Jon Acuff's Blog, page 97

Being slightly offended that the pastor has a nicer car than you do

Christians like their pastors humble. And, by humble, I mean driving a domestically made mid-size sedan with high mileage.

I’m not saying I want my pastor to be poor, just that my assumption is that to be a man of the cloth means the seats in your car shouldn’t be made of leather.  I’m fine if you have a luxury car, as long as it was a gift from a church member who happens to own a car dealership.  Otherwise, I want to be honest. If I see you driving around in a tricked-out Mercedes-Benz, my first two thoughts are going to be:

1.            I guess that pastor hates starving children in Africa.

2.            I had no idea my tithe was going directly to the procurement of rims.

I want you in a hooptie, not a whip.  I want you on a donkey, not a Denali.  I want you to know the moral fortitude that comes with having to push a car off the side of the road at least twice a year when it breaks down.

Me?  What am I driving? Whoa, let’s get back on topic. You’re the Varsity Christian, not me.   If God chooses to bless me with a Rolls Royce, should I refuse that?  Would Abraham or Solomon have scoffed at God’s gifts?  Think of the great witnessing I can do simply by driving down the highway with spinning rims.  Think of the lives that will be touched and transformed when I pull up to a red light and make an automotive declaration, a vehicular proclamation if you will, to the goodness and graciousness of God.

But pastors? You better keep it low key.

(This originally appeared in the Stuff Christians Like book.  If you want to pick up a copy, click here!)

Let’s murder this.

A few weeks ago, someone on Twitter criticized me for saying a joke similar to one I said a year before. And they were right. Someone had done something in the news, and every time I see this particular news story, I tend to think the same thing. So, I tweeted about it because that was on my mind.

And so he called me out for it. Which is a bummer, because essentially what he was saying is “You’re not allowed to have the same thought more than once in a given year. I’ve read all 13,000 of your tweets, and I expect each one to meet my personal level of excellence. If I ever see two thoughts that are similar, I will let you and everyone who follows me on Twitter know about my disappointment in your creative output.”

Exaggerated? Certainly. But at the heart of it is a sense of entitlement. In moments like that, it’s fun to point a finger at a stranger and call them entitled. Whether it’s online or on the news, there’s a parade of entitlement in society, and it’s easy to think it’s a problem that faces other people, but not me.

That’s not the truth, though.

If I want to remember how entitled I am, I only have to watch a YouTube video that has a commercial on it first. Are you kidding me? How dare you show me a 15-second commercial, YouTube? I am enraged! I currently pay you 0 dollars and expect you to continue to give me free content quickly and in bulk!

That one is easy and doesn’t cost me much ego to admit. This one is a little closer to home, though.

As I recently wrote on my other blog several weeks ago, I found out I lost 99% of all the Facebook fans of Stuff Christians Like. The group went from 10,000 people to 23. Facebook changed the rules of groups. There must have been something I was supposed to do in order to accommodate that change. I did not do what I was supposed to do. And so the group essentially disappeared. Why? I was lazy. I started to coast on a few of my social media platforms. I thought I had set them in motion, and that’s all I had to do. Bottom line? I got entitled.

“Look at me with my book and my blog! I’m Jon Acuff. I don’t have to do the hustle things that built the blog when it comes to my Facebook page. It will just magically take care of itself.”

I was entitled. And I’m not the only one. We’re learning how to demand instant, free gratification at every corner. If our phone takes a four seconds to load something, we’re frustrated. If a free social media platform we’re using goes down, we’re indignant. If an app dares charge us more than 99 cents, we’re shocked.

And the danger is that how you practice is how you play. It is physically, emotionally and mentally impossible to be entitled all day on the little things and then not have that same sense of entitlement creep into other parts of your life.

I didn’t believe this until I started having a hard time listening at home. (Which I wrote about in Quitter.) As soon as my wife would start saying anything I didn’t find interesting, I would tune out. I’ve never been a great listener, but this was getting out of hand. One day in a meeting at my old job at AutoTrader.com, I realized what was going on.

Every week, five days a week, I was checking out in meetings. Most of the meetings I went to did not have earth-shaking implications for my life, so in a lot of them I got bored. I would daydream about things I wanted to do, run through my personal to-do list, or try to think what my favorite word might be. (I settled on a tie between nougat and bungalow).

