Bleak Friday: A short story

Bleak Friday
By Colin S. Liddle

Two fifty inch plasma HD TVs.
Zenith surround sound system.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Assassin’s Creed 2

This is not a Christmas list. This is a list of items that I will be getting killer deals on at Target at 5:00 am on Friday, November 27. My cousin made me watch a really lame movie once; it was called There Will Be Blood, but I liked something a character said in it: “I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed.” Now, I know that he goes crazy and beats the preacher kid’s head in with a bowling pin at the end of the movie, but these words ring true to me. And I can live with other people succeeding, just so long as it doesn’t affect my success. I will get every last one of these items and I will get them all for killer deals.

But not for another twelve hours. Ugh.

I’ve come up from playing WoW to join my family for Thanksgiving dinner. I’m not a gaming nerd, actually, I played football in high school and lettered as a right tackle. I have a really hot girlfriend; my parents said it was only family that could come over for dinner, though. Shame, really, I wanted my cousion to really see how much hotter my girl is than his. Facebook just doesn’t do her justice. Oh well, he should know it anyway, his girlfriend’s a cow.

Sitting at the table while everybody feigns an answer of what they’re thankful for is quite a chore. God. Family. America. How about somebody says something different for once? We all know nobody really means that when they say it. My cousin says he’s thankful for all three things and then mentions his girlfriend. I think that Family, God and America would be pretty upset to hear their name thrown in with the hideous girl that he dates. The funny thing is that my friend Casey thinks she’s hot. But he’s never really been able to get girls, so his taste is pretty desperate at this point. He only had one girlfriend all three years of high school. She wasn’t too hot either, I don’t know why he dated her so long.

The thankful parade reaches me and I stand up to give an actual honest answer to what I’m thankful for:

Two fifty inch plasma HD TVs.
Zenith surround sound system.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Assassin’s Creed 2

All for killer deals.

“I guess that means you’re going to Target at 5 in the morning?” My aunt says, bemused.

I nod my head slyly and sit down. My mother glares at me. I’m thankful for her and everything, but I figured whatever is on my mind most at that time is probably what I’m really thankful for. Even when people are asked about it, they don’t actually think about what they’re thankful for, they only think about what response they can give to avoid looking like a jerk.

Dinner gets over and my cousin and I play the first Modern Warfare game for a while to pass the time. The rest of the family is in the other room watching some stupid Pixar movie. Shrek or something. My cousin is horrible at the game; I only face a real challenge when I play online. It’s a good thing I’m getting the new game in the morning; I’ve completely mastered all of the levels.

I finish owning my cousin in the desert stage and we decide to watch a movie before going to sleep. We pop in Transformers 2. I don’t even think the movie’s that cool, but Megan Fox runs around a lot in it, so I can’t complain. My girlfriend gets mad when I tell her she would look better with her hair dyed like Megan Fox. I don’t really know why it pisses her off; if you can change yourself to look better, do it. I look better with bleached tips, so I bleach them.

My alarm goes off. 4:05 AM. I wake my cousin up and he moans. I tell him to hurry up or I’m leaving him. He reminds me that he’s the one driving, so I just tell him to hurry up. We get ready pretty quickly. I check my wallet to make sure all my cards are present and we head out the door.

I arrive at Target and there are already something like forty people queued up out front. These losers. Did they have Thanksgiving dinner in line or something? Oh well, I’m still pretty big from football and the people in front of me are mostly overweight moms and pencil-necked Pokemon nerds. It will be pretty easy to overpower them.

We wait a little bit longer and my cousin starts talking about some book he’s reading. I like books, but mostly memoir books. Well, mostly memoir books by Peyton Manning. He babbles on, but I stop listening once I see a figure with a red vest walk to the doors and begin unlocking them. The crowd begins to rouse and I get my game face on.

Two fifty inch plasma HD TVs.
Zenith surround sound system.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Assassin’s Creed 2

All for killer deals.

That’s my focus. Nothing else. The doors open and everybody begins to rush inside. I successfully push through about fifteen people to make it inside the store before them and my hunt begins. Top priority – The plasma TVs, $300 each. Insane deals. Absolute musts. I put my running skills to the test and pass up a few string bean kids and a short plump woman that looks like George Costanza.

I reach the electronic section with the plasma screens. There’s already a guy who has the first two in his shopping cart and is reaching for another one. There are four left. I’m still OK. I tap my foot impatiently as he reaches for the next one. He’s slowly budging it off the shelf and my hand starts shaking. I don’t have time for this. I need to get moving. I ask him if he needs any help, but he says he’s fine. There are more people that are accumulating in the store and my chances of getting the rest of my items are going down. The TVs are my top priority, but I need to get out of here with one hundred percent of what I came in for. He slowly inches the TV screen off the shelf. I offer my services one more time and he responds in an annoyed manner that he’s got it. That’s it. I reach into his shopping cart and take out the two TVs that he has in there and speed off. I hear him yell something as I run toward the gaming section, but I just tell him to get the other TVs because I’m in a hurry.

