I Used to Be Smart.

In the past six months or so, I’ve become increasingly convincted about sports — how I watch them, what I think about them, the place they occupy in my life. It’s particularly intensified lately. I think that’s for two reasons. For one, college basketball has started. Has much as I love football, college basketball is the one sport where I have much more stake and I get much more emotionally invested than any other game. Secondly, I’ve been reading a book called How Soccer Explains the World. All over that book are ways in which a simple sport incites people to violence. Sometimes that violence is senseless, sometimes that violence helps to inspire regime-changing revolutions. Honestly, at a few points, it sounded to me like what UK fans would do if faced with impunity. It’s stories about people who invest way too much into following a sport, and project way too much onto that sport (class struggles, political struggles, etc.). It’s clear the ways in which sports are a stand-in. People feel disenfranchised and unable to participate in the arena that would actually help them overcome their struggles, so they import those struggles into the football arena, and those struggles never make it much past that arena. Because football serves as an outlet, it also serves as a release, and a source of apathy. It’s an opiate of the masses. American sports really aren’t much different.

That’s hard for me to admit. It makes me think that I’m not a real male, or that I’m not a real American, and various other things like that. I realize that saying all of these things opens me up in all kinds of ways to be made fun of by people that are (for some reason) considered more “American” or “masculine” for their deep associations with sports.

So this year, I’ve decided that the game will only be a game. Like games should be, the game will be fun. At no point will I get mad at UK this year. I will not let myself. Additionally, I will attempt to not hate Duke, and to not hate Louisville. Lastly, I will not let a game come before something that is more important than a game.

And that’s a big deal.

(I’ve been a blogging fool lately.)

Christians are convinced that they are losing Christmas. They think that the rug of their holiday is being yanked out from below them, and that a furry green man is stalking around every corner, slipping their presents into a sack so he can destroy the holiday wholesale.

So maybe that’s not every Christian, but it’s the Christians who yell the loudest.

Those Christians are convinced that Christmas is being stolen because the public face of Christmas is changing. In the public arena, specifically Christmas references are being replaced by more ambiguous holiday references — references that are palatable to those who celebrate Hannaukah, or Kwanza, or those who choose to celebrate no holiday at all during this time. Because of that, Christians are running scared and screaming loudly, convinced that this shift in public perception can steal Christmas away from them.

What these Christians have completely failed to realize is that Christmas is not contingent upon what banner is being hung on the courthouse, or what kind tree sits on that courthouse’s lawn. Christmas has noting to do with how stores advertise sales, or the content of the holiday performances at public schools. What these Christians have failed to realize is that we DO live in a VERY multi-cultural society, and that the feelings of the few must be considered along with the feelings of the many. A majority, even a large one, is no excuse to graft the views of the majority onto places used by the minority. Having respect for the feelings and affiliations of those minorities does change Christmas. If anything, it makes the character of Christmas more noble — that we sacrifice our preferences for the sake of those who do not share those preferences.

However, the public argument is not the biggest part of the whole thing. The real argument is this: Christmas does not change in our own homes. Inside our own homes, and inside our own churches, we are still free to practice Christmas however we choose. We may proclaim as loudly and as frequently as we like that this season is about the start of something crazy that happened in Palestine about 2000 years ago and has changed the world (and our lives) ever since. Noting changes our ability to be personally convinced about that and to celebrate this time of year as the remembrance of that in our homes. Nobody changes our Christmas traditions in our homes. We may still say “Merry Christmas” and put our trees up proudly. Christmas is contintually alive in the homes of those who choose to celebrate it!

However, we would do well to live our lives in concert with our clamoring. If Christmas is so important to us — if the Christianity that it represents to us actually impacts our lives a much as our shouting impacts the ears of those around us, then we would live like it. We would treat other people like Christmas is true. As long as we continue to scream for the preservation of Christmas in the public arena, and fail to live as if what happened at Christmas is true and has impact upon our lives — then Christmas will continue to become more and more marginalized. While Christmas’ greatest impact on the world is the way in which it rallies the market because of the huge influx in spending, it will continue to be increasingly marginalized, and it will continue to be co-opted as the savior for the market.

If Christmas is dying, it’s because we killed it.

