Stuff Christians Like (7 page)

The barrel is what you’re going to be wearing when God instantly makes you homeless as a way to increase your humility. He’s just going to take away everything you have and leave you with only a barrel to wear. And not even a nice one that looks old-fashioned and might have come from a sun-dappled winery in Sonoma, California. I’m talking about a gross old barrel that probably held beets before it held you. Don’t expect rope suspenders, either. God’s taking those, too. You’ll be holding up that barrel with your bare hands.

I’m not sure what our fear of patience and humility really means. Maybe we think God won’t notice we need more patience or humility, and he’ll forget to slow our lives down or take all our stuff away. We’ll be able to skate on through at a normal pace with loads of possessions unless we accidentally summon God with the words “patience” and “humility” like Beetlejuice or the boogeyman.

So if you’re feeling like this book isn’t funny, either
you
prayed for patience when it came to finding a good book to read, or
I
prayed for humility.

We’ve all either heard somebody do this, or we’ve done it ourselves: In the middle of a prayer circle, someone will raise their hand with a prayer request and then proceed to gossip about somebody else. Usually it sounds like this:

“I want to lift up my friends Charlie and Sandra. Sandra caught Charlie looking at pornography online, and he yelled at her for running up all their credit cards. And you all probably know their son got kicked out of school for getting drunk and doing the African Anteater Dance from the movie
Can’t Buy Me Love
at the homecoming dance. So I really just want to pray for them.”

I’m sure that when God hears stuff like that, he wants to throw a lightning bolt down at us. And not just a regular one, but some sort of super lightning bolt coated with tigers and switchblades. But what should you do when someone in your small group disguises gossip as prayer?

I suggest you hit that person with a plank.

I know, that sounds violent. Beating someone with a 2 x 4 chunk of wood about the head, neck, and shoulder regions might seem aggressive at first. But hear me out. I think that when a new small group is forming, they should make a “Please Stop Gossiping” plank together. They can decorate it and paint it and make designing it a communal activity like fraternities with their paddles. Then, at the start of each prayer circle, just lay the “Please Stop Gossiping” plank in the middle of the room. The moment someone starts down that path, the first person to grab the plank gets to hit them. And the offender can’t act surprised—because they helped design the plank. If they act indignant, just bust out the “splinter in my eye, plank upside yo’ head” verse. That’s in the Bible, and when the room stops spinning from the donnybrook you just initiated, you can show them the verse.

The plank is effective, but if you don’t have access to wood, the fastest, easiest way to punch prayer gossip in the mouth—besides actually punching someone
in the mouth—is to say, “This is about you—isn’t it?” Just insist that the horrible things your friend is gossiping about are actually true of them instead of somebody else. Keep saying, “This is about you—isn’t it? Come on…‘I have a friend named “Frank” who met a girl online in the Niagara Falls area and she stole his identity’? That’s you, right? Someone stole your Social Security card and they’re living it up, looking at big waterfalls and spending your cash.” Eventually your gossiping friend will grow tired of your shenanigans and say something like, “Stop! It’s not about me! I would never do something like that. That’s horrible!” At which point you can say, “Aha! You’re right. Those are horrible things, and you’re telling us horrible things about your friends. In Proverbs 6:17 – 19, on the list of things God hates, gossip is listed with murder. Murder! What’s next? Are you going to kill one of us? You are. Aren’t you? A pox on you and your kin.”

All right, you should probably leave out that last line about the pox. It’s not particularly compassionate, and I probably just threw it in there because I wanted to make it seem like I read Shakespeare so much that sometimes it just spills out uncon-trollably.

I think the uber-popular Christian prayer request for a “hedge of protection” is in the Bible, but I’m not sure. It sounds like something David would have written in the book of Psalms. He’s very poetic and our most Bono-like writer. But a friend of mine once revealed that he’s always found that to be an inadequate security measure. As a child, when his mother would pray that he would have a hedge of protection or a hedge of angels around him, he would think, “Anyone can jump a hedge. How hard is that? Forget the hedge of angels; I’m praying for a dome of angels.”

At first I laughed at that story, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. These are troubling times, and I’ve never seen a hedge and thought, “That thick collection of bushes is both terrifying and impenetrable.” Maybe instead of praying for a hedge of protection, we should pray for:

Your enemy would see this from a distance and think it was a standard beaded curtain. “Sweet,” they’d think. “Hippies. Let’s go steal their stuff.” But as soon as they touched the curtain, they’d be rained down on by wasps that were enraged at being delicately strung together in a beaded curtain formation.

Throwing a plank across the average moat renders it useless. That won’t be an issue though…with the trampoline moat of lions, or T-MOL. You’ve admittedly got to pull insane permits to build this thing. But once you do, trust me, it’s worth it. Few things are as scary and imposing as a pride of lions that have
figured out the mechanics of a trampoline. Just imagine a hurricane of claws and fangs and manes bouncing skyward as they “give each other air.” I’m getting sweaty just typing this.