My cousin meets up with me and I tell him to watch over the TVs while I get the games. He agrees and I rush over to the aisle with Call of Duty 2 and Assassin’s Creed 2. Suddenly, my speed skills are rendered moot, as I run into a crowd of about fifty people all rushing toward the games. I find myself caught in the middle of the siege of people and unable to move my legs as much. This doesn’t faze me, I played right tackle in high school; I know how to get through people. I lock my fists together and begin shoving people out my way. Several others are doing this as well, but not to the degree that I am. Nobody’s going to get those two games over me. I’ve prepared way too long for this. As I mow down people in front of me, I reach a point where I have stopped feeling the ground beneath me. There is a squishiness beneath my shoes and I then realize it’s a person’s face on the ground. I can’t stop now. People are still pushing. The games are only thirty dollars each. That’s half off. I’d stop and help that person if it were any other circumstance, but I promised myself that I’d get every last item on my list.

Finally I reach the glass pane display with the shining light on my two games for everybody to see. There are several copies left and the salesperson hands me both of them upon request. My mission is almost complete. I turn to head to the sound system aisle, but I’m trapped with all the other people still trying to get their games. I begin to squeeze out, but nobody is budging. Can’t these idiots see that I need to get out of here? I’m trying to be nice on the way out but everybody keeps pushing against me. I’m right up against the glass and I can’t move because of the current of people opposing me.

I stand there getting more and more aggravated at the fact that I can’t move; I even try some of my right tackle maneuvers, but the number of everyone has grown too large. I try to call up my cousin to see if he can go get the sound system, but he doesn’t answer his phone. Where the hell is he? I can’t believe I brought him, I should have brought Casey. Suddenly this short, fat high schooler with a bowl cut starts pushing against me and literally sends me back a few steps. My lower back hits one of the display controllers for a Wii sticking out from the glass pane. Ok. I’m done. I grab the stupid kid by his head and swing him around and bash his head against the glass. It cracks (the glass, not his head… At least I think so) and he drops to the floor. I see an opening. A light at the end of the tunnel. I power towards it before people can close it up again. I leap out of the crowd of people and I’m free.

With the two games tucked under my armpit, which is getting slippery from all the sweat, I high tail it over to the sound section. I turn around a corner of iPod docs and there it is — A single Zenith DA3520 Home Theater System remains, and it sits solely with the 120 dollar price tag, waiting for me. I advance towards it, but then my peripherals pick up another figure. I look to my left. It’s Casey. I then see that he’s also eyeing the same box of electronic goodness that I am. Casey’s my best friend and he’s a damn good Black Friday shopper, but he will not be the victor this morning. I promised myself I’d get every item on my list, come hell or high water. I don’t know if this situation would be classified under either, but best friend or not, he’s not getting MY Zenith home theater system.
“Hey man,” he says to me, pleasantly.
“Hey Casey,” I say. “You can come over to my house whenever you want to check out the system, once I set it up.”
“Oh, I don’t think so!”
With that we both make a mad dash towards the box. He’s faster than me, but I’m bigger, he reaches the Zenith box right before me but I pounce on him and we both go sliding across the floor of Target with our hands on the system. In an effort to gain leverage, I heave my elbow back at Casey and land a blow square on his nose. He lets go of the sound system and goes into the fetal position to clutchhis nose which has started trickling blood. Well, the blood coming from his nose is more than a trickle, but he’ll be fine. I climb to my feet in a dazed manner and compose myself. I reach down in my pocket to grab my phone and hear Casey rolling around on the ground yelling obscenities at me. Geez, Casey. He may have the mouth of a seller, but he could never take hard hits in football practice.
I call my cousin and again there’s no answer. Dammit, where the hell is he? I need to get in line before they get too long. Whatever, I’m sure he’s already in line. My cousin may not be the coolest of kids, but he’s pretty sharp in these situations. I hustle over to get in the check out line and finally stop to take a breath. My body hasn’t had this much adrenaline pumping through it since the forth quarter of the state championship game. I need to start working out again, this is a rush.
As the line gets closer to the clerk, I reach for my wallet and find, to my horror, nothing but an empty pocket with a large tear in it. Fuck. I holler out loud with fury and several people stare at me with a collective contorted expression on their faces. I turn to head back to the gaming area because I figure that’s where my pocket was torn. Dammit. I should be walking to my cousin’s car by now. I head back towards the gaming department and I see paramedics walking in and taking some random guy out in a stretcher. Geez, these Black Friday things are crazy. All of a sudden I see my cousin. And he doesn’t have the TVs with him! What is his g**damn problem? I start walking over to strangle him when I notice the two men in black uniforms with him. In an instant, all three of them look up at me and my cousin points me out. From out behind them steps the guy I stole the TVs from. Are you kidding me? He really got upset about that? I can’t believe this is going on.
I figure the TVs are a loss. Shit. I’ll still get them somehow; those two TVs are probably going to be put away, but they’ll restock them later today. I’ll come back with a hat and scarf on or something so they won’t recognize me. The two security guards and my cousin and the douche bag I won the TVs over are about twenty feet from the exit of the store and walking toward me. Wallet or not, I’m going to get these items back to my house. I lift my foot up defiantly to the two candy ass security guards and book it towards the doors to make my escape.
They realize I’m doing this as I speed to the doors and turn to go after me, but there’s no way they’re going to beat me. I’ll be at the door of my cousin’s car before they get outside the store. I am five feet from the door; this is it, I’m almost free, fresh air and great gaming awaits me at home. As I stick my hand out to push open the door, a push cart with my two HDTVs for 300 dollars each (killer deal) slides out recklessly in front of me. For a split second I feel like I’ve been blessed and I’ll be able to push these bad boys out to my car as well.
Two fifty inch plasma HD TVs.
Zenith surround sound system.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2
Assassin’s Creed 2

