Gay Marriage and Green Eggs & Ham

Posted on February 24, 2012 by theboeskool

"The turkey's a little dry."

When I was young, my mom once made us some Chinese food for dinner. Well, “made” might be a little too innocent a word…. Concocted? Maybe “devised.” She devised us some Chinese food. It should be noted that my mom is normally an awesome cook. I love just about everything she makes, but this one time when she attempted to fix us some “Sweet & Sour Chicken,” it did not get fixed–It got broken. I can still remember struggling to chew pieces of chicken that somehow had astringent properties…. Chicken so dry it made my hands feel like they needed lotion. I marveled at how something so surrounded with an awful, wet sauce could manage to stay so dry. After making about four trips to the bathroom to spit out mouth-fulls of unswallowable chicken into the toilet, I swore off Chinese food forever. Not only Chinese food, but ALL FOOD whose origins were from Asia, as a continent capable of producing a people capable of consuming such filth was NOT to be trusted.

Then came College, with all its annoying people saying annoying things like, “What do you mean, you ‘don’t like Chinese food?’ Have you ever tried Chicken & Broccoli? Do you like chicken? Do you like broccoli? THEN YOU’LL LIKE CHICKEN & BROCCOLI!!!” and things of this sort. Finally, (after much coercion, harassment, and unwanted readings of Green Eggs & Ham) I tried a bite…. I spent the next year saying that the only kind of Chinese food I liked was Chicken & Broccoli.

"Thank you. Thank you, Sam I Am!"

But a question started eating away at my stubborn soul–like some sort of Chinese water torture drip, drip, dripping on rationality: If I was wrong about Chicken & Broccoli, what else might I be wrong about? Before I knew it, I had tried sushi. SUSHI!!! I tasted it once and said, “It’s not that bad.” The second time I had it, I was a little disappointed when it was gone. After that, I started to think about it when I drove past the Sushi place near my apartment. I began to crave it–Like a junkie. Sometimes I would drop $20-$30 on a meal. FOR MYSELF!!! To this day, it is my absolute favorite thing in the world to eat. To think of all that time I wasted not eating Sushi…. What a shame.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am passionate about a lot of things. Annoyingly passionate–Everything from “Shut up while this song is playing,” to “You’ve got to see this youtube video,” to “Try a bite of this,” to “Seriously, shut up while this song is playing.” As annoying as this can be, one of my gifts is being able to take my excitement about something and transfer that to another person. But if you think I am passionate about regular issues, that is NOTHING compared to when someone changes my mind about something.

Well…. My mind has gotten changed recently about the issue of gay marriage–Not so much my mind as my heart. I have gotten it wrong all these years…. And I can’t wait to tell you about it.

These guys look WAY too normal to be gay. I'm sure that, just out of the shot, they are wearing rainbow speedos instead of tuxedo pants.

I think that most people would say that the government shouldn’t be in the business of discriminating against people. There are laws to prevent systemic discrimination, but many people work very hard to keep discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation a legal thing to do. This is almost entirely due to the belief that being gay is wrong/immoral/sinful, and I think it’s safe to say that most of the opposition (in this country, at least) to equal rights for our homosexual brothers and sisters comes from Christians (Which is strange, because we don’t take away rights from adulterers, liars, blasphemers, Sabbath-breakers, or coveters–And those are in the 10 Commandments). This fact makes me ask this question: Should followers of Jesus Christ be in the business of trying to enforce their  ideas of morality on others? If you are a reader of my blog, then you probably already know that my answer to this question, and if this is your first time reading, I’ll help you out–The answer is no. The goal of evangelism is not getting enough people to make sin illegal–the goal of evangelism is a changed heart.

Speaking of which, my heart was recently changed about about the issue of a Christian’s response to homosexuality by a documentary called “For The Bible Tells Me So.” It introduces you to five Christian families who had gay kids, and the range of reactions to their kids–everything from complete acceptance and love, to complete rejection and abandonment. And it shows you the fruit of those reactions–everything from a healthy, supportive family relationship, to a life that was tragically ended by suicide…. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you which parental reaction bore which fruit (The Church’s reaction to gay men and women bears the same fruit, by the way). The families in the movie really struggled with a child/spouse/sibling coming out of the closet because they had been taught their whole lives that being gay is simply a choice. One that will send the chooser to hell…. This movie is so amazing and even-handed. I can not recommend it highly enough.

IT'S ADAM AND EVE, NOT ADAM AND STEVE!!!

Christians are usually very certain about their views on homosexuality–right up until someone they love lets them know they are gay. I have a good friend whose father recently came out of the closet. This was a really hard thing for the son to hear, as his father had spent almost his whole life as a leader in the Church, and the son had been (wrongly) taught his whole life that being gay was a special sort of sin. When he told me about it, he had had some time to work through it, and I listened as the son described what a good father his dad had always been: He was loving, and he was present, and he raised his son to love the Lord. And I was a little jealous–My dad wasn’t around when I was growing up, and I’m still muddling through what it means to be a man. Many times he was angry and violent and out of control…. If only my dad could have traded some of his own demons for something simple like being attracted to dudes.

Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, showing the appropriate amount of space to be left for the Holy Spirit while dancing.

Here’s the thing (I know, I say that a lot): The Bible is not as clear on the issue of homosexuality as we have been taught (It is seemingly WAY more clear about systemized misogyny and limiting a woman’s role in Church leadership than it is about the issue of the inherent sinfulness of being gay, but we easily chalk that up to cultural and historical differences). There are many, MANY things in the Old Testament that are described as “abominations” other than just homosexuality. The Bible has been translated over the years with a very anti-gay bias. For example, when Paul uses the word “Sodomite,” it’s translated as “homosexual,” even though the Bible says that the sin of Sodom was not homosexuality, but Ezekiel 16:49 says, “Sodom’s sins were pride, gluttony, and laziness, while the poor and needy suffered outside her door.” And even more, when the men from Sodom asked to send out the angels “so that we may know them” in the story of Sodom’s destruction, it was not so much about homosexuality as it was about rape.

Usually, when I want the right view on things, I check what Jesus had to say about it…. Unfortunately, Jesus never said anything about homosexuality (or, if he did, it was not written down in any of the Gospels), but we can still learn some things about this issue from his life and words.

"Wish I could help you, man, but I've got to get to Church. If I don't get there early, the line at the coffee shop is so long...."

Just like there are today, there were many big debates going on during Jesus’ time. The other Rabbis would ask Jesus questions to see which side he was on (in today’s terms, it was like trying to find out if he was liberal or conservative). The Rabbis of that time were very aware (as we should be today) that there were many things that appeared to contradict each other in scripture. For example, they might be like “Hey Jesus–Scripture says that I shouldn’t work on the Sabbath, but it also says I should help my neighbor who needs help. Let’s say my neighbor’s donkey falls in a hole on the Sabbath…. Should I help him?” (This, by the way, proves that even in Biblical times, people still had trouble with assholes) The question boils down to this: In questions of LAW versus LOVE, which one wins out? And here’s the thing: EVERY TIME JESUS IS QUESTIONED LIKE THIS, HE SIDES WITH LOVE. Every time. “Who’s my neighbor?” Love–That’s who. Not those two religious men that left the guy bleeding in the road trying to keep the law, but the dirty, sinful Samaritan who helped him. You guys have ears? Well, let them hear!

SINNER!!!

Well, I have heard! And I am giving up my right to judge someone else’s heart based on their sexual orientation. Paul writing to some freaky Romans (who were going to fertility temples and having sex with everything that moved) about sexual immorality does not inform my opinion of the “rightness” or “wrongness” of a committed, loving, monogamous relationship between two people of the same sex. I’m done with bull shit phrases like “Love the sinner, hate the sin” (especially when the “sin” in question might be in the same category as eating shellfish or wearing two types of fabric at once).  What if that person’s “sin” is having both sexual organs? What if their “sin” is Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome? What if being gay is not something from which a person needs to be delivered?

