Children Obey Your Parents

I am currently sitting at my desk at my second job (Ministry doesn't often pay the bills) and am about to go insane with boredom. Things are so slow here that my co-workers and I have spent the last five hours killing time on the internet. I would like to share with you a little treasure I found during this time. It's a poem. It's a really bad poem. I left all the spelling and grammar errors alone. They're part of the fun. Here it is. (Seriously, it's abysmal)

Jenny was so happy about the house they had found.
For once in her life it was on the right side of town.
She unpacked her things with such great ease.
As she watched her new curtains blow in breeze.

How wonderful it was to have her own room.
School would be starting, she'd have friends over soon.
There'd be sleep-overs, and parties; she was so happy
It's just the way she wanted her life to be.

On the first day of school, everything went great.
She made new friends and even got a date!
She thought, "I want to be popular and I'm going to be,
Because I just got a date with the star of the team!"

To be known in this school you had to have a clout,
And dating this guy would sure help her out.
There was only one problem stopping her fate.
Her parents had said she was too young to date.

"Well, I just won't tell them the entire truth.
They won't know the difference; what's there to lose?"
Jenny asked to stay with her friends that night.
Her parents frowned but said, "All right."

Excited, she got ready for the big event
But as she rushed around like she had no sense,
She began to feel guilty about all the lies,
But what's a pizza, a party, and moonlight ride?

Well, the pizza was good, and the party was great,
But the moonlight ride would have to wait.
For Jeff was half drunk by this time.
But he kissed her and said that he was just fine.

Then the room filled with smoke and Jeff took a puff.
Jenny couldn't believe he was smoking that stuff.
Now Jeff was ready to ride to the point
But only after he'd smoked another joint.

They jumped in the car for a moonlight ride,
Not thinking that he was too drunk to drive.
They finally made it to the point at last,
And Jeff started trying to make a pass.

A pass is not what jenny wanted at all
(and by a pass, I don't mean playing football).
"Perhaps my parents were right ... maybe I am too young.
Boy, how could I ever, ever be so dumb.

With all her might, she pushed Jeff say away:
"Please take me home, I don't want to stay."
Jeff cranked up the engine and floored the gas.
In a matter of seconds they were going too fast.

As Jeff drove on in a fit of wild anger,
Jenny knew that her life was in danger.
She begged and pleaded for him to slow down,
But he just got faster as they neared the town.

"Just let me go home! I'll confess that I lied.
I really went out for a moonlight ride."
Then all of a sudden, she saw a big flash.
"Oh God, Please help us! We're going to crash!"

She doesn't remember the force of the impact.
Just that everything all of a sudden went black.
She felt someone remove her from the twisted rubble,
And heard, " Call an ambulance! There kids are in trouble!"

Voices she heard.... A few words at best.
But she knew there were two cars involved in the wreck.
Then wondered to herself if Jeff was all right,
And if the people in the other car were alive.

She awoke in the hospital to faces so sad.
"You've been in a wreck and it looks pretty bad."
These voices echoed inside her head,
As they gently told her that Jeff was dead.

They said "Jenny, we've done all we can do.
But it looks as if we'll lose you too."
"But the people in the other car?" Jenny cried.
"We're sorry, Jenny, they also died."

Jenny prayed, "God, forgive me for what I've done
I only wanted to have just one night of fun."
"Tell those people's family, I've made their lives dim,
And wish I could return their families to them."

"Tell Mom and Dad I'm sorry I lied,
And that it's my fault so many have died.
Oh, nurse, won't you please tell them that for me?
The nurse just stood there — she never agreed.

But took Jenny's hand with tears in her eyes.
And a few moments later Jenny died.
A man asked the nurse, " Why didn't you do your best
To bid that girl her one last request?"

She looked at the man
with eyes so sad.
"Because the people in the other car
were her Mom and Dad."

I laughed out loud and gagged simultaneously upon reading the ending. I think I will share this with my youth group next Wednesday.

"So children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right -"

"Yeah, because it's the first commandment with a promise."

"Good. You know what that promise is?"

"What?"

"If you don't you will murder them and then die slowly."

"Oh."

"Now go in peace to serve our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ."

