January 20, 2006

• You guys are smart people, so you'll figure out when I'm being sarcastic.

  
  

  So 'm sitting here at Starbucks. I've been reading Searching for God Knows What, a book by Donald Miller (I read books about the Bible more than I read the Bible... hmmm). So Don, I hope he's cool with me calling him Don, he started talking about Hosea and How God tells him to marry a whore and have kids with her and love her, all agape style and stuff. He talks about the heartbreak that this story is, about a man who loves a woman magnificently and purely, and a woman who's ready to open her legs "at the drop of a hat." This would be nice and all, but the one she's opening for isn't her husband. You see she's stuck in her old ways. She used to be a whore and she probably doesn't want to be one but there's just something inside her that is comfortable in that old stuff, comfortable, but dying all the while. He goes on to talk about the fact that the reason God told Hosea to do that, to love the woman unconditionally despite the fact she's unfaithful (Unfaithful is too nice. Don't get me wrong when i say this, but it's the only appropriate way to describe it. She's a bitch... pulling the kind of crap that my friend's dad did to his mom. I haven't read Hosea (i guess I should), but I wouldn't be suprised if she pulled all that crap and stayed away for a really long time causing him to wonder if she'd ever come back. But here comes the beautiful part... God tells Hosea that the whole thing with him marrying the whore was to serve as an allegory to God's relationship with the Jewish nation, with his church. And hosea serves as God. He cares so much for his wife, that he loves her unconditionally and wants everything just to be with her and for her to be secure in Him.

  
  

  So I decided to go to the restroom, a slight interruption in the reading process, and I was waiting in line. So this dude comes up behind me. The guy, about 18 to 25, had a pale face and a scab on the right side of his chin. He was wearing kind of weird clothes and had a ghetto backpack. Just trying to be nice, I invited him to go ahead of me and when he started to object I pretended like I didn't hear him. I returned to my seat and after a while I started getting antsy. After all, I had gone to the restroom in order to use it. This is literally five or ten minutes minutes later. I went back and I could hear the sink running and the same dude was in there! I thought maybe the dude was doing drugs in there or maybe, me being the great daydreamer I am, he was planting a bomb since that's what people do when they turn sinks on for extended periods of time.

  
  

  I told the folks at the counter that Frank, we'll call him Frank, had been in there for a while, because honestly I was concerned. He told them he'd be out in just a minute and it dawned on me that he was washing up in the sink! So I began to think upon the fact that he was a poor man because at some point in his life he had decided not to work, and that basically he is a horrible person and I'm rich because my parents are Christians and we're better than homeless people. Homeless people are stupid because they don't work. I'm better than that because I go to school and drive a Lexus. So after I had pondered the truth and spiritual validity of the last statement, he did indeed come out a full extra three minutes later. I was on the phone with Jim and tried to get of the phone so that I could catch up with him and see if I could buy him dinner or whatever, but by the time I got out the door he was a pretty long way off and it was then that I realized I didn't have the greatest amount of evidence for my assumption of the sink-shower.

  
  

  Nevertheless, this thing that happened around me got me thinking about being a Christian conservative republican dude, and how I believe that if somebody wants to stop being poor, they just have to get a job, and it's their responsibility to get out of their situation. You know what, that is true. But Jesus didn't give a poo about that. Being a social republican works in the government, but not when I see a dude on the side of the road that's hungry. Jesus met people where they were. 'member when he went to that lady who had cheated on her husband, reminded the dudes that were about to stone her about how their hearts were in the same place, seperated from God by their sin and saved the girls life? Frank doesn't have a job for the same reason that I procrastinated on my homework this week, the same reason that this girl I used to know seemed to never be able to stop having sex with her boyfriend all the time. Frank has no job ecause he is sinful, because he is just like me. The point is, every sin is the same, and the man is to be pitied not judged. I'd be willing to bet, that if I spend time loving the helplessly lost in sin, they'll learn about the love of Christ and come to him, then like Jesus, we'll be able to say, "Go and sin no more," and  really believe (down where the life exists in our souls) that he who began a good work in the preverbial Frank will bring it about to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

  • 5:28 pm
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