Tonight, I was watching the Travel Channel, and there was a large, bald, white man travelling in Thailand. Since the title of the show was, “Bizarre Foods: Asia,” I was pretty sure that I was in for some nice novelties. However, I wasn’t ready for the best statement that I’ve heard all night.

After a long trek up a mountain to a village, then a long trek down into a cave to knock bats uncouncious with bamboo poles, the large, bald, white man hiked out of the cave to the village where the bats were roasted over the fire (to remove the skin), then stir-fried. Then the host and the villages sat around drinking homemade village beer and eating stir-fried bat. It was clear how much the Thai villagers loved both the bat, and their new Western friend. The host then said:

“The enjoyment of a meal is relative to the effort it takes to get it into the frying pan.”

The man picking the fried bat from his teeth was exactly right. He had just, in one sentence, explained so much about America, and he had explained even more about what I see at work every day. Most of the people I serve have to idea what sort of effort it takes to get their food into the frying pan, and out to their table. That’s why they’re cranky. That’s why they complain. That’s why they drown everything in ranch dressing and ketchup and eat it so quickly that it’s absolutely silly. They know there’s more where that came from, and they know how easy it is to get. Because it’s so easy, there’s no appreciation for the food, or for the people who make the food, or get the food to the table. There’s no appreciation for where a ribeye comes from, or what a chicken finger really is. So the enjoyment of that food is greatly decreased by ignorance and ease.

It’s amazing what a guy who just ate fermented shrimp paste can tell you about the way your world works.

So today, I bought the new John Mayer Trio cd. There’s this great song on it called, “Another Kind of Green.”

Sara’s friend she lost her mind
left him and made it look sexy
You fear I won’t be far behind
Thinking I’ll be the next to leave
I know I might be anxious
But I’m still not crazy

And I don’t need another kind of green to know I’m on the right side I’m on the right side with you

I used to be the one saw
Crying alone to sad songs
But then we go and hit the wall
When nothings changed, nothing’s wrong
It’s not the perfect hand
But I dont hit on nineteen

And I don’t need another kind of green to know
I’m on the right side
I’m on the right side with you
Someday you’ll drift away from me
Adopt some new philosophy
That doesn’t keep the two of us in mind
Move into someone else’s place
And stare in truth in other’s eyes
And slowly only come to realize

That you didn’t need another kind of green to know
I’m on the right
Mine was the right side
I’m on the right side with you

The song is simple enough. The singer is convinced that the green he has on his side of the fence is just fine, and that he doesn’t need “another kind of green” to know that. I like it. However, I also became convinced of something. I am officially diagnosing myself with AKGS. Another Kind of Green Syndrome. That is the story of my life right now. I want another kind of green. I wan’t something different, because I think it’s better on the other side. It’s that simple. I suffer from AKGS, and it needs to be known that my new goal is to try to be content on this side of the fence without always leering over to the other side.

Who’s with me?

I’ve noticed before, but it’s never really bothered me enough to say anything until this year (or maybe this is the first year that I’ve been comfortable enough to say anything, I don’t know). There is this odd thing that happens to my family at holidays, most noticably at Thanksgiving. I don’t know how it started, or why, but there is a distinct stratification to the whole meal. When it comes time to eat, the “men” of the family disappear. They go to the nicest room, and they enjoy their meal in what is (I assume) relative tranquility. I can’t say that I’ve been in their while they are eating. The “women” of the family are relegated to the smaller table in the kitchen. The rest of us, the “kids” (24, 21, 21, 20, 16) eat on our own, in front of the football game. It really struck me this year how odd the whole structure was. Actually, it struck me as more than odd. I was intensely convined that it just wasn’t right. So I mentioned it to my mom (in front of all of the other females in my family). That is, she said, the way it’s always been. So it would continue to be that way. Plus, she added, she bet that most of the families “around” would have looked the exact same way. I told her that MY family won’t be that way. She thought it was funny, and took for granted that families or just that way. So I got defiant, and PROMISED her that my family won’t be that way, because I won’t marry a girl that would be cool with it being that way. Everyone thought the idea of me marrying anyone was quite funny. I don’t blame them for that. Then all of the women washed the dishes and cleaned up while the men and kids watched football. I ALMOST offered to help clean up, and I should’ve. Maybe at Christmas.

