The Man in Me

As I have celebrated four years with my amazing wife, I have been considering and mulling over in what's left of my brain, the entire institution of marriage. When I call my wife amazing, I try my hardest not to merely pay lip service to her. That's just disrespectful. But, I do mean "amazing." I have put her through the ringer, and yes, I do take a considerable amount of, rightful -- credit for her emotional devastation. She, partnered with Jesus -- takes a lot of credit for stressing me out, giving me migraines, and day by day -- growing my immature ass up.

So, the question begs to be answered, "Who gives a fuck?" You don't, probably. I know I didn't, which is precisely the reasoning behind all the consideration of this institution of marriage. I also take pause to notice that all my buddies are either divorced, separated, or seriously considering divorce. The other interesting part, and the reason I actually give a shit, is that all these dudes are professing "Christians." This is troubling because there's this thing about Jesus that in a two-handed fashion bothers me and brings me peace. It's this fact that Christ gets in the shit with you as a Christian. Once you say "Jesus, I trust you," Jesus says, "A'ight, let's do this thing." This is regardless of all your dysfunctional bullshit that keeps coming up. I, personally, have a gigantic laundry list of stupid bullshit that Jesus is still dealing with. He endlessly, tirelessly, relentlessly pursues me and gets into it with me. This is not something I have pursued. Time and time again I have shouted "Fuck you, dude," and got outta dodge. Then He shows up, tells me He knows my shit, and he's gonna keep on walking with me.

This has astronomical implications on the state of marriage. Seriously? Five years and you're out? When Margie and I started this thing, I really had no idea how this was going to play out. Mainly because, I had/have so many bat-shit-crazy issues. I was always wondering how Christ was going to redeem this mess, but he is. He's teaching me how to love my wife. I still suck at it, but he's taking me through it. If you're a christian man, your wife is probably put there by God to teach you a bunch of shit you suck at, which is probably everything.

I'm troubled by dudes who proclaim Christ and abandon their wives. My dad did that. I'm scared shitless that I'm going to do that. I need Jesus to help me stick around and be a better husband. I need so much grace, and constantly.

I'm troubled for my brothers and myself.

Declare Love Not War: Part 2

Do I feel some false sense of responsibility because I gave him someone's interperetation of the bible that clashed with his own worldview? Not really. I think my old friend made a series of decisions that led him to the conclusion that God doesn't exist based on a series of circumstantial events (rejection, bad sexual experiences, isolation, depression, etc) that he had pinned on the God he served. Many would argue that he was never a Christian in the first place and that is assuming that one could actually "become" a christian at all but that's another post entirely. That's not what this is about. This is about making blanket statements about things to big to be covered with a blanket and basically calling that good. "If you DO this, then it WILL yield THIS result. Or if you DON'T do THAT then THIS is the consequence." In my life experience, it's never been as cut and dry as that. My life has been "Here is a list of hundreds of things that CAN possibly happen if you pursue This option and the same thing if you choose THIS option but there is NO way of gaging what THIS outcome will be."

Let's go back to my gay friend, I was told by a spiritual authority that if I had given him hell, fire & brimstone accompanied with the message of Grace & Forgiveness that he might not respond today to "God's call" on his life but one day he would thank me for "speaking the truth in love." He never did and he probably never will. Mainly because it's too paradoxical an ideology that eternal torment and damnation works hand and hand with grace unabounding, no matter what context it is communicated in. At the very core of my discussion with my friend, he wanted to know if God would accept him, even if he was gay and there was nothing he could do about that, and my answer to him was, "No!"

I want to make it clear that I'm not merely writing about homosexuality as a sin, nor am I making an argument for or against the "christian homosexual" (maybe I will in the near future). What I am pursuing is a discussion on how we arrive at such a mass generalization or judgement of pieces of our culture that will never experience God because "believers" have in large part excluded them not really from the community but rather from the grace that we claim to partake in. Rather we declare war on the deepest parts of humanity. Are we ok with that? I'm not sure if I am.