Laughter is a gift from God. When we refuse to accept it, it makes Him want to take it back. Like the unicorns.

224. Lying because I love you.

Serious Wednesdays May 13, 2008 • Comments

If you’ve spent any time reading this site, you’ve learned two things about me: I like referencing rap music from the 90s and I have a black belt in lying. Seriously, I used to lie every time I opened my mouth. I would lie about things that didn’t even matter. It was a real problem a few years ago but is something I’ve been working on. Along the way, I developed highly sensitive “Lie-dar” or the ability to spot a lie or smell my own kind so to speak. So every now and then I like to shed some light on a particular kind of lie that I think we Christians like. Today’s is the “lying because I love you” lie.

I remember one of the times I lied to my wife. We were planning a trip to a city I didn’t every really want to go back to. The last time I had visited this particular city I had done some really stupid things. Just talking about going back with her stirred up a lot of shame I had not dealt with yet. I particularly didn’t want to see people that had been witness to my horrible behavior.

So when she asked me where I wanted to stay, I made up a really lame excuse of why I didn’t want to stay with some particular friends. (If you’re playing along at home, “lame excuse” is an attempt to drape a lie in nicer clothes than it deserves.) She bought the lie, or so I thought, and we went to bed.

Why did I tell her that? Why did I lie? Honestly because I love her. I thought that if I told her the real reason I didn’t want to see our friends it would force her to mentally relive that chapter of our lives. That if I were honest, it would bring back that unpleasant memory for her and she would experience more pain. So I lied to protect her. I lied out of love.

When you write it like that, it’s pretty simple to see the foolishness of that logic, but it’s so easy to do. Think about a time when you’ve not completely disclosed some financial truth to your husband or wife because you don’t want them to worry. “We’re a little over our budget this month, but I don’t want Pam to freak out so I won’t bother her with what’s going on.” Or you hide something from your spouse because you know they’re insecure about that particular area of their life. “My husband is insecure about his physical appearance so I won’t tell him I’m worried he’s making some unhealthy decisions with his diet because I don’t want to hurt him.” Or in my case, “I failed in the past and I don’t want my wife to think about that failure, so I’ll lie in the future.”

So dumb, but again, I really thought that I was lying to my wife because I didn’t want to hurt her. My small group leader always says, “It’s interesting that when you were messing up, when you were failing, you didn’t have a problem with hurting your wife by your actions.” He’s right, the truth is, that lying is always about protecting me, not someone else. In the example above, I didn’t want to deal with the consequences of my actions. I didn’t want to experience how my wife’s anger would make me feel. I was worried about my feelings not her’s, so I tried to cover them up with the false nobility of protecting my wife.

But it never works, it always catches up with us. The next morning after I told that lie, I felt like God called me out on it in my quiet time. That night I confessed to my wife that I had lied. Her response? “I know. I know why you didn’t want to go back to see those friends, I just wanted to hear you say it.”

The takeaway? Lying is never an act of love and people that are close to you usually know when you’re pushing them further away with a lie.

223. Well actually, the Sabbath is a Saturday.

Misc May 12, 2008 • Comments

My wife is smarter than me. Honestly, she has her Master’s in Construction Management from Georgia Tech and until she stopped working to take care of our kids, she was the breadwinner in the family. Whenever someone comes to do work on our house they see my eyes instantly glaze over in confusion (which end of the wrench do I hold?) and instead address her, which is a little emasculating. But I’m fine with that, she can’t tap dance like me, so we each bring something important to the table. Every now and then though, she’ll correct my grammar and it drives me a little cuckoo for cocoa puffs.

When I say something like, “He made it down the stairs pretty quick” she’ll quietly respond, “quickly.” Or if I tell my daughter to “lay down so I can change your diaper,” she’ll say, “lie down.”

I have friends that do the same exact thing when it comes to the Sabbath. They couldn’t tell you a single thing about the Bible or Jesus or God or anything remotely spiritual. But if you ever say, “This Sunday, I’m going to really focus on living according to the Sabbath” they will instantly blurt out, “Well actually, the Sabbath is a Saturday.”

It’s one of those Christian technicalities we love to be right about. Like arguing about tithing gross or net or the most accurate version of the Bible or what God really says about whether you can or cannot drink a Sam Adams Summer Ale.

And if you’re one of the readers that posted a comment or emailed me about which day the Sabbath is, we’re still friends. I love that you’re even reading and taking the time to connect. Let’s get together for a Summer Ale.

222. The "first time visitors" message.

pastors May 12, 2008 • Comments

Sometimes, when I go to restaurants, the waiter will say this to me, “Have you ever eaten at Applebee’s before? Is this your first time here?”