Awesome.
But before I can stop, I collide with both of them as they domino over and I fly forehead first into the glass doors of Target. I go through the door and land on the other side on my stomach as shards of glass bounce around me. I look up with my head spinning to see the security guards approaching me.
*******
I’m out the door right after Thanksgiving dinner and on my way to Wal Mart. The list has been running through my head ever since I saw the deals listed in the newspaper. This time I’m bringing Casey with me and not my stupid cousin who rats me out when they think he’s the one who stole the TVs from the guy. I figure with Casey, it’s best to join forces, and he forgave me pretty quickly for breaking his nose; he knows how competitive I am. Plus I had already done it once in practice and he his nose is pretty Owen Wilson to begin with. The TVs didn’t turn out to be such a big deal, the kid whose head I cracked against the glass was hurt pretty badly, but I only had to go to jail for three months with a plea and obeyance. The five hundred hours of community service kind of sucks, though, but whatever, I’m used to physical labor.
I’m doing things much smarter this year, I’m going to be first in line and rely on my speed more than my force. There aren’t any laws against speeding.
A forty eight inch Plasma HDTV.
Grand Theft Auto V
Halo 4
Pioneer subwoofers

Oh yeah. Killer deals.

2 Corinthians 10: 3 – Anti-War?

There have been about eight hundred billion posts by now by Christians like myself who don’t necessarily understand why Christianity has become predominantly conservative. There are several issues that many people feel safe siding with the right on as a Christian (gay marriage and abortion), but it seems a bit silly to me that there are so many Christians that seem to be pro-war and anti-hippy. Now I know that hippies can be extremely annoying and smelly, but let us not forgot the first hippy – Jesus Christ. A dude wearing a robe with long hair and a beard wandering around prophesying about loving your neighbor and your enemy and everybody else. It’s such a wonder that every red lettered sentence in the bible doesn’t end with: “, man.”

He was also something of a liberal back then and the pharisees were the conservatives. Here comes some guy who threatens to change everything and begins gathering a lot of followers that support him. This, of course, pisses the pharisees off and they spend all their time slandering him (sound like Fox News to you at all?) OK, that last comparison was a little spurious and the same could be said about the liberal media with conservatives, but I was rolling with something, OK?

I was reading the Bible the other day and I came across quite possibly one of my chapters ever (which I had never read before). 2 Corinthians 10. It’s full of awesome verses, definitely check it out, but this one popped out the most to me: Verse 3-4 “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.”

There it is as clear as day. An anti-war message in the middle of the Bible. Even the Bible is too liberal for some of these conservative pharisees.

It just really makes one wonder… More later.

-CSL

The role of God in my life the past few weeks.

Colin says:

Whenever I have a significant problem or grievance of sorts in my life, it always feels like the worst problem I’ve ever had. And even when it doesn’t feel that way, thinking of how things have been worse doesn’t make me feel any better. I generally think it’s the same with most people. The phrase “time heals all wounds” is certainly accurate, but the problem with having a wound being slowly mended by time is that– It feels about fifty times longer than it really is and sometimes we need a little reassurance along the way.

Considering that God knows everybody personally and knows all their personal problems, He’s the one who knows whose problems are the worst and whose are the most miniscule. The things that I’ve been struggling with recently don’t involve making a house payment (attaining financial stability, sure, but I’m not in trouble), finding where my next meal comes from, worrying about a warm place to sleep or even legal troubles. My struggles are more of the emotional sort and while all problems deal with emotions, I think it’s pretty safe to say that my problems are pretty miniscule compared to the ones I just listed.

The greatest thing about God is that I’m a spoiled brat in that I’m worried about emotional problems when there are teenagers in Haiti that have no comprehension of the question: “What do you do for fun?” There are a billion people out there whose life is exclusively about survival, no worries of career choice, spousal choice or even an ability to fathom what the world “leisure” might entail. By all means God should be smacking across the back of the head and saying: “Are you kidding me with this? You’re an asshole for even contemplating these things as problems while billions of my people are dying in the dirt!”

He doesn’t do that, though. He takes my problems just as seriously as anybody else’s and realizes that the mind is where the problems lie. God understands my mind better than anybody else and better than I do. I’ve been praying a lot to Him the past month or so and He has been answering and reassuring me that He’s there, even when I feel like I’m talking to nobody.

About three weeks ago, I had a very depressing day. Dealing with certain things was attacking my emotions all while at work (which sucks considering I’m answering phone calls for irked customers deprived of their merchandise purchased on eBay), I was looking forward to seeing the movie “Where the Wild Things Are” that night, thinking: “Yes, today sucks, but it will be fine tonight because I’m going to see WtWTA with two of my best friends. That will make me feel better. Spike Jonze, awesome effects, what could go wrong?” Well, the film itself was one of the most depressing movies I’ve ever seen. I went home that night, climbing into bed in my lonely apartment, feeling cold, hopeless and empty.

