A Word About This Address

This is ALWAYS a painful subject to breech, but I find myself coming back to it time and again. It's basically this:

Ladies, I like you and all, but this web page is just not for you.

There, I said it. Again. I've had several uncomfortable conversations with the lady folk about this, and I just had another with my friend Rachel Peters, who chipped a couple of comments in last week, to my surprise and sadness. I know people like LeRay and E come here and look in, and I'm really okay with that: it's just the comments that weird us guys out. We need to feel free to speak openly and guyly one to another, and we might feel condemned or constricted with the fairer sex looking in. And that's really it--I want the locker room feel. As I've mentioned this dilemma with other guys, I am universally lauded by them for wanting to speak out about this.

I haven't done this in the past, I don't think, so let me now tell you why this page was born: I have friends hither (see hamster) and yon (see cardinalzen), to (theRod) and fro (Totila) who know me and with whom I'd like to talk more frequently than I'm able. As I see it, this medium simply allows me to scatter my stories over a wide swath at once. That way, I don't have to repeat experiences in Africa on the phone with each person, or tell each person what I think God's saying to me. I can talk to Washington D.C., California, and Texas all in one go. It's nice. Also, I forget a lot of stuff, and this is a good capturing spot. Unfortunately, I find much humor in body noises, my anatomy, etc., and I just want to be able to talk about these things freely with the guys I love, for right or wrong. I want the feeling of being on my back porch with ace, while I drink Sprecher Root Beer, and he drinks actual beer, and we both burp and get honest and not guarded with our words.

I have to say, here, that I might be wrong in wanting this at all, or maybe I want something I can't have. I'm open to correction on this from whoever may be listening in. Really. But I'm just stating my viewpoint. Open and transparent, as Mark tells me to be. Pity me, sure, but don't hate me. Please.

And there it is.


ps- I'm sorry to all onlookers I may have just now offended.
pps- Totila, I'm sorry you were labeled as "Fro". That is not an epithet.
ppps- now I'm feeling kind of... sheepish.

What hath God wrought?

This is a picture of a man so beaten down by life, so utterly destroyed by the banal, the colorless, and the mundane, that he resorts to novelty band-aids shaped like bacon and eggs for some sort of cheap thrill. This is a man who is so starved for activity and meaning in his life that he would inexplicably run a half marathon in a completely foreign state, at the Home of Country Music, just to see if he would still be alive at the end. It's a man who would let his own wife strong-arm him into rising at 4:45am, on a day off, to compete in a sport he doesn't even really enjoy. My God, look at this lump of flesh.

And this is a picture of that same man, with his eyes closed. He would run a respectable 2 hours, and his wife would convincingly beat him by something like 8 minutes.


Here are some of the 23,000 other lemmings that participated.

A dairy tale

My pal Kelly told me this story, and it blew my heart up through my nose:


Kelly has a son named Mac, and Mac can be petulant just like he's a 4 year old boy. Anyway, Kelly takes Mac, sometimes, when she's feeling generous and motherly, to go get ice cream. They have to walk by the United Dairy Farmers store, which, to all of you people out there, sounds like some sort of "tradin' post" where men wearing straw hats and flannel shirts trade with butter and cheese. It is, instead, a popular convenience store that happens to sell ice cream also (think 7-11 with a Baskin Robbins built into it). When they walk by the UDF (as we Cincinnatians call them), Mac throws an absolute FIT, acting like his mother has held out on him, and life is terrible, and my guardian is a liar and isn't even looking OUT for me, oh WOE IS ME!!! kind of thing.


Kelly rolls her eyes a little then smiles sweetly and keeps dragging along this frustrated Mac-boy until they get to the Graeter's Ice Cream place. Graeter's is "Oprah's Favorite Ice Cream"; it is very rich and sweet and indulgent--much better quality ice cream than what UDF has on offer. Also, there's a big park/playground right by the ice cream store where Mac and Kelly can dawdle and lick their cones and swing a little bit--way better than the cigarette butt-littered intersection where the UDF store is situated. It's just a better world, all the way around. But Mac couldn't see that. Mac wanted Cheap and Quick. Mac would sell out INSTANTLY to expediency.