That’s a weird question. I’m sure they have to ask it, like wearing a certain number of pieces of flair, but it still doesn’t make sense. Every time I hear that, I want to respond, “No, I’ve never been to Applebee’s, but I have ordered food, off a menu, eaten said food and then paid for it with cash or credit.”

The restaurant scenario reminds me of what we sometimes do to first time visitors at church. The person reading the announcements will say something like:

“If you’re a first time visitor, we’re glad you’re here. We’re going to have a good time today. We’re going to sing songs, of music, and then a man in khakis that will probably be pleated, will preach what we call a ‘sermon.’”

I exaggerated a little there but there are some elements of truth peppered in there. It only gets weirder when we start kind of apologizing to the first time visitors:

“Our Senior Pastor, Randy Smith, is on vacation today, so our Youth Minister will be speaking. And he’s going to be talking about tithing, which we never usually focus on. Just so you know.”

I don’t know what we should say to first time visitors. That’s a little foggy to me. At the church I start called GracePointeLifeTruthHouseNorth I’ll probably say something like,

“If this is your first time, thanks for coming. Church is kind of weird, isn’t? I mean today we’re going to sing songs to the person we feel breathed into existence the universe and the sea horse. We’re going to learn about the person who we feel is most important but we’ve never actually seen. We’re going to tell you how a book that is thousands of years old can help you have a better day tomorrow in your cubicle at work. And then we’re going to cut you off in the parking lot after church cause we’re still pretty messed up. It’s going to be a little weird today but we hope you’ll come back next week. Because even though it’s weird, it’s also wild and wonderful.”

And then we’re going to fire WWJD bracelets into the crowd using those t-shirt guns they have at sporting events. It will be a good time. Promise.

221. Convincing youth group girls to make out with you.

love/ youth group May 12, 2008 • Comments

A cashier at a Staples office supply store once gave me some parenting advice when I was checking out. When he found out I was having a girl, he said the following:

When you have a boy, you have to worry about one boy on the planet. When you have a girl, you have to worry about every boy on the planet.

That’s an odd thing for the guy selling you uniball micro pens to tell you, I seem to be a magnet for that kind of thing. But he’s right in some ways. Unless modesty becomes a trend or a really famous Amish girl becomes someone that teenagers learn to emulate, I’m stuck. It’s not going to be easy to raise girls. I get that. I probably deserve that for how stupid I was to the opposite sex when I was young.

Here’s the thing though, maybe I can take lessons from my days of foolishness. Maybe I can equip my daughters with the kind of wisdom that can only come from a lifetime of bumps and bruises.

It’s doubtful I’ll ever write a book called “The girl’s guide to jerks” but I could definitely at least share three lessons I plan to pass on to my daughters. I’ve written about these before, but I think they only get more valid as time goes on. The first two are the kind of things Christian guys are really good at or bad at depending on your perspective. The third one is kind of a bonus idea that non Christians and Christians alike are guilty of.

Maybe you’re still in college or on the dating scene and can use this. Chances are these will seem really obvious, but if you already know them, I promise you’re miles ahead of some of the girls that I ran into while in college.

1. Depth Perception
A counselor told this idea to a friend of mine and I think it’s solid. Everyone has a handful of things they don’t want to share with strangers. Joys or pains that feel too big to introduce in a casual conversation. Maybe you didn’t get into the college you wanted to or you once got fired from a job. Could be that you still suck your thumb, it can be anything really. What happens though is that some guys have a handful of things they’ve grown comfortable with over the years. You might have a hard time talking about a family member that died but they don’t. In fact, they’re perfectly fine with it. So what they do is tell you all about it. And you think, “wow, this guy just shared something really personal. I should too.” You open up and make yourself really vulnerable because you think he just did. But he didn’t. He’s creating a depth perception issue. He’s appearing deeper and more honest than he really is in an attempt to get you to open up.

2. Reverse Psychology
Again, super obvious, but you’d still be surprised how often people get trapped by this. In this scenario the guy simply uses reverse psychology to push the girl into doing something she wouldn’t normally do. A guy will say, “You’re such a goody too shoes. It’s so different to be around someone Puritanical.” Rarely does someone want to claim that title. And the guy continues, “You’re not wild. You don’t do crazy things. That’s what I like about you.” Again, this kind of conversation begins to wear on the girl and she feels like she has something to prove. It becomes a challenge and before long, she finds herself saying “I’m not such a goody too shoes, you just don’t know me. I do crazy things!” And then they make out.

