Stuff Christians Like (13 page)

The chances of a turtle popping up in your baptismal at church are pretty slim. During an away game, that’s completely possible. It’s not the turtles you should be afraid of though…it’s the snakes. Imagine a huge water moccasin slipping across that glassy surface, just as you’re about to usher someone under water. Do you call off the baptism and write the church folklore right then, or would you allow the urban legend about the “guy’s baptism that was almost ruined by a serpent from the devil” to grow naturally over time?

Our church records some amazing videos of people before they’re baptized. Usually, they get four or five takes to get the message right because everyone gets nervous in front of the camera. The final take is always really touching, but part of me misses the days when you could just blurt out whatever was in your heart (or mouth). It was awesome to see my dad, a minister, try to rein it back in when someone dropped a wild sentence about how crazy life was before Jesus came into their picture.

Rarely does someone crash the baptismal at church. Those things are planned and orchestrated. Our baptismal is twenty feet in the air above the crowd. A person would have to scale the wall like Spider-Man if they wanted to pool hop. The church can prepare for whoever’s getting baptized each Sunday. But in away-game baptisms, anything goes. Each year, at least one guy who came to the camp just because he likes camping would be sitting on the dock while my dad baptized other people. And he’d realize, “I’m here. I have a bathing suit on. Why not?” Next thing you know, he was wading over to my dad, and a murmur of “
that
guy’s getting baptized?” would ripple through the crowd.

If I ever start a church, I’m doing 100% away-game baptisms. I’ll probably try to do them in some sort of body of water that qualifies as a “holler.” I’m not sure if that’s a cross between a pond and a swimming hole, but something about having a T-shirt that says, “I got holy at the holler” sounds pretty nice. Or maybe we’ll baptize people in the crick so we can say, “I got Christ in the crick.” Is it wrong to arrange destination baptisms in the same way people get married in tropical resorts just so I can make horribly puntastic T-shirts?

Do you ever think God lets Moses win at Frisbee golf? The guy didn’t even get to enter the Promised Land after forty years of wandering; would it be so much to let him win at least once? Or would the purity of God’s character prevent him from deliberately missing a shot? That’s the kind of tough call that most theologians refuse to make. Not me. Moses always loses to God but he crushes Samson, who by the way is all drive, no short game.

It’s a well-known Christian fact that if you surrender your life to God—if you
really
turn over your hopes and dreams to him and
truly
give him control of your entire life—the first thing he’s going to do is send you to Africa. Immediately.

You’ll go from 0 to Hut in about 3.9 seconds. So if you don’t like the idea of being insanely poor and living in the desert in a thatch lean-to and eating—I don’t know—a steady diet of bugs, you should probably not give God everything you’ve got.

Because it’s a safe bet that if becoming a missionary in Africa is the most miserable thing you can imagine happening to you, that’s probably the first thing God is going to do when you become a Christian.

Of course if you
really
believe that if you turned your life over to God he would immediately send you somewhere you’d hate, then that’s a pretty hateful God you’ve got on your hands. If the very first thing God is going to do when you ask him to take the wheel is crash your car into a tree or a deep ravine, you’re serving a pretty miserable God.

That subtle reference to the Carrie Underwood song “Jesus Take the Wheel” would have killed three years ago and made you think I’m really relevant, but when I gave my life to God he said I had to use old references to country songs, which is the writer’s equivalent to being sent to a literary hut. But that’s just how God is.

Seeing God in nature is one of our favorite things to do. We love holding retreats in places like the mountains or the beach. Something about a panoramic view really drives home the point that “God is big. If he can handle how the ocean works, he can take care of my little problem.” But a panoramic view is only half the battle. What we really like is when we can find a cross shape that has naturally formed somewhere on God’s green earth. Two trees that have grown together, a formation of rocks that kind of looks like a wobbly cross, that clump of stars out in the dead of space that resembles a cross. We love finding reminders of God in nature.

I think that’s great, except that the last time I went to the beach, on the roof deck of the house my family rented, I tried to force God to meet my schedule. I got up early, took my notebook and pen up there, held my breath as the sun came up, and…nothing. So I literally walked the entire deck to make sure I was not in the wrong God spot, as if maybe the God juice was flowing to the corner I wasn’t standing in.