Cherishing The Moments That Are Absorbed By What Is Real

I just finished watching Grizzly Man by Werner Herzog. It's a profound documentary about Timothy Treadwell, a man who's desire to make peace with his own soul and find a place to belong led him to live with grizzly bears in Alaska for 13 summers. Why did he stop at the unlucky number 13? He didn't really have a choice. He definitely would have spent more summers there, but at the end of the 13th, one of the bears ate him.

What makes this film brilliant and so beautifully haunting is the honesty humanity with which it deals with such a difficult protagonist. Herzog does not begin to attempt to make Treadwell a black and white hero. The film shows his life to be a messy one. Treadwell ended up going insane, and Herzog does not try to pretty this up. Neither does he exploit it by turning him into a two dimensional crazy person for comic effect or added eerieness. Herzog doesn't even romanticize Treadwell's love for nature. Where in nature Treadwell claimed to have found love, perfection and oneness, Herzog, in a voice over of a close-up of a grizzly's face, confesses to seeing only "the overwhelming indifference of nature." (Which seems to be the interpretation supported by at least one of the bears whom Treadwell served for 13 summers.) What Herzog does is show a man going to extremes to try and find something worth living for.

Treadwell found it increasingly difficult to see anything real in another human. He could not find intimacy and belonging in the human world. His way of dealing with this was to sink into madness, and create in his mind a oneness with the grizzlies and their habitat that was not there.

Herzog does not demean Treadwell for this. He treats his search as what it is, tragic, beautiful, human, something we can all relate to and learn from, and, most important for Herzog, honest (though his solution was not - thus the tragic part). For Herzog the world is not unified in God, or love, or harmony, but chaos and violence, and he sympathizes with any person who looks honestly at this chaos and retreats into insanity.

Though I obviously do not share Herzog's worldview (I respect it as the most truthful one that does not know God) I was deeply touched by his film. It plunges deep into a troubled soul and offers no simplistic, cardboard answers, yet still left me with a deeper appreciation for life. I can relate to a world whose search for truth in others results only in consternation because it no longer knows how to look for or recognize the Imago Dei in another. I've been there. Truthfully, some of me still is (as long as we fight, parts of all of us are).

This film made me especially grateful for my fiancee. For the fact that I, unlike Treadwell, have someone with whom to share and live out the real, the self-sacrificing love and faithfulness of Jesus Christ. It made me appreciate the oneness that God is creating in us. It made me want to call and leave ridiculous messages on her voice mail so she can laugh at my expense. It made me cherish the moments we share that seem incredibly real. Like last summer when we sat together on the sofa and I held her in my arms and looked at the clock then closed my eyes and stuck my nose in her hair and just tried to really live in the last eight minutes we had left to celebrate our third anniversary. Those eight minutes are still real. Or the times we argue without the fear that our disagreements will lead to separation. Or the time I bore my soul to her and shared my deepest secret. It was a brutal moment. But it was honest, vulnerable, safe, and godly. It was not a happy moment. It was a real one.

Why is it that people like Treadwell are unable to find the oneness they seek in other people? It is not that people like my fiancee and I are better or know how to see what is real because of our own merit, but because what is real has found us. I hope more people like Timothy Treadwell are not left to escape into madness, but see that they too can be found by what is real.

Politically Correct language Is Indeed Political, But Far From Correct.

In truth, all language is political. This is because when writing or conversing, there is more going on than the communication of whatever base information the words stand for. There are numerous different ways in which the same basic thing can be said. The words that the writer/speaker uses are specifically chosen, in part, because the writer/speaker is trying to communicate something about themselves. Their rhetoric reveals not only what group said person identifies or is attempting to identify with, but can also reveal how said person feels about whatever group may be their subject and/or whatever group they are addressing.

Example: I work with teens. Say I am at a youth camp and approach a group of boys who obviously like emo music very much to introduce myself.

If I say, "Hey guys, sweet hair. I like the way you shoot it to the right when it gets in your eyes too much (cocky smile). That was a Death Cab song you were playing there on your acoustic guitar right? (Wait for them to nod in silence) Sweet. Nice stickers on that guitar too, how they're all crooked and unbalanced. Especially that one. I'm glad you're doing your part to combat the Nazi message... I'm Wil, what are your names?" I reveal myself to be someone who fears becoming out of touch with age, nevertheless has become slightly out of touch and tries to combat this by keeping up with popular music trends and watching Napoleon Dynamite to learn the current acceptable way to say "cool," but who realizes this and hates it for it's shallowness and therefore tries to make himself feel like he's above it by slipping in some sarcasm. I also care, at least on a shallow level, for these teens, am open to their culture, and want to be accepted by them.

