Glee

I am a 20 year old male. I am straight. And I watch Glee. Every week. It's a show about, well, a glee club at a high school, filled with dancing quarterbacks, pregnant cheerleaders, and conflicted guidance counselors. It has love triangles, even love squares, and every high school stereotype imaginable. I don't miss an episode.

In the show, the characters are constantly combating issues of identity. They are forced to confront who they are versus who they want to be, the expectations placed on them versus their true desires. Such is evident in the main character Finn, the starting quarterback of the football team who also happens to have the makings of a Broadway lead. Or the gay kid with the weird Beyonce obsession who also happens to be the best kicker on the football team. Or the kid in the wheelchair...well, you get the point.

There's a band I've been listening to lately called The National. Transplanted to Brooklyn via Cincinnati, they sound something like Leonard Cohen backed by the E Street Band and tend to write rather intense lyrics, which are then mumbled by lead singer Matt Berninger. One such song from their album Alligator is called "Baby We'll Be Fine," a heartwrenching story about a man slowly losing a grip on his life.

The song begins with Berninger singing of a sleepless night, during which he prays for recognition at work and even for his boss to hug him or offer some show of affection to the struggling worker. He eventually falls asleep only to wake up and manically run around the house and take a 45 minute shower, all the while telling himself that things will work out. In a great lyric, the man "puts on an argyle sweater and a smile" only to end up bored and depressed again that night. Calling upon his girlfriend to offer him "some entertainment" he begins to undress her, only to spill whiskey all over himself, at which point he breaks down begging for forgiveness as Berninger continuously repeats the line, "I'm so sorry for everything."

Following a common theme, The Who penned a song in 1978 called "Who are You?" In it, Roger Daltrey tells Pete Townshend's story of a man who ends up in a bar in Soho, nearly passed out on the floor when he is approached by a cop. The officer tells the man, "You can go sleep at home tonight if you can get up and walk away." After a belligerent exchange with the cop, the broken down drunk, reflecting on an eleven hour workday and sinking into deeper melancholy, pulls himself off the ground and stumbles home, ending the song with a powerful verse:

I know there's a place you walked / Where love falls from the trees / My heart is like a broken cup / I only feel right on my knees / I spit out like a sewer cup / But still receive your kiss / How can I measure up to anyone now / After such a love as this?

I had a couple of good friends from high school that all went off to college at the same time. Most of us stayed in the area, maybe separated from each other by 20 miles. At first we all stuck together, but slowly the distance and difference in schools began to wear on the relationships in the group and we all drifted away. From afar, I watched several of these friends begin to get heavily involved in the party scene at their respective schools, spending their weekends getting trashed and their weeknights getting high, as is customary at any off campus apartment complex stinking of spilled beer and stale weed.

I think it's fair to say, the majority of poor decisions made in life come from a lack of identity. Perhaps all bad decisions do. Even something as simple as a poor fashion choice, like skinny jeans, can be traced to a lack of identity, a result of searching for something that will affirm us. Such a search for affirmation is poetically expressed in that song from The National, which tells of a man going so far as to wish for his boss to hug him or his girlfriend to give up her body for him, merely so he can know who he is. But it doesn't satisfy him. Likewise, getting drunk and preaching to the bar from atop a chair merely leaves the protagonist from The Who song stumbling home alone and guilt-ridden.

The thing is, if you don't have a proper definition of who you are, someone or something else will define you. Always. Such a struggle for definition will often encompass one's entire life. Perhaps that's why Glee has resonated so strongly. Aside from the catchy songs and creative writing, the show really addresses the conflicts inherent in all of us searching for an identity that will exceed others' expectations and meet ours.

But no temporal identity can really ever satisfy. Your intelligence will always let you down, the athleticism won't last, and the answers to life's questions are not found at the bottom of a bottle. There will always be someone smarter, stronger, faster, better, or ready to replace you. That's why Jesus' upside down message is so powerful.

Jesus meets us where we are at, in a place of broken down identity and poor decisions, whether we're stumbling home alone on a Saturday night or sitting in a pew Sunday morning. Jesus gets past all our temporal identities and frail facades. Jesus defines us as His followers, as children of God, no more, no less.

I heard it said a couple of Sundays ago by Rob Bell that "Jesus did not bring a ladder, He brought a cross." There is no ladder to climb, no goal to attain, no identity to inhibit. We are loved and that's enough. So stop trying, stop searching, and rest. Jesus has identified us, how can we measure up to anyone now after such a love as this?

Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for Glee.

All I Want is You

You say you want diamonds on a ring of gold / You say you want your story to remain untold / But all the promises we make / From the cradle to the grave / When all I want is you

You say you'll give me a highway with no one on it / Treasure, just to look upon it / All the riches in the night / You say you'll give me eyes in a moon of blindness / A river in a time of dryness / A harbor in the tempest / But all the promises we make / From cradle to the grave / When all I want is you


A couple weeks ago, I was sitting in my Spanish class when our professor asked us to go around the room and each say something about our future goals and desires. Feeling especially deep on this Monday night, I quickly scribbled "Quiero un sandwich" in my notebook.

As people were volunteering their most heartfelt of dreams, the girl in front of me raised her hand and announced to the class, "Quiero un novio rico," which she translated as "I want a rich boyfriend," a sentiment echoed several times by others in the class.

(Side note: "Quiero un novio rico" actually translates to "I want a delicious boyfriend"...so don't use that phrase around native Spanish speakers.)

There's a Ricky Gervais movie in theaters right now called The Invention of Lying. In it, no one on earth has evolved the ability to lie yet, everyone always tells the truth no matter how offensive or hurtful it may be. For example, when Gervais' character Mark gets fired from his job, his secretary tells him "I've loathed nearly every minute I've worked for you" and his coworker comes over to tell him "I've always hated you." When he goes on a date with his dream girl, she picks up the phone midway through dinner to tell her mother that "He seems nice, but fat." She later tells Mark that they can't be together because she doesn't want "little fat kids with stub noses."

The lyrics at the beginning of this post are excerpted from one of my favorite songs from my favorite band, All I Want is You by U2, from Rattle and Hum. (Click the link to see the fantastic music video, otherwise a live performance is at the end.)

I think the reason this song is so powerful lyrically is because it gets to the root of relationships.

I'm getting to that weird age where friends from high school start to get married. Guys that you built Hot Wheels tracks with in kindergarten and girls that you chased around the play ground are now preparing to walk down the aisle and say their vows.

There's something particularly powerful about wedding vows and I think it's because they recognize the difficulty of frail human relationships, just like that U2 song. To be able to say to someone that you will love them in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, for better or for worse...that gets to the heart of relationships. Because they're not easy and they're not simple and they're not a prolonged honey moon.

But even with this recognition; even with the recognition that your boyfriend may not always be rich (or delicious for that matter), even with the recognition that you may have fat kids with stub noses....relationships still fail.

I think that's because our human relationships are really only a beautifully frail metaphor for the relationship between Creator and Creation. There's something that gets to me about the lyrics of "All I Want is You" because that's what everyone wants, and needs, to hear. I don't want your money, I don't want your gifts, I don't care if you're rich, and I don't care if we get sick, I don't need your promises...all I want is you.

And that's the heart of the Christian message. I think a lot of times we go around trying to impress God. I know I do. When I go a whole week praying every night, I feel that I have somehow earned God's attention on further matters. I feel like the favorite son. But when I miss a week...or a month...when I have to blow the dust off my Bible when I pick it up, I feel terrible. I may even try to win back God's affection by adding a little extra to the offering that Sunday or having one night where I put on really solemn music, something like Seven Swans or that really heavy David Crowder song from Illuminate until I feel good and sorry for not talking to God. And then I usually go to bed without praying, but still feeling absolved from my Protestant guilt.

But I think that's missing the point. Because really, what Jesus said by coming to earth and living and dying as one of us was that He desired our relationship. He didn't come to give a workout schedule or a five step guide to living your best life now, a how-to for praying down blessing or achieving the American dream.

Relationships on earth are beautiful and necessary, but they always must come to grips with human frailty. Maybe relationships fail because we try to make others into our personal Jesus and when they fail, so does our idealism and romanticism.

But when we base all of our relationships off of Jesus, we are no longer looking for that most fundamental of affirmations. Because Jesus' message at its most basic and beautiful core continues to be, "All I want is you."

(Pardon the brief language at 3:42)

Sexy Nurses and Wild Things

A couple weeks ago, I observed a girl at college asking several guys what they thought of her potential Halloween costume. The guys were getting pretty excited about her dressing up as a seductive nurse. From what she said, I had a hard time seeing what this had to do with the medical profession. I also didn't see why the guys were so into this fantasy. Most of my nurses wear pastel colored scrubs, sometimes with a floral top and they always have freezing cold hands. More often than not, they tend to be older than my parents. I typically don't want to linger during my physicals either so the sexy nurse thing seems just a bit odd.