And when it didn’t happen, I tried to help God out by priming the pump. “Wow, that water is endless. Maybe you want to tell me about your endless love? No, nothing there? How about all the shells that are scattered across the sand when the tide goes out? Maybe you want to talk about how the search for wisdom is a lot like searching for a perfect shell amongst a million broken ones? How’s that sound? Nothing, hmmm. Let’s think about the dunes or storms or something. Help me out, God; I’m doing all the work here.”

I was at the beach so I expected a God performance, for him to speak something deep and beautiful into my heart. But he didn’t. I didn’t leave the beach that day with any new insights, even though I probably could have written a pretty amazing sequel to “Footprints in the Sand” called “Footprints 2: The Revenge.”

“You should have seen me before I became a Christian. I was wild. I had this really hot girlfriend who was named after a city, and we were living in this cool loft downtown and every night, not just on the weekends,
every
night, we were going out. Her uncle owned a bunch of nightclubs and a fleet of yachts, so we would just party and then get on one of the yachts and have
the craziest times and catch fresh crabs in the Florida Keys and then watch the sun pierce the morning sky with streaks of red and orange and yellow.

“And then I became a Christian. The end.”

No one ever says “the end” when they tell a reverse testimony, one of those rare gems that buckets all the exciting parts of a life story before the moment of salvation, but they should. Because that’s what they’re doing. They’re essentially saying, “I used to have a really fun life and then I became a Christian. The end.”

We associate all the fun and excitement and neon coolness of life with the world and leave God all the boring, discipline-flavored moments. He’s like eating broccoli. We know it’s good for us, but it’s still broccoli. But that can’t be right. God is wild. He’s constantly saying, “Let’s go find cliffs to jump off of,” and, “I know exactly what you need, because, guess what, I put that need there.” He created my heart and the deepest desires I have, and there’s no yacht or nightclub on the planet that can access those spots of me like God can.

And besides, he invented sex. And not just “let’s make a baby” sex—he invented “whoa, the world just tilted on its axis; I can’t believe we get to do that and go to heaven too” sex. Sometimes we act like we were the ones that discovered it was fun, like maybe God was in heaven and was surprised to see how enjoyable we were able to make it. “Whoa, I created that for procreation purposes; I had no idea it would be so awesome.” And so we give the world credit for sex and think that God is only down with the functional version, but the fun version, the wild version, that’s probably something Marvin Gaye came up with.

If I were God, which my counselor Chuck assures me is not the case, I would probably want to pile drive everyone who ever complained that “God has never spoken to me.”

And that would be quite the pile driver-a-thon, just a non-stop beat down with T-shirts and pony rides for the family members who weren’t receiving a pile driver. Because not hearing from God is one of our favorite things to complain about.

I think Christians do this because we all know at least one person who says, “I heard God speak to me, clear as day, and it changed my life forever.” And if they’re humble, they only say it when prompted, but if they’re not, they drop that sentence if they get within ten miles of a conversation having anything remotely to do with God. (Which could indicate that their life didn’t really change, but that’s beside the point.)

It’s possible God dropped some solid, audible wisdom into that person’s life. Maybe he megaphoned them like Paul on the road to Damascus. But when we hear stories like that, we twist them all around in our heads. We don’t hear, “I heard God speak to me, clear as day, and it changed my life.” We hear, “Unless God speaks to you too, your life will never be changed.” So we establish that as the gold standard of radical life change and secretly walk around having internal conversations like this:

“Is that you, God? Are you there? I thought for a second I heard you. Okay, let me know if you want to talk. I’m ready. Say something out loud, please. Speak up. Just this once. Come on.”

We’ll complain to our friends, “God’s never spoken to me. Yeah, in the Bible, I guess, but he’s never really spoken to me directly.” That might be true. He might never speak to you audibly, but getting hung up on that is such a fantastic way to short-change the Bible. “Yeah, it’s good…it’s hundreds of pages of
God’s Word, but not like that one magical, silver-bullet, audible sentence I’m waiting for. That…that would change everything.”