If I'm wrong and we should all be boycotting JCPenney for having a lesbian as its spokesperson, I believe God will forgive my decision to shop there more than ever--which is to say, at all.

Then again, maybe it is. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong (it has happened before), and the Church should be telling gay people that if they want to be Christians, they need to be straight. Maybe Christian parents should be turning their backs on their gay kids and kicking them out of their houses. Maybe the Church shouldn’t put gay people in positions of leadership. And maybe the Church shouldn’t bless the union of a man and a man or a woman and a woman…. But if we get it wrong, what are we worried about? If we aren’t supposed to freely accept everyone into the Church and leave the judging up to God, are we worried that God is going to send us to Hell for getting this wrong? Is that the kind of Father to which we pray–a father who send his kids to Hell for getting the wrong interpretation? Of course, if he is, we might already be damned for allowing women to talk in Church…. This is a situation (like a neighbor’s donkey falling in a hole on the Sabbath) where Jesus-loving, Bible-believing people of good conscience have come to different conclusions. From now on, if I’m going to err, I’m going to err on the side of love.

Posted in 1) Jesus, 2) Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 46 Comments

Forgiveness, Compassion, and Writing Stories

Posted on February 15, 2012 by theboeskool

The other day, I had an epiphany. I was waiting tables (as I do two nights a week to support my blogging habit) and I saw things clearly–And it was all thanks to a dumb ass.

"I've been frozen for 30 years. I've got to see if my bits and pieces are still working."

I was tired, I was hungry, and I was really busy. The kind of busy where it’s 10:00 and you have to pee really bad, but you literally can’t find a minute to make it to the bathroom. Then, in a moment of calmness, you hustle over for a quick pee, and (as happens just about every frickin’ time) the door is locked with someone else in there. The next thing you know, it’s midnight and you suddenly realize that you still haven’t peed and your bladder is making a noise like stressed metal. There are few things that feel as good as that moment–that porcelain shattering moment–when you finally pee, and you get the pee shivers so bad that it makes you speak in tongues, and your leg quivers like Austin Powers after he was thawed out…. I think I need to take a little break from typing….

You think I've got money for a tip!?!? I spent $85 on this T-Shirt!!!!

And I’m back. So it was this sort of night that backdropped my dumbass-induced epiphany. I was super busy, and a table of six asked for their checks. One of the guys offered to pay for two of the other people at the table. Their total was $41.18 and he gave me $42. When I returned, I laid three quarters, a nickel, and two pennies on his his receipt and said, “82 cents is your change.” And no, I didn’t whisper it. As I walked by the table a little later, I noticed that he had picked up 81 cents and left one penny on the table. Also, he was chuckling and trying very hard to not make eye contact with me…. There have been many times in my life when I would have dealt with that sort of rage by playing out a little daydream in my head where I tell him exactly how big of a butt-munch he was, he threatens me, I make fun of his Ed Hardy T-shirt, he comes at me with a fork, and I deftly put him in a sleeper hold until he’s unconscious and the restaurant cheers.

I have killed a man with a penny before, and I will damn sure do it again....

This time, instead of my usual daydream that ends up with me using my non-existant judo skills and people cheering for me, I wrote a different story. Here’s the story I wrote: This guy grew up with an absolute jack-ass of a father who taught him a bunch of awful lessons. He never really felt love from his mom, who wanted a daughter instead of a third son. He offered to pay for his friend’s meals because he could feel them not liking him as he sat at the table. He left a penny tip and laughed about it, but none of the people sitting at his table thought it was even a little funny–They just felt sorry for this grown man who didn’t even realize that, by acting like a stupid child, he was dishonoring himself. It was a whole lot easier for me to have compassion for this moron after making up this story. Which made it a lot easier for me to forgive him. Which made it a lot easier for me to not imagine me throwing his effing penny at him so hard that is sunk into his fat head as he left….

This lady was in my driving class.... I love that she has a silencer.

The first time that I had heard about this whole “writing stories” thing was in the place that most people go to confront existential issues: Traffic School. I was sent there because I failed to “move over” after the “Move Over Law” was passed, but while I was there the instructor talked about Road Rage. She talked about how we write little stories about why people do the things they do on the road. Stories like “THAT BITCH CUT ME OFF ON PURPOSE!!!” Instead of this story, we could write a story that says, “Her son is in the back seat and has been stung by a bee. He is going into anaphylactic shock, and she is trying to get him to the hospital before he stops breathing.” Because, really, I don’t have any idea why that bitch cut me off, and if I’m making up stories, I might as well make up a story that doesn’t fill me with judgement and rage. I wonder how much time I have spent being angry about something I thought I knew, but I really had no clue….

And then I think about my Dad, who died nine years ago today. Well, I suppose most of him died two days earlier, but we removed his breathing tube on the 15th. How many of my judgements about my father’s failures were me making up stories? About which I actually knew nothing…. I know nothing about his childhood. I know nothing about what it’s like to lose both of your parents and one of your sisters in a car crash. I know nothing about the voices in his head and the demon that is addiction. And I know nothing about how much he loved Jesus despite his brokenness. And the same is true for you and the person you just can’t seem to forgive–So why do we continue to make up stories that leave us angry and hurt and bitter and sad?

So here’s this: It’s from an interview with a Buddhist monk and pacifist named Thich Nhat Hanh that appeared in Sojourners Magazine about five years ago (The article was called “Compassion, The Antidote”):

“Suppose you are angry at your father. Many people are angry at their father, and yet if they don’t do anything to change it when they grow up, they will repeat exactly what their father did to them. They will do that to their own children. That is why we have a wonderful exercise of meditation that has helped so many angry sons and daughters who come to Plum Village:

If you looked at the circles that are made by this woman's fingers, let me know.... I owe you two punches, to which I am entitled per the rules of an ancient playground game.

Breathing in, I see myself as a 5-year-old child. Breathing out, I hold that 5-year-old child in me with tenderness. Breathing in, I see the 5-year-old child in me as fragile, vulnerable, easily wounded. Breathing out I feel the wound of that little child in me and use the energy of compassion to hold tenderly the wound of that child.
But then you continue—breathing in, I see my father as a 5-year-old boy. Breathing out, I smile to my father as a 5-year-old boy. Breathing in, I see how as a 5-year-old child my father was fragile, vulnerable. Breathing out, I feel compassion for my father as a 5-year-old boy.
When you are capable of visualizing your father as a 5-year-old boy, fragile, tender, full of wounds, you begin to understand and feel compassion. When the son is capable of practicing understanding and compassion, he no longer suffers and the father in him is also transformed. That moment, compassion is born in your heart. Now it is possible to forgive.”

Posted in 1) Jesus, 3) Bathroom Humor | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Five Ways to Really Love Somebody

Posted on February 12, 2012 by theboeskool

It doesn't get any more romantic than this, ladies....

Some people are really good at giving presents–I am NOT one of those people. I am the worst. There are a few reasons why I am terrible at giving gifts: 1) I am a man–The man who is a good gift-giver is the exception to the rule. 2) I forget everything–I think of good ideas and then promptly forget them. And 3) I can’t remember what #3 was supposed to be, but it was good. Part of the reason I suck at gifts is that I don’t care much about receiving them. I’m not really sure when this happened, as I can clearly remember that I liked getting presents as a kid–I think it was sometime shortly after they stopped making Star Wars figurines…. Anyway, at some point, the worst of all childhood gifts became my most cherished gift: Socks. Now the only gifts I really want are things that make me more comfortable–Maybe some good SmartWool socks, maybe a new pair of house pants, and maybe a nice bottle of Bourbon. Still, as nice as all these things are, if I didn’t get a thing for my birthday, I would be just fine.

My wife, however….

I stand corrected. It DOES get more romantic than that. My wife is willing to put up with a few imperfections to have a man with a body like this.

