| Tuesday, July 26, 2005 |
| Where's the Love? |
I'm writing this first sentence after I've finished writing the rest of this post. I really don't know where I was going with this, but it's just some rambling that I put together. So don't hold it against me if it doesn't resonate with you.
Sometimes I wish I were a jerk. It would make life a whole lot easier. You're probably muttering to yourself, "What's Steve talking about? He is a jerk!", but I'm talking about being a lifetime jerk. I have moments of jerkiness that are unavoidable yet, overall, I'm a nice guy. I like people and I care about what happens to them. But if I were a jerk, than I could run with my holier-than-thou attitude and not give a rip whose feelings I hurt.
Last night we were watching the new FX series, 30 Days by filmmaker Morgan Spurlock. Spurlock to the concept of his Supersize Me film documentary and is applying it to different situations. It's an interesting concept. Kelly and I watched the first episode when Morgan and his girlfriend lived on minimum wage for a month, just scraping to get by. Yesterday they showed an episode where they took a rugged, midwestern, twenty-something male from Michigan and transplanted him to the middle of a highly homosexual part of San Francisco. He had no idea how to react. Much of the show focused on the lack of acceptance by evangelical Christians toward a homosexual lifestyle. Of course, this led to the obligatory shots of the ignorant people claiming to followers of Jesus while protesting homosexual events with signs proclaiming "God Hates F-gs" and "AIDS Cure Homosexuals." You just want to grab a 2x4 piece of wood and beat those protestors senseless because they have no idea what they're talking about. If they really believed Scripture, they wouldn't act like that [of course, if I really believed Scripture I wouldn't be grinning right now at the thought of bashing one of those moron's head in]. Ask me to summarize the life of Jesus in one word and I'd say "love." In the gospels [NIV Translation], Jesus used the word "love" almost fifty times. Maybe He liked the concept.
Anyway, this brings me to the conversation I just had half an hour ago with a college-age young adult. It was your basic dialogue about sex and why they shouldn't be having it if they really love the person. As I went through the Biblical teaching on the subject there was this voice crying inside of me, wanting to be the matter-of-fact jerk and yell out something like, "You'd better not or it's off to hell, you fornicator!!!" I mean, it would be much easier than having to show a little love and understanding. Isn't it interesting how we Christians have perfected ways of acknowledging wood specks in others eyes, while ignoring the redwood in our own? I'm not saying that we ignore sin; that's the farthest from the truth. But the very least we must do is love those caught in sin as Jesus did [and does]. I'm serious, I have times where I want to be the jerk. If you're the jerk you don't have to invest yourself in the lives of others, you just play the role of umpire. And I find it interesting that nobody waits for hours after the game to collect the umpires' autographs.
I can't be the jerk. I don't have it in me. And I'm sorta glad. I'm just sick of people who don't like people. And why do those "haters" just always seem to be followers of Jesus? It just puzzles me. |
yet another musing of steve-o @ 5:15:00 PM  |
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