So, here’s the deal. It’s Sunday.
Why aren’t you in church?
Really, I want to know.
Don’t worry about offending me.
I’m just researching.
Hate God?
I won’t take it personally.
Hate his employees?
Not a problem.
You’ll notice I did not read you your Miranda rights. There is no need. I will not use anything you say against you in trying to convert you. Pinky swear.
My only interest in this is why.
Yeah, this is a fight starter, to be sure. I’m going to talk about BOTH politics AND religion. You’ve been warned.
First, let’s talk about the Tim Tebow, Focus on the Family, Super Bowl commercial. The “most controversial” ad of the year, even though there were tire commercials where the men chose tires over their wives, and men “not complaining” that their women have emasculated them because they can drive whatever they want? How is that less offensive than a mother saying she is thankful for a son that she almost lost. Nowhere in the Tebow ad did anyone say anything about abortion or give a judgment as to its morality. It simply pointed you to a website to learn more about their story.
I don’t know what has happened over there at family.org but, and they might pull my Christian card for this one, thank God James Dobson isn’t the public face over there on this one. He needed to step aside a long time ago and let families tell their stories about how Jesus rocked their world. Like the guy from KORN.
I have been spared, not from anything like meth, but spared none the less. In many cases suburbia might be as dangerous as meth to eternity. Because we are “good” on our own. We can debate the loftier sins without actually getting our hands dirty. We go to church on Sunday, sit next to people who look like us, make the same amount of money as us and have the same hygiene regimens as us. We send $30/month to charity who sent us a picture of a kid in Africa and we are doing our part for God and for orphans. We pray for the homeless, and by pray I mean, “Dear God, please help that homeless man (not go crazy at this particular moment, pull me out of my car and kill me in front of my children because I’m pretending I don’t see him while I talk on my phone). And we have done our part without really doing anything at all.
We take care of orphans only when it serves the purpose to ease the pain of our own need to fill our families, not as a directive from God. Truth be told, most Christians do not want to face the realities of the orphans. They want nothing to do with babies born addicted to drugs, or who have been sexually abused and may in turn abuse others. We want healthy, well adjusted orphans that fit it with our own family and who have no residual family members that we will have to deal with. Somehow, I think we have really missed the boat, and are doing it in the name of God.
We can blame the gov’ment, or society, or the culture we live in but WE are the problem. We expect the world to play by our rules when they aren’t even playing our game. Let me just throw this one out there, I think that Satan is proud of the work we are doing as Christians. I think he’s great with the work churches are doing in America. Sure, he’s lost a few to God, but those few pale in comparison to the numbers he would lose if we were effective Christians doing the work of God. Because right now, churches are the only place you can discuss God, and if you aren’t already in a church, what is the liklihood that you will find yourself in one? Because they are not known as safe havens for the hurting. That is something that we cannot blame on others.
A quick plug for my own church Imagine Fellowship we meet in a movie theater on the first Sunday of the month, shortly before the first showing of Saw IV. We don’t have a building, don’t want one, because the church is not a place we meet, the church is who we are. If you take away the building who you are becomes more evident. What difference are we making in the world? If we are not affecting our world, then what is our purpose?
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I wrote this in response to something I read on A girls site. A girl and me do monthly co-writings. She wrote about abortion and the Tim Tebow commercial here. And to be fair she wrote this before the commercial aired, and didn’t know that I was writing this in response.
(Tech Support, we’re good)
Does everyone remember the story from Sunday school about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego? It’s in Daniel for those of you who want it straight from God.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to worship an idol of the king, and he promptly had them thrown into a fiery furnace. The fire was so hot that the guards who threw them in died just getting that close to the fire.
As is the right through time and history, when being executed you get to record your last words.
They had great ones, which I will now misquote.
“Our God whom we serve will rescue us, AND EVEN IF HE DOESN’T we will remain faithful.”
I can probably profess to say that, but I’m surely not thinking it.
I wonder if they were thinking it. I don’t know who said it, but I wonder if the other two looked at him, like you’d look at a person who said something like that as you are about to be thrown into the fire.
As many of you know, we are nearing our fifth anniversary of having the kids in our house. We are only about three steps into the journey, and most days it feels as if we are about to be thrown into the fire.
And there are days when I think “God, where the hell are you today? Can you rescue us already?”
On those days I imagine God saying “they haven’t even thrown you in the fire yet.”
Then I feel all bad. Oh yeah, I don’t really want you to have to rescue me from the fire, but my feet are hot, and I’m tired, and I guess we’ll just chat for awhile until somebody decides to throw us into the fire or let us go.
And I feel better.
But Tech Support has rubbed off on me a little over the years, and I think too much. Then I feel bad that I’m yelling at God for not rescuing me from a fire that I ain’t in.
I’ve spent the last couple of days with the Women of Faith, and it’s been pointed out more than once, purely for my benefit I’m sure. That when you don’t communicate it causes problems.
The same holds true with God I suppose. I get all pouty and refuse to talk to him. Because I’ve been telling him the same thing FOR FIVE YEARS and apparently he isn’t listening so I give up.
I ignore him. Throw a tantrum. Swear I’m going to out him on the blog.
Luckily HE remains faithful.
He reminds me that he’s right there. Waiting with us to see if they will throw us into the fire, or let us go. That I’ve been so focused on me that I cannot see him. He’s probably even thinking the same thing.
“Either throw them in or let them go, I got stuff to do.”
But there he is waiting with us, and he will rescue us.
