Friday, February 27, 2009

Two Steps to Writing a Book I Won't Read

This post has very little relevance to anything. It's not going to help you in your spiritual walk. It's not going to give any kind of new insight or understanding. But what I've discovered is that people tend to like the posts where I write about random crap more than when I write about anything meaningful. And I guess if anything, at least this post will give you warning to stay away from a very dangerous trend that is infesting Christendom.

I'm a little bit of a geek. I also go to Bible college. So last night, another Bible college geek (Ryan) and I were doing something very geeky and Bible college-y. Before our floor devos, we were looking through the latest catalog from Christianbook.com, discussing what books we had and what books we wish we had and such. Don't act like you haven't done the same thing. Anyways, as we talked, we discussed a couple common elements of many Christian books that cause me to be suspicious of them, and I generally stay away from them. So in case any of you decide to write a book someday, keep these in mind, and remember that your readership may decrease by one person at least if you commit either of these publication blunders.

First, I have a distrust for books that include a number in the title. Not just the number itself, but the ways that it's used. If a book title includes something like "10 Ways to...." or "18 Principles of...," I tend to leave it on the shelf. It just seems so phony to me. So last night in the catalog, we found such gems as "199 Promises of God" and "12 Ways to Be a Blessing to Your Church." Now those might be fantastic books. But I'll never know, because the formulaic title repels me from the start. My favorite one was "100 Ways to Simplify Your Life." Ryan made a good point: if I wanted to simplify my life, I don't think I would want to be told 100 ways to do so. That's too complex. A book that promises "One Way to Simplify Your Life" would be much more appealing.

The second thing that makes me wary of many Christian books is when the front cover is just a big picture of the author. I just want to yell, "Dude, I don't want your face all over the front of my book!" And the pictures are always so cheesy! There's nothing worse than a book with a guy dressed in a blue suit with his greasy hair slicked back with a title that ensures I will gain "Five Steps to Improve Your Relationships." Authors belong in the "About the Author" flap on the back of the book. They need to stop running all over the front cover, parading their sparkling white teeth and crimson neckties. I would rather anything be on the cover. A picture of a monkey playing dominoes. A drawing of James Garfield playing golf. Even just the title of the book. Just get the author's mug off of there.

Chick-fil-A (in Joplin at least) is having free breakfast every Friday in March. Be there.

Monday, February 23, 2009

My Problem With Hills

I'm a lazy person. This week, Ozark is hosting our annual Preaching and Teaching Convention, so there a ton of ministers from all over that are going to be on our campus. What this means for me is that we have no classes until Thursday. Now, the busiest part of the semester is rapidly approaching, during which I will have many tests, book reports, research papers, and all kinds of other stuff due. With a few classless days, I have a great opportunity to get a little ahead on my schoolwork. But alas, I have spent most of the afternoon either playing XBox or just sitting around, and now here I sit typing away on a post that my single-digit readership may or may not enjoy or benefit from.

I read through 1 Corinthians not long ago. It's one of my absolute favorite books in the Bible, because it has so many really challenging ideas in it (Some of which I'd like to write about on here, but as I said before, I'm lazy and don't write near as much as I should). Just as I tend to be a little lazy with my schoolwork, it's really easy for me to get lazy in my spirituality. And I imagine the same is true for many, many Christians, at least in America. We go to church on Sundays, get our sampling of Jesus for the week, and relax on the easychair of mediocrity until the next Sunday. Here's what 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 says:

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.

This is probably my favorite passage in 1 Corinthians. It brings to my mind the numerous sports movies where the main characters really suck at their sport until they enter a musically accompanied montage of push-ups, sit-ups, jump rope, and stair-running. It doesn't allow for a weak, easygoing Christianity. It demands discipline. It demands commitment. It demands growth. It demands maturity. We get so content with having an ankle-deep spiritual life. We don't put forth serious effort to know about Jesus and God's Word. We tolerate the same old sins and don't reach out for holiness. We'd rather watch another re-run on TV instead of tell our hell-bound friends and family about Christ. How many of us "run aimlessly"? We're alright with our lives being the same old thing with no vision to moving closer to God. In word, we coast.

My house is situated on a hill with a pretty slight incline. When I was in fourth grade, I would ride my bike to the end of the street, which was the top of the hill, and then I would peddle as hard as I could for a little bit, then stop peddling and see how far I could get just by coasting, and it was usually a pretty long ways. One time, however, I peddled and peddled, but as I began to coast, I decided to pull into my driveway instead of go all the way down the street. Unfortunately, I was going so fast that my turn into the drive way was a little wider than I anticipated, and I slammed full speed into my basketball pole. I had the entire driveway at my disposal, but fate directed me to that five-inch diameter location. Upon impact, my body stopped at the spot while my bike slid several more feet before I gingerly limped into the house with a very sore bum.