Then, after hours and hours of not listening to other people talk, I would go home and act surprised that it was difficult to listen to my wife. It was happening because, for forty hours a week, I was training myself not to pay attention to people. It was happening because we are whole people and can’t separate ourselves into “buckets.” The practice vs. play principle is why Tiger Woods took so long to be awesome again. You don’t get to detonate some parts of your life and think the other parts won’t be impacted.

If you practice entitlement, you will be come entitled.

The problem is entitlement isn’t new. We didn’t invent it. Our generation didn’t create it. It’s been around forever, and the first place we see it is in the Garden of Eden.

Entitlement is one of the buttons the enemy pushed with Adam and Eve. In Genesis 3, he says of the tree, “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

Adam and Eve, in perhaps the greatest moment of entitlement in history, think to themselves, “You know what? God is holding out on us. We deserve to be like him. We deserve to know good and evil. The garden is a nice start, but it’s not enough. We deserve more.”

And so they ate it. And we’ve been taking bites out of things we don’t deserve ever since.

Let’s kill entitlement. Let’s not be the generation that says “I got my first job. I deserve my fifth house. I’ve been working for 14 minutes, so I want the house it took my parents 40 years to get.”

Let’s not be the generation that says, “I’m 22. How come nobody at work treats me like an expert in this industry?” (I personally tried this. It’s a great way to make your co-workers miserable.)

Let’s not be the entitled generation.

Question:

Have you ever bumped into entitlement?

Can we please get a secret handshake already?

Is that too much to ask?

I know we’re doing life together.

And we’re in community.

And some of us are even going through seasons together, but in the midst of that, do you think there’s time for us to come up with a secret handshake?

It doesn’t have to be unnecessarily complicated like those “end with a snap” handshakes that swept the 1990s like Canada’s Snow. (The rapper, not the meteorological condition. Don’t act like you don’t remember him. He was one of the best white rappers from Canada in the 90s.)

Those snap handshakes were horrible. Why do you and I have to execute a snap together? If we both snapped on our own when we saw each other we would think “that is ridiculous. Why are we snap helloing? That makes no sense.” So then why do we have to do a synchronized snap? I never once had a good snap handshake where I walked away thinking, “That was a great snap. We really nailed it!”

Why do we Christians need a secret handshake?

So we won’t witness to each other on airplanes.

That’s an impossibly awkward situation. You see the stranger next to you reading their Bible and taking deep, “pre-airplane witness breaths.” And then they just launch into it, and suddenly you’re not headed to Baltimore with Southwest, you’re on the Romans Road with an accountant from Dallas.

If we had a handshake, we could immediately bust it out and know “Ohh, cool, I’m sitting next to a brother (or sister) in Christ. No need to try to convert them.”

Right now, when a fellow Christian tries to double convert me on a plane, the only thing I can do is blurt out “I’m down with the king! I’m in! But that guy next to you is reading 50 Shades of Gray!’”

It’s uncomfortable for all parties involved and will remain so until we’re able to get our own secret handshake.

Question:

Has a Christian ever witnessed to you?

When people name drop God in order to make you do something.

In the last month, two different people have asked me to do them a favor. (They didn’t ask for breakdancing lessons. People don’t have to ask me for that. You watch me just walk across a crowded room, and you’re already better at breakdancing. Bottom line.)

These favors were unique because they both name dropped God in order to convince me to say yes.

They were subtle about it too.

Neither one of them said, “Will you help me finish this project? God wants you to.”

Nobody is ever that straightforward. It was more, “Hey, you know, God would probably want you to do this. For him. Not me. I don’t really even care. God does though. And he’s watching.”

The funny thing is, neither task they were trying to assign me had anything to do with God. Yes, all things have to do with God. He’s everywhere. But does God really need me to lend you a pair of running sneakers? Is that somehow kingdom work? I have my doubts, but maybe.

This is whack because when someone employs this technique they automatically side with God and leave you satan’s team. (Don’t act like that lowercase “s” is a typo. That’s me giving him the middle finger of grammar.)

“I’m with God on this one. If you don’t want to help me, I can only assume that you’re riding shotgun with the devil. What’s that like?”

In order to prevent situations like this, here is what I am proposing:

When someone asks you to do something that is clearly for them, and not even remotely related to a mandate from the Alpha and Omega, I want you to do the following:

1. Ask them, “Did God tell you to tell me that?”

Audibly. Did God audibly speak to you, via a burning bush or donkey, and tell you that I need to babysit your ferret while you’re out of town?