There's this great movie currently in theaters called Where the Wild Things Are, a title familiar to most anyone who had a childhood in America after 1963. The offbeat movie adaptation, as constructed by Spike Jonze, is impressively rendered with a very melancholic tone. The movie revolves around Max, a boy who escapes to an island after running away from his mom during a fight. Max's whole world is starting to unravel as his single mom has found a new boyfriend to compete with Max for attention and as his sister has grown indifferent to the trappings of childhood, including her little brother. So Max escapes on a boat to an island full of fantastically depressed "wild things," creatures with beaks and claws and a serious need for some Prozac.

The wild things view Max as a savior, making him their king in the hopes that he will rescue them from their sadness. Max tells them he has secret powers that will bring happiness to the land. Previous kings have come and gone, as evidenced by a pile of bones and crowns in the middle of the forest, eaten by their subjects at the first sign of failure. But still the creatures hope that Max can reunite their group, torn asunder by feelings of hopelessness and dreams that have been long lost. When Max inevitably fails, the wild things turn on him, channeling their sadness into anger, even trying to eat him. Eventually Max leaves the island, as the sad wild things bid him a tearful farewell. Nothing is resolved, nothing is changed. The king was a charlatan and he left them unfixed.

I think that a lot of us aren't too far off from those wild things in the movie. We all have an awareness, as human beings in a screwed up world, that something is not right. Something needs to be fixed. Something, at our core, is not how it's supposed to be.

So, we try to correct that feeling of emptiness and we try to find an identity. The wild things tried to find an identity in Max. They pinned their hopes on various kings. When the kings let them down, they ate them.

Who are our kings? Who do we look to find an identity in?

Sometimes it's material things. I am the driver of a Porsche, I am the owner of this TV, I am wealthy. Of course we don't actually say those things. Or maybe you do, in which case you speak like C-3PO. But words are really unnecessary, it's obvious where a materialistic person gains their identify from by their actions.

But material things can't satisfy, they can't really change someone. So maybe, we look for acceptance in others.

The sexy nurse girl tried to find her identity in guys. If they wouldn't pay attention to her normally, maybe they would if she objectified herself in the name of some holiday or drunken party.

Where are we getting our identity from? Who is our king?

Is it sex? Is it money? Is it relationships?

The thing is, as long as our identity is about us, we're never going to be happy. That may seem counter intuitive, but it's really not. Because when my identity is only about myself, what makes me happy, or what defines me in the best way possible, I become selfish and ugly. Relationships are no longer about others, they're about me. What am I getting out of this relationship? How is this person making me happy?

But people that find their identity in Jesus: they are in tune with eternity. Relationships are seen through a whole new lens, what was selfish becomes selfless. The Way of Jesus is all about the fact that it's not about me. None of it is about me. And that's a very freeing thing. We don't have to find temporal kings anymore, we don't have to sell ourselves out for someone's cheap, selfish affirmation. Those most in tune with Jesus, most in tune with the Way, have found themselves as His Followers. Not perfect, not sinless, but broken and committed. And that's a beautifully liberating way to live.

Rescue is Coming

To the hustlers, killers, murderers, drug dealers, even the strippers / Jesus walks with them / To the victims of welfare, we living in hell here / Jesus walks with them

There's a very poignant scene in Peter Jackson's movie The Two Towers. The whole movie we've watched the good guys, including the appointed king Aragorn, be beat back into a fortress called Helm's Deep. The evil forces led by Saruman have been advancing, forcing Aragorn's army to take refuge deeper and deeper into the fortress. The situation seems hopeless, the castle is being overrun, and all the dudes that look like regurgitated demons are slaughtering Aragorn's army. In one last desperate plan, Aragorn, Gimli, and Orlando Bloom decide to take a final ride into the heart of the battle in an attempt to distract the bad guys while the women and children escape to the mountains. Just as all hope seems lost, and while Orlando shoots demons in slow motion, it happens. He's back. Gandalf, the wizard who was killed a movie (or at least four hours) earlier, appears over the mountains just as dawn breaks. Dressed in brilliant white and surrounded by an army, he leads the charge downwards, leaving a wake of Orkish things in his path. Gandalf descends into the belly of the battle, the middle of the ugliness, and in doing so saves the day.