What a cruel twist of fate it was for a sweet soul like my wife, who especially feels love through receiving gifts, to fall for a overly content, forgetful, procrastinating, function-over-form, cynical-of-all-things-that-smell-anything-like-commercialism, incredibly sexy man like me. And to top it all off, I have generations upon generations of Dutch thriftiness pulsing through my veins, making it next to impossible for me to spend money–even on things we genuinely NEED. So when a “Holiday” like Valentines Day rolls around, it stresses me right out. I feel torn between wanting her to feel loved in a way that translates to her and wanting her to understand that flowers are stupid. I’m sorry, but they are–You spend more than most people in the world make in a year (Unless you buy them at 3:00 AM at Walmart for $10 and clip off the diseased petals after you get home…. Not that I would ever do that) for a dozen things that are going to be droopy, dead, pains in the ass within 3 days.

But what do I know? I am no expert on how to love. I have a lot of experience with FEELING love, but not so much with the actual ACT OF LOVING. There’s a bit of folklore about Thomas Edison where someone asks him about all of his failures at creating a working lightbulb. As the story goes, he was asked if he grew discouraged about his thousands of failures, but he responded, “I haven’t failed–I have found thousands of ways not to make a lightbulb.” If I have any expertise or wisdom in the area of showing love, it has most likely been gained by learning what NOT to do. If life is like an education, marriage is like Doctorate level courses in what does and doesn’t work when it comes to showing love. As Valentine’s Day approaches, I have been thinking more and more about how to love. Here are five things I’ve come up with:

“The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer.” — Henry David Thoreau

This is never what listening looks like.

LISTEN TO THEM. I think that one of the best ways you can really love a person is to genuinely listen to them. A lifetime of selfishness has conditioned me to be a horrible listener. I have become very skilled at anticipating a pause in someone’s speech patterns where I can jump in and give the person I am “listening” to what I believe to be a very special gift: My thoughts. I am terrible at this. I am 36 years old, and I still have to constantly remind myself that waiting for my chance to speak is not listening. Larry King once said, “Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.” And the more I learn, the more I learn that I’ve got a lot to learn…. Many times, I am in such a hurry to be clever or insightful that I fail to honestly listen. Listening means letting another person’s words to change you–even in some small way (I mean, I’ve heard…. I’ve never really tried it). It is putting down a cell phone, closing a laptop, and turning of a TV. It is turning your yourself toward a person, and allowing yourself feel what that person feels.

“Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I keep a Contributor in my car so I can wave it at the people selling them. "I got one, bro."

LOOK AT THEM. Not too long ago, I noticed myself trying to avoid eye-contact with the people trying to sell the homeless newspapers while I sat in my car waiting for the light to change. I did this because it’s way easier to keep yourself from having any sort of emotional understanding with someone when you don’t look them in the eyes. I have been on the other side of this as well–watching as a person does everything in their power to NOT make eye-contact with me after leaving me a crap tip at the restaurant. When I realized the similarities, I decided that I will never again avoid making eye-contact with a poor person asking me for something–I may not be able to help them that day, but I sure the hell am going to look at him while telling him that. It is much, much harder to be selfish when you are looking someone in their eyes. There are all kinds of things that take up our time every day, but to really love someone, we must take the time to really let our gaze linger with theirs. It is that thing Matthew Arnold takes about in “The Buried Life” where “Our eyes can in another’s eyes read clear…. And a lost pulse of feeling stirs again.” The more we look at each other, the better we do at loving each other–that goes for Valentines just as well as homeless people.

“At the touch of love, everyone becomes a poet.” — Plato

I am fluent in the love language of foot massage.

TOUCH THEM. This one has always been easier for me (not just the romantic kind of touch, though that’s fun too). While growing up, every once in a while we would stay at a cottage during the Summer with my extended family. When it was time for bed, I would hug everyone in the cottage–many of them people who were not normally very physically affectionate. Even at a young age, a simple act like this changes the atmosphere. There is something so healing about physical touch. Like a foot crossing over to your side of the bed when you accidentally go to bed angry, or a hug that lasts as long as the person who needs it more wants it to last, or rubbing lotion that smells like minty/floral garbage onto calloused feet, or a simple back rub while she’s sitting at the computer, or just holding hands while walking together…. Sometimes we attempt to explain things with words that can only be understood with a touch.

“I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts, then there is no hurt, but only more love.” — Mother Teresa

I need somebody.

HELP THEM. I’m convinced that one of the coolest things that you can ask a person is “Can I help you with anything?” When I think that I deserve help, things almost never go well–This is especially true when the person you’re expecting help from feels the same way (this happens in any relationship, but I think it happens even more often in ones that involve kids). When I am looking for a way to help, a few cool things happen: 1) I can almost always find one. 2) It makes everyone happier. Everyone. 3) Even when I am exhausted, helping someone almost always energizes me (I can never remember this. For some reason, the things that will make things easier almost always feel too hard to do. This is true for many things: Exercise, taking care of things around the house, and even showing love to the one we love most). To help someone is to love someone.

“Forgiveness is the final form of love.” –Reinhold Niebuhr

FORGIVE THEM. The more I’m around me, the clearer it is that I have many faults. These faults have never been as prominently displayed as they have since I’ve been married. Marriage is like a giant spotlight shining on our our weaknesses. And as scary as this can be, the cool thing about seeing your own failings more clearly is that you can more clearly see how we all need forgiveness. When looking for a reason to forgive, we needn’t look any further than our own reflection. The offenses we hang onto are reflections of our own insecurity. Someone once said, “Forgiveness is setting the prisoner free, and then finding out that the prisoner was you.” This is never as true as it is when we forgive the ones we love.

A rose by any other name other than Walmart would smell as sweet.

There are plenty of ways to love that I’m missing (doing special things for no reason, getting enough sleep, remembering special occasions, etc…), but these are the ones I’m focusing on: Listen, Look, Touch, Help, & Forgive. It seems simple enough, but like Morpheus said, “Neo, sooner or later you’re going to realize, just as I did, that there’s a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path.” God knows I’m no expert on how to love–I’m obviously writing this more to myself than anyone else–but if this inspires anyone else to “walk the path” a little better this Valentine’s Day, I suppose that will be a good thing. Tell you what: You might as well buy her some flowers too (this brings up another way to love: Buy her stuff she likes even when you think it’s stupid). Love is a pretty amazing path to walk down. Happy Valentines Day, Sweetie! This counts as a present.

Posted in 5) Not Quite Sure | Tagged , , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Pooping in the Woods and Other Lessons of Humility

Posted on February 8, 2012 by theboeskool

I don’t have much shame…. At least that’s what my wife tells me. I have plenty of shame, though–just not as much of the “social” sort of shame. I possess a special “shame exemption” when it come to things that go down in the bathroom. For example, I have no trouble posting a blog devoted almost entirely to pooping. This lack of shame when it comes to issues of the scatological nature started at a young age….

For some reason, whenever the Church tries to make a "Christian version" of something secular, it invariably ends up being significantly more lame.

When I was in about third or fourth grade, I was in this thing called “Cadets” — It was basically like Boy Scouts for kids in the Christian Reformed Church (there was a Christian Reformed version of Girl Scouts as well called “The Calvinettes.” Yes, they were named after John Calvin). Once a year, the Cadets would have a big camping deal called a Camporee or a Jamboree or a Dutchoree or something…. We would all drive out into the woods (there was no hiking), meet up other Cadets from all the other Christian Reformed Churches, and do a little light camping. We brought our floating Ivory soap and our crappy Coleman Car Camper sleeping bags, and we would fill the tent with the kind of smell that can only be created with the combustible combination of pre-adolescence and giant cans of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. We pretended we didn’t know that the counselors were smoking by the fire, and when we finally slept, we slept light–listening for the sounds of footsteps from other clubs coming to “raid our tent” (basically just pulling out all our poles and having everything come crashing down on our stinky little heads).

I don't speak German, but I can only assume that this sign says "No pooping on Christmas trees!"

Anyway, no shame…. When you’re out in the woods for any extended period of time with a hundred or so men and boys, you need to prepare a place for everybody to take a dump. What they would do is dig a giant hole between two trees, lash two large limbs between the trees, and then affix a couple of toilet seats to the limbs directly over the giant hole. They brought us all out to the latrine to teach us the steps involved in taking a shit in the woods. I still remember the instructions: 1) Wipe your ass. 2) Shake a little bit of the lime over the poo. 3) Take the shovel and cover your crap with some dirt. 4) Rinse, and repeat–Wait, that was Pert Plus–I think it was actually 4) Don’t fall in.