2. Tell them you’ll “pray about it.”

For centuries, Christians have been using this as a stall tactic. “How big and or fast is your ferret? I’ll pray about it.”

3. Say you want to pray together about it right now.

We gonna do this? We going to spiritualize your favor request? I’ll see your “God name drop” and start a prayer circle right here. Right now. Two men enter. One man leaves.

4. Hold hands.

Oh boy, the awkwardness of this moment just took a Huey Lewis Back to the Future size leap! Interlink digits to amp the moment even more.

5. Add a tambourine.

Granted, this tip requires you to carry around a tambourine (or handbell) that you play in order to add a little worship music to the moment, but it’s worth it.

Eventually your friend will say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why are we turning this into a church service? I’m just asking you for a favor.” At which point you can say “Exactly.”

If they don’t understand the deft reversal you pulled, hit them over the head with the tambourine and run. It’s less graceful but it works in a pinch.

Question:

Has someone ever thrown the “God card” on you when asking you to do something for them?

PC Paradise Lost: The Tale of Anna and Steve

(It’s guest post Friday!  Here’s one by Kevin Karaki.  If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how!)

PC Paradise Lost: The Tale of Anna and Steve

Long ago, a loving father placed both of his children into the Garden of College. He gave them all the software they would ever need, both Vista and XP. But of the Apple, they were not to partake.  Under no circumstances were they to own one, or use one. But all other computers were theirs for the asking, and under their dominion. And the father would Skype with his children in the evenings.

One day, that dreaded and hateful of all creatures, the HIPSTER, saw Anna watching him and his iPad. Now the HIPSTER was more cunning that any student of the campus which the father had placed his children within.

And he said to the woman,

“Has your father indeed said, You shall not partake of the Apple on campus?”

And the woman said to the HIPSTER,

“I have a Vista and my brother has a XP, and I’m going to get a Windows 7 soon, but the Apple on Campus, Father has said, You shall not own it, nor shall you touch it, lest you downgrade.”

And the HIPSTER said to the woman,

“You shall not surely downgrade. For your father knows that in the day that you use one your eyes will be opened and you shall be as Steve Jobs, knowing good and malware.”

And when the woman saw that the Apple was good for streaming video and surfing the web, and that the screensavers and toolbars were pleasant to her eyes, and desirable to make one wise, she bought an iPad and partook in its pleasures. She also showed her brother and he partook as well, both with their own iPad. Then the eyes of both of them were open, and they knew that they were exposed to viruses and malware on their Windows Systems. And they attempted to patch together Norton Antivirus to cover and protect their software.

Then they heard the sound of their father calling them on Skype at the end of the day, and Anna and Steve attempted to act nonchalant and delayed answering the call. When they did answer, the father asked, “Where have you been? “

The son answered,

“I heard your voice on the e-chat, and I was afraid that I might have a virus.”

And the father said,

“Who told you that you might have a virus?  Have you partaken of the Apple which I commanded you that you should not?”

After they admitted their actions, the father bowed his head with sadness.

To the HIPSTER he said,

“Because you have done this,

You are cursed more than all students,

And more than every beast of the field;

On your Civic you shall go,

And you shall eat soy

All the days of your life.

And I will put enmity

Between you and the music world,

And you shall eat poppyseed cakes;

And everyone that you meet

Will want to crush your head.

 

To Anna he said:

“I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your paper-writings;

In pain you shall bring Word documents;

Your desire shall be for your PC,

And Steve Jobs shall rule over you.”

 

Then to Steve he said:

“Cursed is the software for your sake;

In toil you shall work on it

All the days of your life.

And you shall struggle to work with NET technology or ASP.

Till you return to the Windows operating system,

For the rest of the business and professional world uses it for any job they do;

For PC you are,

And to PC you shall return.”

How to eliminate 92% of the arguments you get in online.

I recently wrote myself an 8 word note that I stuck on the corner of my computer.

It’s a remix of a bunch of verses in Proverbs, and it’s the easiest way to eliminate 92% of the arguments you get in online.

You’re on your own for the other 8%, but I will say this, if you can, avoid criticizing Peanut Butter Twix. I personally find them to be the Twix equivalent of the unfrosted Pop Tart, but their fan base on the Twitter is surprisingly vocal. (Though still incorrect.)

