Last night proved to me once again that I still have so far to go in this “live like Jesus thing.” I want so badly to be Christlike, but yet I fall so far from that each day. And, just like I learned in a children’s sermon, once I squeeze out that toothpaste, it’s a bitch to get it back in the tube. In fact, it’s impossible.
I did have a funny thing happen at school today. One of my boys asked me to read his sermon that he will deliver at his youth group, and as I was giving it back to him with comments, he asked if I was going to go hear a Christian comedian speak at one of our local high schools. I told him I didn’t know about it. He replied that there was a post on someone’s Facebook page. “I’m not friends with very many FCA people on Facebook. I say the f*bomb a lot, and most Christians don’t tend to like that very well,” I said. He started laughing so hard, he had to regroup before we could continue talking about his sermon. Hilarious.
In the spirit of Family Guy, do you want to know something that really grinds my gears? When people leave their cars running while sitting in them or running into Starbucks to get a drink, I get all wound-up. It’s almost 60 degrees; there is absolutely no reason to leave your car running. It isn’t warm enough to “need” air conditioning and it isn’t cold enough to “need” a warm car. Wow.
My goal today is to make a conscious effort to meditate and pattern my steps after Jesus. I’m not off to a great start. Regroup.
Reason Breeds Insanity 
Good luck with that! And I can’t help myself, gotta say this: I wonder how Jesus would feel about the Starbucks car-keeper-goers? See, that’s what I always end up with when I try the WWJD thing–how the hell do I know what he’d do? Sometimes he was gentle with seemingly big things (woman in adultery, woman at well), other times fierce about seemingly justifiable things (Temple sales staff, divorce), other times frankly cryptic (leave your family, ok, now what? Don’t bury your dad, ok, so now what do I do about the angry relatives? You get my point.)
I know I am sounding irascible and simplistic here, and that isn’t my point. My point is that I honestly do find it difficult to feel for certain what Christlike really looks like. Does it look like reaching into those cars that should have been turned off, saving a few minutes of fossil fuel and emissions, but risking potential legal fees and immediate rancor? It’s always so gray. X is committing adultery, but her husband/his wife is impossibly demanding/distant/absent/angry/whatever. Y gives away thousands of dollars to worthy causes, but the money is earned on the backs of underpaid part-time employees without benefits.
You get my drift. Sometimes I just get so frustrated with all this trying-to-do-right that I need to rant a bit. Thanks for the chance:)
I get frustrated with it, too, but I think I am just Wesleyan (not the denomination, the man as an adjective) enough to not give up, to strive for perfection in this lifetime, though I know it cannot be achieved. I understand your rant, and I think it goes back to something we’ve discussed before about how we are all striving to do what we think is best, but sometimes we can’t see the holes in our own actions. Of course, we can always see what’s problematic with what others do. One of the things I need to remember is that I am not Jesus; I am going to screw up. Over and over and over and over…