Exodus 20:7 reads: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.”

I’ve been thinking about this scripture recently because a friend asked some questions on her Facebook regarding God’s name and whether or not it was worse than using the F-word.

Now, I’m not here to discuss the F-word, though I’m sure that would be entertaining for some of us. I’m rather going to explain briefly (I hope) why this particular scripture is so misused and how if we understood it better, we would be WAY more interested in keeping that particular command.

You see, as so often happens, this scripture has been misread and abused in a way that belittles it’s main message. The scripture has nothing to do with saying things like, “God Damn” or “GODDDD!!!!” when you hit your thumb with a hammer, or “LORD HAVE MERCY!” when you see some hot chick walking down the street.

Sorry, race fans. It simply isn’t that easy.

To truly understand what is being said, we must put the scripture within it’s proper contextual paradigm and in this case it is similar to a marriage.

In most marriages, when a woman marries, she “takes” her husband’s name. Along with his name, she agrees that she is now a changed person, no longer alone, but one with him and subject to a new life under that reality. The things she was have changed and now she has placed herself under new leadership. (Sorry ladies, but we are looking at this historically, so please don’t get off on a “he’s not the boss of me” tangent. I promise you I already know he isn’t the boss of you.)

As always, the Church has been likened unto a bride. While we certainly see the language more prevalent in NT phraseology, it nonetheless applied even more so in the OT, where this scripture is used. At that time, the idea of “Taking an name” was VERY important. Wives took names. Slaves took names. Children born into a family were said to “Take the name of the father”.

This language used in Exodus would certainly not have been lost on a people group who were said to be “Taking the name of God.” They would have been quite aware of the language and it’s implications.

So, in light of this, when we look at a marriage, let’s say mine, and we say, “April, please don’t take the name of Alderman in vain.” What do we mean?

We certainly don’t mean that April shouldn’t yell “Alderman Damn!” or “ALDERMANNNNNNN!” or something like that, do we? Of course not. We are saying, “April, along with this name comes a certain set of expectations as to what an Alderman is and is not. To take this name and then spit on those expectations is to dirty the name of Alderman.”

Whoa.

Expectation?

God has….expectations?

EXPECTATIONS?!?!?!?!

Yes, my dear friends, he does. And when we take his name, he expects us to take the utmost care with the way we live our lives. It goes beyond saying something silly using the name “God” and into the way we live out our daily lives at all times.

I’m not saying it is good to say God’s name in a frivolous way. Like any word, it tends to loose it’s specialness when we cheapen it. But that doesn’t mean it is ok to devalue a scripture like this and think that if we just learn to use God’s name in prayerful ways that we are fine and dandy, because we aren’t. God has a clear expectation for those who take his name.

Let us not take it in vain.

I can say this – I was tired. Tired of being fat. Tired of having anxiety attacks because I knew I could have a heart attack at any moment. Tired of the way my clothes didn’t fit and my knees hurt all the time. Tired of not being able to run anymore, and tired of being so very tired.

I think that the biggest thing that people miss when trying to motivate an overweight person is that they are dealing with an addiction that is so powerful that it isn’t a simple matter of “cutting back” or “taking small steps towards a healthier you”.

That’s a load of crap.

I’ve never known anyone who lost weight that way. You have to get radical. Scary radical. You have to say to yourself, “I know this diet is insane, but it HAS to be a better idea than dying at 50 of a heart attack.” That’s why Jarrod ate all those Subway sandwiches. That’s why a co-worker of mine spent almost 15,000 dollars on bootcamp trainers. (she is my hero) That’s why people cut out all meat. That’s why people eat ONLY meat. You get the idea.

I first heard of HCG when I noticed that our television producer, Joe Palo must have gotten cancer. Now, Joe doesn’t have cancer. I just said that to recapture your attention for a moment. That fact is that he dropped weight so suddenly that one day I thought, “Joe must have cancer.”

I’m super glad Joe didn’t have cancer. (side note: cancer is awful and I hate it) What Joe DID have however, was a new diet. The kind of diet that had made him shrink up. Where “Big Jolly Joe Palo” had been, there was now “kind of weird looking because he’s so skinny Joe Palo”.

So I started the diet. I didn’t wait forever, but I did research it first. More importantly, I had my dear friend Ken Scott, who is also the corporate medical director for Life Care Centers of America research it for me. He said, “Let’s do it.” so I did.

If you haven’t heard of HCG, you will soon. It’s becoming one of those hot-button items like Atkins diet was years ago.

I’m not here to tell you that everyone out there criticizing the diet is wrong. I honestly don’t know if they are or not. I just know that my personal doctor here in town has been thankful that I did it.

The first few days were tough. I wasn’t sure I could do it. It wasn’t a physical thing. It was mental. After all, I’d been overeating for 37 years. That doesn’t change overnight. Still, my friends and family kept encouraging me, and I found myself sticking to the diet.

