'God' speaks about wanting a new name

When I wrote last week about Steve Kreuscher, the man from Zion who wants to legally change his name to "In God We Trust," I cross-posted the article at the CT Liveblog. I was just checking comments there, and I saw that awaiting approval was one from Kreuscher.

The following is the whole reasoning behind me wanting to change my name to "In God We Trust; So that You know the whole truth about why I am doing it and see that I am more down to earth, then you probably thought at first.

"I have been a very creative artist since 1967. I have been searching for a new powerful and meaningful signature for my artwork, for the last 10 years. I was looking for a signature, which would best express my charactor of "Trust In God", my life of "Trust In God" and most of my artworks, which faithfully express my "Trust In God" also.

"Being born and raised in Zion Illinois, the city which the world renown faith healer, Dr. John Alexander Dowie, founded in 1900, I had a stong "Trust In God" since childhood. But then at 23 years old, I had a very dramatic spiritual experience and full whole hearted conversion to Christ, in October 1973, which is also the title of one of my very important works; "October 1973, My Conversion". Most of my artworks since my conversion, are very deeply religious. Being very religious, those artworks faithfully express my "Trust In God". Also many of those artworks express powerful stories about many tribulations that I went through in my life and how God used those trials to develope and increase that "Trust In Him" to where it is today.

"Therefore, changing my name to "In God We Trust" is my newest creative artwork; painted not with paint, but instead with those beautiful, powerful and meaningful words, on the canvas of my life. Those words "In God We Trust" most truely and most faithfully express me and who I am, in a beautiful creative word painting, a million times better, than the name Steve Kreuscher does.

"Those beautiful words are now the person, who God has made me into, by "the free riches of His power and His grace, In Christ Jesus" , my Lord and Savior

"And finally, by taking those precious words as my new name, I am joining those beautiful words, which are so dear to me, in a permanent way, to myself, preserving them for myself as part of me for ever."

Needless to say, My four children, my five grandchildren and myself need all the prayers and support that you can give us, for God's Divine protection, wisdom, strength and any thing else that God knows we will need through this all, and especially on Friday the 13th of June. I would love to see June 13th to be made into the offical "In God We Trust" day here in America. And last of all, my hopes and prayers are that Christians, all over America and all over the world, on that day figure out some creative, loving, peaceful way to take there own little personal stand for "In God We Trust" on that day.

All my love "In Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior"; Steve Kreuscher ( In God We Trust )

Kreuscher had me for a minute. Sort of. And then he mentioned Friday the 13th.

The pink gorilla and me

It's difficult to explain to a big pink gorilla why as a journalist you don't want to mug for the camera, so I indulged Zack Sher last week at UC Irvine. He and his fellow Anteaters for Israel were celebrating the Jewish State's 60th anniversary with iFest, a week long festival that preceded and partially overlapped Palestinian awareness week, for which I'll be heading down south again this week.

Awkward introductions: 'Call me God'

Steve Kreuscher has let his status as a denizen of Zion (Illinois, that is) go to his head. He's asked a judge to legally change his name to the motto that backs our money: In God We Trust.

Believe it. First name, In God. Last name, We Trust. The Daily Herald has a detailed story that is striking for its lack of lame jokes and offers other interesting name changes:

Santa Claus: Robert Rion of Mundelein, 1997

GoVeg.com: Karin Robertson of Virginia, 2003

Megatron: Michael Burrows of Washington, 2007

Optimus Prime: Scott Nall of Ohio, 2001

Pro-Life: Marvin Richardson of Idaho, 2008

Low Tax: Byron Looper of Tennessee, 1998

Jesus Christ: Jose Espinal of New York, 2005

My favorite funny name, though it may be apocryphal, is "Sh--head" (pronounced: Shah-TEED).

(Hat tip: DMN and BBB)

China's penis restaurant: clean or unclean?

DISCLAIMER: I saw this video last month and had no worthy excuse to blog about it. But after a conversation about what is clean and unclean, I've got my hook. Please, don't watch the above video, starting at 1:57, if you are prone to nausea, pregnant or may become pregnant.

Before there was The Law, there was Passover. After the Exodus came the transmission of Torah to Moses and all the mitzvot included in Levitical code. God only knows why he gave the Israelites all the instructions he did; this is apparent over and again when you read through Leviticus (or A.J. Jacobs' "A Year of Living Biblically").