Kids sure are stupid, huh?

About titles

Don't you think it's weird how the guy at the front on Sunday mornings always holds the title "pastor"? Maybe not. I do. I started feeling that way in high school, since that guy had no idea who I was or what my life was like. How could I call him my pastor, since pastor means "shepherd", and shepherds are generally thought to know something about their sheep's whereabouts, health, anxiety levels, etc. I realized that the guy who wore the title was NOT the guy who had the function.

Back off that example, and the same thing happens all over the place. People want titles to compliment their giftings, so that everyone can know at a glance that they're leaders, they're proven, they have some pull. I mean, once you've spent a few years serving people, why go through the whole thing again? Just let your past speak for you via a title, and you don't have to go through the ignominy (and time waste) of serving people that don't know how great you are yet. It's a nice shorthand. Give me a title, and I don't have to prove myself anymore. Trust the title. I AM the bishop. Or the apostle. Or the evangelist. Etc.

Am I sounding negative? I hope not, but I'm quoting bad examples. They ARE bad. What I see more and more is that gifts are really just functions within the body. Functions. Do you receive pastoring from me? Then, as far as you're concerned, I function as a pastor to you. Let me know that, that will help me. But if Bob receives TEACHING from me, then to Bob, I serve as a teacher. And maybe I'm that way to him today, but not as much tomorrow. And that's fine. But if, over years, Dan sees that I serve as a prophetic voice to many people in many situations, then Dan can call out my function there, over time. Gifts are called out by body members, not by people themselves. If somebody tells you "I'm Steven. I'm a prophet," you will naturally be wary of Steven. He will concern you. John wrote that Jesus didn't give any credence to man's testimony about himself. He could see what he was by how he interacted with other people. Here's a snippet from Matthew 23:

6[Pharisees] love the place of honor at banquets and the most important seats in the synagogues;
7they love to be greeted in the marketplaces and to have men call them 'Rabbi.'

8"But you are not to be called 'Rabbi,' for you have only one Master and you are all brothers.
9And do not call anyone on earth 'father,' for you have one Father, and he is in heaven.
10Nor are you to be called 'teacher,' for you have one Teacher, the Christ.
11The greatest among you will be your servant.
12For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.

What planet does Jesus live on? This is NOT the way it works. The whole point of the institutional system, if you traffic in it, is to be Noticed and Given a Platform and Recognized. And that stuff is filthy, absolutely filthy. I don't know if you know how it feels to be introduced as a "great worship leader" or have people say that you're a teacher, or something like that (not like that's your function, but as if that office is Who You Are), but it feels great. Trying to get off that pedastal and back to the Mat. 23 place where we're all brothers is like killing yourself, over and over. And I guess that's the point. But how can we possibly avoid the fact that when organizations label their people with religious terms like Head Pastor, they're in direct violation of this passage? Well, we can't. We're all brothers, and that's where the titles stop.

Here's what Paul said about all this mind-numbing jockeying for honor, in I Cor. 3:

3You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?
4For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?
5What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task.
7So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow.
9For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building.
10...each one should be careful how he builds.
11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.
16Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?
17If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple.
18Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a "fool" so that he may become wise.
21So then, no more boasting about men!

We're just fellow workers. So we'd better be careful about talking about people as if there is some sort of division between those who're REALLY gifted and "the rest of us". And we sure as hell should be careful if you're ever treated as one of these "specially gifted ones." Hello? Paul also says in I Cor 12 that "those parts that SEEM 'honorable' require NO SPECIAL HONOR." So we'd be wise to get off the high horse that our flesh (and that of others, too!) likes for us to be on, and humble ourselves and get some grace. This titles thing is dangerous ground.