I have long struggled with my view of Jesus, especially regarding his sermons, like the Beatitudes. I always read the Beatitudes, and really the Bible, as a list of all the things that holy people do, a laundry list of righteousness. Kind of like the worst syllabus ever. Don't get me wrong, I liked the things that Jesus talked about, but they all seemed so hard to attain. Impossible to attain, really. I could spend my whole life trying to hunger and thirst for righteousness, whatever that meant, but realistically I'm probably never going to get there. And even if I do, I'm only one for eight in the Beatitudes alone. And then, I haven't even touched the fruits of the Spirit.

Perhaps the biggest distortion of Christianity is when it becomes something to attain. Christianity was never supposed to become a commodity.

The story of the Bible and the Beatitudes and Jesus has nothing to do with what we have to attain to be okay with God. That's legalism. When Jesus says, blessed are the meek, he is really saying "blessed are the people that don't have it together." When Jesus says, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, he's really saying "blessed are those who haven't obtained righteousness yet, and who may have no chance of doing so in the near future." Blessed are the not good enough, the screw ups, the ugly, the rejected, the people with bed head and chest colds. Blessed are those that get turned down for dates, get laid off, struggle to make it through the day. Blessed is the single mom, the family on welfare, the couple with the hurting marriage. Blessed are those that are at the end of their ropes. Blessed are those that live in the Mondays.

Because Christianity isn't about getting somewhere on our own volition. It's about Jesus coming here. Like Gandalf, Jesus charges into the midst of our battle, into our mess. We don't escape to Jesus or to some far away place of spiritual peace. Jesus brings it here. Jesus walks with us here.

Jesus is bringing heaven here, crashing into earth. He wants to redeem, he is making all things good. Christianity is not about escape. Christianity is about rescue.

Are you going through a divorce or a break up, a situation out of your control? Rescue is coming. Are you unemployed, struggling to make ends meet, just trying to get by? Rescue is coming. Are you struggling to pass a class, to pay your bills? Rescue is coming. Have you been giving into temptation, do you have sin that you just can't let go of? Rescue is coming. Are you struggling with issues of sexuality, lust, greed, pride...have you lost control? Rescue is coming.

Jesus is making all things new. He made the earth, He made us, and He said it was good. We are His creation. And we are being made new. God isn't looking to evacuate the religious to some daily mountaintop experience, leaving the rest of us poor, sinful schmucks to wallow around in our own mess.  He wants to bring heaven to earth. Rescue is coming.

Mr. Hustle

Growing up, I was never so sure about Jesus. For a long time, I was also pretty unsure about myself.

Sitting on my bookshelf is a small, plastic trophy of a basketball player with really short shorts and a sprayed on gold tan. Below him sits a long-broken plaque that reads in faded letters, "Mr. Hustle: 1998 Basketball Camp."

More than a sign of my lone athletic achievement in twenty years of life, this trophy is also about finding an identity. You see, from pre-school through graduation, I attended a small Christian school just outside of Grand Rapids. Despite the small size of our school, we were and continue to be, one of the best basketball programs in the city and state. Our state championship run began in the mid-nineties, just in time for an entire elementary school, and one red-haired, book loving kid with Harry Potter glasses and the entire dc Talk discography, to get caught up in basketball fever.

Personally, I would have preferred to stay home and read books about fighting mice and British detectives, but instead every June I convinced myself to join my friends and go to the basketball camps put on by our high school's varsity coach. These two weeks in June would serve to weed out the 10 year old boys from the men, as evidenced by my best friend's shelf which sagged under the weight of a small army of little gold men with basketballs. My shelf, on the other hand, was full of Snoopy books, Narnia boxed sets, and Donkey Kong 64 manuals. I was very jealous of my friend's bookshelf.

So, being the straight A elementary student I was (save for penmanship...if only Mrs. Neibor could see me now!), I quickly used process of elimination to determine which trophy I could reasonably attain. The one-on-one trophy was out because I couldn't score on anyone, much less beat them. Likewise, the free throw trophy was a wash since I couldn't make a free throw. PIG was also a non-starter, unless I could find someone incapable of copying my jump shots from inside the paint. Which left...Mr. Hustle, the trophy that they give the kid that either runs a lot or whose parents' have paid far too much for four years of basketball camps, yet have only generic Sunny D and a Hanes T-shirt to show for it.

