The Bible makes a pretty horrible self help book.

Sometimes, that’s what I want it to be. I want to see a picture of God on the back cover of the Bible wearing an approachable sweater next to a golden retriever who knows a few tricks but not so many that he’s obnoxious.

I want to crack open a chapter, read a few verses, get some action items and then walk away from my relationship with God. The truth is, most of my self improvement efforts are geared at getting my life running smoothly enough to where I don’t need God anymore. I’m not opposed to self help books or self improvement, Quitter could be categorized as one in some ways. But if I’m not careful, I tend to mutate my own effort into my own Emmanuel.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about feeling convicted over my choice of music. I shared that lately it was getting harder for me to justify the soul-feeding benefits of explicit rap involving strippers and cocaine. (The post was over 1,000 words long, but that’s pretty much the summary.)

Some fun conversation followed in the comments, but one particular thought stood out to me. Here is what someone said in response to what I wrote:

Jon…its all talk until you delete him out of your ITUNES

I really like that comment, because I really want it to be true.

When I bump into challenges in my faith, I want the solution to be as simple as deleting a file from my computer. (Or, in my case, removing it from Spotify.)

I want to press a button, feel a twinge of completeness, and walk away. But there’s a problem: That’s never worked in my life.

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When people talk to me about geography in Nashville, I do one of two things:

1. I nod my head and pretend I know what part of the city they are referring to.

2. I tell them, “I don’t know where that is. We just moved here.”

Neither one of those two responses is entirely true. Pretending I know is not true and saying we just moved here isn’t true. We’ve lived here for 18 months. So why don’t I know my way around town yet?

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“Never offend someone who has a Rottweiler in their profile photo and is in charge of the unofficial Eazy-E fan club.”

That’s a lesson in Twitter etiquette I learned the wrong way. I’ll be teaching folks everything I know about Twitter at the Quitter Conference on February 10 & 11, but that’s a free nugget of wisdom for you.

In my defense, that terrifying gentleman with the threatening vocabulary misinterpreted what I had said about Eazy-E, the 1980s rapper.

Here’s what I tweeted from @jonacuff:

Every time I see Dr. Dre optimizing computers in that HP commercial, I think, “This is exactly what NWA was all about.”

I wasn’t making fun of Easy-E. I was making a social commentary on the unexpected career trajectory of Dr. Dre. There’s not a person alive who heard Dr. Dre in the 1980s and thought, “You know what this guy will be doing in the future? Optimizing computers for Hewlett Packard.”

Next thing I know, I’m involved in a tweet battle with a guy in Compton.

Lesson learned.

But in addition to picking up wisdom like that on Twitter, I discovered something else really interesting the other day. And it came to me in the form of a virus.

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A weird thing happened to my generation.

A lot of us grew up thinking of church as strict and fundamentalist and a buzz kill. Christians got a reputation of being hypocritical and close minded and constantly protesting anyone who didn’t agree with them.

You drink beer? Enjoy your fold out couch in hell.
You watch movies that aren’t rated G? Gonna be a hot one in the fiery furnace.
You listen to music that’s not Christian? It starts with “h” and ends in “ades.”

Was everyone’s church experience like this? Not at all. But for me and a large group of people, this was the perception we grew up with of faith. So what did I do in reaction to that?

I boomeranged the other direction. I was so afraid of being labeled judgmental or close-minded or fundamentalist that I over corrected in the other direction.

I realized this while jogging the other day while listening to Kanye West and Jay-Z. I was listening to their song “No Church in the Wild.”

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I don’t remember what it felt like when the steel bar tore through my face. The moment it happened, my body was flooded with adrenaline and I got drunk on survival. I hit the ground running, blood pouring from a wound that would require plastic surgery and hope. But I probably need to back this story up.

In the seventh grade, I was in love with my Santa Cruz Rob Roskopp skateboard. It was my whole world. And one day, I thought it would be fun to jump off a concrete loading dock at a factory. (I was constantly gleaming the cube in the seventh grade.) The plan was to grab what I thought was a stable bar and swing from it while my skateboard sailed off the four-foot drop.

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The first year we were married, I decided to make a nightstand for my wife Jenny for Christmas.

Why?

Because I am stupid.

I’d never built anything in my life, but in my arrogance thought to myself, “How hard can it be?”

So I tore out a picture of a nightstand from the Pottery Barn catalog and went to Home Depot. Without any sort of plan, I walked the aisles picking up random items. “Jigsaw? Probably going to need that. Hand saw? Why not. Hammer and nails? Of course.” Then I bought a bunch of lumber.

Driving home I thought, “This is going to be too easy for me. I’ll probably finish too quickly. Why don’t I learn woodcarving too? I’ll get some carving tools and carve out a topiary into the front of the nightstand. How hard can it be?”

So I purchased some more tools and retreated into our basement in Arlington, Massachusetts.

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Do you ever feel like God is ignoring you?

Like he’s screening your calls and hitting decline when he sees your name pop up on his iPhone?

You keep throwing out the same question to him and you’re getting nothing.

No nudge from the Holy Spirit. No wise counsel in the form of friends. No handwriting on the wall.

I have and I’m in the middle of one of those moments right now.

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We’re all curious about that on some level, especially at this time of year. As we reflect back on the year with joy or sadness or a mix of both, we reassess the last twelve months and wonder what the next twelve will hold. Can we be part of something bigger than ourselves?

What does that really look like?

A little over two years ago, I asked you that when I told you a story called “what if?” I asked you if we could be bigger than a blog. I asked you if we could try something more than a little crazy. I asked you if we could try it together.

Your answer was a resounding yes.

Here, from start to finish, is a Serious Wednesday story about the crazy adventures our big God can take us on.

How do you make cobra wine?

I’m glad you asked because recently on our trip to Vietnam, I learned the recipe.

Step 1 – Catch cobra.
Step 2 – Put cobra in jug of rice wine.
Step 3 – Seal lid on. Tightly.

From what I can tell, the hardest part of making cobra wine is catching the cobra, but isn’t that true of most cobra-based beverages?

What’s that you say? You’re more of a scorpion wine guy? You feel like it tends to have better undertones of raspberry and oak and scorpion? I’ve heard that myself.

But I can’t say for certain, as I didn’t taste either variety of wine. (Although I hear 2009 was a particularly excellent vintage of cobra.)

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