for Christianity, we can safely assume that churches in the U.S. will eventually lose their 501(c)(3) tax exemption and any legal protections it provides. Therefore, conventional church models should be abandoned in favor of small, mobile cells.

17. 2 Thessalonians also refers to a "great falling away" which will take place before the rapture. In order to prevent people from abandoning their faith in the face of persecution, great pains must be taken to ensure believers everywhere understand the real and actual cost of following Jesus Christ.

18. A bible is a luxury some people in other countries cannot legally have. Read it. Memorize it. Prepare for the possibility that you too may one day face the same problem.

19. Buy a gun. If that sounds a little too violent and paranoid to you, then don't. Don't call me when they come for you though.

20. Don't go looking for trouble.

21. Don't be afraid.

22. It's all part of the plan.

23. It may be important how we live, but it matters far more how we die.

24. Jesus is still the way the truth and the life, and nobody comes to the Father except through him.

25. I'm officially announcing the foundation of The Council. It is a small, tight-knit community of believers who meet regularly in homes and restaurants to discuss the deeper doctrines of the faith. Our goal is to resemble the early Church as much as possible, and leave behind the traditional model of doing church. If this is something that interests you, please get in touch.

One thing I've been reluctant to speak publicly about is the resultant cynicism that has permeated my entire thought process and life outlook since things blew apart back in February. The church, if I may be completely frank, bungled their intervention in our affairs (I would also like to point out that they never should have been involved in the first place), and essentially sided with my ex. They surrounded her with a team of three pastors and several church friends, and assured her that everything was going to be ok, and that that monster of a man would never be around to bother her ever again. They either ignored the fact that the histrionic and spectacular way with which the relationship self-destructed was largely of her making, or maybe they simply didn't get the full story. In either case, this do-gooder team of three pastors decided to dispatch a fourth pastor to "counsel" me during this time of grief, although without his knowledge they also laid plans to take out a restraining order against me in the event that I made any attempt to contact my ex. I think that he genuinely believed he was sent to help me, although clearly in light of later events, he was merely a pawn in the hands of the other three who sought nothing short of my absolute ruin.

I should state for the record that I did never, at any time, threaten or harm my ex in any way. The relationship collapsed because she had what I will call an emotional breakdown, which led her to make an unfortunate decision that quickly grabbed the churches' attention. While it could easily be argued that I was the cause of said breakdown, the decision she made was entirely her own, and she alone bears the responsibility for its consequences. In any case, the church leapt into action, ostensibly to protect one of their poor, helpless members of the flock by demonizing and ostracizing her "abuser" while still appearing to remain as compassionate as possible.

With that pretension of compassion in mind, they sent me a nice person to talk to from the church staff, who may have indeed been trying to reassure me and offer me counsel during a time of tremendous emotional upheaval, but who was in fact feeding intelligence to three very sinister people who had pronounced judgment upon me long before they picked up the phone to call the fourth pastor.

I eventually learned of the threat to destroy my career and livelihood because my ex reached out to me in secret. Although we were both still reeling from the sudden split, there were some lingering positive feelings on both sides, and this led her to offer me the discreet warning about the gun pointed at my head. For that, I will be eternally grateful. I took this information back to my "counselor," who seemed genuinely surprised. His unmistakable shock was very reassuring, since I could now rest confident that he wasn't knowingly playing a part in the scheme to undo me. Nevertheless, I did have to take a firm line with him, saying that if such a discussion was taking place, it was totally uncalled for. In no uncertain terms, I made it clear that I was going to handle this situation like an adult, and that threats and ultimatums were absolutely not the right way to ensure my cooperation.