(or When Sin Got Sexy or The Church’s View on Smoking or It Would Suck to Have Asthma)

In an attempt to dissuade smoking, I remember adults and health books saying it looked “uncool.”  I hardly agreed.  Although never taking-up the habit, “uncoolness” was far from the compelling cause.  I have to say, the thought of one smoking in a Parisian café, suavely engrossed in a good book, or stimulating conversation, rates as one of the more “cool” looking scenes in my opinion.  In its proper context, I think smoking is sexy.  

Too bad it gives you cancer.

(Random aside: I wikepedia’ed smoking and came to find that these little white sticks have dented history since 3000BC!?  Among other interesting, disturbing facts, “Between 1970 an 1995, per-capita cigarette consumption in poorer developing countries increased by 67 percent, while it dropped by 10 percent in the richer developed world. Eighty percent of smokers now live in less developed countries. By 2030, the World Health Organization (WHO) forecasts that 10 million people a year will die of smoking-related illness, making it the single biggest cause of death worldwide, with the largest increase to be among women. WHO forecasts' the 21st century's death rate from smoking to be ten times the 20th century's rate ("Washingtonian" magazine, December 2007)).

I was taking a walk the other day and passed a relatively fit looking woman on the other side of the road.  She was probably fifty or so, and I think what led to my initial double take was the fact that she required the pursuit of an inhaler two times in our fifty-yard span of passing.  Man, it would suck to have asthma.  But what an inspiration to see people like this, captured by disease, or disability, but still committed to a life that fights the odds.

But then I realized it wasn’t an inhaler.  

The woman was smoking a cigarette.  

While walking.  

Inspirational moment had passed.

Maybe something about this was good though—at least she was still exercising, right?  And certainly being “transparent” in her addiction.  But…really…together…cigarettes and cardio?  Could they work?  Should they work?  Puffing the odd cigarette in a Parisian café is one thing.  Sucking down cigs while exercising is another.  And publicly!  But then I got back on my “things that suck” bandwagon and realized an addiction to smoking must be really awful.  I have enough addictions and rarely have the gall to admit to them, especially in public.  Her authenticity appealed to me and although it didn’t strike me as sexy, it did strike me as honest—and I liked that.  Which led to my consideration of today’s “emerged church.”  We love authenticity.  But unfortunately, I feel like it’s taken on a pretty sexy twist.

It’s one thing to attempt belief in a wooden cross and unconditional Christ who wants to save you.  But it’s an entirely other to walk that out.  As if it’s enough.  As if his exercise really cuts the bill.  Without cost.  Without adornment.  Without a sexy cigarette in hand.  I think a lot of our dogma has moved into walking while smoking—because at least you’re out for the walk...and, at least you’re smoking with authenticity.  

So am I saying we can’t have our walk and smoke our cigarette, too?  In some ways, I guess, yeah.  But I think the bigger thing I’m saying is that there’s a temptation to make, and keep, sin sexy.  To over-glorify exercise with a cigarette, versus just exercise—to keep afloat destructive habits, as long as they’re “in accountability.”  Again though, I’m not saying cigarettes are “bad,” or “following Christ and/or authenticity,” is a seamless “good.”  Furthermore, I’m not meaning to minimize, or maximize, given habits.  These are theologically fringe conversations you can take up with God.  What I am meaning to say though, is that I think we’ve gotta be willing to further grapple with an atoned for, yet transparently addicted culture of saints.  Furthermore, to tread lightly in treating the arguably sexy appeal of sin.  Can they walk together?  Should they walk together?  How do they walk together?  

Because no matter how sexy smoking can seem, it still leads to death.

Airplane

Airplanes are one of the more perplexing things in life to me.  They’re intimate and communal, yet detached and individual. Unfaithful in offering a detailed view, yet immeasurable in light of granting “the big picture.”

I’m flying right now.  En route home from the Orange Conference in Atlanta, which collected thousands of leaders aiming to rethink our thoughtful (and sometimes not so thoughtful) attempts at “Church.”  It was encouraging on many fronts, but overwhelming on many others—revealing a naked and yet overdressed, vow-less and yet overly complex, modern Bride.

The man behind me is speaking German and has ordered three “vodka and tonics.”  The woman in front of me is holding a baby.  She seems sad and tired.  The man beside me snores in intervals of three and hasn’t moved since take-off.  The guy across the way looks about forty, with a young daughter.  Going by their head-gear, they’re Jewish and look to have a tender relationship.  And these are but the inside faces.  My window keeps changing its visage, from cloud, to mountains and soon to be ocean.

Imagine all the stories on just this plane, let alone the faces of atmosphere airing its frame.  Where do they come from?  And where are they going?  Which can’t help but make me think about leaving this conference and wondering where we’re all going—and if the airtime we experienced was enough to change where we’ll choose to go?