 

 

The worst tool for evangelism.

A few weeks ago, I drove by a church welcome sign in North Carolina that I thought was a smidge strange. As I am wont to do, I promptly turned it into a tweet and said the following on Twitter:

“If you’re 99% saved, then you’re 100% lost!” Church sign I just drove by. I guess they didn’t have the letters for “Visitors keep out.”

A number of people saw that tweet and replied back to me with thoughts like this:

“Isn’t that theologically accurate?”

“Don’t we need to be convicted?”

I think those were good questions, but I never doubted the accuracy of that idea. I was doubting whether or not a welcome sign is the best place to debate theological accuracy. Is a message of shame the best message for a church welcome sign?

And more than that, what does “100% saved” mean? Who is measuring that? The pastor of that church? The elders? Is there a chart? What is the 1% that makes all the difference? What do you do with the guy in Mark 9 who asks Jesus to heal his child “if you can?”

Jesus replies, “If you can? Everything is possible for one who believes.”

To which the father says, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”

Jesus, sensing that the father was only 78% saved says, “Can’t do it. Disciples, get my boat! It’s time to bounce.”

Or he heals him and moves on. One of those two things happened.

Ranking by percentage the authenticity of your faith is a difficult thing to do, but maybe we all already agree on that point. What about the need for us to be convicted?

I agree with that. I do, but I think that as humans we have an unbelievable ability to transform conviction into shame.

I think that’s part of the reason Jesus left us so little wiggle room in Matthew 22:37-40. When asked what the most important commandment in the law was, he replied:

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Notice what it doesn’t say? It doesn’t say, “Judge your neighbor.” Or, “Convict your neighbor.” Or, “Shame your neighbor.”

The verb is love.

Now there should be two push backs to this:

The first is, “Didn’t Jesus essentially say what that church sign said to the rich young ruler who was unwilling to give up his worldly possessions to follow him?”

You could definitely make that argument, but the key difference is that they had a conversation. Jesus looked him in the face and talked with the rich young ruler. Though it was brief, they had an interaction that was far more intimate than a message on a sign. Jesus talked with him one on one, he didn’t carry a billboard around.

The second push back is, “Isn’t the most loving thing you can do is share the truth of Christ with someone?”

Agreed. But again, a word of caution about using “shame” as a tool of evangelism. Let’s not forget what we are told in Romans 2:1-4:

“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you toward repentance?”

What leads us toward repentance? Kindness.

Not shame.

Not abuse.

Not anger.

Kindness.

But if you’d prefer to not look at it through that lens, as least answer this question:

Have you ever met someone who said, “I became a Christian when a friend of mine shamed me badly. They shamed me into the arms of Christ.”

I haven’t, but I have heard this story countless times:

“A neighbor loved me when I was so unlovable to them. Their love made no sense. Finally I had to ask them, ‘Why are you so different? Why are you so kind to me? That’s when they told me about this guy, Jesus Christ.’”

Do we need conviction? Without a doubt.

Do we need theological accuracy? Definitely.

Do we need shame? That’s a tough one. But I do know this, we don’t need it on our church welcome signs.

Hey Christian Girl …

If you’ve been on the Internet in the last year, you’ve seen the “Hey girl,” memes that have popped up.

The formula is pretty simple:

One Photo of Ryan Gosling + Sensitive sounding “Hey Girl,” Statement = Interwebs gold.

A few months ago, someone started a Christian version called “Hey Christian Girl.” My only complaint about that site is that I wish I’d thought of it first.

There are some really funny ideas on the site, and I strongly encourage you to check it out. Here are a few of my favorite:

 

Question:

What’s a “Hey Christian Girl” statement you’d write?

The prayer trick I caught myself doing the other day.

I’m the worst Christian ever.

But that’s OK because my friend Jamie is the Very Worst Missionary, and she and her husband seem pretty cool.

Maybe we’ll form some sort of club with a treehouse and a secret handshake and a live mongoose for a mascot. (If you’ve got a better way to keep the club from getting attacked by cobras, I would love to hear it. That’s what I thought.)

Why am I pretty sure I’m the worst Christian ever?

The long answer is the archives of this site, which in elaborate detail chronicle my many misadventures in faith.

The short answer is I apparently have a trick to avoid being asked to pray.

