Totem to Temple

This is the sixth in a series of interviews with bloggers who are part of The Blogdom of God. The Blogdom of God is a loose group of Blogs that identify themselves as 'God blogs'.

Today's interview is with Bob Rouse of Totem to Temple. He's prepared to speculate on the Anti-Christ of the Week and if you're into "holiness" churches you might want to move along. There's nothing for you to see here...

Q: Is available light online a substitute for church?

A: NO!!! and it never will be. One of the objectives (although I may or may not have met the objective well) and also one of the many answers to question 15 below is to emphasize that even though the church today has many problems in the midst of the good within the church, a true believer will eventually find a local body of Christ to be a part of, support via tithes and prayer, and contribute to Christian service within the church body and also out of the church body to go out and fulfill the Great Commission.

(Interviewer Note: I was giving him a hard time because he says his blog isn't a substitute for church. Sometimes my laconic wit doesn't translate well by text only.)

Q: You've had quite a few experiences in charismatic churches. What was it about them that attracted you and why do you think you experienced the problems you did?

A: One of the many things that attracted me to the charismatic movement was that at that time, they were one of the few groups of Christians I had seen that went out and with the power of Jesus heal the sick, cast out devils, do outreach, etc.

Q: Why do you find yourself drawn back into it through watching TBN?

A: I am not really a TBN fan. I do not watch it unless someone I want to see is on television. I think in many ways, it has gotten a little excessive and has allowed itself in many ways to spread a money-driven Gospel that equates money to anointing and money to God loving you and lack of money as the root of all evil, non-anointed, and God must hate you. However, I do like a select few that appear on that network from time to time like Mario Murillo, some (not all) of what Gregory Dickow teaches, and Dwight Thompson.

I realized that when I went to search for the truth in the matter about the Holy Spirit, I ended up uprooting both wheat and tare before the harvest time in a noble attempt for the truth. However, you can not truly distinguish wheat from tare until they bloom at harvest time.

Q: Legalism can be a tough drug to give up. Did you have problems with that and do you still?

A: Yes I did have a really bad problem with Legalism growing up in the pentecostal / holiness movement as a child (suits equated to holiness, attendance every time the doors were opened, and crossing those t's and dotting those i's) and there are probably some areas today in my life where Legalism still likes to show up. But like many people, I made a mistake of giving up an extreme on one side via legalism and went to the equal and opposite extreme of almost anything goes misusing grace as an excuse. I have had to go onward towards a quest of balance to find the middle, straight and narrow road while still being in compliance to what the Scriptures state. It's a delicate balancing act like a tightrope walker on a tightrope hundreds of feet high in the air. One shift in balance on either side and one goes tumbling down.

Q: You're a single guy in your 30's. Any prospects?

A: Not at this time. Maybe one day in the near future God will somehow lead my path to meet her and it will eventually lead to marriage.

Q: Do you still have the Black Grand Prix? (One of my favorite cars both then and now.)

A: I still do. It has seen better days in the past. Being 15 years old, it's beginning to 'nickel-and-dime' me as I repair the things that are starting to break down on the car. It's my secondary vehicle as my S-10 is my primary vehicle now.

Q: Do you think if you bought another one you might find a wife?

A: When I finally get financially back on my feet, I really would like to have another Grand Prix or if possible, the new GTO (in black of course) with the last generation HO 350 Corvette engine under the hood. I stood in the parking lot of the Pontiac dealership one early Sunday evening and was enamored by the styling cues of the GTO while being shocked at the price on the sticker. I really like what Pontiac has done trying to make stylish cars that look a little European that come close to a BMWesque feel behind the wheel (even though they may lack BMW quality and craftsmanship) at a price a poorer man might be able to afford when compared to the BMW.

I hope and pray that the quest for a Godly Proverbs 31 / Genesis 24 woman that may one day become my wife WILL NOT come as a result of having a nice vehicle, house, or whatever material possession that moth and rust will one day destroy. I pray that it may come about because two people meet each other, have their priorities and relationship with God right, and realize that
marriage is a serious lifetime covenant between me and the future wife to have and to hold, through rich or poor, sickness and health, till death do us part.

