in love with the .357 to my head

author's note: no, steve's holiday madness, interactions with the female species, and psychotic career choices have not driven him over the edge...yet.

sometimes, considering God will make your head explode.

seriously.

or, at least, people tell me it will (although doing a google search for exploding heads due to comprehending the glory of God won't get you far). lately, i've been in that state where God is there leading you, but He's leading you blindfolded, and you have no idea where you're going except that God is leading you. some people would say some pithy church cliche like "that's the best place to be" or something, but some people also enjoy root canals. you always have to wonder about some people. anyway, i've been contemplating God at the non-head exploding level, and i'm honestly freaked out by what i think - though truth be told, it hasn't changed me much yet ('what i want to do, i don't do'...sound familiar? thanks, paul).

christianity is a strange religion. no, more than strange - insane. we'd be normal if we bowed down to the memory of a prophet 7 times daily, or if we believed that our god was once like us, or if we believed that god was the earth, or a universal conciousness, or even some otherworldly force with jedi and stuff (you think i'm kidding? 'jedi' is an option on US navy dogtags). no, we're really crazy. because when you boil christianity down to it's deepest parts, we are a people who are supposed to be in a relationship with an omnipotent infinity who is at first glance schitzophrenic - both radically pursuing His image in us and devestatingly punishing our sinful natures.

in other words, we are in love with the .357 to our heads.

hmm...does anyone else see a problem with this? we are called to put our unyeilding trust in a being we can't understand. c.s. lewis once had the gonads enough to levy the question: what if God ISN'T good? scary thought.

honestly, i'm not sure why i pose this possibility. i mean, a God who has broken me numerous times, who has allowed horrible tragedy, who has had the audacity to be silent when i've needed Him most, and yet who has also healed me and others countless times, who has given peace and understanding on levels impossible to grasp, and who has perhaps been the only sane element of an otherwise pointless existence could be called sadistic...but on the other hand, He could also be called perfect. somewhere between the .357 and my head is a space that can only be called infinite grace, eternal love, a tension that causes all of heaven and earth to hold it's collective breath. it's like all that is beautiful and lovely and fantastic exists in that centimeter between metal and skin. our God boiled Himself down to an inch.

my head hurts.

beautiful people need not apply

have you ever wondered about barbie? for some reason, i am thinking about her currently. no, i don't have some unrevealed fetish for dolls - the only barbie i played with as a kid was my grandma's old one, who quickly dropped ken in order to be wisked away by iron man before she was vaporized by some random teenage mutant ninja turtles villan and his transformer minions. but i've been thinking about her because she's so...perfect. absurdly so. i read a report once that barbie couldn't live - she is the equivalent of a girl with breasts that would cause imediate spinal injuries, a waist so small she would be admitted to anorexia rehab, and feet reminisant of chinese-foot binding. but in the fantasy world of american soldiers who don't die and pink corvettes, barbie is perfect. she can cook, clean, model, mother (although she's never had children), fly, go into space, act, heal...there isn't much baribie hasn't done. and then there's her stuff - like the girl who was already perfect suddenly inherits enough money to have houses in malibu and miami while still finding the time to be an executive in new york and a rancer in texas. wow...i think i'm gonna be sick.

but in thinking about her perfection, i wonder things: does barbie ever cry? has she been hurt? does she still picture life with ken as opposed to her new beau (pictured above), austrailian surfer blaine? are her multiple houses/jobs/outfits a desperate attempt at finding identity and meaning in an ever changing world? perhaps she isn't so perfect after all.

like i said, this post should not be cause for alarm among my friends, and i have not acted upon some hidden desire for the color pink in its pondering. rather, i've been moved by events in the past few weeks that have tested my love for the church in a huge way. last week, the president of the national evangelical association, a leader in pro-marriage legislation, and one of the spiritual leaders on the president's speed dial, admitted to struggling (and falling) to drug use and homosexuality. i also struggle with my diverse youth group - there is a part of me that wants a group of youth who are willing to throw everything else to the wind and do "great things" for God. but that's not going to happen - i have fallen youth, just as i am fallen.

and the revelation comes - we do not live in a world of pink plastic. we are flawed, fallen, often evil people. i can no longer believe in a world where people are inherantly good when i know girls who have been abused by the very people who should protect them and have seen entire nations collapse under the weight of obesity when millions of people starve every day. and in all of that, there is hope.

i was praying in church a few weeks ago when i saw a picture of, in many ways, heaven. no, i don't think i see strange pictures of streets of gold and leigons of angels. rather, it was a picture of the fallen, perhaps the way church should be: a drunk next to a woman in white addicted to gossip rubbing up against a homeless man who reeks of urine. and a murderer, and an adulturer, and a porn producer and a rapist and a racist and a autisic child and an elderly grandmother and a foreign exchange student...people of all walks, with every sin imaginable against them, out in the open...and me sitting in the midst of them - me, my prideful, lustful, arrogant self, with all of us joining in the praises of the God who has redeemed us and is changing us into a picutre of His Son who died for us.

ghandi once said, "ask the poor. they will tell you who the true chirstians are." the church is made up of broken people, trying desperately to scratch out a relationship with the mysterious, infinite God of the universe. we fail, and we eat our broken, wanting to live in the plastic church world of "i'm okay, i USED to struggle, but now i have total freedom and peace." crap. pastors are sinners. the church is, in the words of john wesley, "a hospital within a mile of hell". we must stop wearing the masks of righteousness, and put on Jesus, who is all we have. our souls are ugly, every one of us. no one should think otherwise. as far as the kingdom of God is concerned, beautiful people need not apply.