I swear I’ll get to it…. After they went over the instructions, one of the leaders looked at the giant half-circle of elementary and middle schoolers and said, “Alright–Anyone want to give it a try?” Before the leader could let me know that he was just joking, I was up there with my pants around my ankles taking a shit in front of an audience of my peers. Now you might think that this was the “no shame” portion, but this is just part of the story. The real lack of humiliation is shown in the fact that this event did not make enough of an impression for me to remember it on my own–I had to be told this story by a classmate at a friend’s wedding…. Something that could have scarred someone forever was probably forgotten by me by the time I used the latrine again three hours later (I poop a lot).

Alas, a life of carefree bowel movements is not meant to last forever…. In high school, one incident at a friend’s house filled me with a feeling of anxiety whenever the door to the bathroom is not within arm’s reach that continues to this day….

Some people understand this painting more than others....

I was upstairs at my friend’s house when nature called. Actually, it was less of a call than a scream–One of those emergency situations where your body says, “Listen–You can either get us to a toilet or stay right here, but very shortly, this thing is going to go down one way or another.” I did the honorable thing and took my screaming bowels downstairs instead of using the one right next to his room, as I didn’t expect things to go well. I hustled down the stairs, thinking about how I was pretty sure I was going to make it to the toilet, but if, for some reason, the door was locked I probably wasn’t going to make it back upstairs. While saying a prayer of thanks for an unlocked door, I neglected (somewhat ironically) to lock the door myself.

"God, I know I haven't been to church in a while...."

It took me about 10 seconds to realize that there was no toilet paper on the roller, and I immediately broke out into a full sweat. This could not be happening–if ever there was a time for a FULL roll of TP, it was now. I surveyed my surroundings, but there was definitely no replacement rolls to be found. It was one of those bathrooms that had a curtain separating a washer and dryer, and I briefly considered looking for some sort of dark towel that no one would miss. Before it came to that, I decided I would at least look under the sink for a new roll. The layout of the room went Washer/Dryer–Toilet–Large Sink (large enough to be out of arm’s reach)–Door. I shuffled over to the sink, with my pants around my ankles, and bent down to look under the sink.

The moment I realized that there was nothing under the sink that could help me was also the same moment that my friend’s mom opened the door to her laundry room with a full hamper of clothes and swung the door into me–Naked ass in the air. I am not sure of the exact view that she had, but I can still hear the words the spoke as she hurriedly shut the door–“Oh God, Chris…. I am so sorry.” It wasn’t the kind of “I’m sorry” that people say when you bump into them, or even when you break something precious of theirs–It was the sort of “I’m sorry” that you say when someone has died. And to make matters a little more humiliating, through the closed doors I yelled, “Could you bring me a roll of toilet paper?”

A part of me did die that day. It was that young boy, freely pooping in the woods as a half-circle of strangers looked on, without a care in the world. I guess part of the purpose of this blog is to resurrect a piece of the spirit of that little boy that knows nothing of shame.

Posted in Uncategorized | 11 Comments

My Dad

Posted on February 8, 2012 by theboeskool

I really struggled writing this. Not because it’s hard to say, but because there is too much. I broke off a part about forgiveness that I’ll be revisiting shortly, and I also had to leave out a delightful story about pooping.

My Dad died nine years ago this month. He was 51. He laid down in his bed, and at some point before his wife tried to wake him up, he had stopped breathing. When the paramedics got there, they managed to get his heart going again, but there was no brain activity. There were some questions surrounding his death (why a man with a history of drug and alcohol abuse was prescribed and had access to so much methadone and other pain killers, for one), but basically, after a lifetime of abuse, his body just said, “I’ve had enough. I quit.”

"I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you're gonna hear about it!"

The Christmas before he died he was really messed up. While he was eating his food, I looked at him and he was bringing his fork to his mouth about as slowly as you could move something–All while his mouth was open, just waiting for the food to get there. It would have been sort of funny if it wasn’t so sad. At some point during the meal, he went upstairs in kind of a huff. I followed him up there, and he was sulking in a chair, saying something about how no one even cared that he had left the party. I tried to tell him that that is why I came up to talk to him, but he didn’t really buy it. When he came back downstairs, he had a bone to pick. With EVERYBODY. He started going around the room and telling people what their problem was. It was like some sort of surreal, pain med-induced Festivus “Airing of Grievances,” only in real life. Without the Costanza comedy and without the laugh track.

When his finger started pointing my way, he said, “And YOU. You are not the father in this relationship.” I think I said something like, “Dad, what are you talking about?” I think everyone probably had a shocked look on their face, but my wife of seven months, who hadn’t seen anything like this at a Christmas meal before, probably looked pretty startled at the whole scene. Then his finger pointed at her, and shit got real. He said something about her thinking that she is better than everyone else and I was instantly pissed. I grabbed her hand and said, “We’re leaving.” While we were driving home, I remember saying, “I don’t think he’s going make it to next Christmas.” I was right. Two months later he was dead.

I have some regrets about that day.

"I'm here for the AA meeting.... Ticket for what?"

I wish that, instead of reacting with anger, I had just looked at him and said, “Dad, I love you. Everyone here loves you. You have a problem. Let us help you.” I sometimes wonder if saying something as simple as that could have kept him around long enough to see my beautiful kids…. But anyone who has been around addicts knows that they have ways of controlling the people who love them. My Dad had overcome his alcoholism before. When I was young, he went to rehab. He would take me to AA meetings and show me “The Big Book” and tell me that I couldn’t tell anyone who I saw there (I was like ten. It’s not like I was going to be talking to my friends and say, “You guys will never believe who I saw at the AA meeting…. Frank M! Yeah, I don’t know who who the crap Frank M is either, but he sure was there. And his breath smelled thickly of coffee and cigarettes.” But it’s a whole lot easier admitting that you are powerless over your addiction/admitting you have a problem/admitting you need help when you have hit rock bottom. The sneaky thing about addiction (and the Devil, if there’s a difference) is that as you get healthy again, you start to feel a little bit good about yourself–“I can do this.” Then, when you fall off the wagon again (as my father often did–as we all often do), it is that much harder to admit you screwed up and you need help.

My Freshmaker addiction started in church....

We’re all basically a bunch of addicts—We’re just addicted to different things. Some of us (like my Dad) are addicted to things that are more likely to ruin our lives in ways that other people can clearly see, others of us are addicted to things that ruin our lives in less visable ways. We’re addicted to work, or food, or sex and pornography, or feeling important, or dependent relationships, or TV, or facebook, or people reaffirming that you are funny and talented and you write well and your blog is awesome…. Regardless of what our drug of choice is, we all need help.

So, yeah…. I realize this one is kind of heavy. Fear not. My next one will be entirely about pooping.

Heads I lose, Tails you win....

Anyway, I guess I’ve been thinking about how our pride is the main thing that keeps us from getting the help that we need–whether it’s help from people or God (again–If there’s a difference). Shame and pride are two side of the same coin—a coin that keeps us from becoming the sort of person we would rather be. There is something powerful about being honest with other people about how big of a piece of shit we really are–being transparent. It makes me think about the truth in those 12 steps written on the wall of that crappy, smoke-filled building that my Dad would take me to. I think the Devil and Addiction are dealt with the same way.

So…. Just in case you never saw them before, or just in case you haven’t seen them in a while, or just in case you were wondering how to let get rid of a mess that you just can’t seem to let go of, here are the 12 steps:

  1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol (or whatever your personal addiction happens to be)—that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
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Jury Duty and a Death Sentence for Newt

Posted on January 31, 2012 by theboeskool

Turns out I LOVE jury duty. Everybody talks about it as if it were this excruciating thing, but there is something about being me that goes really well with being a juror. Maybe it’s my thirst for justice, maybe it’s that I feel like there aren’t that many opportunities to feel like I’m “doing my civic duty” by taking part in a flawed legal system that is trying do the right thing, maybe it’s that I like the change of pace from work, maybe it’s the pleasure that I feel going mad with power when I feel like someone’s fate is in my hands…. Whatever the reason, when I got a jury duty notice last year, I was not the least bit disappointed. I was giddy.