The funny thing is, we're supposed to recognize our leaders--we're told that. And we should look for the pastors, teachers, evangelists, apostles, and prophets. We should know them, since they're gifts to us from God. But it gets sticky when we laud them as something other than us, as a cut above. We ARE to bless them for their service, but maybe not HONOR them. We're to obey them, but not... well, I'm not sure how this all works.

Do I sound a little confused on this issue? Well I am. I'm just talking through the stuff I'm thinking. It's swirled, like the last generation pudding pops that Bill Cosby used to tell me about. I miss those. I really do.

This just in!

Research journalist Matthew McConaugheyhey has recently made some incredibly perceptive statements about professional baseballer Barry Bonds, who's embroiled in a sticky scandal because, now follow me, he has genetically altered his body in a way that his predecessors and competitors have not. So his body is artificially bigger, faster, his head is gigantic, etc. People are talking about this, and getting upset. Luckily, McDonaughey is there to set us all straight:


"If Barry Bonds did take steroids or not, even if you think he did or didn't, you gotta root for him because, whatever is true, or whatever you believe, he's clean now. Fact and perception. So every home run he hits, like the mammoth 452-footer he hit in Philadelphia May 7, is a hit, a home run — for Barry, for baseball. It's a clean pursuit of the record, by maybe the greatest home run hitter ever to play the game. ...'Roids or not, this man has more than the ability, but the talent, to be the greatest home run hitter in baseball history, and I think he is. So, believe what you want, guilty or not, what the future tells or not, we should, and do, all root for Barry Bonds to break every record in baseball's home run history."



Man, this helps me, coming from a respected physician like McConaughey. Wait a second... now I'm seeing... hey, this guy's not a journalist NOR any sort of doctor! This guy's a freaking ACTOR! He's a dope-smoking actor doing that Tom Cruise-style "Up With Everything" cheerleading! His opinion has no merit whatsoever!


Oh, okay. Uh... oh. Nevermind.



Ps--I'll say again that the guy should've been put away after making "A Time To Kill", which was a film I rather enjoyed.

South Africa Part One

South African people are better than us. Well, I can't really say that, can I?

South African people are not better than us, they just sin less. Wait, no, that's not right, either.

South African people are not taller than us, but they're nice and happy and give of themselves like crazy. Well, that's a little patronizing. The people I met were like that, but I only met SOME of the South Africans. I have not met them all.

My Didi and I stayed in a house one night in a township. A township is something that white people made up when they decided that they wanted to legislate a separation between them and black people, so they sent the black people to the far, far outskirts of town without money, to sort of scrounge around and make things livable for themselves, even though all the money and power and jobs were controlled by the white people. It wasn't fair. But that's the way it was, and though the machinery that made those divisions have been dismantled, the divisions, for the most part, are still there.

For instance #1: Didi and I were told we were the first while people to EVER stay the night in the township called Nelson Mandela. I will remind you that apartheid was made official in 1948. That's 58 years ago.

For instance #2: My friend Andrew went to buy supplies at the hardware store in Pretoria, and they were all excited about our big American purchasing powers. The guy just happened to ask Andrew what it was for. Andrew told him we were going to build houses in the townships. The guy suddenly became mysteriously unhelpful: "No, sorry, we don't have CAULK. You'll have to go somewhere else to find that, I guess." "Nails? No, I don't really know where we could find NAILS for you. Maybe some other store will have NAILS for you." We eventually got what we needed, but Andrew wanted to twist that guys sack right off its moorings. I don't know that that would've solved anything, but it's how he felt.

--Fortunately, some things ARE gone. Like the law that said that black people had to register parties in their homes with the police, or else the police could come in and throw everybody in jail since it might be political; or the law that said all black people had to be out of the cities by 8pm or you'd get thrown into jail; or the law that said that only 2 black people could walk side-by-side in the cities, and 3 was a mob and you get thrown into jail. Those laws are no longer enforced, like they were in 1992 when I was a junior in college and knew nothing about any of this.