So I hustled. I hustled to loose balls, I hustled to miss my free throws, and I hustled to the bathroom. Eleven years later, the trophy still sits on my bookshelf, next to a stack of old scripts from the high school plays I was in, and yearbooks filled with pictures of missions trips and memories that have nothing to do with basketball.

Until recently, I wasn't sure what to make of Jesus. I liked what other people said about Him. I liked how Donald Miller wrote about seeing the lines on His face. I liked how Rob Bell talked about a socially conscious Jesus and how Max Lucado made me feel like Jesus wanted to take me to a baseball game, and even though I don't like baseball, Jesus would make it fun anyway and probably pay for my nachos. I liked how my friend Julian talked about Jesus as someone who was concerned with all people, not just the privileged or the super spiritual.

I also liked the artsy Jesus, the kind that Flannery O'Connor wrote about and Bono sang about. I liked the Jesus that Bruce Springsteen referenced. I liked the Jesus that J.D. Salinger had Zooey Glass talk about. And I liked to think of Jesus as Aslan, because it seemed a lot cooler to have your God be a lion as opposed to a fat Chinese man in a loin cloth.

But I also didn't like some Jesuses. I felt uncomfortable with Mark Driscoll's Jesus, that Jesus sounded like he wanted to give me a swirlie or at least practice his UFC moves on sinners. I also was kind of uncomfortable with Joel Osteen's Jesus. I like the idea of a loving God, but I'm not sure I want to follow a Messiah that walks around with a "free hugs" sign. I have another friend that told me she wants to feel the whiskers on Jesus' face when she sits on his lap, like a dad with his young daughter. That was nice for her but I didn't really like that either, I don't really want to feel the whiskers on anyone's face and lap sitting was never my thing.

But that all started to change, right around the time that I gave up on my dreams of NBA greatness. Through a series of events in high school, I began to find an identity in the giftings God had given me. I got involved with acting and I found out I liked to write. I was following Jesus, but I was just beginning to realize what that meant.

I think a lot of us Christians waste time trying to "find ourselves." We want to find identities, so we go after meaningless pursuits. Once we identify our interest, we try to shape Jesus into it. That's not always a bad thing, it's good that socially conscious people recognize the social consciousness of Jesus. But it can also lead to Jesus becoming nothing more than a detail of our lives rather than the center. For example, while beliefs taught by Jesus, such as the intrinsic value of life, are recognized by many politically motivated Evangelicals, other obvious teachings of Jesus are conveniently shelved in the pursuit of political power. Jesus no longer becomes the center of our lives, but an aspect of an agenda. We pursue temporal things, earthly treasures and fleeting power, nothing more than plastic Mr. Hustle trophies.

Following Jesus means finding an identity in Him, rather than conforming Him to fit a self-appointed identity. Jesus is not part of an agenda and He's not a self-betterment tool, He doesn't offer get-rich quick plans or instant blessings. Jesus offers a lifestyle, a Way of living that is straight, but narrow.

The Way of Jesus is full of the poor in spirit, the meek, the weak, the merciful, the persecuted. It's for the people that can't get the trophies, those that haven't spent a lifetime pursuing temporal things but have lived in a way that is in tune with eternity, that brings heaven a little closer to earth. Jesus is not an identity we invent, but our identity is found in Him.

Bullhorn

In the middle of my college campus there is this massive blue sculpture. I think it's supposed to be a gateway to learning or something collegiate like that. It's probably three stories high and looks like the unfinished structure of a really ugly barn. I guess this represents that learning is never finished. Get it? Seems a bit obvious for art.

Anyway, this is also the place on campus where people have rallies and demonstrations, usually involving a fraternity, free Red Bull, and speakers blasting  Nickelback or something that sounds just like Nickelback. But every September, a group comes consisting of four or five very grim looking, bearded people who hold signs saying things like "God hates you" and "We love hell." In the middle of the sign holders, a preacher with a bullhorn will list the things that he believes will send you to hell, including earrings, ripped jeans, and eating Lucky Charms. The first year that this happened, it became a week long event. By Friday, the middle of campus was full of protest groups, including one offering "free hugs" and another sitting around a hookah, all barefoot and strumming acoustic guitars. A few feet away, the preacher continued to debate with those who challenged him, listing off all the things that a good Christian did and did not do. I wasn't sure which group I felt more uncomfortable around.