One of the questions I've heard before, and heard again at Bible study last week, is: Why did God, creator of all, deem some animals clean and others unclean? What was so bad about the coney or the owl or the, gulp, weasel? Why would He give the Israelites such seemingly strange commands in Leviticus 11?

I am the LORD your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy. Do not make yourselves unclean by any creature that moves about on the ground. 45 I am the LORD who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy.

Oh right. Because He's God. If you don't like His commands, build your own universe.

Oddly, though, the food laws offer no prohibition (that I know of) against what I would consider the most defiled delicacy. For the rest of this story we head to a restaurant in China, via The Times of London, where all they serve filleted penis and such drinks as deer-penis juice, which the reporter calls "the vilest concoction I’ve ever had the privilege to imbibe. It’s as sour as a smacked lemon and as bitter as neat quinine. My face freezes in an agonising spasm, and Lord knows how I manage to keep from throwing up."

Baby Beckham's badmotorfinger

Well, I guess Cruz Beckham can forgo applying to top-tier Jewish day schools.

(Image: TMZ)

Strange debate on State of Israel

The Jewish Chronicle, via the Bintel Blog, has a strange story about an even odder resolution passed by Britain's oldest debating society, the Oxford Union.

The motion last Thursday, “This House believes that the State of Israel has a right to exist”, was passed by more than 100 votes, but not before the antics of some of the participants caused raised eyebrows in the union’s debating chamber.

American academic Norman Finkelstein, fresh from a tour of Britain backed by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies, spoke in favour of the motion but voted against it, while Ted Honderich, professor of philosophy at University College, London, joined the two anti-motion speakers — Palestinian academic Ghada Karmi and Israeli professor Ilan Pappé — but voted in favour of the resolution.

One member of the audience decried the “absurdity” of the debate. “I didn’t think it was a question we asked any more,” she said.

Finkelstein, the son of Holocaust survivors, is the author of "The Holocaust Industry" and "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History." He seems to generate controversy most places he visits, and next week he'll be at Cal State Northridge.

Undie Run: What have we done?

That is a photo from LAist of last night's Undie Run at UCLA. It's been a "tradition" for Bruins to drop down to their drawers and jog off studying at midnight the Wednesday of finals week since spring 2002. And, as my wife just noted, this giant display of debauchery was, gulp, started by a few Christians.

Do it ... Come on ... Do it

The All-Bran challenge: Do it, feel it.



Slate has a funny commentary on the boldness of a bran ad that shows "barrels actually plop out from behind that guy's butt."

'Mideast peace through porn'

That headline was for an eye-popping, but ideologically wanton editorial in Saturday's LA Times.

The Vietnam War-era slogan "Make love, not war" has been taken to its logical extreme by an Israeli pornographic website, which is engaged in a sort of cultural exchange of bodily fluids with the Arab world.

According to a recent report in Daily Variety, when executives at Ratuv installed software that could track where their users were logging in, they found that the site was getting thousands of hits a week from such countries as Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Iraq, even though some of these governments block the ".il" domain address on Israeli websites. So Ratuv responded by translating the entire site into Arabic, and traffic quickly skyrocketed.

What makes this more than a tale of clever entrepreneurs making a buck off Middle Eastern sexual repression is that Ratuv isn't an ordinary porn site. It's a clearinghouse of political parody porn, making fun of Israeli affairs such as sex scandals and often featuring Mossad agents or army soldiers getting out of uniform, thus providing a view of the Israeli military seldom seen in the Arab world. The next step, says Ratuv's manager, is to make movies with Israelis and Arabs performing together, in order to foster more intimate relations between the two peoples.

Yeah, right. Right? Forget the fact that plenty of people find pornography to be a demeaning, degrading thing. Is the LA Times -- a lightning rod for anti-Israel accusations -- really saying that if a Hamas suicide bomber watches a porno featuring Jews and Arabs together (think "Assraelis in the Occupied Territories") that he's suddenly going to think twice about exploding in a crowded market?

It's a quirky story, something editors love. But let's not take this seriously.

'World's newest slacker religion? Dudeism'

Hailed as the "fastest-growing religion in the world" -- not confident in the accuracy of that statement -- Dudeism has a homepage and a mascot. ("Yeah, I've got a rash, man.")

The idea is this: Life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it. So don't do anything about it. Just take it easy, man. Stop worrying so much whether you'll make it into the finals. Kick back with some friends and some oat soda and whether you roll strikes or gutters, do your best to be true to yourself and others - that is to say, abide.