Q: What's your favorite Linux distro? Why?

A: It depends what you want to do. For serious server-based enterprise grade operations, Red Hat because the major enterprise grade server sellers (Dell, HP, Compaq, etc) usually test the hardware performance to Red Hat and the open source software development projects like Apache, PHP, MySQL, and others really emphasize their beta testing on Red Hat platforms. Even though my
secondary 'technical tinkertoy' home machine uses Red Hat, I actually found that for the home user with little to no Linux experience, Mandrake had a much easier graphical user installation interface and installed better on a home grade system than Red Hat. I think Red Hat took notice because later versions of Red Hat made drastic improvements to the graphical user installation
interface that made it easier for the inexperienced home user to install.

Q: Do you still have your Commodore 64? (I wish I still had mine.)

A: I have it but it is not working. In fact, when it quit working, I realized at that time that Commodore's days were numbered with the failure of the Amiga and the IBM PC AT/XT were the future. I then abandoned Commodore and bought a XT/AT clone with DOS.

Q: There are two types of computer geeks; artists and engineers. The artists tend to be free spirits who can come up with really good (but really buggy) programs. The engineers write really nice code but they have no ideas and tend to be overly rigid. Which one are you?

A: Engineer. In the past, I have done some 'beta testing' for some freeware and helped discover bugs and was able to communicate to the software developer's programming team to help the re-simulate the fault condition to provide resolution. It seems like most everywhere I have worked, I have always been the one to be given the product / processes with the intermittent problem to
re-simulate and re-create the problem to find the root cause of the intermittent problem to address and resolve to completion.

Q: It sounds like you listen to a lot of music. Any current favorites?

A: I listen to a lot of stuff. Primarily I have been listening to the voice audio of the ESPN sports radio network (particually Todd Wright All Night and Mike and Mike in the Morning) because I love sports and I want to blog more in the future about sports but my current musical tastes have been an unique blend. From Moving Pictures by Rush to George Gershwin's An American in Paris to the Brecker Brothers to Michael W. Smith's Worship to Paul Baloche's God of Wonders to various Lincoln Brewster CD's a friend loaned me to the Jazz Violin playing of Jean-Luc Ponty. It's an interesting hodge-podge of different music.

Q: So, who's the anti-christ this week?

A: I have not decided yet. The Kellen Winslow, JR statements about the Washington Redskins not picking him in the NFL draft has gotten him deep consideration along with Michael Jackson switching lawyers. However, something else may pop up between now and Friday that may change my mind altogether.

The 'anti-christ of the week' started out as a joke that just snowballed. A friend of mine and I were watching television one night when a news item came on about Winona Ryder being charged with shoplifting and I just blurted out these words in a sarcastic tone "Winona Ryder, Anti-christ of the week". My friend busted out laughing and rolled out of the couch to the floor in an hysterical fit. After he got over the humor, he proceeded to tell me the story (very similar to the way the antichrist was treated in pentecostal / holiness circles growing up) how when he grew up in independent Baptist fundamental circles, everytime someone made the world news, that person somehow became the most probable candidate to be the 'one world government anti christ' and how the bible prophecy teachers just re-issued and recycled their books, tapes,
etc. substituting the current newsmaker's name as the antichrist.

We then started naming all the people and things we heard were at one time the antichrist from the Pope, King Juan Carlos, the credit card, Henry Kissinger, Gorbachev, HAL9000, Britney Spears, 'the beast' supercomputer in Brussels Belgium, Bill Gates, Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat, Bob Geldof (Live Aid), IDI Amin, Marshall Tito, Jesse Jackson, Daniel Ortega, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Elian Gonzalez, Francois Mitterand, etc. We then treated it like a game show stating if we had the money, we would send these people who were named antichrist of the week some Lee press on nails, Rice-a-roni, and a software version of our future antichrist of the week board game.

When I started blogging, I mentioned to a friend that I wanted to add 'antichrist of the week' as a weekly feature on my blog to which he stated his approval. Now one small upstart Christian portal has e-mailed me about the possibly of them syndicating my antichrist of the week post on their humor section of their portal.