There's a famous quote by Karl Marx that says, "Religion is the opiate of the people." Yet what this preacher was offering didn't seem very comforting or opium-like.

There's a story in the Bible about Jesus. He's hanging out with His disciples and teaching some followers one day, when the Pharisees approach Him with a woman that was just caught "in the act" of adultery. Under the law, the woman was to be stoned. The religious leaders hoped to entrap Jesus, surely someone claiming to be the Messiah couldn't condone adultery. While the Pharisees were working themselves up into a lather, explaining the situation to Jesus, He simply stooped down on the ground and started drawing. The woman was about to be stoned for adultery, and Jesus was drawing pictures? I think the modern day equivalent would be if Jesus were playing Tetris on His cell phone.

And yet, after the Pharisees were done yelling and having their orgy of self-righteousness, Jesus stood up, looked at them and the woman and calmly said that whoever was without sin could feel free to throw the first stone. One by one, they left, until it was just the woman and Jesus, the only one there who could have rightfully whipped a rock at her head. Yet rather than stoning her or even walking away in disgust, Jesus simply asked her "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?" The woman replied, "No one, sir. Then Jesus looked at her and said, "Then neither do I...Go now and leave your life of sin."

Not only did He not stone her or issue a lecture on her failings as a wife, He refused to even condemn her! He merely told her to go and stop sinning, she wasn't condemned and she wasn't a failure.

Religion, such as that demonstrated by the preacher on campus or the Pharisees of Jesus' time is really a rejection of grace. It's a way of saying, "No God, you just don't get it. I can't accept free grace, I really should jump through some hoops. After all, we are talking about heaven here, grace shouldn't be easier to get than a credit card." So we construct ways to get around grace. We invent religion.

I have been asked before, how can I know that Christianity is true? How can I say that my religion is superior to others? And it's a difficult question. But what I do know about my faith, is that in essence, it is a recognition of my frailty and my failings. I don't have to attain anything, I don't have to find Zen or Nirvana, I don't have to bow to Mecca every day and hope that I'm all right and accepted. I can come to my God broken and ugly, battered and bruised, beat up or beat down. Because that's how life goes, isn't it? Have you ever met someone that has attained "Zen" yet also lives in the real world? Most of us don't have time to live on a mountain finding inner peace. When there's laundry to do, kids to pick up, and exams to take, meditation tends to take a back seat.

Now perhaps that's a crude characterization of other religions, I admit, but my point isn't to compare hermeneutics or religious traditions. My point is that only Jesus offers true, unadulterated grace. The greatest distortion of Christianity is when it becomes the religion of the elite, of the rich ruling class or the trickle down economists. Jesus was the complete opposite of an elitist or a self-righteous, unearthly "holy man." Jesus was not religious. Religion is not Jesus.

Jesus is grace. Jesus is love. Jesus accepts you. That does not mean that you won't have to change, He did tell the woman to go and stop sinning. It also doesn't mean that we are irresponsible for our actions or that there is no eternal accountability. But it does mean that you are not condemned.

Maybe Karl Marx never needed anybody, never had one of those days where he couldn't do anything right, never got sick or was stood up or let down. Never flunked a test, never had more to do than could reasonably be done, never fell behind or missed a deadline. But I would venture to guess that most of us don't live in that world where everything is perfectly scheduled and ordered, where shirts are always pressed and hair always combed, where cars always run and colds never come. The truth is, we can't do it alone. We need love, we need acceptance, we need grace. We don't need religion, we need Jesus.

Religion doesn't need grace. Religion doesn't need Jesus. That preacher on campus, the Pharisees, Karl Marx, they don't want grace, they don't need Jesus. But I do. Every day. And I receive grace. And I receive Jesus. Every day.

God's Refrigerator

The other day, I drove past a church sign that asked, "If God had a refrigerator, would you be on it?" And I thought to myself, I'm not sure I would make it onto God's fridge. I mean, He has a lot of kids. My family has two and I don't even think I made my mom's refrigerator. I know there's a Snoopy magnet and a picture of some family friends, but I'm pretty sure there's no me. And God's refrigerator, I surely haven't done anything good enough to get put up there. I mean, that's some stiff competition what with people like the Pope, Max Lucado, and Kirk Cameron.