I believe the distance between the Church Body is shrinking.  Mileage between denominations and destinations seems to be lessening.  Masses are colliding and ministries collaborating toward new (and newly old) attempts at the Commission.  But I’m still can’t help but realize we’re gonna land in 46 minutes…and all these people are gonna go their own way and reenter their own story.  And I have to wonder if all of us from the conference will do the same?  If all of us in the Church will continue doing the same?  Will we choose to keep colliding on certain fronts, sharing airtime and elevation, but then isolate again when the rubber hits the runway?

Not sure what I’m meaning to say here, exactly, or if there’s every anything conclusive to say after all—heck, I’m thousands of feet in the air, so far from conclusive statements of precision.  I guess I just want us, and me, to be aware of the Churches full process in attempting to fly—the take-off and landing points, as much as the airtime in-between.  That we’d be grounds in our points of departure and destination, but risky in our willingness to head upwards.  I guess I just want our generation of disciples to be with the Bride in all parts of Her aisle—porch and alter, as well as airtime in between.  Flying high with lofty ideas and innovation is good, but its most important and challenging task is “landing well.”  Integrating successfully.  

The bad news is, I have no idea what this looks like.  For me.  For you.  For us.

But the good news is, the pilot just announced a grace period.  Seventeen minutes till landing.

This is a more exposing spread of paragraphs than my norm, so bear with me if I’ve moved into a realm too vulnerable for your tastes.  

So it was my birthday a couple weeks ago.  I’ve never been a big birthday person, but this year really wasn’t.  Birthdays weren’t grand celebrations for me growing-up (conversation/issue for another day), which takes my view of these (birth) days to a benchmark of sorts, but not much more.  (Although my mom does sing a pretty awful, and thus decently hysterical, yearly rendition of “Happy Birthday” to my answering machine.)  All mediocrage aside though, twenty-seven marked the first “bad birthday” I’ve ever had.

Suffice it to say I’ve never been “the typical girl.”  And certainly never the typical “Christian girl.”  I knew I held dreams of marriage and mothering (mothering and marriage is probably the more suitable order).  And I knew I had expectations and assumptions of “right passages.”  But I didn’t know to what extent.

In summary, my 27th birthday woke to an I am single soliloquy spanning Vogue’s entire archive.  Again, rare to my typical form, or at least conscious and shared form (meaning I think this has all been subconsciously around for as long as my birthday has), I hit the girly’est, lonliest, love-craving place I can remember.  No matter how shallow and ungodly it seemed, all I wanted was a man to tell me I was beautiful, and if he had a ring in hand, or was named Ben and/or Jerry, we could’ve just gone straight to the vows.   

These feelings were shocking and depressing enough, but they weren’t even the most pervasive.  I told you this was vulnerable.  The feelings I felt most strongly that sunny 27th morning were sadness and guilt.  Sigmund Freud says depression is repressed anger.   I would agree.  My sadness felt very, very sad, but more honestly, it felt very, very angry. Angry at myself.  Angry at my circumstances—or lack there of.  And angry at my anger.  Furthermore, I felt guilty, apologizing to God for being where I was/am that day/today.  “I’m sorry I’m not married.  I’m sorry I don’t have children. I’m sorry I don’t know what I’m doing with my life.  I’m sorry God…so sorry…”  As phrases hit the page, and further inwardness came out, it felt like I was listening to someone else, and yet something of the lands felt recognizably real, too.

One of the things I appreciate about blogging is that you can click “post” without necessarily finishing a thought process.  And that’s what I’m about to do.  Life is hard.  Believing God has you where you are, on purpose, is hard.  And feels really bad at times.  If the Bible is true though, and the Cross really happened, Something is unfolding that wants you and me to be exactly where we are today.  Even if that means having a bad birthday.  

makes it easier to believe God can handle the whole world in His hands today, but struggles to handle just mine?

I was asked in a radio interview last week the biggest challenge confronting college campuses today.  I said “isms,” with pluralism and relativism topping the list.  Imagine if your campus was restructured such that all faiths were combined under the same umbrella (I can’t not mention that “ella, ella, ella” is running through my head right now).  Imagine that your “staff position” was mixed with that of the Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Athiest staffers, too?  "You’re all aiming for the same thing right?!  Trying to help students explore their “god-concepts”? Ummmm, sort, but no, not really…  The LA Times ran an article Sunday that doesn’t fall too far off this paradigm shift. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-alameddine6apr06,0,2743519.story

It’s eerie how much this article took me back lawn conversations and lectures during my undergrad days at Emory.  In short, the writer takes about 80% of the article to build a point regarding “Allah” as synonymous with “God,” and thus rightfully needing to be used as such in the English vocabulary.  The point is padded by remarking that so many religious faces are acceptingly worn by “God,” and yet Allah remains separate—dangerously separate.