The next morning wasn’t any different. I woke up in the exact same mood that I went to sleep in, only now I had eight hours of work to look forward to on a Saturday afternoon. Driving to work, with the sky still a dark blue, daylight savings time having not happened yet, I began praying to God. As I prayed, however, I felt like I was just talking to myself, I felt like there was nobody up there listening to me and it was all bunch of bull shit, but somewhere inside of me, I didn’t feel that– Because I just began crying out to God, not asking for a sign, but just asking Him to help me. As Anne Lamott says, she only has two kinds of prayers: “Help me, help me, help me” and “thank you, thank you, thank you.”

Thirty seconds past. At best. I looked to my left and saw the mountains. Dark, yet clearly visible silhouettes of them against the shadowy blue of the sky. I was right at a point on the freeway where the long row of mountains took a dip, and right as the mountains began to dip, there was a cloud that began right as the mountains began descending and ended right where the mountains concluded their ascent. It was like a bridge– And above the cloudy bridge, there sat a single star, that, as I drove, was crossing over the cloud. The whole scene looked like this:

Now, whenever somebody tries to interpret a dream to me, I find myself rolling my eyes and just thinking: What a bunch of crap. Call me cynical, but think trying to relate dreams to every little aspect of your life is a bit extreme. The thing is, though, that image that I saw, an allegorical portrait of nature that God had painted for me, gave me so much to interpret and so much to analyze, yet it was very simple and it shut me up. The moment that I saw that, I felt peaceful and warm and within another thirty seconds, the image was gone, but the star kept moving over the mountains, having completed its course over the cloudy bridge. I felt like I was at a dip in my life and instead of letting me fall to the bottom with a quick descent, God stepped in, as He does, and guided me over what could be a very harrowing mess without Him.

The single star also felt very significant to me. Up until just now, I always remembered a scene in Ben Hur where Jesus appeared and everybody was looking at him and to each individual it looked like He was looking at just them. I YouTubed the scene really quickly and found that it wasn’t in the movie (Jesus does show up, though), but I still remember that depiction of Him. It makes perfect sense to me, though. Jesus and God look at us each individually as if we are the only thing that matters to Him, He does this for all of His sons and daughters. I only saw one star in the sky that morning. I am God’s only star in the sky. Just like you are. And everybody else is. He knows all of us as if we are the only person He knows. That’s omnipotence for you. It was another comforting sign that God gave to me to give me truth and comfort. The moment I got to work I jotted that image in a John Nash-like frenzy. It will forever be significant to me and was an amazing answer from God in a moment of weakness and despair for me.

God does say no to us at times because if He gave us direct answers and solace every time we turned to Him, we wouldn’t progress, we’d just become lethargic and ask Him to do everything for us. There’s a reason he gave us able-bodies and able-brains. However, I think there are times in our lives when He knows that we need to something to hang onto. And I feel like that time is now for me. I am a non-denominational Christian in Salt Lake City, sometimes it can be a little lonely and God is helping me keep strong through times of weariness.

I prayed to God also, having felt detached from people about a week ago, and it was followed up with an amazing and enlightening conversation with my friend, Shane. I prayed to God to have my Bible that I had lost returned to me, and two weeks later, my friend Forrest turned up with it.

There were two topics I was interested in hearing be discussed in a church-setting as a sermon. The controversial and more disconcerting areas of the Bible and Satan, himself, the adversary. I felt like I needed to hear pastors address these matters because a lot of non-denom Christian churches seem to avoid these topics as they are not as pleasing to the ear as other biblical topics such as grace. Well, I have two services I go to, one on Sunday evenings called The Mount and another on Tuesday evenings called UteNited. On Sunday, the topic was Psalm 137, a psalm that ends with the Jews wishing for their enemies’ children to be smashed against rocks. If you’d like to hear it, it was a sermon given by Chad Whitehead and is very eloquent and meaningful – Here. Then, two nights later, the topic of the night was Satan… The moment it was revealed that that would be the topic of discussion, I literally looked up and said: “Are you kidding me?” It felt a little too convenient to be considered coincidental.

I don’t mean for this to be a listing off of prayers answered or to try to convince anybody of Christianity’s validity, I just felt like I should put these all down for me to remember and for anybody who may appreciate them. I have not proofread this thing and it may read as erratically as it was written. If I have any advice for you, it’s this — Pray to God. Even when you just feel like you’re having a conversation with yourself, He is listening and He will help you be strong. Always have full confidence that whatever God does for you will be the right thing.

-CSL

So I just saw The Invention of Lying…

I am a huge fan of Ricky Gervais. His wit and talent are so wonderful and I’m glad that he’s starting to grow in the United States. Last year he came out with a wonderful comedy gem called Ghost Town that made about forty dollars at the box office. Now, he’s packed a movie with famous faces and gave it another go with a somewhat original concept, but one that seemed to be something he would revel in.