Anyhow, Didi and I stayed in this precious stuccoed cinder block house without running water, and were hosted by Conny Mthombeni and her boys Sempiwe and Nkosinathi. We bathed in a plastic tub, and used an outhouse. We saw that, in this community of poverty, people are CONSTANTLY reliant on one another for basic needs, and everyone is happy in that system. We went a few doors down with Conny and visited Bopi, and while we were there, 19-year-old Niko stuck his head in to say that his father was out of town for a few days and did anyone have some food for him? Conny said "I'm making dinner for these people in an hour. Come back then and I'll feed you." I thought, "way to go, Conny."

Niko did come by, along with about 8 others (we were told it's a custom that, when someone has a visitor, everyone is to come by and meet the visitor. A good custom), but Niko was the only one who, after dinner, asked us to tell him all about God and then responded by asking Jesus to love him and save him away from all the pain and sickness in his heart. Wowee.

Conny's friend Daphne came by with her girl, also (fathers are a rarity in South Africa), and they brought a dish along to the dinner feast: Mautwana. This is boiled chicken's FEET. I know that sounds really great, but remember what you know of a chicken's foot: it's really hard skin. So when you boil it, it (eventually) absorbs water, and becomes fat and puffy and slimy like okra. Now, I'm not a fan of chicken WINGS because you have to fight through so much nonsense to get to the MEAT part, and with FEET, the problem is even worse: there's a tiny tiny SLIVER of meat under all this freaking SKIN and TENDONS and CRAP. I said with gusto that I'd try one, then proceeded to dismantle the foot in an effort to find the food inside. I was told that, no, what I was removing IS the dish, so I sheepishly ate it. IT WASN'T VERY GOOD.

I have a habit of throwing stuff like chicken skin away. But South Africans not only eat the skin, they eat the tendons and EVEN THE BONES. Yup: crunch, crunch, crunch. Bone eating. Awesome. We left Conny 100 Rand, which is about 15 bucks. This was equivalent to two weeks' money for their household. Are the South Africans better than us? Maybe not at everything, but at eating bones and being hospitable? Yes. Yes they are.

This time, I'm ready

I have not been prepared in years past for the disintegration of the Mavs at the hands of the Spurs. I have been disappointed and frustrated. But I think those things are behind me. I believe that I am, as Paul encouraged me to do, putting behind childish things. I am now quite ready for the Mavs to stumble on their own shoelaces, for whatever random reason, and JUST ALMOST win, but not quite. I am ready. It feels good, this preparedness.

No, that bracket isn't from this year. But that's not what this is about.


Also, this:

SAME GUY

Today's War Story

I couldn't have known when I pulled up to the toll booth of the $4 lot that I would meet that thin, aging black man. I couldn't have known about his Purple Heart baseball hat, and that if I'd ask him about it, he'd tell me all about being injured in the artillery in the war in Vietnam, and that the next thing out of my mouth would be the only thing I could think of in response:



"You did that for me? You did that for ME?"

At which point his eyes would meet mine (for the first time), then he'd pause, and with a smile steadily eating up his face, he'd say:

"Yes. I did. Yes, I most certainly did."





I pulled into my spot and sat there and cried. It's not every day you get to meet a savior who defends you against an enemy you've never seen for freedom you didn't know needed defending, be able to live your life as nothing more than a beneficiary of wars fought for you outside of your awareness, and then, at just the right time, be able to thank the one that did that for you. What could I possibly give this guy? A candy bar? [Yes, do that.] Could I buy him a Coke? [Yes, do that, too.] But these are simply tokens of gratitude; they could never come close to REPAYING him. And you know, he didn't want that. He certainly doesn't want me to go experience the hell he endured, taking a mortar from a guy named Charlie and have schrapnel splatter me against the ceiling. He doesn't want me to have to load 16-inch mortars all day and blow my eardrums out.

