Ready, Aim, F...

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Blue Collar Christianity

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Sex, Candy, and the Abundant Life

As a lover of chocolate and peanut butter, the existence of God has never been an issue for me. You see, while these two distinct flavors may have come together as a matter of chance, the fact that together they are AWESOME smacks of the supernatural.

And it isn’t only my sense of taste that has me convinced of the reality of a higher, greater Being. How about the gifts of touch, sight, and others? My wife, with a scary ability to manipulates these senses, can move my consciousness in a heavenly direction at will.

When I ponder these things, it also occurs to me that God must be quite good. After all, it isn’t only that my wife has this God-given ability, but that I like it!

Getting back to chocolate and peanut butter, I have to say that the existence of evil is more than a fairy tale too. The proof is in the fact that my children’s Halloween candy is disappearing at a faster rate than their parents would allow. I know kids will be kids, but I don’t think the kids are the problem. We’ve placed the candy bag in a place that can only be reached by the adults in the house.

It’s time we got it through our thick skulls: God created boobs, sex, laughter, the cocoa bean and peanuts. He said, “Whoa, this is good! I’m going to give it to you. Let’s see what you can do with this stuff! Just use a little self control, okay?”

Then we started stuffing our faces and kneeling before the candy bag in the middle of the night. What did we get for our efforts? Cavities, and souls that are heavy and bloated.

I want more out of life. How about you?

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so they can have life. I want them to have it in the fullest possible way.” –Jesus (John 10:10, New International Reader's Version)

Certifiable Sanctificity

I consider myself to be one of the new men. You know: tough and tender and all that jazz. I’ll take a drag on the odd cigar with my buddies, and later on go fearlessly to one of my daughters’ tea parties. I own a motorcycle, and I’ve watched Anne of Green Gables (once…a long time ago). I try to stay balanced.

It was in this spirit of renaissance that I accompanied my wife to a baby fair a number of years ago. She was eight months pregnant, and there was no hiding the fact. If I had poked her with a pin she would have floated around the room like a wounded balloon. I figured that considering her fragile state we’d do a lap of the conference center, she’d go to the bathroom a few times, we’d go out for a nice dinner, she’d check out the ladies room again and we’d be home in time for me to watch reruns of the A-Team.

We got home a lot sooner than that, and me with my head barely attached.

I suspected a problem as soon as we got to the venue: there were absolutely no men in the parking lot. Bill, I cringed to myself, you are getting some serious brownie points for this! Vastly outnumbered but stalwart and brave, I walked around the end of the car to open the door for my wife.

We went inside and right on cue, Karen needed to use the facilities. I didn’t mind waiting- there were some deep leather couches nearby. They were way more comfy than those benches outside the lingerie store at the mall. That was as comfortable as I would get that day.

I knew I was in immediate, serious danger when I noticed the glares I was getting from every third or fourth woman. Mostly they were shot from the eyeballs of what I imagined were the grandmothers-to-be. I tried shrinking, but it wouldn't work. I’ve broken some baby-fair rule, I thought. Maybe this is only supposed to be quality time for mothers and daughters.

I was partly right. Here’s what happened: the dates had been mixed up and apparently I had taken my pregnant “girlfriend” to a bridal fair. Nobody noticed our rings, I guess. I can only imagine what they must have thought about me - finally deciding to marry the woman I had knocked up!

As far as near death experiences go, this ranked right up there with malaria.

My bridal fair fiasco shares some attributes with some churches. Nice venue. Crowded parking. Everyone dressed up.

And the glares. Holy cow.

If something is a little out of the ordinary people can really get crazy. A friend of mine once came to church with ratty sneakers but no socks. Nobody said anything but the message was clear, and that message wasn’t the gospel.

What happened to grace, people? What changed in us that we no longer identify with delinquents? Sadly, it appears that there is a fine line between sanctifiable and certifiable.

"It wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ." (Ephesians 2: 1-5, The Message)