Faith and the Great Pumpkin

Thursday night with our youth group, we’re looking at the classic 1966 short film: “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

I’ve seen the film several times, but watched it today as if for the first. Somehow, in all those viewings, I missed its commentary on faith. For we see in the story four different attitudes people have about faith.

The first, and most prominent, attitude is that of Linus’. Linus has a rock solid, unshakable faith. It’s not an easy faith, however, and he endures many hardships, as he lives out his belief in the great pumpkin. We see that his friends desert, and ridicule, him, even his best friend. Regardless, he still believes. Nothing can shake his faith. He’s also a bit of an evangelist. He’s throughout the story he’s telling others of the great pumpkin regardless of the scorn.

Secondly, we have Charlie Brown. Like many, Charlie Brown would have faith, but he needs it in writing first. His attitude is that he’s only going to believe in what can be proven. If he can get it in writing he’ll believe. We see this lived out when he goes to play football with Lucy. We know that Lucy always pulls the ball away at the last minute and he ends up on his back. Charlie Brown knows this too. He’s wise to her antics. However, with a written signed note stating she will not pull the ball away; his faith in the game is renewed. Sadly, a loophole crushes him and he ends up on his back again. What seemed to be the proof he needed was worthless.

With Lucy we see the attitude of the skeptic. She doesn’t believe in anything. What’s more, she finds belief foolishness and a waste of time. For her there are far better things to focus on, like trick or treating and parties. Lucy lives for the carnal self with no thought to anything beyond her experience.

Finally, we have sweet innocent Sally. Sally is driven by her romantic feelings for Linus. She wants the fun of candy and parties, but her love for Linus drives her to sit in the pumpkin patch waiting for the great pumpkin. She lets the person she loves dictate her beliefs. They aren’t her beliefs, but she’ll follow along believing whatever her loves tells her is true.

So which one of these four are you?

Do you have solid unshakable faith?

Or are you waiting for something you can get in writing?

Or are you the skeptic believing there is nothing worth believing in?

Or are you waiting for the person you love to tell you what to believe without investigating it for yourself?

When is it too early to brag about your kids?

You hear a lot of parents brag about their kids every time the child learns a new trick. And let's face it, a trick, for the most part, is really all they are doing. At first anything they learn is just for the entertainment of the parents. Parents say "Where's your nose?" and scream with glee when the kid manages to connect finger with nose within the next couple minutes. The child tries to get it right not because they care where their nose is, or what it can do for them, but because, I'm assuming, they like to answer questions correctly. No one likes to be wrong at any age.

One of the "talents" you often hear parents bragging about is the ability to blow kisses. I'll admit that I find it cute when a toddler can blow a kiss. I saw a child today who learned this skill really young.

How young you ask?

In utero.

That's right I saw a baby on the ultrasound blowing kisses.

And why was I there looking at the ultrasound? Was I job shadowing? No! Do I break into ultrasound offices as some sort of a twisted hobby? Of course not!

I was there to see my child. That's right, my kid is already blowing kisses. And at about 18 or 19 weeks. Take that!

Of course, at the rate at which my child's intellect is increasing I fully expect it to be better than me at math by age four.

Jesus is my DJ

You know something I love? I love it when a good song is playing while I’m getting ready in the morning. The best songs are the ones that make me want to dance. This is no easy feat. It’s pretty tough to be motivated to shake what you’ve got when it’s 6am and you haven’t had your coffee yet.

This morning was one of those blessed mornings. I had far more energy then usual, despite trouble sleeping, because good tunes were blasting through the house. This made everything fun. Brushing my teeth was fun. Ironing my shirt was fun. Shaving was fun. Annoying my wife by having lots of energy was fun.

The vibe continued into the car where the radio was on. I heard a song on the radio this morning that I haven’t heard before. (I’m a bit surprised by this since the song has been out for a while.) I enjoyed the song quite a bit, and it‘s been stuck in my head all morning. It’s not the best song ever, but three reasons help one make an argument that it’s good:

1. It was upbeat and fun
2. It made me dance in my seat unashamed of what other drivers thought of me
3. It made me think.