So, there’s my promise, for posterity’s sake. And here’s the question: is my family weird, or are all families, like this?

Tommy Johnson stood on the bridge, looking down onto the creek. He held his umbrella over his head. The sun trying to shine though the clouds behind him made his sillhouette look like something out of a folk art painting. The rest of us climbed down the bank to the creek. It was late spring, so everything was green, and it was all just made greener by the rain. There weren’t any more than 30 of us there that day. There were no elaborate ceremonies. There were no ornate clothes. Very few words were used that anyone with a high school education couldn’t understand. There were just three generations of people with histories that went back much further than that gathered around a creek bank while while two nervous bodies were dipped into the muddy water, and brought back out as something different than they were before. And Tommy Johnson stood on the bridge, looking down onto the creek.

It’s no secret that I’m no fan of the current administration.

So, to be honest, there’s something that I CANNOT understand — why in the world do Christians love this administration so much? I really do no get it.

Is it just because George Bush is anti-abortion, anti-gay marraige, and quoted Bible verses to justify the war in Iraq? Is that all it takes?

The thing about a television is that when I turn it off, it’s so much easier to write.

The thing about a television is that it tells us what it thinks the norms of society are. Television takes its opinion on how people are, and it airs it on a massive scale (usually for the purpose of selling its wares). That airing makes people believe that what is on television is the norm — that the representations on the screen are the way that people really should be. Teenage girls believe that Laguna Beach is a representation of how teenage girls should be, teenage boys think that Laguna Beach is a representation of how teenage girls should be. TV has the amazing power of setting the norms for society. The problem is, it does not set those norms with any sort of responsibility. Very few networks use their norm-establishing power to enrich. They all (even the news) use it to sell. That leads to a twisting of the norms, and it makes the people who watch tv live life with a skewed outlook on how people really are. The more tv I watch, the more apparent that becomes.

I don’t know what to do about it, besides kill my tv. But ESPN has me much too hypnotized for that.

I’ve been reading recently about American history, and all of the messed up things that have happened down through our history, and the ways in which they have been justified, all the way up until now. In all of that reading, I have been struck by one thing.

The issues is this: those who have power will do nearly anything to maintain that power or to gain more power. Every time I read about some atrocity, some questionable policy, some abbrogation of rights, some unfair international policy, it was always the same story. The people in power were seeking to maintain the power they had, or they were attempting to add to that power.

It looks like power is dangerous. It blinds people, and finds ways to justifies all sorts of atrocities in its name — slavery, unfair gender roles, genocide. That list goes on for days. The current situation is no different. It’s difficult to believe that our current war is not a war based both in the desire to secure power and the desire to add to that power.

What is interesting is that it looks like Jesus is that exact opposite of that power gathering approach, and the way Jesus tells us to live is the exact opposite of that power gathering approach. It’s a life filled with love and submission rather than desire and ambition. It’s not very often that an honest appraisal of American history shows the kind of life Jesus would have people to live reflected in a nation that claims to be Christian.

Interesting.

It seems that there is this legacy, from Constantine on down of those seeking power realizing that they could co-opt Christian rhetoric for their own ends, and using that rhetoric to justify all sorts of things that are (in light of history) far from Christian. It’s an interesting way to frame the actions of “the powers that be.”

I live in a red state, so I frequently hear large doses of conservative misguided politics. A recurring theme of these diatribes is often a very precise dislike for the new wave of Spanish speaking immigrants, and their inability/unwillingness to learn to speak English. These people are especially distraught that the alternative is to teach our children Spanish in order to help them communicate in an increasingly bi-lingual culture. The railing against the Spanish language and the culture that accompanies it happens for a lot of reasons. Some of it is ignorance, some is fear, some is simple xenophobia. However, when it comes to the Church, all of that is irrelevant.

Every Christian should learn Spanish. I believe it to be that simple.

Language is arbitrary. There is no intrinsic value to English. It is only an arbitrary way of speaking and symbolling that we have developed as means to express thoughts. The same is true for Spanish, there is no instrinsic value in Spanish. It too is only an arbitrary way of speaking and symbolling that has developed from some of the same sources as English has. However, there is something that has intrinsic value — the people that speak Spanish.