The movie’s pretty darn funny, but it gets awfully heavy-handed when it decides to tackle the topic of not only religion, but any kind of belief whatsoever. Now, frankly, I have no problems with well thought out arguments against Christianity, supernatural belief and other challenging things of that nature, but what I do dislike, however, is when it’s incredibly blatant and in-your-face not leaving any kind of room for interpretation. Ricky Gervais could have just stared at the screen for ninety minutes and said: “You’re stupid for believing in God!” in his charming, sardonic accent.

I feel like the movie came off as Veggie Tales for atheists. The problem is that the movie is marketed as a fun, upbeat romantic comedy with a big twist on the whole affair. At least with Veggie Tales, you know what you’re getting the moment you pop the DVD in– Corn, tomatoes and celery reenacting biblical stories… Yeah…. Now, I don’t know if they have a Veggie Tales documenting the story of Jesus’ atonement, but if I ever see a shoddily animated cartoon of a potato Roman soldier nailing a cucumber with a beard to a cross making a comical “BWACK” noise, I’m going to flip.

The thing is, be it Christian or Atheist, I’m always against having such a glaring agenda in a film. There’s nothing wrong with political, religious or social commentary, whether it’s cynical or optimistic, it’s a bit shameless (and easy) to rely on mocking people’s beliefs for so many laughs. There are several scenes that were actually quite funny, such as when a man has an exchange with Gervais’ character about the “Man in the sky.”

Man: “Is the man in the sky the reason I was saved when I was on that boat that cap-sized?”
Mark: “Yeah!”
Man: “But… is the man in the sky the reason the boat was cap-sized?”
Mark: “…Yeah.”

That has a good, challenging comedic commentary and it still keeps things lively. But, as if the film itself weren’t obvious enough in its agenda, Gervais literally admits: “There is no man in the sky” at one point. The funny thing is, I felt like I had non-belief shoved down my throat in this movie more than I did when I watched Bill Maher’s film “Religulous” in which the literal point of the movie is to mock, belittle and challenge spiritual belief. The thing is, Bill Maher criticizes even atheists because he says there’s nothing more pompous (and Maher knows pompousness) than somebody saying: “I know for sure” one way or the other.

I agree with Maher on this. Now, I feel that I do know that God is the creator of the universe, but I don’t get my kicks by trying to convince somebody that my way of thinking is right by assuring them that I KNOW that God exists.

So, as a message from a strong admirer of Ricky Gervais: Please, Mr. Gervais, you’re known for your subtle, smart comedy, do not let this change because of any kind of other agenda you may have. You’ve never seemed an oppressive man, but even if you do have an agenda, keep it a little more subtle, a little more open for interpretation and little more respectful.

-CSL

Follow me on Twitter (Sorry for that phrase)

Whenever I hear the phrase “Follow me on Twitter,” I respond with a roll of my eyes and a slow shaking of the head. Twitter confounds me with its popularity. I want to start a website where you can only put a number to say how you are feeling at one time… It’ll be wildly popular!

Anyway, 150 characters just seems very silly to me, I already have a Facebook and I can do other things on it besides that. However… I caved… Me, the last person that anybody (including myself) expected to start a Twitter account… And now… Ahem… You may follow me on Twitter at Twitter.com/sosayscolin (Some meanie took colinsays)

Anyway… Join me and all the other conformists on Twitter! Whooo!

-COLIN

The Christian’s acceptance of lust. (Examiner)

Examiner.com – Religion & Spirituality – The Christian’s acceptance of lust.

The young Christian girl sat on the floor of her boyfriend’s room as he surfed the web for information on school as another friend of hers recounted his recent trip to Las Vegas. When he commenced sharing the fun weekend he had, she piped up about one of her favorite experiences in sin city, which poses, ironically, as an appropriate reference for her anecdote. “Yeah, I love Vegas, I remember once at the mall I saw the hottest guy I have ever seen! He was modeling for some store and as I walked by him, I stopped dead in my tracks and stared at him with my mouth agape. As soon as I realized what I was doing, I sped off embarrassed, but he was just so hot I couldn’t help it!” Her boyfriend, apparently unfazed by this, continued browsing web sites indicating he was accustom to this kind of behavior from his girlfriend.

How many times have you been exposed to a similar situation involving somebody who was married or in an intimate relationship? How many times have you heard a married woman exclaim: “Oh my gosh, Ryan Reynold taking his shirt off was worth the price of admission alone!” or a married man spout: “I about creamed my pants when Megan Fox was bent over the front of the motorcycle!”

This behavior has become widely accepted by many Christians who have subscribed to the idea that it’s not such a big deal to ramble on about a hot girl or guy that isn’t their significant other. We seem to have forgotten a strong message from Jesus in Matthew 5:28: “But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” Now, Jesus singles out us guys in this passage because we aren’t exactly the fairer of the two sexes, however, it should be apparent that the perpetrators are not limited to either gender.

My pastor several weeks ago, commented on the fact that Jesus was an extremist and that we humans want Him to come down from His high horse to a more practical, easier level. The world of Christianity has done this and we are all guilty of trying to attribute Jesus’ teachings to our feeble, worldly values. The acceptance of: “Well, I can see what’s on the menu as long as I eat at home” has denigrated the Bible and has allowed pseudo-spiritual complacence in committing mindful adultery.