Then the weight started coming off. Lots of it.

By the end of week one, I’d lost 12 pounds. 12 pounds in a week. What? Yes.

Now, I’m 80 pounds lighter and 10 inches smaller. My kid tells his friends, “My dad is so skinny!” which isn’t true, but makes me feel absolutely awesome. The best part is that it isn’t coming back. I’ve kept it off.

One month ago, I gave away 90% of my wardrobe to a homeless man. I can’t tell you how good that feels.

So, are you sick of feeling horrible? Are you done being afraid that you’ll die of a heart attack? Want to know what it feels like to not hurt when you walk? Are you ready for something that isn’t easy, but works?

If so, email me at robalderman@gmail.com and tell me you want to and we will get started.

Love you,

Rob

As a creative type human, nothing is more important to me than listening to the right music at the right time. This is especially important this weekend as I head to St. Louis to see Matthew Sweet on his special 20-year anniversary Girlfriend tour. This tour is going to blow the minds of those of us who remember Sweet’s battle against grunge music and how he ultimately won that battle. A boy from Nebraska invented power-pop, and boy are we all thankful.

To be honest, Sweet thinks of himself as some sort of Beach Boys/Neil Young hybrid, and while that may be true, to those of us who have been in love with his music, he certainly superseded both of them. not in album sales of course, but in making music that remains melancholy and beautiful.

I first heard Matthew Sweet when I was living in Indiana as a high school senior. The Girlfriend album had just hit, and “I’ve been waiting” was making the indie rounds in the Chicagoland area. I went to Lollapalooza with my two best friends, and we ended up sitting near Matthew, who wasn’t a star, and to be honest didn’t even seem like a star in the making. He was cool, fun, liked comic books and hot girls, just like we did. I remember being shocked when the local tv station who did a late night music show, pulled him aside in the row to the side of us and began interviewing him. Who was this dude?

Well, “that dude” ended up being the most influential musical influence on my entire life.

Now, while critics properly hail Girlfriend as a remarkable achievement in music history (the first proper, and still the best, power-pop album of all time), it was really the follow up to this record that impacted me most.

I’m talking about Altered Beast.

If Girlfriend was the album that endeared Sweet to the world, it was Altered Beast that showed the world that rockstar darlings are not to be trusted. you see, just when you think they are going to hand you more of the same old crap, the best of them do something completely different. Altered Beast was like some sort of candy-coated haunted house, with dark imagery playing just beneath the jangly guitars and vocal harmonies. While Girlfriend had documented Sweet’s divorce, Altered Beast seemed to tackle the issue of the evil side of humanity in general, which is much more ominous than one man’s failed love life.

Needless to say, I loved the album immediately.

To this day, it remains one of my favorite albums of all time, and alongside Rich Mullins’ A Liturgy, A Legacy and A Ragamuffin Band, my favorite Fall album.

Like Altered Beast, Fall is a candy-coated haunted house, you see. While the leaves turn gold and red and fall beautifully from the trees, we can’t help but feel a bit awkward since we know that in their beauty, the leaves are also in the throes of death itself. As each track plays, you tap your foot and hum along, pleased with the gorgeous layered guitars and harmonies, but what is that twinge of horror you feel? Oh yeah, it’s the fact that Sweet isn’t letting you forget that underneath it all, he’s dying.

And so are you.

Either you want to argue with him or you want to embrace him, but regardless, he is one of the most dynamic figures of the Christian community to have emerged in many, many years.

In seminary, I had a professor who was upset with Bell because they were supposed to debate one another twice and both times, Bell cancelled. I guess that’s the thing about Bell. He’s going to say and do whatever it is that he wants to, and if you are good with that, you like Bell. (NOTE: I’ve always felt that Asbury Professor and NT Theologian Extraordinaire, Ben Witherington, has been Bell’s best critic)

But why? Why is it that Bell has such an effect on people? I’ll tell you why.

It isn’t that Bell has a bad theology. It is simply that he isn’t afraid to express a theology at all. And THAT is precisely why Bell has so many followers. The world is starving for pastors who aren’t afraid to have a thought-through (if sometimes a little questionable) theology.  To have a pastor with strong theology is so rare that one can certainly point them out. Bell, Driscoll, Piper, Boyd…the list is a short one.

In a world filled with self-help, everyone can figure it out themselves, wishy washy pastors, Bell is a giant.

Long ago, a professor made a note on a paper I’d written. It said, “Rob, don’t be afraid to have an opinion. This is YOUR thesis. Make a decision on the material and stick to it. That will make people want to read your work, even if they disagree.”

I took the advice to heart and have tried my best to do just that ever since, and when people ask me how I can have so many readers, I point out that I never expect them to agree on what I’ve written. I simply try to have an opinion. I write from a place of authority. I am the supreme authority on the subject of Rob Alderman’s opinion.