Spanish speaking people have a tendency to be among the most marginalized groups in the country, compromsing both sections of the urban poor and the rural poor. They are, especially in farming areas, poor farmers, doing the work that white people often no longer wish to do, and doing the work more cheaply. Being from Kentucky, I see the fruition of that in tobacco fields. If they are not working in agriculture labor, they are doing the jobs that we have no desire to do — washing the dishes and cleaning the fryers at our restaruants. They are precisely the sorts of people that Jesus was all about — the people who are marginalized by those who have power and the people who are working as hard as they can to get somehwere in a system that is increasingly hostile to the achievment and social mobility. To continue to ignore these minorities and to insist that they meet us on our side of the fence at every turn is to ignore clear New Testament teachings on how it is that we are to deal with those who are impoverished and marginalized.

That is why we must throw aside our arbitrary preference for the English language and learn to communicate with these marginalized people in a way that is understandable them. In doing so, perhaps they will learn to communicate with us on our preferred terms, however, that will be secondary. Love for Hispanic immigrants would be willing to sacrifice its own arbitrary language preferences for the good of those who are marginalized and in the need of much ministry. Love puts aside its own preferences, and its own fears, and transcends its own ignorance for the sake of those who have pushed into the margins of society, and whom the powers that be would have remain in the those margins.

Furthermore (and this is only a tangent, really), most Christians (especially the Christians I have encountered here in my red state) must fundamentally realign their peceptions of these Spanish speaking immigrants. They are not scapegoats. They are not competition. They are people looking for the same things we are all looking for. Rather than continuing to hammer a wedge between the immigrants, be they legal or not, and those have always lived in America may be smart under some rational construct of how to save America, but it is absolutely not the way that those who have been given radical commands to love must live. We must make their success our success. We must see their failings as our failings. We must thoroughly tie ourselves to the marginalized and commit our churches to finding these people a place in this country where they are part of the fabric of the nation and the Church, not a marginalized subset of two properous entities, and we must do it in ways far greater than social programs and government spending. We must do it on a very on the ground, personal level. We must do it despite what the voice coming through the radio speakers says, and despite the ways in which people scream it will destroy America.

We must begin to make the margins our priorities.

“Before you ask me to go get a job today, can I at least get a raise on the minimum wage?”
– Kanye West.

“Why the Church Must Stop Seeing America as a Christian Nation”, or, “How America is Destroying the Church.”

The Church must stop seeing America as a Christian nation. There is no more simple way to describe the situation. The absolute insistence of the Church to tie her fortunes to the fortunes of America is destroying the Church’s apologetic. If the Church ever wishes to regain that apologetic, the Church must sever its ties with America, and find a way to reconstruct its identity as a fundamentally distinct entity.

Justifications for war in Iraq used by the current administration did not shy away from religious rhetoric. They used the vocabulary and the sacred texts of the church in order to justify an act of violence that is patently political. At the same time, in America, important domestic problems persist. A government that is using scripture to justify war is using those scriptures so selectively that it has effectively castrated the church and taken away its ability to be fertile.

The bodies that would use scripture as justifications for war are neglecting the same parts of that scripture that give explicit commands about what to do with the poor. A body that lauds itself as the upholder of Christians values has set its minimum wage far beyond the standard that is livable. The body that controls the economic activity of a country claims in a loud voice to be inspired by God above, and yet has but the poor in such a situation that even their hardest work does not have the ability to provide the things those families desperately need, things so essential as healthcare.

Furthmore, those who support those bodies are often the ones who are found crying most loudly when money from their paychecks is redirected to the impoverished, while they live lives of comfort, and even luxury.

The Church has, by tying itself to this inconsistent political body, neutered itself. The Church is rendering itself powerless when its loudest voices continue to clamor in support of a political body that speaks out of both sides of its mouth. That political body is more concerned with self-preservation than it is upholding the faith it uses to justify its incursions.

