Derelict Theology

Yesterday an era of my life ended.  I traded in my 1999 electric blue Dodge Durango for a brand new 2006 “thundercloud metallic” (silver) Scion xB.  It’s pretty much my dream car.  I’ve been wanting one forever, but never got really serious about buying one until this week.  What drove me to the purchase?  Paying $65 just for one tank of gas for the Durango, or Durangon, as his Transformer name suggests.  The Scion doubled our gas mileage and dropped our insurance payments, so I suppose it was a good choice.  I suppose I should go over the whole story, but first, a little history.

When I was a wee lad of 16, all I wanted was a truck to drive.  I wouldn’t have anything less.  So, one day my dad’s car quit on him and he had to have something new, so he purchased a brand new Nissan truck, which was cherry red in color.  He drove it for a year until he gave it to me for my senior year of high school.  The truck was perfect for me and I loved it.  I drove it until my senior year of college, when a wreck on the interstate forced me to get something new.  At the time, I was in a bit of a bind, so I had to buy something within what my insurance payout was.  So…..I got an Oldsmobile Cutlass Cierra.  It was an old people car, but it got me through that year, until Erin and I were married and my groomsmen put Crisco under the doorhandles.  That car smelled like fried chicken that whole summer, and I swear I could hear it sizzle on hot days. So I endured another year with it, until something caught my eye on the side of the road one day.

I saw the car I thought I’d always wanted, a Dodge Durango, and it was a perfect in price and color, I loved the fact that I’d never seen a color on a car like that before.  I found out the car was a repo, and though it had high mileage, I thought it was a good purchase.  So, we sold my car (eventually) and bought the Durango, which we’ve driven until this past Saturday.  The gas mileage was just eating us up, and trying to find something better for us, we started checking out different cars, which led us to either a Scion or a Honda.

So, we went up to my parents house on Thursday night, and went looking.  We found a brand new Scion in Franklin, TN that looked really nice, but we weren’t committing to anything.  Both Erin and I wanted to look at the Hondas, just to see what they were like.  I sat down in a 2005 Honda Civic and felt like I was sitting in a straightjacket.  We realized it wasn’t going to work, went to eat at Cracker Barrell, and went home.  The next morning, my dad and I got up and went to Nashville, where we shopped around for a Scion, went to Carmax and got an appraisal on my Durango, and finally settled on the same silver Scion we’d seen being delivered the night before.  So, we just bought it. 

It had 1 mile on it when we drove off the lot.  It was a strange feeling, because I’d always thought I’d never have a brand new car, and so it’s been fun having it.  Plus, the doubled, almost tripled gas mileage helps out a lot.  So, R.I.P. Durangon, you served us well, may you serve someone else just as well, at least, once gas prices go down!

I am reading through Donald Miller’s “Through Painted Deserts” and this morning I came upon and passage that just had me grinning, laughing, and awestruck at the same time.  I hope you find it as useful as I did.

 ”I was raised to believe that the quality of a man’s life would greatly increase, not with the gain of status or success, not by his heart’s knowing romance or by prosperity in industry or academia, but by his nearness to God.  It confuses me that Christian living is not simpler.  The gospel, the very good news, is simple, but this is the gate, the trailhead.  Ironing out faithless creases is a toilsome labor.  God bestows three blessings on man: to feed him like birds, dress him like flowers, and befriend him as a confidant.  Too my take the first two and neglect the last.  Sooner or later you figure out life is constructed specifically and brilliantly to squeeze a man into association with the Owner of heaven.  It is a struggle, with labor pains and thorny landscape, bloody hands and a sweaty brow, head in hands, moments of severe loneliness and questioning, moments of ache and desire.  All this leads to God, I think.  Perhaps this is what is on the other side of the commercials, on the other side of the curtain behind which the Wizard of Oz pulls his levers.  Matter and thought are a canvas on which God paints, a painting with tragedy and delivery, with sin and redemption.  Life is a dance toward God, I begin to think.  And the dance is not so graceful as we might want.  While we glide and swing our practiced sway, God crowds our feet, bumps our toes, and scuffs our shoes.  So we learn to dance with the One who made us.  And it is a difficult dance to learn, because it’s steps are foreign.”

Last night was glorious.  What happened, you ask?  Well, besides it being spaghetti night for dinner, it was also a night of doing absolutely nothing.  No plays to go to, no church events….I sat around the entire night, doing exactly what I pleased.  Which amounted to typing up our May youth calendar, eating cookies, and watching the a majority of High School Musical which Erin had TiVo’d this past weekend.  I didn’t really think I’d like it, but it was alright.  I’ll have to admit that it wasn’t atrocious.