But he loved hearing thanks. And I loved saying it. I said it three times, and got a high five from my savior.

It was a good day.

Daddy is away. Respect Mother.

I am away from the innernets until the mid-20s of this month. I am in one of the AIDS capitals of the world, that being South Africa.

I will be building cinder block houses, and Didi will be visiting AIDS victims in their homes. It will rip her heart out of her soul.

We'll be staying, for at least part of our time there, with black families in the township of Mamelodi, outside Pretoria. What we're going to go do is not magical or spiritual-looking, but it matters. I don't think the enemy likes it when we start sniffing around the poor and disenfranchised, so pray for us when you get the chance. Also, this:

Some Things Matter

When I make a poot, I want it to be as loud as possible. So I always push it out. I want it to QUACK, for crying out loud.

But sometimes, because I'm pushing it out so often, I get a little hemorrhoidal. I loosen an O ring.

[poot!]
(giggle.)

The Glorious Use of Sin

Let's call this man "Trent".

You're walking uptown and you meet Trent. You know nothing of him. You stare, exchange pleasantries, etc. At some point down the line, Trent sins against you. Aha! Now you've got him right where you want him. You didn't know how to 'minister' to Trent previously; you'd considered putting your hand on his arm and praying with him, but weren't sure how it'd come across. Now you have a great opportunity:

Isaiah 53:
4 Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

Before, it wasn't an option for you to bear up Trent's foibles. Now it is. After doing away with the petty temptations of unforgiveness and bitterness, you move into the place where you can actually deal with his junk before God in a way that will redeem him from his sin, and redeem you because you get to enter that much more into Jesus' heart. Yum!

When you were unrepentant, this opportunity was also not open to you. You were sentenced to working out life on your own, trying to make sense of your scene, and striving to create a world for yourself (in which others would be props) where you come out feeling good, safe, and as comfortable as possible. Whew! Glad that's over... now we can get onto reality.


If you will responsibly carry Trent's oopsies back to God and deal with them redemptively, you will enter into "the fellowship of sharing in [Christ's] sufferings, and, becoming like him in his death, somehow attain the resurrection from the dead." Wow! That sounds mysterious and crazy, but it also sounds wonderful. Painful? Yeah, sure, but every one of us is happy to experience pain to get something beautiful. That was built into us from the start.

-----------

The funny thing about this whole scenario is that I was born into a system of thinking that told me to run from all sin as far as I ever could. I was told to do that becuase God hates sin and also hates people who mess with sin. I now know that to be false. And I also now see that Jesus went around basically looking for sin. He was like a sin hunter, and he'd go absorb it everywhere he went. He'd suck it all up into himself and deal with it in himself. Like John Coffee (like the drink, only spelt differn't).

So the question for me is, what am I after? If it's comfort, then for goodness sake, stay away from sin! It's like spiritual poison! It hurts to get near it (maybe not instantly, but eventually)! It'll hook you up with this system that'll steal from you! Oh, but if you're after mercy (! oo! mercy!), well then, THERE's a horse of a differn't color. In THAT case, you might not MIND too much if your heart is used as a doormat, or you're ridiculed, or you have to stand up to strangers, or you have to defend someone who's smelly because of their own decisions. Yes, in THAT case, you might have that weird Pauline sort of APPETITE for what the Rod calls the "sweet storm" and might have some INTEREST (with misgivings--yeah, okay) in suffering in the right place for the right reasons.


It is my destiny to be like Jesus.
Jesus was a Sin Siphon.
A=C.

More Cereal Reviews! Spoilers Ahead!

I'll tell a story, then I'll make a point.

Get ready for a story. Didi came home recently with a cavalcade of packaged goods she bought at the local big box grocer. She knows the system, and my baby works the deals. One such product was a new cereal (my interest was immediately piqued): she'd bought it on sale, got an even better deal with that blasted frequent-shopper card (give me a moment here, for an extended parenthetical note...