Where many people have gone wrong is not recognizing this seemingly minor misdeed for what it is. A man or a woman will always catch themselves looking at somebody that isn’t their spouse and acknowledging them to be attractive, there is no avoiding that in life, but the problem lies within when somebody lets dwell on that acknowledgment; entertains the thought of that attractive stranger and lets their mind focus on that potential person’s good looks, alluring figure or charm.

Perhaps a strong reason for the continuous iniquity of this manner is the fact that many people do not recognize it as sin. Many husbands and wives have accepted that it is OK for their respective spouse to lust after people other than themselves as long as they are a movie star or celebrity of sorts. This is just as bad. It opens the door for lustful thoughts in the same way a man checking out his neighbor’s wife does. The fact of the matter is that once a person does this and continues to do this, it defames his or her love for their spouse and it defames his or her relationship with God. It leads to masturbation with thoughts of one’s fantasy celebrities or even thoughts of somebody else while making love to one’s spouse. It then leads to adultery, the act of physically cheating on one’s spouse. Everything starts out as a thought, and a thought can be just as damaging as an action. Jesus knew this when He spoke about it in Matthew and we, as His followers, should pay much stronger attention to this verse and apply it more directly in our lives.

“It is God’s will that you should be sanctified: that you should avoid sexual immorality; that each of you should learn to control his own body in a way that is holy and honorable, not in passionate lust like the heathen, who do not know God…” Thessalonians 4:3-5

God and R-rated movies.

Examiner.com – Religion & Spirituality – God and R-rated movies

In the Bible, it is clear that God has a certain lifestyle He planned for us. We are meant to be good people, to have strong morals and to keep the mind abundant with God’s word. However, the opposition to God’s word is ubiquitous. Advertisers and marketers want us to deny ourselves for their product, which is what many people do. They deny themselves for a product or lifestyle they think will make them better or better liked. In fact, everybody does this at some point in his or her life and it’s a sorry replacement for the acceptance of God. Denying oneself for God makes one begin to see how silly all the things in our lives are and how at the moment we buy something that we’ve wanted for sometime, our minds are so fickle and earthly that they immediately move to the next thing on the list. Worldly validation will never last; God’s validation is everlasting.

There is something else that people use for validation, it is better intentioned and executed with God in mind, but it is still a petty substitution for a Godly ideology. It is an attempt to measure God by worldly customs. A good example is a church that nigh enforces its members to wear a suit and tie or a nice dress when they come to church. One has to wonder why exactly something like this would matter. An argument that could be made is the very one that is being made in this article except in a different context. A person may be worried that the inclusion of casual wear such as t-shirts and jeans may lend to a person’s mind a worldly demeanor. However, if somebody comes into church with his or her mind focused on the world and not on God, which many people do, it isn’t going to matter if somebody is wearing a Volcom shirt or a suit coat.

When you think about it, the need for a suit and tie seems really silly. Jesus didn’t a wear suit and tie, they didn’t even exist back then, a collar is just a thick topper to your shirt and a tie is just a piece of cloth that dangles from your neck. This is supposed to please God how? Now, this isn’t to say that a suit and tie is a bad thing, but it is a pedantic notion to have it be required apparel. God invites His people to come as they are to Him, why should church be any different?

Another strong measurement by earthly means is the speaking out against R-Rated movies. Many Christians simply say R-Rated movies should be avoided at all costs with no exceptions. This is the mother of all short strung measurements to an endless thread of string. Anybody who says that R-Rated movies should be avoided at all costs for one’s spiritual integrity needs to be educated on how the ratings system works. First, it is a monopoly of censorship in which all movies in hopes of being distributed to theaters nationwide (almost all theaters won’t show movies that don’t have an MPAA rating) must go through. Second, the people who fund the ratings board are the big movie studios themselves, so there is a strong bias in situations like a movie that will make more money with a PG-13 rating than an R. Have you ever found yourself watching a PG-13 and saying to yourself “Wow, this should be rated R,” or found yourself watching an R-rated movie and thought: “Wow, this should be PG-13.” Well, there’s origin to your suspicions. For example, the first Transformers movie was slapped with an R, but the rating was changed to a PG-13 after a simple call from Steven Spielberg asking them to change it. Another example involves a Utah-based film called Saints and Soldiers, a WW2 movie made on a meager budget; therefore it was independent and without a large studio backing it. The filmmakers made the movie based on PG-13 war movies like Behind Enemy Lines, in fact they even made it a point to make it less violent just in case, but they were slapped with an R-rating regardless. They had to undergo editing in order to secure the PG-13 rating whereas if a studio supported them, it would have been rated PG-13 with no questions asked because the MPAA would have had money banking on the project. Does that seem like a reliable tool to relate with your spiritual integrity?

Thirdly, there aren’t any rules to what makes a rating. None. It’s just a few people, whom do not undergo any training, that screen the film to decide the rating. Fourthly, slapping a movie with an R-Rating entails that Into The Wild is at the same level of questionable material as Superbad, or Schindler’s List to American Pie. The same stigmatized word (RESTRICTED) labeled to completely different stories with entirely different premises and content.