Courtesy of the Bible Belt Blogger who points out this line from Duderonomy 5: "Respect everyone's point of view. It's just, like, their opinion, man."

Stephen Prothero would disagree.

Don't touch that dial -- you'll miss Jesus

Did you hear Jesus Christ on the radio this morning. I swear, on 640 KFI, "morrrrrrrre stimulating talk radio," as they say.

Now, of course, this voice wasn't that Jesus. It was KFI Jesus -- also known as Neil Saavedra, who is not the redeemer of man but pretends to speak as him every Sunday from 6 a.m to 9. Here's part of the profile I wrote about Saavedra last December.

Listeners heed his wisdom; some consider it divinely inspired.

"Oh, Jesus?" Pete Moyes, 54, of Murrieta said after waiting on hold for about an hour. "Question - I really appreciate you taking my call - how can I be assured of my salvation?"

"OK, what's your concern?" KFI Jesus asked.

"Well, people that know me, and I've known you for 30 some-odd years and I know that you are going to perfect whatever work I start, but I would think that after 30 years, I would get rid of some of these character defects, things that I do that I know I have to apologize for," Moyes said. "Why is my brain still thinking that way?"

"Well," KFI Jesus responded, "Scripture says it via (the Apostle) Paul very well: `The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.' ... The benefit is that it's paid for: It's taken care of by the blood of the cross. ... You hit it on the head when you called, and that is that I will finish the work and the perfection I started in you. That comes from me and not you."

I was curious then about what people thought of Saavedra's shtick. But I didn't have a blog, so I've resurrected this story to ask you the question: Is this blasphemous?

(Image: Podsafe)

Second Coming of Christ

Wal-Mart, which some believe is the anti-Christ, is about to start carrying 12-inch Jesus dolls. He will join Samson, Goliath and Daniel in the lion's den on toy shelves, according to USA Today. Photos can be seen here.

The toys were created by One2Believe, a Valencia, Calif.-based company I ran into when I was at the LA Daily News. Personally, I think this is a noble effort, with a niche market, but as I kid, I would still prefer to play with my Ninja Turtles.

The righteousness of prancing in your underpants

This post has very little to do with religion, save maybe what it says about the vulnerability of college students to be sucked into a clearly odd movement.

See, five years ago, I was a sophomore at UCLA when my friends and I began running around Westwood in our underwear. We called this finals week act of rebellion "Undie Run." Some of my roommates hoped to start a tradition, but I don't think anyone believed it would actually happen.

Wow. Were we wrong. Two weeks ago, what was once a 13-man jog up and down Glenrock Avenue was 8,000 to 9,000 students running from the apartments to Powell Library.

Last fall, I wrote about the origins of Undie Run and my astonishment at seeing what it had become. LAist has some insane photos from the spring run; they might not be appropriate for work.

(Pictured in the cowboy hat and bikini briefs is a former roommate, Mark Chipello.)

Ferrari: Not a sin to need the speed

Well, Ferrari, the other Italian pipeline to the divine, didn't care too much for the Vatican's Ten Commandments for drivers.

Turns out, according to Ferrari, that owners of the ultra-expensive, lust-driven sports cars simply spend more than a quarter million American because they like high-performance cars and don't use them "as a means for outshining other people and arousing a feeling of envy," which would violate the Fifth Commandment.

"Unless having fun has become a sin, I don't believe it (to be wrong)," Amedeo Felisa told Reuters this week at an event celebrating Ferrari's 60th anniversary in its hometown southeast of Milan.

I simply find it comical that his warranted a news story, no matter how short the story, not the car drivers -- yes, I'm envious of their Enzo.

Vatican: Drivers 'shall not kill'

People always say God has a good sense of humor. I heard the same about Pope Benedict XVI will he was elected two years ago. It's hard to tell how tongue in cheek the Vatican's just-issued Driver's Ten Commandments are.

1. You shall not kill.

2. The road shall be for you a means of communion between people and not of mortal harm.

3. Courtesy, uprightness and prudence will help you deal with unforeseen events.

4. Be charitable and help your neighbor in need, especially victims of accidents.

5. Cars shall not be for you an expression of power and domination, and an occasion of sin.

6. Charitably convince the young and not so young not to drive when they are not in a fitting condition to do so.

7. Support the families of accident victims.

8. Bring guilty motorists and their victims together, at the appropriate time, so that they can undergo the liberating experience of forgiveness.