CAN ANYONE STOP THE TREND OF THE FREQUENT SHOPPER CARD!?!?! My local PETROL supplier, for Petey's sake, now has a frequent shopper card! How many of these do we have to lug around with us to trade on the modern market? My friend David showed his RIDICULOUS wallet yesterday, filled to overflowing with items such as a Blockbuster card, which is unnecessary since they'll let you trade with just your driver's ID, a Starbuck's gift card with $0 on it, frequent buyer cards for Smoothie King, a pretzel place, Subway, Kroger's, etc. etc. It was disgusting. Simplify! Simplify! Simplify! Those blasted cards are likened to me as the convoluted process one must undergo at Radio Shack--headquartered in downtown Ft. Worth, Texas--to buy batteries. One must surrender one's address, telephone number, and mother's maiden name to patronize the place. I won't have it. I have cash money, and that will suffice. Egads. -mumble-

Ahem. now then.), and even more deeply discounted with an on-the-shelf coupon that the grocer (for reasons I don't understand) voluntarily doubled at the register. So she'd made off with $3 cereal at an introductory price of $1. Good girl.

Well, I was even more interested in having the cereal in my mouth by the spoonful than I was that Didi'd wrangled a great bargain on the product, so I sat down in our custom market research facility and set to work. My friends, what I experienced that day was a revelation: imagine Grape-Nuts (you may not be a fan. You may find it gravelly, pebbly, and generally inedible. I am not like you. But read on, nonetheless) WITHOUT the tooth-splitting hardness. It is light! It is airy! It is still crunchy! And these Grape-Nuts feature almond slivers (yes!) and raisins (I'm always down with the raisin). But the BEST part of this incredible new cereal is the Touch of Honey (TM). Holy smokes, you open up a box and you can SMELL the natural sweetness! Am I communicating its goodness?


Anyhow, I dug into this cereal and exclaimed, "Wow! This stuff is fantastic!" Didi came over and stole some of mine, employing her food-stealing skills of persuasion and chicanery, then said with resolve, "I'm getting my own bowl." We love the stuff. The day after this cereal festival happened was a Friday, which is my day off. Let's just say I made my way back to the big box grocer:

Cashier: So, I guess you really like that cereal, huh?
Me: Yes, i really do. You're correct in that assumption. My wife says the price on this stuff will never be any lower, since this is an introductory special and you guys are doubling the coupon and everything, so, I mean, since it's good 'til, like, 2008, stocking up makes a lot of sense. It's also delicious.
Cashier: Uh, okay. How many boxes you got there?
Me: 15. It's got a heart right on the box. That means it's good for me, right?
Cashier: (ignoring me, swinging the UPC Lightsaber around)

And that's the story, friends. My point is this: you should go out of your way to try new Grape-Nuts Trail Mix Cereal. I have forced several friends to try it, and the reaction is 100% enthusiastic approval. As a matter of fact, I had lunch that same Friday with Chris, who I entreated to take one of the 15 boxes of cereal in my car. Being a man of high principle, Chris insisted on buying his own. He has since passed on reccomendations to others. People, this is a quality product. Go. Eat.

Same guy.

He Slapped Me With His Prayer!

This guy is a friend of mine. He plays a bass guitar and sings crazy funk music for a living. He is buddies with Bootsie Collins. Here he is reciving an award for being the baddest funk guy around. Don't ask me which award this is. I just ripped it off his website.

While I'm establishing a visual context for Chris, I'll throw in this one, in which he apparantly is appearing as a sperm for a show. I include it because, to me, it's comical.


Okay, so there's the guy. He's a relatively new believer (<5 years), and he's really growing. Great guy. Tender heart. Anyway, I have to report a prayer I heard out of his mouth last night that blew me away. I really didn't hear the rest of his prayer because I was so taken by what he said. He was talking to God about how he felt such a huge desire to be an example to people. Now, as a religious brat, I understand that, too. Growing up, that was pressure for me. But here's what he said:

"I want to be an example, God: not of what's right and wrong, but what it's like to be loved by you, and how great and freeing that is."