Q: What is it about your current church that keeps you engaged?

A: The quest for balance between the Word and the Spirit. The elders have desired this for many years and have slowly with caution taken some measures to incorporate this balance into the church's vision while at the same time evangelizing the lost. Such things such as welcoming the move of the Holy Spirit along with their study of Douglas Bannister's book "The Word and Power
Church", hosting R.T. Kendall (which I blogged about recently) for a weekend seminar have helped push this desire forward. Being Evangelical Presbyterian, they (and myself included) had seen Word only churches that preached more from 'dead guy theology' notes from Spurgeon, Luther, Calvin, etc with no inking of the Holy Spirit to the Spirit only churches that preached little to no Word and valued spiritual experiences as excessive tongue talking, slain in the spirit, worship music for three hours, etc. The Word of God is infallable and the Bible does mention healing, casting out of devils, the gifts of The Holy Spirit, baptism of the Holy Spirit. The quest to be a church that has a solid foundation on the Word of God while allowing a genuine move of the Holy Spirit at the same time has been a tedious war that has caused some minor church splits in some cases and also a revelation breakthrough at the same time.

Q: How long have you lived in North Carolina?

A: All of my almost 36 years of life.

Q: Is there anything special you'd like people to bring away from your web page?

A: Some of that objective I had answered in question 1 earlier. However, I really want people to see that I am not some super human, super spiritual Christian who has it all together. I fail. I have fallen. I have risen back up. I am rising up again in some areas. I want people to see a real and authentic Christian with no masks and facades that they can relate to as a real person
who writes and blogs about the real experiences of their real life offering the real solution of Jesus to their real life's real problems while not denying the problems the church does have and attempt to reveal and provide a solution for those problems. Maybe I am an unrealistic idealist. However, I have met too many non-Christians locally and online via IM and e-mail that think all Christians are or must be "Republican, feminized Promise Keeper, butterfly kissing dad, married to the stay-at-home mom, calling themselves "single income" but the mom sells Avon, tupperware, vitamins, Amway, etc. at night, homeschool the seven kids who look like the Precious Moments Figurines with the praise and worship CD playing 24/7 living in the Thomas Kinckade gingerbread houses in the meadow next to the brook where the deer pants for water reminiscent of Little House on The Prairie" where the environment appears to be "sanitized", "isolated", and "overprotected" in their homes and their woodgrained minivans or SUV's with the soccer-ball sticker on the gas tank lid preaching from their Jesus Junkets or their T-Shirt Theologies when crawling out of their bunker bombshelters for their once a week trip to church and the grocery store" to enter the Kingdom of heaven. I do not have a problem with many of these characteristics and concepts such as Republicans, homeschooling, single-income families in and of itself. The problem I have is when people who call themselves ministers of the Gospel have stated, implied, etc. that failure to be or follow through those characteristics deems one as a "fake", "unsaved", and / or "inferior" Christian while those who do are "real", "annointed",
"remnant", and "superior" Christians.

I just want the people (unsaved and saved) who visit the web page / blog see a fellow Christian who shares the same struggles and how I will, through the power of Christ overcome. It's time to be real, genuine, and authentic and point people to Jesus.

Q: Is there anything else you'd like to say?

A: Yes, Thank you to many of the new e-blog-friends I have made out in cyberspace for your support, comments, suggestions, etc. Blogging has been a very interesting medium that has captivated me and has given me new opportunities and new ways to explore different ways and styles of writing vastly different from the long-winded articles I did on my regular web page. I want to grow and mature in Christ. I want to help others mature and grow in Christ. Also, I
want to help them through Jesus be set free from the legalisms, abuses, bondages, etc. that may hold them captive. I also want to meet some new bloggers and hopefully, this interview may be instrumental in that goal. Again, I want to thank you for interviewing me.

Bob has some great content on his blog. Be sure to check it out at, Totem to Temple.

If you haven't read previous Blogdom of God interviews, check them out here:
Josh Claybourn
Adrian Warnock
Fr. Jim Tucker (Dappled Things)
SecretAgentMan

If you are a member of the Blogdom of God and would like to be interviewed, please contact me. -jdm