Another time, I was in high school, and I was at Ozark for one of their high school events. Ozark is also built on a hill, though much steeper, and Charlie and I decided that it would be a good idea to have a race by rolling down the hill. We didn't anticipate the vast quantity of sticks and walnuts that would be laying on the ground, and we soon both discovered that rolling down that hill was a bad idea. But neither of us could stop, so we both painfully let gravity take its toll on our bodies.

The point of these unfortunate memories is this: when you start coasting, it's hard to change direction. You can't just stop on a dime. Once we recognize our own spiritual obesity, training ourselves into fitness is hard. It requires discipline, endurance, and purpose. With God's help, we force our bodies and our minds to become subject to our wills as we align our wills with Christ's. We get off our lazy duffs and move. We progress. We move forward. We stop being bums and start being athletes. We feed ourselves instead of just letting others force food down our underworked gullets. We "press on toward the goal" as Paul writes in Philippians 3:14.

It's normal to accept an easy life. No one likes pain or hard work. But sometimes, that's what makes us healthy. A body never gets stronger unless some stress gets placed on it. So don't coast. Sprint toward God. It might be an uphill run, but it's worth the effort. As Paul said, the prize waits for us at the ends of the race. Everyone who has effort dumped out an entire box of cereal just to get to the trinket at the bottom knows that a prize is worth fighting for. And I'm confident that the prize that awaits us is better than a decoder ring or a plastic top, any day.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Cupid is a Demon

Today is Valentines Day. Valentines Day is kind of a funny thing. I'm not sure there is any day of the year that is more dislike by a large number of people. I mean, pretty much everyone in America likes Thanksgiving, because we all really like to eat. We like Christmas because we like getting stuff. We even like St. Patrick's Day because we like to drink. But for many, Valentines Day doesn't have the same sort of appeal. Single people don't like it because it reminds them that they are single and are doing crossword puzzles on their computer all night while others are having romantic dinners at Red Onion, or at least getting a heart-shaped pizza from Papa John's. Guys in relationships don't like Valentines Day because it is significantly detrimental to their life savings thanks to the obligatory flowers, candies, dinners, movies, etc. So as I see it, the only people who like Valentines Day are girls that are in relationships, because they like to watch sappy movies and eat overpriced pasta. And what idiot decided to start letting them control things?

At least in elementary school, Valentines Day has some redemptive value in that my class would always have a party in the afternoon, which meant less spelling and math and more eating nachos and drinking soda. Of course, the festivities also included the valentine exchange. What made this difficult was that each person was required to give a valentine to every other person in the class. This always created several problems for me. First, being such a romantic as I am, I felt my love was being put in a cage by forcing me to give a valentine to everyone in the class. Is forced love really love at all? Second, I just felt weird giving valentines to other dudes. And third, I was unsure of which valentines to give to the people in the class I just wasn't very fond of. I mean, it was hard enough for me to keep all the girls in class from falling in love with me, and I didn't want to lead anyone on.

And yet, I miss the days when romantic relationships were simple enough that my biggest worry was which Transformer-themed valentine I should put in each person's tissue paper-wrapped shoebox. Over the past several years, I don't think there has been anything that has made me more confused, frustrated, and generally irritable than the whole guy/girl sphere of life. If anybody out there reads my blog but doesn't actually know me, they probably imagine me as a tall, dashing man with a chiseled chin and rippling deltoids with a charming personality and quick wit. But the truth of things is that I'm really pretty odd and awkward and a little socially inept, and I tend to say things that offend people. So all of that doesn't bode very well for me relationally. (If you want to hear more about my social ills, go read the post "Bystander Effect" that I wrote in November). But it's all okay, because it at least gives me things about myself to laugh at. In my idiocy in turning down an invitation to go to Starbucks with a girl I liked because "I don't really like coffee that much" at least gives me a good story to tell others.

So for all of you odd, awkward, socially inept, offensive people out there: I hope you had a fantastic February 14th and that you had the opportunity to feast on plenty of those chalky candy hearts that we all eat at this time of year, even though they're not even very good.

A final thought: I think the reason that many people get so excited about holidays is that it allows them to really focus on a specific thing only one day of the year when they should be doing so everyday. For example, we celebrate Thanksgiving, but we're probably not thankful enough the rest of the year. We celebrate Easter, but we don't think about Jesus enough every other day. And we celebrate Valentines Day. It may be that we don't love very well the rest of time.