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Considering that staggering prayer, I realized that I was raised to be an example to people of what IS right and wrong. That's also called The Law, which is no longer appropriate for me to traffic in. Our world is not in need of a better morality, for goodness' sake. God is getting that out of my head, step by step. Our world is a loveless place of commerce, and it's in need of the Jesus Love Bomb. And Chris is praying that THAT would be his legacy. What a killer prayer.

By the way, if you find yourself in need of funk, Chris' stage name is FREEKBASS. www.freekbass.com

Happy Confession

I am in love with this man.



Read about him and watch him at http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/03/22/afghan.christian/index.html

I am happy to report that I will soon be on a loooooong trip with him. We won't be coming back. It will be great.

Relief

Coming back from a long Chew absence is always intimidating. I feel pressure to output a whole glut of stuff. It ain't right I tell ya.


If you read the Holy Scriptures, and do the head-scratching that happens afterward, you've at least given some thought to the law/grace thing. It's a conundrum, and one that laces the Good Book from stem to stern. Here's what I see on that:

You know that Moses presented the law, aka the Mosaic Covenant. It said you need to do like 347 laws just right or you're a sinner and you need to sacrifice to get your account square with God. Jesus comes along and makes this Cosmic Super-Sacrifice after which there can never be another meaningful sacrifice in God's eyes. You can try, sure. Knock yourself out. But God isn't accepting any more sacrifices.

Hebrews 10:11 Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when this priest [Jesus] had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. 13 Since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool, 14 because by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

15The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says:
16"This is the covenant I will make with them
after that time, says the Lord.
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds."[b] 17Then he adds:
"Their sins and lawless acts
I will remember no more."[c] 18And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin.

This young man is scoring on a sacrifice fly.

Wow. Okay. Huge. But there's still verses that talk about us fulfilling the law. Romans 13:8 says "Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellow man has fulfilled the law." Yeah, that's cool, how we can fulfill the law by loving, I guess. But the thing is... why is Paul still talking to me about there being a leftover law? Aren't they all done with? And besides, I don't feel confident that I can love. And we're back to the law. As a matter of fact, Jesus said the A#1 law is loving God. That right there (the very fact that loving is presented as a law) tells me that I will fail at it, that Steven cannot do this thing. So why is loving people an 'outstanding debt'? Why isn't that also obsolete?

I'm sure there are lots of good answers to this question, but here's one I'll throw out there: The only way you can fulfill this last, niggling law is to have the Spirit of God live in you. He is perfect in all he does, and he will always lead you in His perfection (which, incedentally, is now in you as well, since you accepted the Cosmic Super Sacrifice). That is your only shot. Steven in Steven is doomed to fail—that’s what the law was for originally, to teach me that. Then I give up trying to fulfill the law, invite God to live his love life through me, and forget about the law. The law is not my problem anymore, anywhere--it's Jesus' burden alone. And He, in his spirit, can deal with it. Then, I get to look back at how God has led me and see that he has fulfilled the law through me. People were loved, the law was fulfilled, but it wasn't me--it was Christ living in me. Yessssssssssssssssssssssssss. Relief.

Romans 13:10
love is the fulfillment of the law.


So there seems to be this one little exception law that didn't get covered by Jesus' death? I don't know if that makes me a heretic or not, but I'm quoting Paul, here. God living the perfect Jesus Life through me is the remainder to the equation. Somebody correct me on this if I'm way off, I'm open to that. But that's kinda cool to me. Am I preaching the law by suggesting this?

Viva la GOB!!

My only concern is that the snarky innuendo will be replaced by bald-faced obscenity on Showtime, which will deflate me as an artist and alienate me as a viewer. I trust that Mitchell, though.