The Back Porch

I don’t know what fish I’m in, or where it’s headed.

I’ve talked about Jonah before. I’ve talked about how he ran from God, and even was willing to run from God to the point of his own death. God saved him from death by having a fish eat him.

Probably nicer to have been saved by mermaids, but nice wasn’t the point.
Tonight I wept. In Winona right now it’s 5ºF and there is snow everywhere. I’m in Costa Rica, where even now at 12:30am it’s still a balmy 69º  and no snow for a thousand miles. I’m in a paradise. Nice hotel, beautiful women, amazing sights, and it’s warm.

But I wept. Alone, sitting on the floor of the bathroom in total darkness.  Some of you know my story, and some of you don’t. Very long story very short. A year and a half ago my fiancée left me in an instant message.

How worthless am I?

Every day since then has been a challenge. I am perpetually nagged by a most profound desire to run away from everyone I know and be surrounded by strangers. Every morning I wake up wishing my first sight was a ceiling I didn’t recognize. If I had to sum up the ambitions of my life into a single statement, it would be to remain at least busy enough to prevent suicide. I am broken beyond repair.

I am in the stomach of a very big fish.

It occurred to me then that when Jonah said to himself in the darkness of a disgusting fish, certain of his own painful demise, “Yeshua Jehovah” that he was not pleading for his life. He didn’t say Jesus is God, so please make this fish spit me onto the shores nearest Ninevah. He simply and utterly acknowledged the work of God.

When this happened, God saved him.

Video by Sam Sanchez.

So, I’ve got to political theory classes this semester and in one, Modern Political Theory, we just burned through Thomas Hobbes’s “Leviathan” and John Locke’s “Second Treatise”. Hobbes is very systematic and starts by defining several things (like human nature, natural law, the state of nature) and then building his argument on that.  Locke more critiques Hobbes and other popular authors that pushed a Monarchy as the only good form of government.

Now I’m not going to get into the pit on these guys, just come talk to me if your interested, but I want to start to define some things so I can continue to build my argument, which kind of coincides with their’s, sometimes, but I won’t talk about that here. Ready? go.

1) God is Love.

2) I  am Self.

3) Self is not Love.

4) I am Selfish.

5) Love is not being Selfish.

The End.

I don’t know enough Christians who are like Christ.

One of the greatest challenges the church faces today is insulation. It is distant and removed. We gather in closed buildings and sing our own songs, talk to our own friends, and generally avoid contact with the outside world as often as possible, with the occasional exception of doing something “evangelistic” where we perhaps move from the church sanctuary to the church parking lot, put up some grills, and wait for people to come eat our food and listen to our songs and then we get them ready to invite them into the church sanctuary. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Today, if you want to find a Christian, you need to go to a church. If you wanted to find Christ, you had to go to a bar.

Jesus didn’t spend his time forming clubs or committees. He did not start a Christian rock band and go on a tour of churches to win people to himself. He did not stand outside abortion clinics and picket. In fact, he may have spent his time inside. He didn’t make company with the people who thought they had the religion thing figured out. Jesus spent his time with sinners. He spent his time with drunks and shady businessmen, skanks, whores, thieves, murderers, and the quintessential outcasts of his time, the tax collectors. Jesus cared deeply about all of them enough to feed, clothe, heal, and die for them.

The problem with caring is that it’s hard to care for a person you can’t see.

Fortunately, the solution is simple. Go to where people need clothing, food, or healing. Go to wherever people have broken hearts. Go to the places where people need Christ, and be Christ then and there.

If Jesus were here today, he would be holding hair while drunk students puked. He would offer rides to women on the way to have abortions. He would be a friend to those everyone else cast out.

If Jesus were here today, he’d be spending time with sinners. Why don’t we?