Yesterday, I was awkward. There's this girl that I've been wanting to ask out for some time. I finally decided to go for it a couple of nights ago when we were together and I suggested that we should get Subway sometime out on campus (ladies). She didn't really give me an answer so I just chalked it up as a closed door. The next day when I ran into her at the mall she said, "Josh, I think you owe me lunch." My response? "Umm, oh, oh lunch! I mean, yeah, definitely. Umm, right now?" Which would have been a somewhat acceptable thing to say, save for the fact that it was 6:00 at night and she was currently on the clock at her retail job. After an awkward pause I walked away shaking my head as she turned to help someone out. Brad Pitt I am not.

After going away and pretending to be interested in the store's shoe boxes and mumus, I decided to try again several minutes later when she wasn't busy. I approached her and asked what her Monday schedule looked like. She responded that Monday was not good, but Tuesday she was free. My response should have been, "Tuesday's great!" Instead the words that came out of my mouth were something like, "Oh, but I don't have class on Tuesdays...and I think that it may be the fall equinox or the season premiere of Antiques Roadshow, I get the two confused, which is weird because they seem totally unrelated. So, yeah..." Then my face grew uncomfortably red, and when I say uncomfortably I mean a cross between the worst sunburn of your life and Bill Clinton's hue when denying his affair with Monica Lewinsky. I walked away again and realized that not only had I botched a second opportunity, but that I would never be smooth. Forget Brad Pitt, I'm not even Jim Halpert.

A while ago I was talking with a friend about Jesus, Christianity, and religion. She told me that she couldn't accept grace because she felt it would be a cop-out. My friend told me that she smokes pot frequently, something that amounted to an unforgivable sin in her eyes. A sin that the church just couldn't forgive.

The biggest fear in modern culture is that we're just not good enough. Not good enough, not attractive enough, not smooth enough. For Christians, this plays out something like: not holy enough, not Christian enough, not saved enough.

My junior year of high school, I came down with a horrible head cold. It was mid-February and I felt awful. I sat down in my first hour study hall and told several friends, in no uncertain terms, that I felt like a cross between dying and death. I had a cold. At which point my friend turned to me, and said in a loud voice, "Don't claim that!" By which she meant that my admission of a cold showed a lack of faith, which in turn led to me getting a cold. I told her that it didn't matter whether I said I felt like crap or not, I was going to have a cold. I claimed that cold...because I had a cold.

So many of us experience insecurity in our faith, and that insecurity tends to be fed by church. Churches that tell you that you have to get on God's refrigerator, that you just have to be good enough, that you can't get head colds or broken-down cars.

When Jesus came to earth, he mixed the sacred with the secular in ways that have never since been seen. This was the Son of God, the long-awaited Messiah, the Way, the Truth, and the Life and he was hanging out with...hookers? Sluts? Tax cheats? Pimps? Common whores? Jesus was sitting down and eating with people that couldn't get any further away from church, the Pharisees, and religion. Jesus' death symbolically tore the Temple curtain that He had already spent his entire life practically tearing.

Our God got dirty. He was the Messiah of the prostitute, the redeemer of the pimp. But more than that, He spoke to people who were not smooth. He spoke to people whose life was not like TV, people struggling to get by. Jesus was the Christ of the awkward, the downtrodden, the people with colds and cancer.

Ever since then, the church has frequently done its best to re-mend the Temple curtain, separating itself from the world. Jesus became stuffy and religious, the God of the medieval Catholic Church and the Crusades. The symbol of the privileged and the Republicans. Slowly Christ went from the healer of the wounded to Jesus of suburbia.

But that's not it at all. Jesus' message was that we no longer have to be good enough. We don't have to deny our troubles and sickness. We don't have to learn to be smooth or suave, we don't have to strive to make it onto God's Honor Roll or refrigerator. We aren't ranked, we aren't judged, we are loved.

We are loved. Wherever we are, whatever we've done. Whether you've smoked pot every day for the past two years or have mumbled the rosary every morning since childhood. You are loved and accepted for who you are. You don't have to get perfect. You don't have to have a 4.0 or even a 2.0. You don't have to take a bath before you take a shower. Jesus accepts you and wants you dirty and imperfect. If we had the ability to perfect ourselves, we wouldn't need Jesus.

Jesus wants the meek and the weak. Jesus wants the shy and the awkward. Jesus wants to bring heaven and earth together.

Jesus wants you just as you are.