Homer breaks his jaw after watching a movie called "Shenani-Goats" starring Tim Allen. It was rated PG-13 for brief rudeness and appearances by Garry Shandling

Next thing I knew, I was sitting on a jury in a medical malpractice case. It was me, three other guys, and eight ladies (on a side-note: In regards to the whole referring to juries as “12 Angry Men,” it has been my experience that the women on juries are far angrier than the men. Especially when you say things like “Settle down, sweetheart.”). The cool thing is that in order for a case to make it to a jury, things are not clear-cut. And I love it when things are not clear cut. I revel in grey areas, so I was in heaven. Also, in normal life I tend to speak before I have worked out my entire thought (this habit has, on more than one occasion, led to hurt feelings. Usually mine, when people call me a “horse’s ass”), but while sitting on that juror’s chair you can’t just blurt out questions. I felt like Homer Simpson when his jaw was wired shut and all he could do was ask questions by writing them on a chalk board, and all of the sudden he became a good husband and father. One thing became clear to me, while sitting on that jury: Asking the right question is way more powerful than having the right answer.

It was like this, only more luxurious leather and less luxurious hair. Later, in the deliberation room, I tried to explain that I was making sure I wasn't in the middle of an Inception.

The only hard part about sitting on a jury (for me, at least) is the actual sitting–I cannot sit still. My ADD necessitates that I’m always crossing my legs, uncrossing my legs, tucking one foot under a leg, switching legs/feet, and taking my shoes off to sit “Indian Style” (Is this okay to say? Referring to this way of sitting as “criss cross” is like a grown man ordering a “Shirley Temple.” Go ahead and just call it what it is…. A Redskin Soda). They were really nice chairs, though–leather and wood that swiveled and leaned back–very comfortable. Unfortunately, during a particularly intense part of the trial, I was leaning back and it felt like someone was pushing down a bit on my luxury chair. A moment later, my feet were up in the air and the chair had fallen over–the bolts were ripped right out of the ground. I made two jokes, and nobody laughed at either one of them: I rubbed my belly and made a comment about the size of the sub I ate for lunch…. Not even a smile. The other was holding my back and threatening to sue…. Crickets. I even tapped an imaginary microphone and said, “Is this thing on?” Nothing. Tough crowd….

Juries hear two sorts of trials: Civil (where someone pays money as a consequence for messing with someone else’s stuff) or Criminal (where a crime was committed and the consequence is loss of freedom/liberty or even loss of life for a capital case). I live in one of those states where, if you kill someone on purpose, they might just go ahead and kill you right back. I’m really happy that my trial was a civil trial and not a case where someone might lose their life as a consequence for the crime they committed–Mostly because if it were a capital trial I would not have been able to be on the jury.

America likes its death row prisoners like it likes its John Coffey--Black.

Turns out they don’t allow people who don’t believe in the death penalty to be on capital trial juries. I’ve been thinking about this, and I’ve decided this is really messed up. The only people who are allowed to sit on these jurys are people who agree that killing someone is an appropriate repercussion for killing someone. This is basically a system (follow me here) that insures that the only people allowed to serve on a capital jury (where the person on trial killed someone) are people who believe that killing people is okay. Does this make sense? It seems to me that by only allowing the sort of person who would say “Yes–Let’s kill that person for the crime he committed” to be a juror, the legal system would be limiting the jury to contain only certain types of people. It would seemingly exclude a very large people-group from capital trials–Namely, followers of Jesus Christ.

Surprisingly enough, though, it seems that even in states that claim to be overwhelmingly Christian, they have no trouble finding people to sit in juries on capital murder trials. How can this be? Maybe not so coincidentally, the states with the death penalty are also states that have higher rates of illiteracy–Maybe the “Christians” in these states can’t read. For example, maybe they weren’t able to read the part of the Bible that says:

   “You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too. If a soldier demands that you carry his gear for a mile, carry it two miles. Give to those who ask, and don’t turn away from those who want to borrow.
“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Of course, if they couldn’t read that, they wouldn’t be able to read my blog either…. Maybe, if you know an illiterate Christian who mistakenly believes that followers of Jesus Christ should be for the death penalty, you could do a service project for them and read them the New Testament. Or my blog. Whichever.

So I’ll just say it: If you call yourself a Christian and you believe that killing a person is an appropriate punishment for committing murder, you are misrepresenting Jesus. There is NOTHING is Jesus’ life or words that would lead his followers to believe that we have any place sentencing another person to death. We have all already received a death sentence, and Jesus took care of that when he accepted his own.

"Alright, who let out the Honey Badger? Someone's ass is getting stoned.... No, not that kind of stoned. The BAD kind of stoned"

“BUT WHAT ABOUT THE OLD TESTAMENT!?!?!” the pro-deathers yell in unison (ironically, most of the “pro-death” group also identify themselves by a seemingly contradictory name–“Republican.” Just kidding. It is paradoxical, though, that so many pro-life people are so pro-death penalty). Well, the Old Testament does justify the death penalty for some heinous crimes–like murder. Among the other crimes for which death is prescribed: Cursing a parent, Failure to confine a dangerous animal, Sex with an animal (any animal–not just the dangerous one that got out), Working on the Sabbath, Perjury, False claims of virginity, Incest, and Adultery (just to name a few). If we were still working off of this list, Newt Gingrich would deserve the death penalty about three different times. And that’s not even counting the adultery!

Raise your hand if you're an adulterer....

Speaking of adultery, The Bible tells a cool story of a woman who is about to be killed for committing adultery (like the Old Testament commands). Jesus looks at the people with the stones and says, “All right. Whoever hasn’t sinned, go ahead and throw the first one.” And they all left. Jesus also tells a story about a guy whose huge debt was forgiven by a king, but that same guy can’t forgive a small debt that is owed to him. The king says to the guy, “Shouldn’t you have mercy on your fellow servant, just as I had mercy on you?” When Jesus tells stories about God getting REALLY angry, most of them seem to be about stuff like this–people just not getting it and demanding justice when they have been shown such amazing mercy. And then God is like, “You want Justice? I got your justice right here….”

Also, somewhere in this car, an idiot is missing his teeth.

And the people outside the church seem to get it. The cars with the “Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?” bumper stickers are always the ones with the COEXIST stickers, while the Jesus Fish all seem to be surrounded by a Yellow Ribbon, an NRA sticker, and some form of a NObama sticker. It’s the exact opposite of what it should be. I mean, apart from Jesus, “an eye for an eye” makes sense. It’s a natural reaction, but what use is Jesus if we have embraced the same reactions we had before we knew better. I talk to my kids about it every day–“She hit me first!” he yells. “Listen, little man, because of Jesus, we are operating by a different set of rules.” Killing people is wrong, y’all. It doesn’t suddenly get right just because they did it first.

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My Almost First Time With A Middle-Aged Lady

Posted on January 25, 2012 by theboeskool

The first time I heard of Bieber Fever, I figured it was something that could be cleared up with some sort of cream....

I wasn’t always this bald. There was a time in high school (it seems like just yesterday, but really it was almost 20 years ago) when my blonde locks flipped into my eyes like some sort of skinnier, Dutcher Justin Bieber. And there is a deep part of me that still remembers all that hair–sometimes I still feel a phantom tickle on my forehead and flip my head to the side to swing hair away that is no longer there. But ahhh…. High school. Playing “Curly” in our school performance of Oklahoma! with hair actually coming out the sides AND FRONT of my cowboy hat…. Being out on stage performing in a singing group (looking like a dorky, gangly seal–before I realized you could bend your arms as you clapped) with my smooth tenor voice emanating from that sweet spot right between a sweater vest and a full head of hair…. And having my sexy, cowlicked coiffure bounce up and down as I ran on our State Championship winning basketball court….