9. On the road, protect the more vulnerable party.

10. Feel responsible toward others.

The Vatican said the unusual document was needed because cars can be "an occasion of sin."

"We know that as a consequence of transgressions and negligence, 1.2 million people die each year on the roads," Martino said. "That's a sad reality, and at the same time, a great challenge for society and the church."

As Friendly Fire notes, the translation leaves something to be desired. The blog also offers three additional commandments:

11. Thou shall not apply make-up, talk on your cell phone, and eat a cheeseburger while trying to make a left-hand turn into four lanes of oncoming traffic.

12. Thou shall not drive 50 mph in the left lane.

13. Thou shall not scream at the motorist in front of you just because he or she had the good sense not to run that yellow light.

The Catholic Church's mandates seem simple enough, but I'm not sure I can agree with, or by any means obey, 11 and 13. For some reason, perhaps connected, the report also covers hookers, abandoned children and the homeless.

Sweet Jesus

A New York artist has sculpted a life-size Jesus with his arms spread wide and his feet together, in the position of one being crucified. It's made of chocolate and Christ is NAKED -- endowment and all. (Click here to see.)

The artist's creation, which will be on display in New York for the week beginning Palm Sunday, is the latest culture-war issue to draw the ire of Catholic firebrand Bill Donohue. The website for his Catholic League has two rants against the artist's intentions. Here's part of the first:

As I’ve said many times before, Lent is the season for non-believers to sow seeds of doubt about Jesus. What’s scheduled to go on at the Roger Smith Hotel, however, is of a different genre: this is hate speech. And choosing Holy Week—the display opens on Palm Sunday and ends on Holy Saturday—makes it a direct in-your-face assault on Christians.

All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don’t react the way extremist Muslims do when they’re offended—otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off. James Knowles, President and CEO of the Roger Smith Hotel (interestingly, he also calls himself Artist-in-Residence), should be especially grateful. And if he tries to spin this as reverential, then he should substitute Muhammad for Jesus and display him during Ramadan.

Thanks to the Dallas Morning News religion blog for pointing this out.

* Updated: The nude chocolate Jesus exhibition has been cancelled. Here was David Kuo's take on the art show planned for Holy Week.

What's in a faith?

It's really a philosophical query, one reporters aren't well-suited or aptly trained to answer. But the current case of Temple 420, a Hollywood congregation that reads the Bible and smokes marijuana to communicate with God, is begging the question.

The Rev. Craig X Rubin, a minister ordained by the interfaith Universal Life Church and founder of the temple, sued the LAPD for $30 million Wednesday, claiming his religious and civil rights were violated when narc officers raided his sanctuary/head shop in November and purportedly told him it was not a "real religion."

But what is a real religion?

"There is no standard in nature to which one can go to decide if a group is a 'real' religion," says Dan Olson, chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Indiana University South Bend. "It all depends on whether people in the society that they are part of are convinced they are a religion. When different parts of society don't agree, like so many other things in life it often comes down to the group that has the most influence and power to determine whether the group will be persecuted and harassed or given respect and resources by others in society.

"Almost every accepted religion today has historical roots in some group that either broke away from a major religion (and was thus considered a heretical sect -- Christianity started as a sect of Judaism) or started from scratch with the vision or innovation of a prophet/visionary/founder who was probably seen as a kook or a dangerous heretic by most people in his/her day."

The role religions serve in society also complicate our understanding of what is sincere or genuine and what is "fake."

"You have to give people a feeling or a sense of the sacred and then you have to bond them in community," Robert C. Fuller, a religion professor at Bradley University in Illinois and author of Stairways to Heaven: Drugs in American Religious History, told me. "The fact of the matter is anything that helps with those two function has religious values."

Last summer, a month before Rubin opened Temple 420, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine reported that Timothy Leary was correct: Hallucinogens do enhance spiritual experiences. One third of the 60 percent of study participants who reported a "full mystical experience" described it as the most significant spiritual event of their lives.

Does that mean smoking pot -- whether it comes from what Rubin believes is the tree of life written of in Genesis or just a weed -- has religious value? Rastafarians use it, and the courts have ruled in their favor for consumption, though not transportation and distribution.

For Rubin, who is charged with two felony drug counts, and his followers, an LA Superior Court Judge will have to decide.