However, it was a radio edit, and the original contains foul language. This surprised me. I somehow missed the objectionable lyrics. This is the funny thing about radio. If you’re like me and a bit innocently clueless, you can think that a song says something it doesn’t. What do you mean James Blunt wasn’t actually “flying high”?

What’s got me writing about this song is the lyrics of the chorus: “If God is a dj then life is a dance floor.”

Really?

Is God a dj?

Is He up in Heaven standing at some turn tables?

No, not really. While that mental image makes me smile I don’t think it’s an accurate picture of God.

Well, then what’s the point? End of discussion right? It’s just a silly pop song about nothing.

Maybe not.

I love the consequential language of the song. I’m convinced we don’t consider consequences enough -- especially when it comes to God. If God is, or acts a certain way, consequences follow. As the song says, if God is a do then life is a dance floor. God is ________ and ________ is a result.

How often do we get it backwards and infer attributes of God based on what we observe?

We see hurt and think God is a god who hurts. Or we see injustice and think that God can’t be just to allow it.

We forget that God is who He is.

And He was before the world existed.

Unfortunately the world is the way it is, partly, because there are other forces playing out. Sin changed how things happen in this world. Now we don’t only see good at work, but we see evil also. We can’t go backwards in this. We need to start with the truths of God, and then look to see them on display in the world.

God doesn’t so much react to the world as the world reacts to God.

And what are the truths of God? What do we know to be true of Him?

God is good.

God is just.

God is love.

God is patient.

God is kind.

God cares about people.

God knows us.

God delights in His creation.

And there are many more truths.

What then, are the consequences, or results, of these truths? How do each of these characteristics of God play out?

If God is good then what?

I encourage you to spend some time thinking about the truths of God and what that means for our world. I’ll be doing that as I dance to the tunes my dj is playing: as awkward and as clumsy a dancer as I am I’m sure He will be pleased.

Awkward Days, or How To Pick A Pregnancy Test

Have you ever had those really self conscious moments where you feel all eyes are on you? You know you’re not doing anything wrong, but still you feel as if people are gawking and staring.

Come on, you know you have.

I had one recently. Sheena and I were buying a pregnancy test. If you’ve never done this, it has potential to be a really awkward moment. We first (I’ll explain more about this word first latter) went to the grocery store with a pharmacy to pick one up. Fortunately, this place has a separate till for the pharmacy hidden in a dark corner of the store. Great for not being noticed. We didn’t want to be noticed, because if we were pregnant we didn’t want people to know yet. Just about every time I go to the store I see someone I know, and since there’s only one reason you buy a pregnancy test I didn’t want anyone I know to see me.

As great as the back corner till is, you still have to deal with the cashier. Which felt awkward so I made sure my adorned ring finger was getting noticed. I don’t exactly know why, but I felt a strong need to make sure she knew we were married.

Now, picking out a pregnancy test is a bit of an awkward thing also. How do you know which one is good? Is this really a time when you want to go with the cheapest? Don’t you want the most accurate, which one is that? What do you mean I have to spend $10 for what I’ll learn for free in nine months?!?

So many questions.

Fortunately they only had one option. Well two options, same brand, but did we want a two pack or a single?

Two pack, of course. What if we messed up on our first attempt? And if we got it right first try, then I’ve got a fun toy to play with latter.

That night, we debated about waiting until the morning but thought neither of us might sleep, we tried it out. I’ve never read directions more carefully in my life. We did everything right, but got no response. It was so tough to tell what the answer was.

We were using a clear blue test. Now let me tell you, the only way this product was living up to its name was that it was blue. There was nothing clear about it.

Maybe there was a very faint blue line there, but we couldn’t tell if it was real or not. Was it just wishful thinking to see a blue line? Were we willing there to be a blue line? Or was there actually a faint line and this cheap test didn’t have enough die in it to make a bolder line?

We decided to wait a few days and try again. Thankfully we got the two pack. In a few day’s we’d be at my parents house and we’d try again.

When that day came, and we were all alone we pulled out test two.

More confusion. We really think there was a line but it was really hard to tell if that was significant enough to mean anything. Why couldn’t clear blue be more clear?