If the Church wishes to regain its apologetic, it must sever ties with America, and find a new way to view itself. Primarily, the Church must recognize that it is part of an international community of believers whose first job is to uphold the principles of God, and to do so regardless of the way that those principles will effect any political, national, or social affiliation. The Church must be The Church, and cease to simply be the Church in America, supporting a stilted political system that uses the Church only when it is convenient to its ends of self-preservation, and does so at the cost of the Church’s apologetic.

Like a person in a damaging relationship, the Church must cut ties with a partner that has no effect on it but dragging it down and making it worse for the relationship. No matter how well things started in the relationship, the world is a different places, and the partnership that was always tenuous has become utterly destructive. Only if the Church can return to its “first love” and leave this destructive relationship with a self-concerned partner can the Church return to the thing it should be — the embodiment of God people on Earth — all of Earth. Otherwise, the church is doomed to become a sock puppet on the arm of a country who will make the Church sing and dance as it sees fit, rather than being the people who join God in God’s work on Earth.

Christianity is designed for failure. America is dependant on sustainability. Acting as Jesus act will be ultimately disastorous. It will be impossible for any country to sustain itself if it acts as Jesus did. American will never act in a way that does promote the further good America. America will never contradict its own need for preservation. Thus, the Church and America must be odds — the Church dying daily, America grabbing power daily. It is impossible that the relationship between the two can be symbiotic. America will always function as a parasite, or even worse, a predator.

The Church must cut ties now before it is completely drained of any life by a country that will most certainly do just that.

(Wow. The tone of that came out harsh.)

Last night, I thought a lot about America, and why it is the unique entity that it is. Particularly, I wondered why Americans think so highly of themselves. I came to the conclusions that the vast majority of Americans lack the ability to contextualize themselves.

We do not know how relate to the future, or to the past. Thus, our own self-image is fundamentally lacking.

We do not realize that the future is important. We do not have the ability to cast ourselves very far into the future, thus we do not use our resources or live our lives with an eye toward sustainability. Rather, we live for what will get us by in the short-term, what will fill our needs now, what will placate us, what will get votes or make money. We not realize that this is not our world and that we should be living it constantly aware of those who will come after us. Our concern is only with what is happening now.

Furthermore, we have no real conciouness of the past. America has been around since 1776 (or even a little later, depending on what one believes is the foundation of what is “America”). That’s 229 years. Civilization has been happening for something like 3000 years before that. To this point, we are a blip. We count for less than 10% of the total time that civilization has existed, yet we believe that we somehow uniquely positioned with unique knowledge of how to run our lives that no other civilization has discovered before. We only use the past when it agrees with our vision of the present, and we rarely use the past with an eye toward the future. We have no idea how we fit into what has gone before, and how we can learn from what has gone before. We do not listen to any voices besides those that exercise power over us — the powers that be, the voices from the television, the people that we have deemed “powerful” and “influential,” the voices that manipulate our emotions so that we buy what they’re selling. We are so inundated with the loud voices of the present that we do not have the ability to hear the quiet voices of the past, and those quiet voices have much to say.

If you have ever seen the movie, I am sure you remember the scene from Dead Poets Society. Mr. Keating gathers the classroom full of teenaged boys around old pictures of the hall, and he bids them to lean in close, to look at the faces on the pictures. The camera zooms in the pictures, and we see lots of young men who, though they were different clothes and hairstyles, look much like ourselves. Keating reminds the boys that those boys are much like them, and he whispers, “Carpe diem,” an appeal for them to sieze the day. But more than that, he is reminding them that the people who went before them have the ability to speak, and an inclined ear may gather a valuable a lesson from the past.

Lastly, we do not realize that the world extends beyond American borders. Our only conciouness of the rest of the world is how it relates to us. We know those countries exist, we know there are people there, but we normally only see them as means to our ends. We do not have the ability to truly that our context is one of a much larger world, and a world in which our majorities are actually significant minorities. It is not clear to us how vast the world is and how many perspectives exist in the world. We only have the ability see through American eyes. Seeing the world in such a narrow view is completely antithetical to living in and participating in that world.