I’ve used this trick unknowingly for years, but three weeks ago I finally caught myself doing it.

I was in a production meeting at a Christian event circle, and we were almost done. I could sense a “closing prayer,” approaching off the portside bow of my chair. (I’ve been reading a lot of Clive Clusser books lately, so the amount of nautical references I feel like making has dramatically increased.)

Sensing that in any moment the leader of the meeting was going to ask, “Does anyone want to close us in prayer,” I automatically closed my eyes.

This is a fantastic trick because:

1. It looks like I’m so holy I went ahead and got a jump start on the prayer.

2. People hate to interrupt someone who looks like they are praying. (Except if they’re a waiter.)

3. It works the same way in hide and seek does when you’re little. If I close my eyes and can’t see them, they surely can’t see me either.

The “please close us in prayer” request flew right over my shoulder and landed in someone else’s lap. It literally missed me by only a few feet. Had I not closed my eyes and retreated into my mobile fortress of solitude, who can say what might have happened?

I probably would have been asked, and though I sometimes don’t feel called to close everyone in prayer, there’s no way I could refuse.

You might as well get a t-shirt that says, “I hate baby Jesus,” if someone asks you to close in prayer and you say, “Nah, I’m good.”

At least you could join my club and get to meet the mongoose. Who bites by the way. Not hard, but definitely often.

Question:

Do you ever feel nervous about praying out loud in front of people?

(I’ll go ahead and write the judgmental response for you, “Prayers are for God, not man!” Just feel free to copy and paste that into the comments to save time.)

Bible Olympics

(It’s guest post Friday! Here’s one from Stephen Pepper. You can check out his blog here.  You can also follow him on Twitter  @youthworkinit.  If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how!)

Bible Olympics

This summer, the eyes of the world will be on my home country, as it’s the London 2012 Olympics.

There’s a huge pressure on Team GB (Great Britain) to bring in a record medal haul. Personally, though, I think it might be amazing to field a team from the Bible. (Please insert your own “Gods Bods” joke right here.)

What would that look like? Here are 15 different events I think the Bible team would dominate:

Trainer

Paul: Who better to motivate athletes than someone who exhorts people to “run the race”? He also spent three months in Greece during the years of the original Olympic Games (Acts 20: 2-3), so he might have picked up some insider info.

Javelin

Saul: He threw his spear so hard at David that it got lodged in the wall. He’ll want to be careful not to fall on it, though, and have a repeat

of 1 Samuel 31:4.

Hammer

Jesus: He was a carpenter after all. And don’t forget that turning over the tables in the temple courts shows that he has good arm strength.

Basketball

Nephilim: Regular sized humans looked like grasshoppers to them, so they’d be a slam dunk choice for shooting hoops.

Heptathlon

God: Genesis 1 shows he can easily handle six challenging events. He’d even be able to sit out the 7th event as he’d have done everything

he needed to in the first six.

Wrestling

Jacob: If he can wrestle an angel and not be pinned, he can wrestle anyone.

Field Hockey

Satan: Although he’s not a team player, he is the expert on H-E-Double Hockey Sticks.

Weightlifting

Samson: Just keep him away from Vidal Sassoon before the event.

Fencing

Peter: He cut off someone’s ear with a sword, so he would be a pretty formidable opponent.

Swimming

Jesus: He could pick any swimming event, seeing as he could just run across the water.

Solomon: Perfect for the breaststroke. Have you read Song of Solomon?!

Any event

Judas: OK, he may not win the gold medal, but we all know he’d do anything for silver.

Soccer

Disciples: After Judas killed himself, they became a tight-knit team of 11 people.

Paul: He can be a substitute, as he knows all about pressing on toward the goal.

Shammah: He can be another substitute, as 2 Samuel 23:12 says “Shammah took his stand in the middle of the field. He defended it…..and the Lord brought about a great victory.” He’s clearly an asset to any soccer team.

Shot Put

Pharisees: We all know how much they like to throw stones.

Triathlon

God, Jesus & the Holy Spirit: Seeing as they’re the Trinity, each of them could take one event each, which would therefore be less exhausting. It wouldn’t be against the rules, as they’re still one and the same being.

Equestrian

4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Seriously, would you want to compete against them?

Question:

What other medal winners are in the Bible?

(For more great writing from Stephen, check out his blog.)