We decided that we had to go for another test. One maybe less blue, and more clear. This was our second time in less than a week where we were heading off to the store to buy a pregnancy test.

We went to a fully certified pharmacy this time. By that I mean they’re a pharmacy first and a food store second. (Or maybe the food comes third behind the greeting cards.) When we found the right aisle we were bombarded with options. There must have been eight or so. How do we pick? Well, we ruled out clear blue right away. I kinda wanted to try the Life brand. Sure, it was a store brand, but there seemed something right about choosing life in that situation. Some tests sounded ridiculous. We decided to go with a First Response test. With a name like “First Response” I expected a paramedic to follow us home. First Response sounds like there is a tragedy somewhere. Still, we went with it. It was pink. I don’t know if that is relevant or not.

Unfortunately this store does not have a discreet check out at the back, so we made our purchase right up front where everyone could see us. The clerk gave us a wink as she said; “Have a good day.” I guess what else do you say to a couple buying such a product? Your day really only has two options: it’s either going to be good, as in you get the result you hope for, or bad, as in you always do horrible at tests.

Later I’ll tell you how our day ended.

Alternative Witnessing Tools?

I found a site today that kinda made me laugh and cry. It's a great collection of all the stuff that people try and market to Christians. I should warn you that the author is overly biting and critical in his comments, and I certainly don't agree with everything he says. However, it is a great compilation to make you smile and shake your head in disbelief that someone would ever buy this stuff.

I'm sure you could spend hours checking everything out, but there are a few things to look for:

- The Plush Jesus wearing a "wwjd" bracelet (wouldn't WWID be more appropriate?)
- Jesus Packing tape (so you can remind the mail man that Jesus is watching you cut across my lawn)
- The "Jesus is my Wingman" t-shirt (Take that Maverick)
- The "I heart Jesus" shot glass (How many Christians won't even know it's a shot glass?)
- "The Secret to Happiness" thong

And it's good that I now know "The Bible Cure for Prostate Disorders." Or maybe I'll go and get myself "Kowabunga Jesus."

And remember: "God Rocks"

here's the site:

Je$u$ Junk

Second Night

Last night marked the second night in our home.

It’s been an interesting move in experience. Mostly good, but we found a few eye brow raisers in the process.

When I walked into our new home for the first time, full of anticipation, I expected to find certain things: an empty house being one of them.

I didn’t expect to find piles of dirt on the floor, clothes in the closet, random grapes scattered here and there, and imperfections everywhere a piece of furniture used to be: especially, when the family had been doing renovations. And they only painted what could be seen.

I have two possibly hypotheses:

1) Everything they learned they learned by watching the Mr. Bean show. So, when it came to learning how to paint they wanted to replicate his painting techniques. Those involved papering anything you didn’t want paint on and blowing up a can of paint in the middle of the room. Walls on the other side of the couch would not have been painted.

2) They treat their house the way so many of us run our live our lives. Why paint behind the book shelve? No one will ever see back there. It doesn’t need to look nice. The base boards behind the couch don’t need to be painted. We don’t even need them behind the kid’s beds. Let’s just take care of the parts people see. Why deal with my tendency to judge people? No one ever sees that. And why should it matter what I think? No one ever sees my thoughts.

How often do we only worry about how we look on the outside and let our insides fall apart?

Sadly, I do this all the time. I invest in clothes, shoes, haircuts, grooming products so that my physical appearance looks as best it can. I also spend ridiculous amounts of time watching what I say so that I don’t say something that makes me look dumb. However, I spend considerably less time on the areas that no one sees.

Maybe that’s the issue. I think no one sees them. I forget, or maybe don’t care so much, that God sees them. Sometimes, I even find myself thinking God’s as okay with it as I am: that it doesn’t matter to God how well maintained I am.

But God not only sees, He knows, all of me. He’s inspected the insulation in the attic. He’s checked the foundation for cracks. Every inch of wiring has run before His eyes. He does a far more thorough job then the house inspector we paid to check this house out.

No doubt I need to be working on the “hidden” areas. We can only hide flaws behind couches for so long. Eventually, more and more will deteriorate. I better fix things up before the house falls apart, so that this temple isn’t one day a pile of ruins.