During warm-ups.

I didn’t make it out on the floor very much during the actual games–not unless the outcome was already decided. Don’t get me wrong–I had skills. I was actually really good, as long as nothing was on the line. During real games, everything just seemed to matter too much and I couldn’t handle the pressure. But boy, oh boy, did I ever make that bench look good. At least all of the photographers for the local papers seemed to think so. I barely ever made it out onto the floor, but, for some reason, I sure made it into the photos that went along with the stories of our championship run. Maybe it was how much easier it was taking pictures of a non-moving target, maybe it was just the comparative homeliness of the rest of my bench mates…. Who knows. I didn’t mind. Until one day….

It was the female equivalent of this.

A letter came in the mail for me. It was addressed to the school. Well, “addressed to the school” might be giving it a little more credit than it deserves. What was written was something more like “Christian High School, Chris Boeskool, Michigan” in what looked like a third-grader’s handwriting, and some genius mailman deciphered those hieroglyphs and delivered it to my school (he probably recognized my name from all those pictures in the paper). I opened the letter and the first thing I noticed was a picture. I remember thinking, “This has GOT to be a joke.” In my virginal hands, I held a full-length picture of an out of shape, middle-aged woman wearing some sort of leopard-print bikini. I looked around the English classroom to see who was smiling or laughing–some clue to let me know which one of my classmates was behind this wonderfully heinous joke–but no one was smiling. I unfolded the letter and my eyes scanned the page through phrases like “I see your picture in the paper” and “I love you” and “dress sexy for you” until my gaze rested on the one portion of the letter in which things got serious: “I’ll let you have sex with me if you want.”

"Workers of the world, Unite! The werewolf is the natural enemy of the wolverine."

Holy shit… (Yeah, I know–Kids at Christian Schools were not supposed to say things like this, but there were some exceptions to this rule in extreme cases. Among the situations that made profanity acceptable: If communist werewolves parachuted down from the skies to take over your town like some sort of fever dream you had after watching Teen Wolf and Red Dawn under the influence of NyQuil; if Michael Jordan walked into your classroom to give you a pair of autographed shoes; or if a creepy 45 year old woman sent you a picture of herself in a leopard-print bikini and offered to have sex with you. It was in the handbook. It was somewhere in the back, but it was in there).

Within moments, there was a suffocating frenzy of laughter and late adolescence bustling around me and the treasure that was this parcel of mail. We examined it for clues as to its authenticity, and it seemed legit. We looked for clues in the photo and saw that one half of her body seemed…. droopier than the other–we wondered if the reason the penmanship and grammar seemed distressed was because she may have had a stroke. Even though many of us had no doubts that the letter/picture were genuine, a few of my doubting friends soon left (I don’t remember the exact timeline) on a trip to check out my admirer’s address. When we talked the next day, they told a harrowing tale of hillbilly brothers in a suped-up station wagon and a high-speed chase down roads that went from paved to gravel and almost ended up with everyone dying. To hear them tell it, they had barely escaped with their lives.

But I had to see for myself.

It looked like this, it was faster than crap, and it did NOT have automatic locks...

That afternoon, I found myself in the backseat of my friend’s Malibu on a rural road in Michigan staring at a small house. We were stopped on the road, right next to the stone path that led from the front door to the mailbox. My eyes surveyed the horizon for any sign of a station wagon kicking up dust. All of the sudden, the silence was broken by an idiot in the front seat yelling, at the top of his lungs, “HEY SHIRLEY!!! IT’S CHRIS!!!!!” (I can’t, for the life of me, remember her actual name, but let’s just say her name was Shirley. It was definitely a name in a Shirley-ish sort of category) There was a moment of silence as the words seemed to hang in the air…. We all shrieked and clung to each other as a woman kicked open the screen door and limped toward the Malibu with handfuls of pictures in her hands that fell by the path as she advanced (It wasn’t in the “Holy Shit” section of the handbook, but pretty sure we would have been given a pass on this one). “Chris!!! I’ve got some more pictures for you!!!” I think she was shooting for sultry, but, to our ears,  she landed on threatening. She seemed to be walking with purpose…. That purpose? To make sweet, statutory love to the blonde-haired kid in the backseat of that Malibu.

I’m not sure how I did it, but I simultaneously locked all four door locks at the same time–the two in the back with my hands, and the two in the front with my feet–I looked like a cat trying to not fall into a toilet. I screamed the word GO in a way that would have compelled any driver’s foot to press the gas pedal to the floor, and within moments, she was a dot in the rear view mirror. But I’m pretty sure that my heart didn’t stop pounding until long after I fell asleep that night. As I dozed off, I thought to myself, “Sometimes, being this good-looking can be a curse” (within a year, my hair would start to leave me like a Chevy Malibu driving away from a love-struck hillbilly). Later that week another letter arrived, but this one was intercepted by our principal. The authorities were notified, we never heard from her again, and everyone lived happily ever after.

There’s a moral to this story, I’m just not sure what it is.

Posted in 5) Not Quite Sure | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Rob Bell and Puppies in Hell

Posted on January 23, 2012 by theboeskool

“If millions and millions of people who have never heard of Jesus are going to be tormented forever by God because they didn’t believe in the Jesus they’d never heard of, then at that point we will have far larger problems than a book by a pastor from Grand Rapids.” –Rob Bell, from an interview with Relevant Magazine

“Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” –John, from The Bible

You always dream of making the cover, but when it actually happens….

Last year, before the release of his book Love Wins, Rob Bell made a video where he seemed to question whether we should be certain that Gandhi is in hell. And people (without actually reading the book) lost their minds. Most of what was said in the trailer for the book was just him asking some questions (How dare he?) that people have been asking for a couple thousand years. Really, it was a brilliant piece of marketing–Rob Bell was the top hash tag on Twitter for about a week. “Rob Bell is a universalist!!” they yelled. “False Prophet!!!” “Heretic!!!!”

Right around the time people were ready to crucify Rob Bell over a book they had not yet read (and most of them had no plan to read), I shared this analogy:

“Imagine handing this puppy over to be tortured.” –is the winning entry for the “See who can come up with the least funny caption” contest.

Imagine, for a moment, there was a very wise, very old man who loved dogs. This man decided to breed a new sort of hybrid dog—a wonderful dog that had the best of all canine characteristics (and it was hypoallergenic too). He made huge sacrifices for this new dog. He loved this new dog, and wanted them to love him too, so he decided to give this dog three months to become a good dog. The dog needed to get along well with other dogs, as well as recognize the man as its master in this limited time period. If the dog was not a good dog by the time its time was up, the man would take this dog and he would kill it…. This would be pretty messed up, right? There is something in just about all of us (granted, maybe not all) that would look at this and think, “This is pretty messed up.” 
     Now imagine that, instead of killing the puppy, the man handed it over to a man who was very skilled at torturing puppies. He would hook up electrodes to the puppy’s tail, clip its puppy nails too short, poke needles in its little puppy eyes, and use a series of controlled fires to burn, but not kill, this bad dog. This would take place for the rest of the puppy’s life—about 14 or 15 years…. This would be more than messed up. This would be criminally insane. By just about anyone’s standard. Could this man be seen as loving his creation? 
     Now imagine that, instead of just 14 or 15 years, this is this poor creature’s fate for eternity. Unthinkable, right? And yet, this is the narrative that we have created (and some use to attempt to bring people to God) of what happens when people die without knowing Jesus. I contend that this narrative of an eternal, tortuous “Hell” for all “unbelievers” displays neither God’s mercy, nor his justice.