3. I’m the opposite.
This is for the girls that have a boyfriend/husband. Anytime you express even the smallest bit of dissatisfaction about your boyfriend to another guy, please expect them to reverse the statement. If you say that your boyfriend doesn’t love the color blue and you wish he did, that guy you’re talking to is going to say, “I love blue. I live for blue. I spoke with a doctor about getting my skin turned blue surgically.” If you’re boyfriend hates the movie “Pride and Prejudice,” get ready to meet the world’s biggest Pride and Prejudice fan at work. Not cool, but true.

I need to throw out a few disclaimers for this piece:
1. This isn’t just something guys do. Girls do it too.
2. Girls are smart, this is not about that, it’s about guys being manipulative.
3. There are lots of honest guys out there. This is about jerks.
4. These are really simple. If you already know them, that’s great.
5. I’m sorry that I did anything like this to girls. I was a jerk.

I hope that if a guy ever tells one of my daughters that she’s a prude she ends up laughing her way out of the car. Just looking back as she leaves and muttering between big guffaws, “He actually tried the reverse on me. Me, the reverse. Ha!”

220. The kid crying that makes every kid cry at Sunday School.

Kids May 11, 2008 • Comments

The other day at Chick-fil-A, some little kid called my four-year old daughter a word that is more commonly used to describe a vital part of the male anatomy. I would tell you the exact word he used, but I once wrote a post about Mario Lopez from the show Saved by the Bell and porn. Before I knew it, people that googled the phrase, “Mario Lopez Porn” were linking to my site. How disappointing that must have been for them. Anyway, when he called my daughter that word, she responded instantly by saying, “That’s not my name. He’s calling me the wrong name.” She saw it as an inaccuracy, not an insult. I saw it as a chance to practice patience, as I really wanted to toss that kid in the deep end of the ball pit.

I didn’t though, society frowns on that kind of thing but as much as I disliked that kid, there’s one kid I dislike even more. I am of course talking about the “cry instigator” at church.

This is the kid that makes every other kid in his Sunday school class start crying. It happens all the time. My two year old daughter McRae is perfectly happy as we walk toward her class. She’s holding Barney’s sidekick Baby Bop (BJ and Riff are weak) and she’s smiling. La la la, off to class we go. But then she sees “sir cries a lot.” I can watch her face change. Suddenly she starts to think, “Why is that boy crying? Does he know something I don’t know? Should I be crying? Is that what we’re doing? What’s going on here? Are they out of goldfish? That’s it, isn’t it? I’m about to enter some sort of goldfishless Gulag. I should cry!”

And then it’s over. Especially since that punk cry instigator always stands at the door, clutching the little gate and blubbering a warning to any happy kids that cross his path.

That kid is the worst.

219. Melon Farmer! Melon Farmer!

movies/ pop culture May 11, 2008 • Comments
This has been a swearing kind of month, but what can I say, I grew up on music by rappers like Wu-Tang, (cash rules everything around me) so I’m kind of a vulgarity connoisseur.

One of my favorite things is when we Christians put a holy spin on foul language. We know at some point we’ll stub our toe against the corner of our couch and will need a phrase to scream out. But instead of swearing, we’ll yell at the top of our lungs, “That hurt like H E Double Hockey Sticks!” Or we’ll say, “Dang,” or “Shoot.” If you’re really religious though, you’ll try to turn it into a worship moment. “Praise the Lord! It really hurt when I dropped that Precious Moments figure on my foot!”

It’s exactly what CBS did when they played the Bruce Willis movie, Die Hard 3, on television. When one of the characters was about to drop an MF, they instead made him scream out, “You melon farmer! Melon farmer!”

That’s funny to me. Swears are kind of funny to me too. They’re just words that over the centuries we’ve given power to. We’ve assigned them strength and importance and of course a degree of crudeness. But ultimately, they’re just words.

I’m all for not swearing, but cleaning up your mouth is really just a symptom. Maybe you’re supposed to work on your anger or your unhappiness that is producing your son of a gun foul mouth. It’s like people that go to all you can eat fried snickers and mayonnaise buffets and order a diet Coke. That’s great that you’re drinking diet Coke, but come on dude, it’s the mayonnaise fritter balls that are going to kill you.

218. Confusing "never" with "ever."

Serious Wednesdays May 11, 2008 • Comments

I think satan loves when we say things like, “that shouldn’t be an issue, I’ve never struggled with that before.” Honestly, I think he does a little hoofed dance excitedly around hell because he knows that when we take our eyes off temptation, it’s so much easier for us to stumble. I was reminded of this a few months ago on one of my other blogs when I wrote about a tragedy in the Netherlands.

On the evening of January 31, 1953, a father and his 9-year-old son were walking along a large dyke. The father noticed that the water was higher than it should have been. With a watch and a worrisome look he took a rough measure of how high the water would be soon.