So I offer three solutions (which should be obvious):

Live with an ear to the past. Hear what those who have gone before are saying. Do not assume that the way things are is the way that things should be. Be bold enough to set yourself in opposition to the clamoring that goes on around you. Be bold enough to things that people might think are strange. The truth of the matter is that people who think you’re strange are preciesly the people who have never taken the time to reflect on their lives. Don’t be lazy. Do the hard work of reflecting over what has come before — how those mistakes have shaped the world, how your mistakes have shaped you. Maybe that requires sacrifice. Maybe that means turning off the television, or unplugging the computer. Maybe it means you (and me) finally learn to live with the self-discipline that means that the television and computer (examples picked for a reason) are not the primary influences in your life. Maybe there’s a better world waiting outside the way we have always told it should be, and maybe by listening to those voices of the past, we can discover how that better life would look.

Live with an eye toward the future. Look ahead to how the way your living your life will affect those that will come after you. Do you live in a way that shows responsibility to the planet on which you live? Do you live in a way that establishes meaningful relationships that are useful not only for personal gain but for the sake of those around you? Do you invest yourself in the people around you who will be your legacy? Do you live responsibly for the sake of those over whom you have influence? We can live like the noise around us tells us — for here and for now, or we can live responsibly, for the future ahead — not just tomorrow, but for many years to come.

Lastly, develop a sene of empathy that transcends political and cultural barriers. Realize that there are vastly different ways of looking at the world. Attempt to see the world from a different perspective. Instead of writing off Muslims, attempt to understand Islam. Attempt to understand the countries in which Islam was born and the countries in which it thrives. Attempt to see the world through those eyes, and be sympathetic to the ways in which seeing that world must inform the way a person would think about the world. Do that even at the cost of presuppositions and positions that you have held for a very long time. View the world as a poor person must, as a woman must, as a minority must. It is that empathy that is essential to the ability to contextualize ourselves in a broad, broad world, and preciesly the empathy that we lack. Without it, we will be forced to fight the same wars until history comes to an end.

We (as Americans) MUST contextualize ourselves. It is an essential part of the solution to the things we are doing wrong. We must be aware of what the past is telling us, and we must look toward how we are shaping the future. Otherwise, we will be forced to flounder without direction in a present that is fraught with problems. It is no secret that what we have does not work. If you are convinced that it does, and that America is as grand as the marketing, I truly wish that you would take some time to read something from a perspective other than your own, and to place yourself in the larger picture of an entire world, its past, and its future.

On the way home tonight, I was bored. It’s a 30 minute drive with no traffic, so I tend to drift a little bit. I saw (I think) a couple of shooting stars, and that was awesome.

However, what I noticed was that I couldn’t see many stars. There were just too many lights. So I started thinking. I started thinking about how the darkness isn’t really darkness anymore. We’ve scattered this country with so many artificial lights that it’s hard to find many places where it’s ACTUALLY dark. And it hit me that our attitude with darkness is our attitude with all of the world. Instead of being content to work with cycles and parameters that are complete natural and good, we have find a way to conquer those cycles and parameters. Why? Is it our pride? Are we so insecure that we must exercise dominion over even nature to feel validated? I don’t know, but I think it’s sad. It’s sad that we can’t live with nature, and we can’t live within the world around us. Some days, I think that we live in spite of the world around us. That’s what we (as Western civilization) have come to, flexing our muscle over even the very planet that sustains us.

We’re a sad bunch, with our egos.

To make things even better, this song came on the radio. It was a nice touch:

Do you know what it’s like to fall on the floor
And cry your guts out till you got no more
Hey man now you’re really living

Have you ever made love to a beautiful girl
Made you feel like it’s not such a bad world
Hey man now you’re really living

Now you’re really giving everything
And you’re really getting all you gave
Now you’re really living what
This life is all about

Well i just saw the sun rise over the hill
Never used to give me much of a thrill
But hey man now I’m really living

Do you know what it’s like to care too much
’bout someone that you’re never gonna get to touch
Hey man now you’re really living

Have you ever sat down in the fresh cut grass
And thought about the moment and when it will pass
Hey man now you’re really living

Now you’re really giving everything
And you’re really getting all you gave
Now you’re really living what
This life is all about

Now what would you say if i told you that
Everyone thinks you’re a crazy old cat
Hey man now you’re really living

Do you know what it’s like to fall on the floor
And cry your guts out ’til you got no more
Hey man now you’re really living

Have you ever made love to a beautiful girl
Made you feel like it’s not such a bad world
Hey man now you’re really living

People sing
Do you know what it’s like to fall on the floor
And cry your guts out ’til you got no more
Hey man now you’re really living

Just saw the sun rise over the hill
Never used to give me much of a thrill
But hey man now i’m really living
–The Eels.