The idea that one’s spiritual resonation is going to be in adherence with an extremely flawed and inconsistent rating system is ludicrous. People need to look at the content of the movie itself, look at what it’s about and make a decision based on that. It all matters on the intention of a movie. A PG movie can be much worse than an R movie if its intention is to tell a story with sinister ulterior motives. Movies with strong spiritual substance can be very realistic which causes them to be rated R, but a PG-13 movie about some dude who goes crazy and kills a bunch of people (without showing the ramifications and bloody outcome) is much more damaging.

We need to stop trying to put a worldly label on God’s gospel. It simply will not work and will be fluid and interchangeable as the times pass. Always turn to the Bible, you won’t see anything about suit coats and ties or instructions to listen to a small group of people’s decision when it comes to deciding what movie to see on a Saturday night.

-CSL

The conservative Christian’s reaction to “Obama-Care.”

Examiner.com – Religion & Spirituality – The conservative Christian’s reaction to “Obama-Care.”

From a distantly observant standpoint, it is a baffling concept that the majority of Christians are conservative Republicans. Perhaps the biggest liberal of all time was Jesus Christ Himself. To many, that must be a blasphemous concept to consider, but it’s true. People these days have ceased pondering what the words liberal and conservative actually mean, and now simply associate them with baby-killing Democrats and insane evangelical Republicans. But the terms really aren’t as bound to their stigmas as people would lead themselves to believe.

The phrase “Jesus was a liberal” may send a cold, tingling chill down the spine of some evangelical pastor in Texas who thinks that Harry Potter books should be treated as witchcraft, but it doesn’t make it any less true. His ideals were going against what was conservative and he was the biggest extremist in human history (love your enemy, rich men can’t get into heaven, who does He think he is?! Oh yeah… God). Now, does this mean that Democrats have Jesus on their side with their liberal issues? Not exactly. This article is merely a commentary of the contradictory political reaction of conservative Christians in the past few months with current events.

When gay marriage reared its controversial head, many Republican Christians came out in droves to protest it and made claims that gay marriage was against God and that if same sex marriage was legalized, the country would plunge into a gigantic sin-fest. Sin-Fest… That’d be a good name for a heavy metal music festival.

In the media today, however, gay marriage is SO 2008 and the big hullabaloo is about health care now (the media only gets around to addressing about four issues that circulate every few years in a never-ending cycle, though– Next season—You thought the fight for stem cell research was over, you thought wrong!). So, once again, with a liberal issue, many Republican Christians have come out in the droves to convey their contempt with the idea of universal health care.

Now, there are many problems people have with what is being touted Obama-Care, but besides Sarah Palin inanely ranting on her Facebook and the legitimate concern of raised taxes and lower quality health care, one of the most resounding proclamations coming from conservative Christians has been: “I’m not paying for some welfare jerk’s hospital bill” or “if you want health care, then get a job!” Somehow, according to certain Christians, God picks and chooses which political confrontation He wants to weigh in on. With gay marriage, He was all over the place! Bible verse here, bible verse there, Rick Warren here, President Monson there, but He’s nowhere to be found on this one for some strange reason.

The Christian right hasn’t brought Him up once because there aren’t bible verses that support blatantly selfish catharsis. There are only verses that say we need to help the poor, love our neighbor and love our enemy and welcome the less fortunate with open arms. People were so quick to want to force their Christian values on people who didn’t necessarily share their beliefs, but none of them want to force those same values on themselves!

Anne Lamott (actually one of her friends) wrote: “You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” That seems to be rather prevalent in this classic case of hypocrisy here. The phrase What Would Jesus Do is pretty cheesy, but it’s a darn good philosophy to instill in one’s head. Now, every last person on this Earth is a hypocrite (most certainly me), there isn’t anybody who can escape their own hypocrisy, but it’s something that we can all improve on and people should really think before they run away with their knee-jerk reactions. This article wasn’t meant to be for or against one way or the other, just a mere opposition and observation of hypocrisy in human behavior and how we need to stop picking and choosing where God enters into our lives as Christians.

-CSL

Does love entail tolerance and acceptance? (Examiner)

Examiner – Religion & Spirituality – Does love entail tolerance and acceptance?

Among Christians there seems to be an interesting trend in sermons of pastors and in conversation about faith and spirituality. A lot of people appear to be angered about the “media’s force of tolerance and acceptance of immorality on Christians.”

A pastor named Greg Laurie who speaks out of Riverside, California (writer’s note: I generally consider Laurie a very good pastor with strong moral views) asks, in defense of Christians being labeled intolerant, “Have you ever noticed that the most intolerant people are those that say they are tolerant?” He goes onto exclaim that those people want to shut Christians up and that they should be more tolerant of Christians. While it’s true that picking on Christians is considered media-acceptable while singling out any other groups is considered absolutely abhorrent, what Laurie doesn’t understand is that many people have a reasonable beef with Christians who are intolerant and can’t accept the existence of people different from them.