Have you ever wondered if God is anything like us? I think about this from time to time…. Most of these times are when I’m dealing with my kids. Like when the boy is in the back of the mini van and asks sixteen times (in one way or another) if we can play Wii when we get home. “I’m not sure.” “I am very aware that you really like playing Wii.” “I don’t know–we’ll see how well you do getting ready for bed.” “Seriously, son–we’ll see.” “I’ll tell you this much: If you hit your sister with that elephant again, the answer will definitely be no!” “BOY, DO NOT ASK ME ONE MORE TIME OR I WILL THROW THE Wii IN THE GARBAGE!!!” …. I’m fairly certain that God does not deal with us this way, but this question of whether God is like us (or we are like God) is an important one, because our reason (as well as our sense justice) is one of the big things that makes us human. If God has a completely different sense of justice or reason than we do, that could cause some really big theological problems: Could we actually have relationship with a illogical, irrational God with a sense of justice starkly different than ours?

When Galileo was killed for saying the Earth went around the sun, guess where they told him he was going when he died….

Most of the Christian Church believes that God is going to punish billions and billions of people who don’t know Jesus by sending them for eternity to an actual place of horrific, endless torture known as Hell. Now, there are two basic grounds that people begin to question the validity of long-standing beliefs, and both of them involve our reason and rationality. The first reason is if evidence is pointing you in a different direction than the commonly held belief (for example, Galileo sees evidence that the earth is actually going around the sun and not vice versa). The second reason is if something just doesn’t “feel” right (for example, “I know that the Bible seems to condone slavery, but I feel something inside of me just knows that slavery can’t be okay”).

What if, when Jesus spoke of hell, the people he was talking to pictured this?

So, through literary criticism a person might start to question long-held beliefs about Christian Doctrine and start to think that maybe the writers of the Bible didn’t have the same exact concept of “forever” or “everlasting” as we do today. Maybe the closest word for “forever” is the Hebrew word “olam” which actually is more rightly translated as “a far off distance” or “an age.” Maybe in the story of Jonah being in the belly of the whale for three days, he described how long he was in the whale using the word “olam.” And yet we continue to translate that word into “forever” fitting into our current idea of “eternity”–especially in regard to the afterlife and eternal punishment. Or, maybe the translators of the Bible take the word “Gehenna” (an actual place that was a place the people of the city burned their garbage) and translated it as “Hell.” This is all true, by the way.

This place looks like it would totally suck.

Or maybe, people start thinking about how God has been portrayed over the years, and that portrayal doesn’t line up with what they have experienced of God’s goodness (as well as Jesus’ description of God as a loving Father). Jesus appealed to people’s reason and logic all the time when he spoke, so we know that they are important and useful in figuring things out. Jesus said, “You fathers—if your children ask for a fish, do you give them a snake instead? Or if they ask for an egg, do you give them a scorpion? Of course not! So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” Makes sense…. But does a finite being (humans) in a finite segment of time (the time we’re alive for) receiving an infinite punishment (eternal Hell) really make sense? Can a God that is loving and merciful and JUST really be like this?

What inevitably happens when a person starts questioning long-standing beliefs about God is people accuse that person of creating a god in his or her own image. “You can’t pick and choose!” they yell. When someone says, “Wait, this doesn’t make sense!” people respond with the passage that says, “For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” And yeah, I get that–God is way smarter than I am, so who am I to question the rightness or wrongness of God? That would make plenty of sense…. If that was what I was doing. But I’m not. I am questioning the rightness or wrongness of man’s interpretation of who God is (as well as man’s interpretation of scripture).

This actually is good news.

What makes sense is important. When we paint God as the sort of Being who would sentence a 15 year old kid who dies of leukemia saying “there is no God” to an eternity in hell, it simply doesn’t make any sense. That is not what God is like–It can’t be, especially when we go on to explain the Bible as a cosmic love story between a Creator and his creation–complete with mystery and magic and even the complexity that is FREE WILL. We tell people that “God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” And I believe it. But that word “perish” does not have to mean “be sustained by God infinitely in order to be tortured in Hell for not believing in Jesus” in order for that statement to be infinitely powerful and loving and cool. For God is not something which Jesus saves us FROM, but God is someone that Jesus reconciles us TO.

Posted in 1) Jesus | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Taxes, The Tea Party, And Togetherness

Posted on January 18, 2012 by theboeskool

"The guy who wrote this paragraph is completely full of crap. Also, he hates freedom."

So today, Mitt Romney made some headlines when he was asked about his tax records. “It’s probably closer to the 15 percent rate than anything,” said the man whose net worth most people estimate to be around $190 million to $250 million. He explained this low rate (much lower than the tax rate paid by the “middle class”–whatever that phrase means) by saying that most of his income comes from investments: “For the past 10 years, my income comes overwhelmingly from investments made in the past, rather than ordinary income or earned annual income. I got a little bit of income from my book, but I gave that all away. Then, I get speakers fees from time to time, but not very much.” “Not very much” means different things to different people, apparently. He earned $374,327 from speaker fees last year alone….

So I mean, whatever…. To a guy with a quarter of a billion dollars, $374,327 might not seem like very much–I get it. And I don’t begrudge the guy for making that money. I’ll tell you this right now: If someone cared enough about what I had to say to pay me $50,000 to give a speech, I’d sure the hell take it. And I get the idea of paying less taxes on money earned through investments. The idea behind a lower capital gains tax is that people have already been taxed on their income, and they don’t need to be taxed on it again–At least not as much. What IS pretty gross is when private equity executives (like Romney was) use a tax loophole to get “paid” with capital gains as an “investor” instead of taking a salary so that you only have to pay taxes of 15%. The cool thing is that “Happily for the executives, any investments that go belly up and lead to bankruptcy and mass layoffs can be counted against the earnings, which amounts to a tax subsidy for failed projects.” —HufPo  Pretty sweet deal, if your family has the money to get it for you.

I showed up to let these jackasses know that in 1773, they were protesting taxation WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!!! But they were so stupid, they didn't know what I was talking about. Typical Tea Partiers...

People’s views on taxes are one of the biggest things that divide us from each other in this country. People are all over the spectrum on the legitimacy of taxation. Some people look at taxes as a necessary burden for members of a society to bear; others look at it like some sort of armed robbery committed by the government…. And everywhere in between–The Tea Party, for example. The Tea Party, of course, took its name from the famous Boston Tea Party where, as we all know, they protested taxation…. (wait for it) WITHOUT REPRESENTATION!!! I hate to break this to you, guys, but YOU HAVE REPRESENTATION. Some people think that the way to get more jobs in this country is to tax the rich even less, while others have a more “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked” sort of view. Wait, that sounds familiar….

I know, I know, Jesus wasn’t talking about taxes when he said that. Settle down.

"Oh yeah?" Then what are you using to hold up the sign, old man? WITH WHAT ARE YOU HOLDING UP THE SIGN?!?!?"

I just wish people could talk sanely to each other about this issue. For example, nobody likes waste in government. Nobody–not even democrats. Nor do they like it when people take advantage of Welfare. Also, collecting taxes to provide for the common good is not tyranny–it’s just not. Stop it. And there are things taxes should rightly be used for other than the military and making sure nobody takes our stuff. One of those things, believe it or not, is to protect the members of the society from giant companies who get too powerful. Our current tax burden is historically low–In fact, against the backdrop of the highest national debt ever, our taxes (as a share of income) are the lowest they have been in over 60 years. And yet we still have just about every republican in Congress refusing to even consider more taxes–even for the super-rich–as part of a compromise moving toward functional governance.

This guy doesn't need food stamps, he needs a paycheck. And maybe a Zumba class to work off that fattening crust of bread...

Now, it should be mentioned that I am poor. So far in my life, I have never (that I can remember, at least) had to pay when it comes time to pay my taxes–I have always gotten a return. I credit this to general poorness. The addition of three kids makes tax time a time that I actually look forward to instead of dread. So the opinion of a person who qualifies for the YMCA’s poor people’s rate (I doubt that’s what it’s actually called) on this issue can and should be taken with a grain of salt. But I think of our society kind of like paying for a YMCA membership: You get a nice gym, some tennis courts, a couple of nice pools, and a Zumba class or two, but we have to pay for it. And if you can afford it, you should pay a little more so people who can’t afford it can take a spinning class. FDR once said that “Taxes, after all, are dues that we pay for the privileges of membership in an organized society.”