 There was one part though that I caught and thought it would make a great illustration.  See, the story, for those of you who’ve never seen it is: basketball jock and chemistry nerd try out for the spring high school music and it causes a great disruption in the high school caste system.  The particular scene I’m referring to is when the main character’s best friends find out about their musical try out, and start trying to talk them out of it.  It leads to a musical number (you ever wonder how all these people who suddenly break out in song and dance know all the words and even all the dance steps?  Yeah, me too).

The basica premise of the song they sing is that you should just stick to what you know, and never try anything new, and how if you do, basically people will think you are stupid.  The main consequence here is peer pressure which makes you feel dumb.  I laughed at first, but then I realized how true that is about life, and much like the youth I work with.  Everybody has their thing they “do”, and if you step out of that, much like the characters in the film did, then you suddenly get pointed at and laughed at, because “that’s not your thing.”  It’s interesting to me how we try and classify people based not on who they are but on what they do.  It most likely leads back to our obsession with money and how more $$$$$ in a job means more important job means more important person.

So we allow this world to believe that worth is found in not who a person is but what a person does.  I guess you could call it works based living instead of work based salvation.  I guess what I’m saying is that it makes a good illustration to use when explaining how Jesus broke out of the box and did things no one expected him to do, like eat with those dirty sinners and hypocrites, or touch the sick, or look kindly on prostitutes.  And maybe we need to just get out of our little cubicles every now and then, see that Jesus broke down those boundaries, and do a little breaking down of our own.

Last night, we had communion at our church.  Communion is not an ordinary occurance for us, as we only do it every 3 months.  After last night, I think I want to do it every day.  Because last night, God turned an ordinary communion service into something very life changing for me.  It all started with some ordinary hymns.

Anyone who knows me knows that I have a love/hate relationship with hymns.  I love them done contemporary, and I love them done right in the old style, but when they are offbeat, draggy, and/or botched, they just grate on me.  Always have.  Last night, however, our services was not marred by those blemishes, and we sang…oh, we sang a lot.  It was during the third hymn or so that I started to focus in on the lyrics, and really heard what they were saying, and I really started to see why we were singing.  And, like I always do when I have a “God-moment”, I got a little emotional.  Thing is, I wasn’t the only one.  By the time we were done singing, our pastor stood up to give his sermon and simply couldn’t.  He stood behind the pulpit, shared the Gospel, and quickly gave an invitation. 

 I would love to say that we had 100 people come down the aisle but no one moved.  But I don’t think the service we had last night, I think it was for the church, it was for us, and God was visiting us, to remind us that He’s still there.  So, we sat.  We prayed.  We received the first element of communion, the bread.  I took it from the plate with a bit of a shake to my hand, and, as I held that little bit of bread, I was overwhelmed.  This little bit of bread, this cracker, was a symbol of the greater body that was bruised and broken for me.  I began to feel it fresh.  And as I sat there, all I could do was simply bow my head and offer up a thousand “I’m sorry’s” to God for all the things I’ve done for myself and not Him.  For all the times lately I’ve put my cause ahead of the cause of Christ.  It was as if a dam broke and this huge resevoir of guilt that I’d been piling up came flooding out.  How can we hope to contain the magnificence of God, the Son in a little wafer?  “This is my Body, broken for you, take and eat.”

 We waited for the cup, and I looked around.  Was I the only one here?  Was I the only one affected in this way?  No, others were sensing it too.  To my left a man sat with his head down, palms outstretched in his lap, eyes closed, focused.  Many others, as well, seemed to be stunned at a sudden feeling they had.  Soon, we each had a small cup.  This small taste.  Again, how can we hope to contain the mightiness of the King of Glory in a cup the size of a thimble?  Sure, they are just symbols, but in my heart I was feeling like it was just not enough.  I closed my eyes again, and all I could say to God in my heart this time was a thousand “thank you’s” as my mind flooded with images of Christ on the cross, his body wounded, pouring out life so I might live.  It was almost all too much.  We prayed, we drank.  “This is my blood, poured out for you, take and drink.”

 We stood, and I’ll admit the first thing that came to mind at the end of the service was a line from a David Crowder song.  Service dismissed, and my wife, anxious to get to a meeting we had to be at, told me to move, and I almost said “I don’t wanna move, and I don’t think I should.”  I could’ve stayed there all night.  Honestly, last night was the most real and tangible moment with God I’ve had in awhile….I didn’t want to let it go.  But while we were celebrating the death of Christ last night, today it is my job to move, and it is my job to celebrate the resurrection with the rest of my life.  “This Do In Remembrance Of Me.”

Today, this makes me happy.  Alternators Rumble is on his way!  Woohoo!

I feel like I’ve stared at a computer screen all day.  ALL DAY.  Stupid me and always having to have something new.  I guess a Xanga/Myspace/Blogger wasn’t enough.  So from now on this is my permanent home on the web.  It will probably change its look several times, as I learn what’s going on better.