What Laurie also fails to do in his accusation of the supposed tolerant being intolerant is offer an actual rebuttal. All he is saying, in so many words, is that “it takes one to know one” and it further encourages people to just be more intolerant and close out the outside world without trying to reach it. Many Christians like to simply stay in their inner circle and judge everybody outside of it, but in Mark 2:17, Jesus says: “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” How is any Christian going to reach anyone if they simply steer clear of potential “bad influences?” People are so worried about their own salvation that they’ve forgotten about the salvation of others.

That is where tolerance and acceptance come into play. The greatest commandment, after loving God with all your heart, is to “love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22:39) There is also a very good correlating scripture with that commandment from 1 Corinthians 13:4-5: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.” Considering that we are commanded to love our neighbors as ourselves and love is patient and keeps no record of wrongs… It seems that love cannot exist without tolerance and acceptance.

The very next verse in Corinthians 13 says “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” So it seems as though Christ has posed a difficult task on His followers. How does one love and tolerate those that are different, and perhaps less morally stable, without delighting in evil and/or encouraging it? It’s simple: Be an example. Jesus was the ultimate example, He preached and told people to stop sinning and what-not (something we cannot do without judging), but the strongest trait that He conveyed was His example. People that were around Jesus wanted to be with Him and be like Him. They felt utterly unworthy of being in His presence, not just because of His teachings, but because of His perfect being. He was tolerant of everyone no matter what they had done, He accepted everyone no matter who they were–Yet here are all these Christians who are trying to disassociate themselves with tolerance because of the fickle incoherence of the media.

Now, nobody will ever be perfect, but the ultimate goal in a Christian’s every day life should be trying to be as Christ-like as possible. Tolerate people. Accept them. That will be about a billion times more effective than excluding people that are different from you or protesting somebody’s lifestyle. God loves, so should we.

-CSL

Jesus and gay marriage (Examiner article)

Examiner – Religious & Spirituality – Jesus and Gay Marriage

Many people get riled up and outraged at things that are really quite silly. People have made signs, protested and gone to all kinds of lengths to stop gay marriage from happening. And for what? So that two men or two women can’t get married? Homosexuality isn’t illegal (nor should it ever be) and a gay couple can still live together, why shouldn’t they be able to enter into a committed union? One can call it whatever they want, but it really doesn’t concern anyone who isn’t gay.

Now, there shouldn’t be a dispute among Christians that homosexuality is a sin, but somehow it has become a bigger sin than all the others—And that doesn’t make sense. There’s a reason why God made all sin equal in His eyes, it’s so that His children can’t run around telling other people that they are better than them. People do it anyway and they try and use the Bible to prove that they are better than others, but so many seem to easily forget that they are just as much a sinner as anyone.

God is great and so is America. The freedom of religion in the U.S. is a beautiful thing, but so is the freedom from religion—it’s just as important If we didn’t have a separation of church and state, any moron could go into office and tell us that God commands that we do certain things (some may argue that that’s exactly what George W. Bush did, but that’s another argument), however everyone has a different interpretation of God (as is apparent with the division of Christian faiths – Catholics, Protestants, Mormons and even the Westboro Baptist Church, famous for their “God Hates Fags” signs), so it’d be a very dangerous thing if we were subject to the self-proclaimed moral rule of any particular religious-minded individual.

That’s exactly what’s happened here. A number of people with power and resources have interpreted that God does not want gay people to get married because homosexuality is a sin. God is also a big supporter of free agency. So these people are taking away the free agency of homosexuals, claiming that they are protecting marriage. Marriage, as much as many would like to lead you to believe, is not under attack.

At one time there were a group of men about to stone to death a promiscuous woman, they talked to Jesus and He said to them: “he who is without sin cast the first stone.” As everyone knows, everybody stepped away; Jesus walked over to embrace the adulterous woman and told her to go and sin no more. Now, Jesus can tell people not to sin because He’s… Jesus. Christians aren’t meant to tell people they are sinning, they are meant to tell people about God through love, there is a difference, you know.

That’s all this whole Prop 8 debacle has been– A bunch of people stoning and nobody embracing. The teachings of God are meant to be spread with love, peace and understanding. While people were donating millions of dollars and spending exhaustive hours trying to stop gays from getting married, they could have spent all that money on feeding endless villages in Africa or getting children off the street and into a warm home. Are there really that many Christians out there that think God is less concerned with feeding children than He is with two men whom are sinners (just like every human) getting the same benefits as everybody?

The reality of the situation is that gay marriage is inevitable, one by one every state will legalize it and those millions will have gone for nothing but to hinder any Christian church’s progress. Any non-believing gay person is now going to be about five times more disinclined to be receptive to a message about Jesus, God or the BIble because of the negative connotations that have been pressed upon a large majority of the Christian faith.

That’s not to say that everybody who voted Yes on Prop 8 was hateful or contemptuous; some actually thought that they were protecting marriage (under the false understanding that gays could sue a church for not marrying them, which is absolutely untrue) and some simply thought it wasn’t a good idea, but something many people have failed to do while passing judgment and hurling proverbial stones is imagine what it would be like if somebody came along and told them that they couldn’t marry the person they were in love with. Gay marriage won’t destroy society, if anything, banning it is only going to encourage promiscuity.

What’s next? Banning atheists from getting married?

-CSL