Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Meet Hot Christian Girls

Couple of things. . .
First, all commence being in shock at the number of recent blog posts.

Second, as for the title of this blog, you can thank facebook. There was definitely a side link on facebook to click on to meet hot Christian girls, complete with picture of questionably dressed young ladies. No, I did not click on the link. No, I am not petitioning to ban facebook. It does raise a few questions, comments and red flags though. And by a few I mean many. So I am not going to actually comment on it, save to mention the state of sexuality in western culture, including the church, is not that great when you have a sub category for Christian hotties to be found on the facebook. Now, had they had "Find Hot Christian Guys" on there with my picture, well, you can't argue with truth. But sorry ladies, I am taken and I did not want to invoke lust in any of you, giving the devil a foothold that would most definitely cause you to stumble.

So I said, "NO".

Third, Steelers rock, sorry Josh.

Fourth, got into that age old discussion about Satan Clause with someone today. Always a great topic for discussion, I love to focus on the most trivial element of secular people misrepresenting the celebration of the birth of Jesus. The only thing that is interesting to think about is how the two biggest Christian holidays have found secular popularity through fairy tales. I guess the creator of the universe miraculously being born to a virgin, barely escaping being killed as a baby and eventually dying for the sin of all mankind and rising again, isn't a big enough story. That being said, I really don't blame Santa. He is just a jolly guy. You can't look at Santa and not smile. It's kinda of like a banjo.

And last but not least a quote.
"What's the soup de jour?" . . . "It's the soup of the day." . . . "Mmmm, that sounds good, I'll have that."

Tuesday, December 02, 2008

The Ten Theory




We'll get to the theory a little later. As for the pictures, wanted a picture that related to what I was blogging about, but instead settled on something silly. Under the image search "Fail", are some pretty crazy funny pics, if you want a good laugh and a waste of time. I selected two. The kid for obvious reasons. The cat because he looks like my cat Jeremy, who, being a ninja cat could get himself into a predicament as such. And cats are weird in general. I won't get into that.

I actually wanted to take a moment to comment on Christmas. I feel as though I blogged about this last year, but I will do it again nonetheless. I have grown into quite a scrooge when it comes to Christmas. I have trouble with Christmas music, most folks love the 15 Christmas carols that get sung for a month and a half every year. I on the other hand do not. I like a few of them, sort of and I have redone a few of them in pretty cool ways that help, but I still struggle through getting into the 'Christmas Spirit'. Some of this is the commercialization of Christmas, stores go crazy, black Friday. . .yeah, someone actually died. Radio stations. . .crazy, decorating house with outside lights. . . crazy, TV shows/ movies. . . crazy, all sorts of hype about the 'spirit of Christmas' which basically is giving stuff. I do recognize the cool part in bringing families together, but I struggle with the giving part. Some of this stems from my own propensity to stink at giving people I love, specifically, but not limited to, my wife good gifts. I always sort of feel like the sweater that I pick out will do justice in conveying the amount of love and gratitude I feel. This gets magnified by the pressure that a gift giving holiday (which includes valentine's day, birthdays insert other days that consist of consumer pressure to purchase a great gift.) I don't have a problem with giving, but the consumerism. Does that make sense?

Now with that laying a subtle groundwork for my struggle with Christmas, Christmas has never been a not busy or stressful time. Salvo people can shout an amen. Pageants, Santa Claus, traffic, Christmas eve candle light services, the living Christmas tree, lots of busy and then there is this huge push to be more busy in order to have the greatest family Christmas. I immediately think of National Lampoon's Christmas vacation, which is an awesome part of Christmas. All of this really was hit on the head for me the other day. I was coming home from my parents house on thanksgiving, flipping through the radio station and stumbled upon Christian radio. . . bad idea. The speaker was reading off a list of "naughty and nice" stores to spend money at during the Christmas season. Listing naughty stores being the ones who say 'happy holidays' instead of 'merry Christmas'. . . and the nice ones were the vice versa. Are you flipping kidding me? Ok church, when you go out to spend lots of money, buying lots of stuff your family doesn't need in the name of Santa . . . (as I think the percentage is small for people on black Friday pushing for the best price on the x box 9000 in the name of Jesus. . . did I already say that someone died?) . . . make sure you do it at stores that only recognize your worldview, we want to make sure that we don't intermingle with anyone who believes differently. Needless to say, I was a bit honked and I am still working through why.

Also on the subject of Christmas, as a worship leader, I am called to usher the people of God to the foot of his throne and put the praises of God on their lips on a regular basis. I have such a hard time at Christmas with the songs, not just because I get a bit sick of them, but because I feel like they come so close to pointing towards the secularization of the Jesus story. When I hear 'Joy to the world' I think of kettles, stores, Santa, gifts and then through sheer force of will, come back to Jesus. THat may just be my own deal. But I am going to leave that for now in order to not write forever as I still wanted to address something else.

The ten theory.
I was talking with Mike (my pastor) about holidays and how we always want to get it right and we always want, especially the family time to be a '10'. And he said something sort of on the fly, along the lines of. . ."If it is going to be a ten, it is just going to happen naturally. If you try for it, you might get an eight." The more I think about this, the more I think this is book worthy. It applies to everything. You always know when someone is trying too hard. I've got to think through it more, but I think that is some of my issue at Christmas. You try so hard, you miss it lots of times. I am going to look at this more for sure, so this is just a preview I guess. Anyone think of where else this theory could apply?

IN other news. I have decided that I am old. Despite the evidence in the graying of my beard, I have held onto some hopes of stying hip. But I just got into a text conversation with one of the youth. It took me like 3 minutes to send him a one word answer, and by the time I had watched the phone confirm that the message had gone through, closed the phone and set it down, he sent back a full paragraph follow up response. The dude basically copied the dictionary in 8 seconds. I guess the iphone now has telepathic text response or something. This paragraph was just bonus by the way.

And last but not least a quote:

"It's got a cop motor: a 440 cubic inch plant. It's got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks. It's a model made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas."