A Pilgrims Way

I downloaded some random podcasts to watch at work today and I found one that I think I’m going to love. It’s called Mr. Deity. I watched the Really Cheap Meal Episode and now I’m hooked. I’m going to download all of them and start from the beginning.

I read the FAQ on the website and here’s a little of what the shows about in the words of the creator (literally), writer, producer, actor, everything else…Brian Keith Dalton.

I am a formerly religious person (non-bitter), and as such, have great sympathies for the beliefs and feelings of religious people. I love the fact that they are concerned with the big issues like Good and Evil, Existence, Creation, etc… I don’t always agree with the answers they provide to these questions, but I deeply respect their concern. Our goal here is not to mock religion, but to use it as a foundation for the humor. I’m thrilled that so many religious people have written to tell me that they love the episodes…

Sounds really interesting…and the first show I watched was hilarious. Four people: God, Jesus, Larry & Lucy setting down for a meal. They all decided on a meal, Jesus ordered then multiplied it for the other three to eat. While discussing such topics as the trinity and the immaculate conception. Has a Seinfeld/Office kind of feel to it, which I really love.

Best line of the 4 minute podcast.

When ordering drinks, God to the waitress:

God: I would love a virgin Shirley Temple. Cause I loves me the virgins….

Lucy (The blonde sitting next to God): He’s kidding and in really really big trouble.

Followed by a brief awkward pause….

Then we see God trying to explain the concept of the immaculate conception to Lucy.

God: Nothing happens between us. There’s not even in spooning afterwards.

Lucy: Do you think she’s pretty?

God: How can I answer that? She’s a kid for Christ Sake!

Jesus: Sir…

God: What?

Jesus: Did you call me?

CLASSIC….I”M IN LOVE. Who needs TV anymore. Writers stay on strike…I just need to find some good quality podcasts.

I’ve been reading a series of post over at Mystic Believer Priest recently about the whole being like Christ, holiness, perfectionism thing. Let me just say right now they are some of the best post I’ve read in a long time so if you haven’t done so already you should go check out his blog and read for yourself.

I’ll confess I’m one of those that struggle immensely with this issue. I was raised in a church culture that stressed things like holiness, sanctification, Christlikeness. And when you’re taught that your goal as a Christian is to become like Christ, that’s a standard that’s impossible to live up to. Sinless…Perfect…Divine…Jesus. And the whole argument that he was fully God and fully man in my opinion is completely unfair. Don’t get me wrong, I theologically agree with the doctrine I just don’t think it is fair to apply in this context. After all If I’m supposed to be like Jesus, who is “Fully Man” that’s not fair. I’m crying foul and I’m to saying right now Jesus was a cheater. Sure he walked in my shoes, sure he knows what it’s like to be a man and not sin but he had a decisive advantage…he was God.

If being like Christ in relation to his nature is my goal I’m doomed and I’m sentenced to live a Christian life with feelings of insecurity, inadequacy, disappoint and failure. Which I think does a good job of summing up how I feel most of the time. But on rare occasions when I don’t feel that way, when I’m starting to think I’m feeling”Like Christ”, when I’m feeling like I’m living a Holy life - I’m not sure that’s such a good thing. In fact…when I get like that…I’m probably less like Jesus and more like the Pharisees of Jesus time prideful and self-righteous.

Woe is me…

Bill (The Mystic Believer Priest that is) makes a great point when he says the difference is really between being and doing. Are we supposed to be like Jesus…that is be like God…be divine…be holy…be perfect…be sinless? Or are we called to do like Jesus, love like Jesus, forgive like Jesus, redeem like Jesus, revalue like Jesus, reclaim like Jesus, restore like Jesus, renew like Jesus, (I’m running out of R words here, but think think I’ve made the point).

Bill says it so much better then I…

We should not be saying that our goal is perfection, or holiness, or Christlikeness.

We should be saying that our goal is to be loved by the Father, to share the Father’s love with others, to accept the Father’s forgiveness, and to share the Father’s forgiveness with others.

I agree with him. I believe that in my heart. I want to live this way. The hard part is getting it into my head and drowning out all of the other stuff I’ve allowed to dominate my life for so long.

***Interesting rabbit trail I don’t have time to pursue and you don’t have patience to read.

Gatorade’s Marketing campaign shifted from “Like Mike, I want to be Like Mike” featuring the often imitated but never duplicated Michael Jordan to a “Is it in You” campaign. Featuring colorful liquids oozing out of the pores of athletes as they did their thing. Chew on that for a while.

Is it in you…or more importantly is it coming out of you?

My kids discovered a cool program on my Mac called comic strip. Check out their work.

I can’t wait to see what they come up with next!

I’m leading worship this Sunday at church so I get to pick out which songs to sing.  Which presents a little problem for me this week, being that it’s the last Sunday before Christmas and all.

Do you do Christmas songs or not?

Personally I’m not a huge Christmas songs fan?  The ones people are familiar with are all old, they’re hymns and we sing them every year.  Don’t get me wrong I love old songs…I love hymns…I just don’t like doing them the same way they were written.  And unfortunately we don’t have time to rearrange a bunch of Christmas songs.

On the other hand…people come to Sunday before Christmas expecting to hear Christmas songs and some people like Christmas songs.  My wife is one of the afore mentioned… and she’s pressuring me to go with Christmas songs.

In spite of my personal bent I’m leaning her way.  So I was looking for Christmas songs today.  But therein lies another problem.  There’s not a whole lot to choose from.  Maybe I’m limited by my upbringing and/or experience I don’t know.  I’m going to have to do a little more research tonight.

So picking out Christmas songs I also wanted to focus on more then just…OK Jesus is born…Ya da Ya da… He’s a baby…Ya da Ya da…Everyone Rejoice…Ya da Ya da…Ok lets open presents.

This year I’ve really been thinking about God being with us, incarnation stuff…God in the flesh…Emmanuel.  Also I’m thinking about the big picture stuff about Jesus coming.  Kingdom of God kind of stuff.  So one song I want to do I think is O come O come Emmanuel.  I like the firts two verses ….

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o’er the grave
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Another one I came across that I’m completely unfamiliar with is Come thou long expected Jesus - written by Charles Wesley.  I’ll have to listen to somewhere, but I really liked the lyrics.

Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,
Born to set Thy people free:
From our fears and sins release us;
Let us find our rest in Thee.

Israel’s strength and consolation,
Hope of all the earth Thou art,
Dear desire of every nation,
Joy of every longing heart.

Born thy people to deliver,
Born a child, and yet a king,
Born to reign in us forever.
Now thy gracious kingdom bring.

By thine own eternal spirit
rule in all our hearts alone;
By thine all-sufficient merit
Raise us to thy glorious throne.

If you have any ideas or favorites please let me know.  Any links would be appreciated.

So my non-Christmas ideas so far are

1.  You Alone are Worthy of my Praise (Thinking of Wisemen here for some reason)

2.  Beautiful News

3.  Came to my Rescue (We’d have to learn this one, but I love it and think it fits well for Christmas)

4.  Dwell (thinking of the incarnation - God with us idea)

I was looking through the search engine phrases people typed in that came across my blog.

One that made me laugh was….

“Old Buff Guy”

I think I’m more Old then Buff these days…or at least that’s the way I feel.

Alright loyal readers I need some help.  I need to get my wife a Christmas present.  (No I haven’t done that yet!!!)  We have this standing thing where we’re not supposed to by each other anything, but my wife as usual broke the deal.  Now usually when she does that she buys here own present,  but this year I think I want to buy her something.

Ok - Spare me the comments about how lame and terrible I am.  I already know that.   I need some help and fast!

Any ideas???   Especially you ladies out there.

On Sunday we received a good dose of freezing rain. My wife and I were out and we carefully navigated through the mess and arrived safely home. The main roads weren’t too bad, but the roads and driveways in our subdivision where literally sheets of ice.

My brother-in-law left that morning for a cruise in Mexico and had to leave his brand new car at my house. So pulling into our driveway my wife had a moment of divine revelation and said to me, “Maybe we should move Dean’s car. The roads are pretty slick and if it stays on the side of the road somebody might hit it.” My response, as usual was “Nah…don’t worry about….it will be fine…the roads aren’t that bad”.

So it’s 8pm and I’m getting ready to go to bed early and all of a sudden I hear the doorbell ring and find a young gentlemen standing outside my front door. I open the door and ask…Can I help you?

Sir…I’m really sorry…but I slid on the ice and ran into your car.

I don’t know if she verbally said anything…but as loud as a voice from heaven I heard my wife’s voice thunder I TOLD YOU SO.

So…You think I’d know better by now.

Oh…and my response…

Oh, it’s not my car it’s my brother-in-laws. Come on in…do you like football?

What an interesting way to meet your neighbor.

My wife goes to school on Tuesday nights so it falls upon me to make sure the kids get their homework and everything done.   So last night I’m helping my nine year old son (Conner) with his Math homework and I swear I wanted to kill him.  The first couple problems were easy.  We picked out the numbers from the story problem and figured it out piece of cake…he did the work I guided him through it.  The problem that created such mess for us was 2000 X 28.  He just started learning multiplication with double digit numbers and he was doing it wrong and needed my help.  No problem…that’s what I’m there for.  So I calmly walk him through it showing him each step and then tell him to figure out the answer.  He ignores everything I just said and does it his own way.  Which I can’t believe…so I point out that he’s doing it wrong and begin walking him through the correct steps again.  (When you get to the second number, the one in the tens place you have to add a zero first…)  At this point his eyes are rolling….hands are holding his hair down over his face….and he’s fidgeting nervously any which way he can to let me know “I’m not listenting”.  Which makes me really mad…so I do the natural thing.  Talk louder…say things like…pay attention to me when I’m talking to you.  Which he non-verbally screamed even louder…I’M NOT LISTENING.  At this point I lost it…(God please forgive me) and I gave him a little smack upside the head.  Which obviously shut down the learning session…I knew right away I blew it.  So I apologized and told my son that we cannot continue to treat each other in this way.  I told him that I loved him and wanted to be his friend and not his enemy so what can I do or change to stop the arguing…fighting…etc…between us.

We had some good dialogue for a few seconds (Which he admitted that eliminating smacks upside the head was a good starting point).  And then it dawned on me what the real problem between him and me is.  Really it’s two things which are actually the same thing.

1.  He thinks he knows everything.

2.  He thinks his father knows nothing.

I flat out asked him.  The real problem we have is that you don’t believe me isn’t it?  He looked me dead in the eye and said, “Yes, I’ll wait for mom to come home.”  This was a crushing blow, which he must have sensed because he said you can help me with my spelling.  Which acting like the mature grown up I am I said, I’m sorry…but how can I help you if you don’t believe anything I have to say.   You won’t let me help you.

After calming down a few minutes I just had to prove to my son his old man was right…I asked him if I proved my math on a calculator if he would then believe me.  He said yeah, so I added it up and wouldn’t you know I was right the answer was 56,000.  So he pulled out his paper and did the problem his way and came up with 160,000 and proudly said that’s the answer dad!  I said what?  You know the answer….the calculator says I’m right it’s 56,000.  That’s the answer!  He did his own math again…coming up with a different answer again….again thinking his way was right.  He did this 4 times.  Refusing to accept that my way…my right answer.

We finished up.  Mom came home and I had her show Conner I was right and he reluctantly almost admitted defeat.  Mom (being the math teacher she is) had to point out there were other ways to do double digit multiplication then the method I learned when I was age.  Which Conner was all too eager to jeer…I told you, you were wrong.  I had given up arguing at that time, but mom took the cause and said, You’re dad’s answer is right…

I still don’t think he believes me.

So am I mad?  Not really…more frustrated that my child.  My son, whom I love more then life itself continues to stubbornly go his own way and refuses to accept my help, my advice, my guidance, my way of doing things.

And I’m a little hurt…because I really want to help him.  I want to be his Dad.  I won’t to be the one he looks up to, the one that he believes in.   and I know that I have a lot to offer if he would just listen, if he would just let me help.

So what do I do?  Continue to smack him upside the head?  Punish him?  Ignore him?  No…those things won’t work.  It will just drive a wedge in our relationship.  So I’ll just do the only thing I can.  I just have to let him keep figuring things out on his own I guess.

But why should I be surprised….he’s just like me.

Hey check this out.  We elfed our family.

Why don’t you elf yourself and when you do put a link in a comment on this post.

Thanks Jen for the heads up.