In a controlled panic, he and his son woke up the mayor of the small town. They woke up the town council and for hours discussed what they should do. Ultimately the council decided that they should not ring the church bell and wake up the town because nothing serious would happen. The reason they believed everything would be OK was that the dyke had never failed before. Their town had always been safe and so they trusted that what had never happened would not ever happen.

The next morning, the father and son started searching for survivors among the more than 1,800 dead.

Chances are, you and I will never feel the rush of water as a damn breaks and a town disappears. But in many ways, we all know what it’s like to stand on top of a wall as the water slowly rises. To see the warning signs in our life and know that perhaps someone should be warned.

My friend shared one such moment the other day. He’s got a number of challenges ahead of him and in some ways he’s trying to face them alone. When I asked him what would happen if he found himself face to face with one particular thing he struggled with, his response was simple, “I’ve never done that particular thing, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

And in some sense, he had never done the thing in question. But the truth is that everything you’ve ever done is something you once had never done. Everything in this life has a starting point. A moment where it leaps from never to first time.

Maybe it’s slow, the daily build up of rain washing against your walls. Maybe it’s unexpected, a storm colliding against you with waves and water you never dreamed could be so deep. But in that moment when you stand on the top of your damn and can see the water rising, don’t try to go it alone. Reach out to a friend. Wake up your neighbors. Ring the church bell.

Because in this damn life, it’s just so easy for never to turn into first time ever.

217. Giving mediocre high school graduation gifts.

Misc May 11, 2008 • Comments

At the end of the day, this site is really like one big public service announcement. It’s like at the end of a GI Joe cartoon when Hawk or Duke would tell kids not to play with matches and then say that “knowing is half the battle.” Or like when Matthew Perry got hooked on drugs and had to do NBC commercials warning fans of the show Friends about the dangers of narcotics. Sure you might laugh a little, maybe chuckle, have a yuk or dare I say a guffaw, but I’m here to provide a service. To shed light on some serious issues that are plaguing Christianity. The one I would like to address today, the one that is about to attack millions of high school seniors is simple, I want to talk about Christian graduation gifts.

This is risky on my part. The cartel of people that print Bible verses on things like Frisbees and coffee mugs is powerful. They fly around in black helicopters and have trained attack doves that fight heathens like me. But I have to be strong. This is for the children, whom I believe are the future.

This May, let’s all commit that we won’t buy our graduating seniors mediocre gifts. Let’s not get them post it notes that say thing like, “I’m writing on this but God’s word is written on my heart.” Let’s not make them unwrap rulers at graduation parties that say “God is the ruler of my life.” Let’s not get them a six pack of those tiny books that inevitably are composed of CS Lewis and Oswald Chambers quotes.

Let’s give them money. And Blue Like Jazz and Nouwen’s “Return of the Prodigal Son” and the movie “Man on Fire” and an official 175 gram Frisbee. Let’s give them the kind of stuff we’d like to get, which I think might be the golden rule. Hey, this ended up being spiritual after all.

Newspaper interview about SCL.

Misc May 11, 2008 • Comments

Recently the Houston Chronicle’s faith section interviewed me about Stuff Christians Like. If you feel that sentence is a bit ridiculous, you are correct. I’m just some sassmouth guy writing silly things online. But for some reason, people are responding to the site.

The online article was beautifully written. The author of the story is just flat out good. Honestly, it made me sound much cooler and smarter than I think I am on most days.

Check it out if you get a chance. I don’t have a book deal yet but other than that, the article is pretty awesome. Read it here.

216. Precious Moments

Misc May 10, 2008 • Comments

If it were socially acceptable for 32-year old suburban dads to quit their jobs and pursue careers in breakdancing I would do it. Honestly, the only reason I write is because I can’t pop n’ lock or spin on my back or do an adequate worm. I took breakin’ lessons in the fourth grade and since then I’ve been secretly doing the electric boogaloo in my heart. I am so excited about the show, “So you think you can dance” starting soon that it’s embarrassing. I completely intend to breakdance in heaven and invite you to throw down on the square of cardboard I’ll be breakin on. But according to the fine folks at Precious Moments, I won’t be dancing in heaven.

Instead, I can expect to be a chubby little angel with a short bathrobe and a halo and feathered hair. And apparently I’ll have a satchel of flowers that I deliver to other angels. Ugh. That sounds really boring. I want to do the robot in heaven and ride dirt bikes and have firework fights with CS Lewis. What, you’ve never thought it would be cool to shoot a Roman Candle at CS Lewis?

A few folks have asked if I’ll ever make SCL t-shirts with phrases like “It’s time to get my yolk on” or “I’m never beardronneous.” Maybe, but I think it would be funnier to do a partnership with Precious Moments. To get them to make me my own version of the angel. I wonder what he would look like?