When people say “a hedge of protection” or “a hedge of angels,” I start imagining a bunch of angels in pleated khakis standing around, bored, waiting for the bus. Forget that. A rugby scrum is where players from both teams lock arms and heads and start swirling around in a tangle of power and aggression and swagger.

That’s what I want angels protecting me to be doing. I want them to be constantly brawling, like some sort of angelic version of the Patrick Swayze movie
Roadhouse.
When something bad comes my way, the angels don’t have to warm up. They just turn to my foe and say, “You want to get in on this? We got more than enough to go around.”

“You don’t have to have sex on your wedding night. Be gentle.” That’s what an elderly friend of the family told me minutes after I tied the knot. Well me, and the guy filming the video, and anyone who ever watched the video.

Sometimes the mission field God calls you to is hot, single people. It’s rare, but it happens. You’re just minding your own business, content in your own spiritual walk, when God will tap you on the shoulder and say, “I want you to reach the lost in local nightclubs and other singles hot spots. Please go out and date people into a relationship with me. I’ve seen the traffic numbers on eHarmony.com, and the harvest is indeed full.”

That’s a pretty sweet gig if you can get it. You get to go out to dinner a lot and see movies, which certainly beats slumming it in some third world country mission field. Sure, you’ve got to
come up with creative excuses when your friends at church ask you, “Is that guy you’re falling in love with a Christian?” But what do they know? This is different. You’re different. They didn’t receive the same call you did.

And besides, don’t those naysayers know that marriage will change him? Marriage changes everything. I don’t know the exact numbers, but I’m pretty sure 80 percent of guys who aren’t Christian become so when you light a unity candle and read 1 Corinthians 13:4 – 6 at your wedding. If that doesn’t work, then having a kid together will probably fix everything.

A love offering is kind of a “volunteer offering” the church takes up during special occasions, like when a puppet group from Guam (named “Strings of Mercy”) is performing at your church. It’s really not that voluntary though, because if you don’t contribute anything, you’re essentially telling everyone that your heart is not full of love. By not putting a couple of bucks in the offering plate, you’re actually putting in a big fistful of hate.

I wish when the ushers collected a love offering they would say out loud when someone didn’t give, “Oh, you don’t have any love for the magical world of puppetry? I guess ‘love your neighbor’ doesn’t include puppeteers? Fine, be that way.”

He didn’t give it to me. I’m married, thank God, which I can totally say in this context because I am literally thanking God for something he gave me, which is a wife. It’s weird that he didn’t give you one though. Maybe he does want you to be lonely, I
mean single. Like Paul. Marriage isn’t for everyone. Not everyone gets that gift. Some people, yourself for instance, get cats instead.

Or dogs. God seems like he’s more of a dog kind of guy. And that’s not so bad. Dogs are nice, you’ll have a lot of time by yourself for puzzles, and your tea will last twice as long. Think about that. Whenever my wife and I have tea we waste two teabags. Think of the savings in tea you’ll be enjoying, and you’ll never have to pick a side of the bed to sleep on. You have both sides to choose from and no one ever elbows you.

I bet you didn’t even consider that. Good thing I’m so insightful, which is another gift God gave me. He gave me more of a “spiritual gift basket” than just an individual gift. I got marriage and happiness and kids and joy and love, but you got the gift of singleness. Like Paul. That’s great. Seriously, I’ll pray you’ll be willing to embrace it and not shriek every morning when you awake and that gift is still sitting on your doorstep. That’s what I would do. I have nightmares about being alone sometimes. But that’s your gift.

I’m a huge fan of abstinence. Especially now that I’m married and don’t have to practice it. But I almost didn’t write about it because I think that despite how much we like the
idea
of abstinence, we’ve done a really poor job explaining its benefits. Here’s what usually happens for thirteen-year-old Christian boys:

Their parents or their youth leader says, “Look, you should stay pure and not have sex so that you can keep your marriage holy.” That’s their first option.

Then the world says to them, “Look at me! Sex is wild and fun and neon and loud and Whoa! Spring Break! Party!”

As a thirteen-year-old, it was unfortunately pretty easy to decide which idea sounded more interesting.

What if instead, we told people that a great reason to wait until marriage to have sex is that it makes your sex life so much better after you’re married? When you don’t bring baggage into the sexual aspect of your marriage relationship, things get wild a lot faster. You get to have crazy, awesome, Prince-type sex. There are no memories of other people, no hang-ups to work through. It’s just you and your wife getting ridiculous and enjoying the hot, sexy good time that holiness makes possible.

This is truly what it sounds like…when doves cry.

My little brother wrote one of my favorite songs in the world while he was on a mission trip to Africa. It wasn’t about the people. It wasn’t about the culture. It was about something much bigger and more universally understood than that. It was about falling in love on a mission trip.

This happens a lot. We go away on a mission trip. We fall in love. We break up when we get back. Why does it happen? Why do we do this? I have a few ideas:

When you go on a mission trip and leave your boyfriend at home, you’ll start to see Mark, that awkward but kind of cute guy on the trip, in a whole new light. It’s a light called, “Look at Mark feed hungry children in Africa while my boyfriend plays Xbox back in Ohio.” The person back home is instantly eclipsed. I don’t care how great they are—they’re not on the mission trip helping people. Caring about people, being a servant of the Lord in a tangible, visible way. Doing things that aren’t selfish or self-centered. “And come to think of it, my boyfriend and I don’t even like the same music. And I love that you like weird ethnic food too, and helping people. Can you hold on for a minute? I need to go see if there’s a phone in this village. I have to break up with someone.”

“Hey, remember that time when we all hiked up that little river in the jungle and there was that crazy orange lizard? And for the rest of the trip, we called anything that was crazy an ‘orangelizard situation’? That was hilarious. And then that time Frank said, ‘Bring your Bobbles to church,’ instead of, ‘Bring your Bibles?’ That was so funny! Nobody gets those stories like you. Let’s fall in love on the last day of the trip and then break up when we get dropped off back at the church parking lot. I mission trip love you!”

Anyone can be nice and polite on a date to Chili’s. Anyone can open your car door and slide your chair out before you both eat baby back, baby back ribs. But when it’s 100 degrees in the shade, and you’re sweaty and dirty, and you have to perform one more Noah’s ark puppet show for kids in a desert, you’re going to be real. And seeing how someone really is, who they are in the tough situations and the easy situations, is a pretty intoxicating thing.

If your girlfriend goes on a mission trip without you and immediately tells you “we need to talk” upon getting back, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Go on that trip. Always go on that trip.

Want to torture a Christian who recently got engaged? Don’t allow them any space in the conversation to tell you that they’re not living with their fiancé. That’s some good fun, my friend, because we want to tell you that. We want to be up front that we’re not living in sin, that we’re not co-habiting, and we’ll do
anything
to work that into the flow of the discussion. But we don’t want to say “living in sin” because it kind of makes us sound like we’re weirdo Christians, so we’ll go to great creative lengths to tell you that we have two separate residences:

“We’re really excited to be getting married. It’ll be nice not to pay two mortgages when we tie the knot.”

“I cooked dinner for my fiancé last night at my place, but I was out of salt, so he drove to his place, in a car, because the distance is significant.”

“She has a cat, and I’ve never lived with a cat, so when we get married and both she and the cat move in, that will be a change.”

“My fiancée’s apartment flooded. So she stayed at my place, while I slept on the couch, in the living room of the apartment I share with a roommate. Who was there the whole time and actually kept a sleepless vigil in the hall.”

“I’m engaged to a girl who lives across town. Lives clear across town without any sort of tunnels or skywalks that connect our two houses. Completely separate.”

I personally never got caught up in the fancy ways to say “we’re not living in sin.” I was living in a trailer home in a retirement community when I was engaged, and there was very little chance the community would have stood for any of that shacking up nonsense.

Sure, while living there I mentally aged about forty years in a matter of weeks, sitting in a rocking chair with a quilt over my knees and a foot massager I requested for Christmas because they were all the rage in my new old neighborhood. I may have suddenly fallen in love with
Everybody Loves Raymond
and chuckled at that rascal’s antics like an old man, but other than that, everything worked out.

My wife didn’t become old. She lived across town with the Morrisons. In their house. Which was different from a trailer park. Where I slept. Alone by myself.

I’m married and if you are too, then statistically speaking, one of us is getting divorced.

“Hold up one second!” you might say. “That can’t be true. I’m a Christian. I’ve seen studies that indicate that Christians actually have a lower divorce rate, something like 33 percent
instead of a 50 percent divorce rate like the rest of the country. How dare you misinform me!”

Shame on me, but arguing about whether Christians have a 33 percent or a 50 percent divorce rate is ridiculous. Look at it this way: Would it make a huge difference if one out of every three neighbors on your street got mauled to death by a bear or one out of every two? Would you sit around with friends and say, “Those bear stats are grossly exaggerated. I read that there are only 33 deadly Grizzly bears in our gated community, not 50. The media is so biased!”

No, regardless of the statistic, you’d be more careful about bears. You’d buy books on how to keep your house safe from bears. You’d carry a gun and bear spray. And when Valentine’s Day rolled around, you’d probably buy your wife a hot water heater.

Okay, one of those sentences had nothing to do with the metaphor but was in fact true. In my defense, it was a “State Select” model, which I’ve been assured is one of the sexier hot water heaters available. So don’t worry about us becoming a statistic; we’ll be fine.