In the case of Rob Bell, we have a pastor who clearly loves God and loves people. This alone sets him apart from the vast majority of theologians. Most theologians could care less about people, and this puts the common Christian in a quandary- Sit in a church with a pastor who loves me but doesn’t know the scripture from a Joel Olsteen self-help best seller, or spend time with cranky theologians who is just waiting to point out my mistakes.

With Bell, they don’t have to choose. They can have both. This is what makes Bell remarkable. This is why Bell is on Good Morning America.This is what makes Bell better than most pastors.

So perhaps we should spend less time critiquing Love Wins. (says the guy hosting a Love Wins discussion group) Perhaps we should instead begin the process of asking our pastors to care a bit less about 3 point anagram sermons and care a bit more about having a solid theology.

Perhaps the problem isn’t Bell at all.

The Smithsonian Institute has at this very moment, the original “cut-and-paste” Bible that was created by this founding father.

You can order the book from Amazon, and I’d like you to see a bit of the description. “Working in the White House in 1804, Jefferson set out to edit the Gospels in order to uncover the essence of true religion in the simple story of the life of Jesus. Jefferson was convinced that the authentic message of Jesus could be found only by extracting from the Gospels Jesus’s message of absolute love and service, rather than the miracle of the Annunciation, Virgin Birth, or even the Resurrection. Completed in 1819, this little book is the remarkable result of Jefferson’s efforts.”

Jefferson took a lot of heat in his day by religious conservatives for what he did, but his argument was simple – Man messes things up. To be a true Christian, one must adhere to the words of Jesus and nothing else. Not only was Jefferson not trying to be anti-Christian, but he believed himself to be more pure in his Christianity than those who were attacking him.

First, we must applaud Jefferson’s zeal on the matter. I mean, we all know how people muck with the Gospel so often that they do more harm than good. It just makes sense to erase anything other than the words of Christ himself, right? Jefferson was after the truth.

Here is the problem with that approach. We are all so much more than the sum of our own words. When I die, I will have left behind many words. I have journaled as a young man and as I have grown into a writer, even more of my thoughts and philosophies have been captured and will be preserved.

I imagine that when and if people decide they want to know me, there will be plenty for them to read. Things I thought. Things I said. But if you REALLY want to know who I was, don’t go back and read the archives from this blog. Go to my wake. Sit around with Dusty Strickland, Josh Parchman, Chris Pustelnik or Ryan Faricelli. Knock back a pint with Chris Garmon, Tyler Orr, Dryan, Jerry Redman, Brian Hash, Kevin Kockx  or Davis Cutshaw and the countless other rogues and saintly scoundrels I spent time with while on this Earth. The stories they’ll tell you that night will do more to explain me than my own words ever will.

And so it is with Jesus Christ. His words are powerful. I personally believe they are the guide by which we should live and the way to truth. But as with all things, they are only a piece of the portrait of who Jesus really was. This is why we have been given the entirety of the Bible. (and I would argue other manuscripts that are not found in our current Bible, but that is a different conversation) It is within the whole of scripture that we find a much more complete picture of the savior of the World. Through his words, yes. But also through the words of countless others, and it is my sincere hope that one day we will kick back with Peter, Paul and the rest of the saintly scoundrels and learn much, much more…

Awfully powerful words, aren’t they? Over the past year I began hanging out with a group of guys from Lee University. Some are recent grads, some are seniors. Most all of them work/volunteer at Regenerate Music Co. All of them are much younger than me.

They have a habit, these friends of mine, that has been rubbing off on me. They say, “I love you” all the time, and they really mean it.

At first, this took a bit for me to deal with. I wasn’t used to being told by other men that they loved me so much. I mean sure, every once in a while at a church service or something it would happen, but in general, not very often. These guys? All the time. Seriously.

When you meet them. When you say goodbye to them. When you call them on the phone. These are some loving dudes.

It’s strange how hard it was to get used to. I think for many men my age, we were raised that words like, “I love you” were sacred things. Saying them too often would take away their power. I can remember specific conversations from my youth where those very thoughts were placed into my head.

(SIDE NOTE: I also once knew a family who didn’t let their children say the word “Awesome” because “Only God was awesome”. In retrospect, I’m not sure that there are any words out there to properly describe the awesomeness of God, and they might have been ok using the word to describe my awesome skateboard moves. Just sayin…)

The problem with that mentality is that it trains us to say it too little. We become unable to properly express something that is clearly true. We all agree that not all love is romantic love. The scriptures teach us as much. But we know what love is, and for some reason we hold it close and don’t ever share it. Saying I love you to someone when it’s true only strengthens the word and the relationship. It validates feelings and makes verbal what the heart knows to be the case.