Huh? What was that last thing you said, God? You want me to give what to who? Uh yeah, this is awkward. I didn’t want to do this, but can you come over here and look at Quicken with me? It’s financial software that shows where my money is going, and it was invented by…I’m explaining things to God. Ha, ha, this is so silly, but still.

See right here, this column that says “tithe”? It’s automatic. I am automatically firing off a direct deposit to church every month for 10 percent of my salary. Pretty nice, right? But I could swear I just heard you ask me to give more than 10 percent.

Which is weird because you and I are kind of locked into a lifetime 90/10 contract. I keep 90. You keep 10. I’d like to change that, I would; that sounds great, in theory. But 10 percent is in the Bible. And I’m not ready to go against the Bible, soooo let’s just stick with our current agreement.

The best way to make someone having a really horrible day feel even worse is to say, “God didn’t promise you an easy life.” It’s such a great beat-down sentence because in the very same stroke you punch both God and your friend in the face. On the one hand, you shame your friend for complaining: “Hey,
you diva Christian, it’s not going to be all bon bons and blingity bling easy living with God. I feel like you should have known this simple truth of faith by now.” And then you also throw God under the bus: “I know you’re miserable and you think your life is horrible, but that’s just how God rolls. He’s a big fan of your personal misery, so get used to it. That’s how he gets down.”

I’ve never gotten a speeding ticket, but if I ever do, I want to be honest with you. I’m going to name-drop God. Not just a little bit. I’m going to name-drop God so hard and so often in that conversation with the cop that God in heaven is going to stop playing Battleship with Peter and say, “Hold up, did someone just give me a shout-out? Is it the Grammys already?”

You probably don’t think that’s biblical, but then you probably also forget Philippians 4:13, which says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” (NKJV). And since that verse clearly gives me the freedom to get out of a speeding ticket, I’m going to name-drop Christ, too. I’ll go through the whole Trinity if that’s what it takes to get out of the ticket.

You can, too, if you’d like. It’s pretty easy. Here’s what to say, depending on the circumstances, if you get pulled over:

“Why, hello officer. I was just coming from church, where we had some baptisms and prayed. There were baby dedications too. Did I mention that? Sweet little babies. Was I speeding?”

“Hello, officer! My, where has the day gone? You start out with a church service, and helping people and singing songs to Jesus, and end up just getting so busy on the Sabbath that you end up
speeding around. Was I going too fast? And is today technically the Sabbath? I always get confused about that.”

“Hello, officer. Beautiful night, isn’t it? You certainly can see God’s handiwork on nights like this, what with all the twinkling stars and the quiet whispers of the happy crickets in the tall grass. Reminds me of a retreat I went on one weekend after helping feed the homeless. Holy Spirit, communion, Jesus. Were you saying something about a ticket?”

Technically even if it’s Thursday and you go to church on Sunday, you’re “on your way to church.” It’s just going to take you three days to get there. If that police officer decides to interpret “on my way to church” to mean “I’m headed to church
right now
, so please don’t impede my immediate progress to God’s house…” well, that’s really just between you and the officer. Just don’t give me a shout-out if you end up in jail for providing false information to the police. Save your one phone call for someone who’s smart and won’t tell you to name-drop the Alpha and Omega to get out of a speeding ticket. That’s horrible advice. You don’t want that guy handling your case.

Of course I should warn you that I wrote this book while living in the Bible Belt of America. My friend got pulled over doing 150 mph in a Porsche on his way to volunteer with high school students one Sunday morning in Atlanta. The cop screamed at him for a while, took a look at his volunteer T-shirt, and waved him on.

Given the chance, I would probably edit every word I have ever written in my life. For some reason, seeing something I wrote makes me want to either throw up or punch the piece of paper
directly in the face. I think I could have done something differently or better. I want to start over, I want to rewrite, I want to edit.

I don’t think God has that problem when he looks at the Bible. I don’t think he has any problems, but if he did want to edit one verse, like just a tiny edit—I’m talking a single word—I think I know which one he would yank. “Cheerful.” He would delete the word “cheerful” from 2 Corinthians 9:7 about him wanting a cheerful giver because man, oh man, have we abused that one.