"Hello? Lamar Alexander's Office? Yeah, well my name is CHRIS BOESKOOL, I live in TENNESSEE, and I wanted you to know that I am COMPLETELY against this WHOLE THING!!!! Damn right, I'll hold...."

It actually has been briefly encouraging today to see people on both sides of the aisle get all pissed off and active today over this whole SOPA/PIPA business. Initially, I didn’t know much about it–I couldn’t figure out why Wikipedia was protesting a South American dessert pastry…. Then I was like, “I’m thinking of sopaipilla.” The more I looked into it, the worse it looked, so today I called both of my Senators and my Representative today to complain, and I had to call about 20 times before I could get through. And the cool thing is I was probably waiting while someone on the exact opposite end of the political spectrum bitched about the exact same thing I was getting ready to bitch about. It was something small, but it felt good. I don’t know–Maybe we can look to this time as a reminder that we still have some things in common.

But probably not.

Posted in 2) Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A White Guy’s Thoughts on Martin Luther King

Posted on January 15, 2012 by theboeskool

“If you’re white and you don’t admit that it’s great, you’re an asshole. It IS great. And I’m a MAN. How many advantages can one person have? I am a white man. You can’t even hurt my feelings! What can you really call a white man that really digs deep–‘Hey, cracker.’ ‘Oh, ruined my day. Boy…. shouldn’t have called me a cracker–bringing me back to owning land and people…. What a drag.'”  –Louis CK, Chewed Up

The hardest part of being "judged by the content of your character" is having to be "judged by the content of your character."

Tomorrow is the national holiday celebrating the life of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Those of you who know me (or have read THIS) know that this is not entirely out of character for me, but today I teared up while planning to have my kids watch the I Have A Dream speech tomorrow. It’s hard for me to put into words what MLK means to me–I love him. I love his life. I love his words. I love how he embodied, and still embodies, peace AND justice for a nation that equates justice with violence. When he was introduced at the steps of The Lincoln Memorial, he was introduced as “The moral leader of our nation,” and 44 years after his assassination, I can’t think of anyone who who deserves this title more than him. A man who died 7 years before I was born continues to inspire me, and he is still, for me, America’s greatest citizen.

How Hispanic are we talking here.... Like, are we talking about white Hispanics, or like, non-white Hispanics?

It’s not always easy for a white guy to talk about race–especially when talking to people who have a different skin color than you. There is always that feeling of lacking credibility. It’s the feeling that compels people to back up their opinions by saying stupid things like “I have black friends.” Even the terms that are used continue to make me feel uncomfortable. Should I be saying African-American? Is saying “black” offensive? Even referring to myself as “white” pisses me off–I hate having to fill in a box on things that ask you to “check your race.” And then I feel guilty and stupid for being upset about it. “I’m a white guy who’s mad about having to check “white” on a form…. What do I really have to be upset about?” At least I don’t have to figure out whether I’m Hispanic, non-white or a white, non-hispanic–whatever that means.

It’s this big, confusing mish-mash of “race” and color and ethnicity and political correctness–it’s tiring.

If you want to make a white dude really uncomfortable, accuse him of being racist. Once, when I worked at a different restaurant, a girl I worked with was “in the weeds” and asked me for help. I walked out to her section, and immediately her table complained to me that their server wasn’t paying attention to them “because we are black.” I calmly explained that she had been double-sat with larger parties, she was one of the newer servers, and that her inattentiveness had nothing to do with the color of their skin. At which point they accused me of being racist too. “ME!?!?!?” My calmness was gone.

There are few things more pathetic than a white kid singing "Fight The Power" while driving to private school in his mom's baby blue Tercel.

I don’t remember exactly what I said–I counted on my fingers through a jumble of examples of the credibility (“cred” if you will) of my racial enlightenment: “I have lots of black friends” (I don’t), “I’ve taken classes at TSU” (a historically black college at which I took two Spanish classes), “My in-laws go to church at Born Again” (a really cool local church where white skin is definitely in the minority–not that their attendance has anything to do with my street cred, but I was really frazzled), “I know every word to Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet” (I know a lot of the words on this album–not nearly the complete knowledge that a have with say Sex Packets by Digital Underground, but it sounded…. Blacker), “I played basketball in Muskegon Heights…. MUSKEGON HEIGHTS!!!!” I was a mess…. What I DO remember was that I ended my rant with the words “I love you people.” Crap. This was the wrong thing to say. “YOU PEOPLE!?!?!” Thankfully, someone at the table sensed some semblance of sincerity in me and settled everyone down (Alliteration–I learned that at my sheltered Christian school that had one black kid…. That I later figured out was actually Korean).

If I had been thinking, I would have told them about the time I was walking through TSU’s campus wearing khaki pants and a button-down shirt. I walked past a group of people, and after I passed by one of them yelled, “Why don’t you go back to Vanderbilt!” I turned around and no one was standing out. When I turned to continue on, the same voice yelled, “I said go back to Vanderbilt!!!” At first, I was kind of scared. Then, as I walked on (and realized I wasn’t going to get beat up) my fear turned to…. I guess it was pride. I was like, “YES! I just got discriminated against. Awesome” (On second thought, this might not have been the best story to share with that irate table. Though, the girls in my Spanish class loved it. I was the only white person AND the only guy in the class, so they all knew my name. They gave me hugs and reassured me that the person who yelled that was an idiot. Do they count as friends?).

After watching this movie, I was ready to kick some white people's asses too.

In college, I went with some friends to go see the movie Higher Learning. We were in North Carolina, and I’d say that probably 80% of the people in the theater were people of color (African American? Of African descent? Black? Colored People?). There were quite a few riots surrounding the viewings of this movie. And for good reason–It made me mad too. Anyway, near the end of the movie, I crossed my legs and my big, Dutch foot bumped the chair in front of me. The guy sitting in that chair glanced at me, saw what I looked like, and turned around to say, “Do you mind?” I said, “I’m sorry?” He stood up and yelled, “I said DO YOU MIND NOT KICKING MY CHAIR, MOTHERF**KER!!” and threw a full cup of Coca Cola at me that hit me square in the chest. I was instantly furious. I stood up with my fists clenched and saw that I had about 8 inches on this guy. I looked at the concerned faces of the people in the theater, looked at the face of his friend next to him (who happened to be wearing sunglasses. In a theater.), took a shaky breath, and sat back down.

"I'VE GOT SOMETHING TO SAY!!!!!"

Race is a hard thing to talk about for most people, but it is especially hard for white guys to talk about. Interestingly enough, one of the real points of discrimination against a white man is the perception that he doesn’t have a whole lot of value to add to the conversation about racial discrimination. White women at least have a little something to add–they can empathize, having lived through sexist stereotypes and all that–but who wants to hear what some white guy has to say? Not me, that’s for sure. Does my wet shirt and humiliation in a movie theater give me a credible voice? Does my being singled out as a minority for about 10 seconds on a college campus let me know anything about anyone else’s struggles? How about the fact that I know who Chuck D is? MUSKEGON HEIGHTS!!!!!

"Out of a mountain of despair, A stone of hope."

Anyway, tomorrow I will sit at this computer with my kids and we will watch a video of a dead man speaking about a dream that is still alive. I will talk about how kids right here in Nashville whose skin was a different color used to have to go to different schools, and how people Like Martin Luther King Jr. worked very hard and sacrificed a whole lot in order to change silly things like that. We will talk about how it’s not what a person looks like on the outside that is important, but it’s who a person is on the inside that counts. I will tell them about how he stood up and told the truth when it was dangerous to say. I will tell them how, because of what he believed about Jesus, he believed it wasn’t okay to hit someone back–even when they were hurting you. I’ll tell them how he got thrown in jail for saying that things shouldn’t be this way, and how he wrote from that Birmingham jail that “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice anywhere.” I’ll tell them how one person can change the world. And I’ll cry my little eyes out.

Thank you, Dr. King. Let freedom ring!!!

Posted in 5) Not Quite Sure | Tagged , , , , , , | 18 Comments