Well, as time went on, I found myself saying those words back to the label guys, but it didn’t stop there. I found myself saying them to other friends who I love dearly. I can tell that for many of them this is a new feeling, (I certainly try not to make it creepy sounding) but some of them have begun saying it back to me as well and this is a good thing. No, it is a GREAT thing.

I love not being afraid to love. After all, it was by love that I was set free in the first place.

There was nothing she liked more on a date than just going to the movie theater, holding hands, eating popcorn and watching the picture show, which was awesome. Most weekends, we could find time on our schedule for at least one movie, but every once in a while, something amazing would occur.

We called it, “El Noche De Dos Cine”, which translated meant, “Night of the two movies.” This was the term for the rare occasion when an evening was so free (and we had enough money) that we would watch two movies back-to-back.

Those days are long behind me now. Even though The Slinky and I do a weekly podcast on film, it’s tough to get out to see one movie. Two? Out of the question. For one thing, my wife isn’t in love with the movies. Secondly, I have two kids who require and deserve my attention, and let’s face it, most films aren’t kid friendly these days.

This week however, something glorious happened in my movie world. I am on a trip to Virginia to speak at a conference here, and the timing worked out that I got to see three films over the course of two days. That’s right.

You see, I am easily bored and overwhelmed when I am alone for a long time. I enjoyed some of the solitude (more on that in a different blog) but needed to stay entertained…so, off to the films I went.

The first film I saw was by far my favorite, which is funny because I gave it a “HATE” on last weeks Preview Review. The film is called Paul, and if you haven’t seen the trailers yet, don’t bother because they don’t do the movie justice. I won’t do a review here, because that isn’t the point of this particular blog, but I’ll just say that the film succeeds on every level it shoots for, and I wasn’t expecting that. Adding to the fun of the evening was that I was seeing the movie with one of my best friends, Davis Cutshaw, and we were watching the movie at THE ALAMO FREAKING DRAFTHOUSE.(note: I don’t know why ALAMO didn’t start franchising sooner, but God bless them for it.)

Next, I saw The Lincoln Lawyer at the Regal here in Harrisonburg. (note two- The snacks in the Regal here were more overpriced than I’ve ever seen at any theater. $11 for a small drink and popcorn. what?!?!?!) It was pretty great in parts and pretty not great in other parts. On the whole, I was surprised by what I liked and I was surprised at what failed. It felt like a movie gone horribly wrong and yet accidentally right, which makes sense given the directors rookie status.

Finally, I saw Limitless, which to be honest was ridiculous, juvenile, and everything The Slinky said it would be on the podcast last week. I hate it when he’s so right and I’m so wrong, but what can you do.

As I reflect on my two night, three film week, I am hit with a thought that is rare. Two of the three films I saw weren’t particularly good, and yet I had a fantastic time. As critics, we are often told that we hate movies, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. We love film enough to truly dig into it. Good or bad, the experience touches our souls.

This time I have the feeling that it is going to be more fantastic than most. For starters, I love everyone I’m working with. In addition to this, I’m simply in a different place in life. The people I’m creating with are all very easy to get along with, and yet we seem to push each other well so I feel creative and not stressed, which I’ve never experienced before.

We began recording today what I hope and believe will be the best album I’ve ever done. It’s a cool feeling to be involved in something so fun and so fulfilling. I love my dayjob and I love The Alderman Group. I really enjoy the podcast that I do with Ryan. But somewhere, deep down, there is a part of me that HAS to make music. Perhaps it isn’t the best music ever made, but it satisfies me deeply.

What are you doing that brings you satisfaction in life?

Rob

So, I’m on day 5 of my vacation, and it’s starting to have a strange effect on me. Each night, my dreams get more and more strange. Last night was by far the most strange so far. It was so vivid that even though I’m awake now, it feels like it happened. Here you go…

I was writing a biography on Paul Conn because he was dying of cancer. He was very frail and the university was trying to keep his condition a secret. Dusty Strickland was my personal assistant and we were working for The New York Times and had been sent on assignment because we had gone to school there. News of Conn’s condition sparked a religious war and one side was trying to bomb the bookstore at Lee University. It was global news because Matt Ryerson was going to “keep the store open no matter what.”In my dream, Matt was in a really cool suit and sunglasses, accompanied by security.

My brother and Aaron Doan had been hired to fortify the walls. They were some sort of military construction contractors. We hadn’t seen each other in many years and were enjoying a reunion of sorts inside the militarized zone.

We were hanging out when a football game started. I kept trying to go up to the press box to hang out with Steve Hartline because he was eating exotic fried chicken up there, but security wouldn’t let me.

I have a lot to say right now. So much, that I can’t say it. I hope you understand.

Things are heavy and I’m trying to think of a way to tell you.

So in the meantime, enjoy the newest podcast from my new project, Lights Camera Cleveland.

I’m doing this movie interest podcast with my pal The Slinky.

Hope you likey.