I’ll agree to the extent that openness to the term and context of “Allah” would do our linguistic and existential vocabularies well.  But on almost every other front, I have to disagree.  Compartmentalizing all gods into one “God” ends up minimizing all the gods.  Every “god” of every religion is unique and uniquely named into its given culture, history, cult and/or custom.  And although most may assume similar characteristics, they mean different things, to the degree that that have been differentiated at some point in history in order to designate a given faith, or spirituality.

Presuming that “all gods are the same” and should be titled under the same heading (“God”) feels to me like saying “all people are the same,” so let’s ditch specific “names” and just refer to each other as “people.”  Furthermore, consider my current writing environment: a family of bluebirds is singing into my window, and the Berlin Philharmonic is wafting spectacular notes from my living room below.  But what if I were to say, “There are animals making noise outside my window and sounds coming from downstairs.”  Oh how this minimizes the grandiosity of precise sound enriching my ears!

Finally, and I feel like I’m just getting started, but the writer of the article ended with: “One nation under Allah?,” as if to say this is where our country needs to head.  What a scary thought, I think—not because Allah is scary, but because trying to “refound” the history of a given country, let alone faith, is manipulative, dangerous and dishonest.  America wasn’t founded as a nation under Allah, or else old Christopher would’ve said so.  Furthermore, Islam wasn’t founded under “God,” or else I’m quite sure their Christopher would’ve said so, too, for Allah’s sake.

I wonder what it felt like?
I wonder what he felt like?

And why him in the first place?  It’s not like there weren't other people on the road, or like he didn’t have anything to do that day.

What about the minutes wherein they chose him?  Did they yell at him, or beat him - did he fight back?  How much force did agreement take?  What was Jesus doing during this time?

What did agreeing feel like?  Did he know the cause at hand?  Or its effect?  Did he even know who Jesus was?

How long was the walk?  Did he ever hear the whole story?  Did he need to hear the whole story?  

What does it mean that Sovereignty allows crosses?
Allows us to carry crosses?
Chooses us to carry crosses?
And sometimes forces us to?

Heard an interview with Drew Barrymore lately, where she said, “I don’t want to sit around and hope good things will happen.  I want to make them happen…I want to be in control of my own destiny.”  And on a different, but I-promise-to-tie-together-in-a-second-note, I was strolling by the ocean last week and distracted by the accelerating legs of a small bird.  He made me smile, with sand-cast feet running full-speed away from the approaching waters.  Each wave, clearly more wise and experienced than this little creature, showed uncanny amusement almost, as it let the bird race gravity.  Out of breath and in what seemed his fated end, the determined creature contributed one final stride.  And then, as if destiny were never in question, his wings took rise as his body glided off the sand into the warm, spring air.        

I was impressed by this exhausted run, but more exhausted by the bird’s forgotten ability to fly.  Because in a remarkably similar way, I forget this same thing.  If what God says is true, and I really have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 1:3), I have the power to fly—but typically choose to walk chained.  

Any given day finds me running as fast and as far as my legs will take me, which on good days is pretty far.  But the sad truth is, I’ve still settled for the pace of running, when I have the option of graced flying.  I’ve substituted the cheap lie that lets me function, for the unfathomable Life that lets me fly.  

We all want to make good things happen.  Great things, even.  But we can only cover so much ground, before the waves take us over—control so much distance, before destiny takes us under.  I’m wondering what would it look like today to be delivered from our own feat, and positioned into God’s?

Weakness—I think that’s what I need.  I think that’s what I want to ask God for today.

Outlandish?  Completely. Counterintuitive to me, culture and a lot of “the church”?  Utterly.  

But the truth of it is, I need to be weak.  God’s Word, and God, himself, I am realizing this Easter week, is flooded with personifications of weakness.  Endured weakness, failed weakness, transformed weakness, transforming weakness, and ultimately, I guess, resurrected weakness.  And maybe this is a stretch, but as of today, I feel like something of the crux of Christianity lies a willing surrender to weakness.  

Heard a thought recently that I can’t let go of.  “People will admire you for being strong, but love you for being weak.”  I have tried for most of my life to be strong.  I covet admiration and crave affirmation.  I long for people to see me as unfailing—to know my faith as unshaking.  Bottom line, I do whatever I can to avoid weakness.

Strength saturates our culture.  It’s sexy, stable and stands on its own.  Unfortunately though, it’s also a never-ending facade.  Yes, strength is always willing to lead us somewhere, but it’s always a Somewhere Road to nowhere.  So what I’m learning is weakness is actually my source of going where God wants me to go, which may mean “going,” but may also mean staying, being, or waiting, i.e. taboos in our culture, and in our post-fall complexion.  

As a Christian, my greatest understanding of Christ rises in my greatest understood weakness without him.  Thus, my strength after God MUST be prefaced by weakness in me.  Willingness to surrender—willingness to admit imperfection—this then, is my to way to strength.  My way to love.  The way to God.  

When I am weak, then I have reason to be with God.  When I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:10).