On the other hand, if I walk up to them and say, "Hey, I knew you punks were gonna be trouble. Lunch started fifteen minutes ago, why are you loiterin' around here? ...Who am I? You can call me Sir. Come on. Now! Don't just look at me like I got tinkle on my pants. And afterwards I got some clippers back in my cabin, I'll have the little lady cut that hair. Between that and those tight jeans you look like a sad, pretty little girl. Come on! Move! Maybe if your pants weren't so tight you could keep up. Shameful, showing all you got through your denim like that. Used to be the girls I had to get onto for not coverin' up what God gave 'em. Now it's you little boys too!" I reveal my ignorance of and/or dislike for teen culture and that I care little for these particular teens and whether or not I am accepted by them. In fact, I probably harbor something personal against all cool kids their age and will soon be the subject of creepy little government post cards that my new neighbors will receive whenever I move.

The examples are infinite, but the point was grasped long ago. The words chosen communicate much about the communicator and their position toward their subject and audience.

Admittedly, in a situation like this, the above judgments may not be accurate. Maybe the second guy does care. Maybe a lot. Maybe he does have a gruff but still innocent concern for decency. Maybe he's just having a bad day. Maybe he did just trickle in his drawers a little and at this moment he's self-conscious and embarrassed and his words came carelessly out of emotion. But when politically correct language is used, especially in writing and public discourse, it is not careless but intentional and calculated. Some of it (not all, but some) is so ridiculous that it would be virtually impossible for anyone to use it on accident (poor = economically disadvantaged?). The question begging to be asked is why the person using the PC language is doing so? The answer, more than employing it for the benefit of poor people and folks in wheelchairs, is to communicate something about themselves. And what they are telling us usually isn't true.

What they want to convey is that they are nice and care about these people. That they really are trying to make things better for them. Sounds sweet. But it's not. In reality politically correct language is almost always patronizing, lazy and selfish. It allows the person using it to feel like they have been a part of a real solution without requiring them to actually do anything. And those who supposedly benefit from the new moniker see right through this in a way that only the often-patronized can.

As David Foster Wallace (good writer, check him out) says in his essay Authority and American Usage:

I strongly doubt whether a guy who has four small kids and makes $12,000 a year feels more empowered or less ill-used by a society that carefully refers to him as 'economically disadvantaged' rather than 'poor.' If I were he, in fact, I'd probably find the Politically Correct English term insulting...(because)...like many forms of vogue usage Politically Correct English functions primarily to signal and congratulate certain virtues in the speaker - scrupulous egalitarianism, concern for the dignity of all people, sophistication about the political implications of language - and so serves the self-regarding interests of the PC far more than it serves any of the persons or groups named.

The language might be nice, but nice is shallow. Nice is not necessarily concerned for what is actually good. In fact, when it is used to pacify those suffering and simultaneously cloak inaction, nice is downright evil.

What does all this mean then for me, as a Christian? Well, I use politically correct language (as you can tell by the absence of gender specific pronouns in the above unless I am referring to a specifically named person). In some ways it is important. The way in which we talk about things influences the way we think about them,* but it is not enough to just change the way we think about those who suffer. We need to change the way we act towards them. Let's quit patronizing them with nice titles so we can feel good about ourselves and actually do something for them. The love of God cannot be separated from the love of our brothers and sisters. And I am guilty of this.

So what am I going to do? Or am I just preaching? Doing exactly what I am condemning and thinking that simply writing this is enough? I hope not. And if I do not let you know in a later blog how I am, in some way or another, trying to actually do something, you have the right and responsibility to reply to this blog and call me a self-righteous, patronizing hypocrite.



*Which is exactly why I refuse to replace "poor" with "economically disadvantaged." Poor should be a terrible word, but not to insult the poor. It should stir something in their brothers and sisters that moves them to loving action. "Economically disadvantaged" makes poverty sound too much like a permanent spinal chord injury or something. Something unfortunate, but something that the average person can do nothing about. So instead of helping we "commiserate" from a distance and leave the work of aiding our so called "commiserator" to some specialist.