I’ve always been a fan of Derek Webb’s music.

Well, not always, but since the first time I heard his songs. I’ve always liked Derek because I felt like his music was always part of some ongoing conversations that I have been having — like if we ever sat down and talked to each other, that it wouldn’t be very hard, because a lot of the same ideas float around in our heads. Maybe that’s true, maybe that’s because I hear in Derek’s songs what I want to hear. Either way, I was listening to “I See Things Upside Down” by Derek this week, and I got to the song, “What is Not Love.” While I’ve always liked the song, it struck me this afternoon how clearly this song relates to all of these ideas that I’ve been thinking lately. And how, if I’m serious about ANYTHING that I say, then these things have to be the case. While listening to the song is much more powerful, the lyrics will have to suffice.

Derek says:

what looks like failure is success
and what looks like poverty is riches
when what is true looks more like a knife
it looks like you’re killing me
but you’re saving my life

chorus
but i give myself to what looks like love
and i sell myself for what feels like love
and i pay to get what is not love
and all just because i see things upside down

what looks like weakness can do anything
and what looks like foolishness is understanding
when what is powerful has not come to fight
it looks like you’re going to war
but you lay down your life

chorus
what looks like torture is a time to rejoice
what sounds like thunder is a comforting voice
when what is beautiful looks broken and crushed
and i say i don’t know you
but you say it’s finished
when what is beautiful looks broken and crushed
and i say i don’t know you
but you say it’s finished

If I believe any of the things that I have talked about, then Derek is exactly right. My life will look completely upside down to everyone else in the world. It will look like failure, and weakness, and poverty, but it will be success, and strength, and richness. That’s tough. It’s tough knowing that if I’m serious about all the words that I can type so cheaply, that the way I live is going to be seen as crazy to everyone else. That hits me especially hard, because it means that what other people think about me — in fact, what MOST people think about me will be that I’m a failure, than I’m weak, that I’m poor. And as someone who cares deeply about what other people think about him, that a cut that approaches the bone. (And the song becomes relevant again, as the truth keeps looking more like a knife.)

These days, that’s the big question. As I count the costs of the things that I am starting to believe, am I willing to pay? Am I willing to make these words worth something more than cheap keystrokes and easy late-night conversations?

“And while we’re on the subject of hard work…”

(That’s a Woody Guthrie quote.)

I was listening to an older cd today — “Coming to Life” by The Normals. I used to listen to this cd a ton 4-5 years ago when, I would say, I was a much different person. When I listened to it then, I was in love with it because it would stir so many emotions in me that it was ridiculous. It was a time when who I was, and how I related to my faith was based very much on how I felt about things, and how things had the ability to make me feel.

I listen to the same cd today, and I feel very little. 5 years ago, that would have destroyed me. Now I realized that those feelings are replaced with something different.

There’s a lyric from another cd by The Normals. The sing is lamenting the loss of innocence, and how he never had the ability to know when that innocence was being lost. However, what he realizes is that, in being redeemed, is that a new wisdom has taken the place of this innocence. I think he’s exactly right. I absolutely would not trade the faith I have found for the faith that was rooted in emotions and similar issues. The faith I have found that is much more deeply seated (though not deeply enough) that does not rely on the currency of emotions is much more suited to living this life the way we were intended to live.

As far as I see it, it is impossible for me to be free from this way of ordering the world that we have come up with in America. I am in debt, and that debt has tied me so firmly to the system that I can’t hope to be freed. The example of my student loan debt is the clearest. If I am unable to repay my loans, there is a cosigner for those loans — my parents. Any decision to do something drastic would not only have an effect on me, but it would trickle down to other people.

But then again, Jesus told me that if I want to follow him, I must hate my family (figuratively, I know), and that I must leave now and let the dead bury the dead.

Does that mean what it sounds like?