 Tonight we went to the AJHS Awards Banquet for Vo-tech students, which a few of our youth were in.  As you can see, they were very well dressed…..

And though they are big shot award winners now, they still can squeeze it in their schedules to take a few pictures with their adoring public…..

and, even hijack a camera every once in awhile…

I was going to get up and go to a workday my church is having tomorrow but I’m not feeling all that well, so I don’t think I’ll be going with them.  :( Erin’s grandmother fell out of her bed two nights ago and dislocated her shoulder, but now she’s home and is going to have to be under constant watch for the next 3 weeks so that she doesn’t move her arm.  It’s really more so that she doesn’t hurt herself worse, since they said it was going to be very sore for the next few days.  So Erin’s going up to visit tomorrow, and I’m going to try and feel better and maybe get some stuff done around here if I can. 

http://dontcallmeveronica.blogspot.com/2005/11/games-christians-play.html

I read this post today for the first time and I was simply blown away. It’s from late 2005, but it’s still very relevant. The writer of his blog is so right in his words. Too often today we want to worship the stuff and the success instead of realizing that we are supposed to be looked at differently than the rest of this world! We tremble, complain, and fear when persecution comes even though we were told it would. I think we’re simply too comfortable. We like where we are, nay, we enjoy it. We enjoy that we can brag to our friends that we have Christian senators, Christian tshirts, Christian music on the secular radio, Christians in the media, and a Christian president. And we don’t just brag. We hold it over the heads of everyone else as if we’re better. What if the bottom dropped out? What if our so-called “success” suddenly ended today, and we were no longer afforded these positions and places where we are making inroads?

What if the government said tomorrow that if you were a Christian you could no longer serve in a position?

What if all our tshirts were banned in the public arena?

What if a radio station said they would not play a song even remotely considered Christian? What if the labels said that if you are a Christian, they would terminate your contract or not sign you?

What if Hollywood refused to hire actors based on their faith?

What if the office of President was to be vacated if the president were to be found a Christian?

We really don’t know how good we have it, do we? God has allowed us these inroads, and yet we want to brag and boast about them like we’ve done it. Like we developed the strategy. Like the cultural “coolness” we’re enjoying now is a product of our own mechanations. Like all our lives are “purpose driven” and fit right in line like Tetris pieces making lines for the Lord. I worry that we are not losing our voice in this country, but that we’re cancelling it out, by our own desire to be comfortable, by our own desire to fit in, by our own desire to influence without saying a word. In fact, it almost reminds me of this passage from Jeremiah:

Jeremiah 9:23-24

23 This is what the LORD says:

“Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches,

24 but let him who boasts boast about this:

that he understands and knows me,
that I am the LORD, who exercises kindness,
justice and righteousness on earth,
for in these I delight,”
declares the LORD.

So if you’ve watched the news within the last week, you know that West Tennessee was hit by several hard storms within the past couple of weeks. One of those heavy storms dropped a tornado in Gibson County. This past Monday morning I went with 5 senior adults and our pastor to the cities of Yorkville and Rutherford and did some mission work up there. The whole drive up I wondered what we’d see. I’ve been close to wind damage before, but never damage from a tornado, but I’ve seen pictures. Seriously, there is really nothing that can prepare you for it.

As we got closer to town, the devastation became apparent. On the side of the road, there were metal poles that used to hold power transformers. These poles, solid metal, had been bent over and some were snapped off from the wind. How fast does wind have to be to do that? Houses around the area were just crushed, and some folks still had no power, a week later. The first house we went to had around 5 large trees down in the yard, and their barn behind the house had been complete demolished, and left in a pile of rubble. We spent around 3 hours there, cutting up trees and burning the brush. We ate lunch there and then decided to try for another job.

The second house we went to was that of an 82 year old woman, who was away at WORK. It amazed us that she still worked a full time job. Pulling up in her driveway we could see that she was very hard hit. At the end of her driveway was a foundation where a garage used to be, but it was completely gone. To our right was a field full of debris, and the fence row along the side of her property had junk stacked up to 4 feet high caught in it. Out in her pasture was another structure but it looked like it had just imploded, and left a tractor in the middle of the junk, with it’s front end smashed in. Her work order said she wanted two trees in the backyard cut down, but we were not able to do this because one was over the home and it would’ve taken more men and equipment than we had. I hated to leave without doing anything, especially when the woman drove up as we were leaving, and we had to explain to her what was going on.
We ended up working at two other sites until around 4:30 and then headed for home, completely worn out, sweaty, stinky, and sunburnt. I earned the name “Lobster” from my sunburns, which are bright red. And yes, they hurt, but I dont’ want to complain. Mainly because I know I was doing something good for people who probably couldn’t do anything for themselves. It just makes it worth it. I guess my prayer is that if I were ever in that situation, that someone would come along and help me as well. So, moral of the story?

Get out there and help someone.