Smoking: The Worst Health Decision

I don't smoke because I think its a bad health decision (among other reasons). But recently, I heard a commentator on the radio say that smoking is the worst health decision we voluntarily make. Obviously he was wrong. Here's a list of worse things you can do to your health.

Shooting yourself
Jumping off a a cliff
Standing in a nuclear reactor
Standing in the path of a 65-watt laser
Putting forks in electrical outlets
Overdosing on drugs
Alcohol poisoning
Mixing ammonia and bleach on your face
Swallowing a lit firecracker
Drinking virus vials from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention
Taking a syringe full of air and injecting it into your blood stream
Going into outer space with a space suit
Shooting at the White House
Insulting Chuck Norris
Not eating or drinking for a month
Putting your head in an oven and falling asleep
Sitting in your car inside a closed garage with the engine running
Drinking molten gold
Eating McDonalds everyday

iJudging

Well I guess you could be judging me, but to shake off that feeling a bit, I'll believe you are judging my iPhone (ok I really have an Incredible but iPhone just sounds catchier).

You look over at me with a glare like how dare you be on your phone during the middle of service. You're probably looking at facebook or even worse: composing a work email (remember that commandment to rest).

So maybe I am on twitter, but how do you know I'm not messaging Neil a quote from the sermon he'd really like, but couldn't hear because he has a cold. Maybe I'm texting the pastor about some announcement or ordination he forgot. You never know...

There's got to be something I can do to help you stop judging me. Maybe I could wear a hat or neck tie with a cool tech saying

• I'm reading the Bible
• iPhone for iManuel
• Live Sermon Tweeting
• Jesus is my Facebook friend

I guess I could also just turn off my phone for a couple hours, but then why have it in my pocket.

Have you judged someone using their phone during church? How have you avoided a wrathful judgement?

Kid Program Bingo

Most churches has a kids program, often around Christmas time. This year, instead of cringing your way through a painfully off-key version of "Silent Night," play Kiddo Bingo and try to spot the following kids:

1. Yeller
Identifying Features: All notes become the same pitch for these kids: a nice, steady, agonized wail. The Yellers can usually be found about three inches away from the microphone. They combine two very important children’s choir principles: projection and "making a joyful noise." It’s like they’re trying to out-sing the rest of the choir, as well as the original heavenly host of Bethlehem. I wouldn’t bet against them.

2. Sloucher
Identifying Features: Generally sits in the back row and no matter how many times his teacher pokes him in the back, he maintains the posture of the hunch-back of notre dame.

3. Shy One
Identifying Features: If forced to go onstage, these kids will fix their eyes directly on the ground and never look up. Occasionally, the director will have mercy on them and let them hand out jingle bells to the other kiddos or play a donkey in the nativity scene.

4. Nose Picker
Identifying Features: Has no real sense of where he is or how many people are watching maybe even recording his every movement. He'll generally start with a nose rub, but quickly progress to a digit insertion. Upon extraction, there will generally a brief examination period followed by a "gifting" of the green treasure to the Crier.

5. Crier
Identifying Features: like the shy one, she doesn't like to sing. She generally starts out a little sniffly and the full water works is turned on either directly before or after she stammers her memorized line into microphone.

6. Smiles
Identifying Features: It is generally believed this one is related to the sloucher, but parenting has either trained him to be overly polite or scared him into a false state of joy. Either way he doesn't seem to pay attention to the singing around him, or doesn't care to participate; he'll just smile. During high school he will be voted most likely to be bobble-head doll model.

7. Responsible One
Identifying Features: There is always an older kid, usually a girl, who holds the real power in the group. She has the most lines and she always happy and confident at the rehearsals. You’ll see her corralling the younger kids, even kindly most of the time.

8. Runner
Identifying Features: This one is easy to spot and was often previously identified as the crier. The key is a hasty exodus from the the choir loft often during the spiritual high note of the program. The runner continues down the aisle with arms out stretched until he reaches his slightly to very embarrassed parents.

When you get a bingo be sure to yell loud enough that I can hear you! What other kids should we be on the look out for during the next kid's program at church?

Cleaning the Chapel

A lot of congregations to save money ask members to volunteer and help clean the church. Recently while participating in one of those cleaning mornings, I saw these parallels with scripture.

The Parable of the 10 Diapers
In the bathroom of the the Kingdom of Heaven there were ten dirty diapers, who having been soiled were left to sit in the garbage can. Five of them were loaded, and five were just wet. Now while the pastor was delayed, they all slumbered and ripened. But at 9am there was a cry, "Behold! The pastor is coming! Come out to meet him!" Then all those diapers prepared to release their odors. The wet ones said to the loaded, "Give us some of your poop, for our scent is too weak." But the loaded answered, saying, "What if there isn't enough for us and you? You go and try to collect some rotting fruit from the bottom of the can." While they buried themselves looking for rotting fruit, the pastor came, and those who were loaded released their stench before being dumped and made the pastor throw up a little in his mouth. Then the bag was sealed in the dumpster. Afterward the other diapers also surfaced, saying, "Open to us. Let us make you vomit also." But the pastor answered, "Wait for the garbage man."

The Prodigal Hymnal
There was a hymnal who lived in the sanctuary. It decided to leave the promised land and travel to distant places to participate in riotous living. Arriving in the nursery, the hymn book got piercings and tattoos and liked the attention and living it up until it suffered a broken back in a toddler head-on collision. It remembered the calm safe life of a hymn book in the choir loft and returned to the sanctuary where he was "made new" by the choir-master and rejoined the other books in the back of pews.
Miracle of Cheerios and Fishes
After cleaning was done, the pastor called the helpers together and said, "they have already been with me three hours and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way and we know refreshments are necessary for any church event. What do we have to eat?"

"Just the candy in your office," they replied. He instructed them to kneel on the floor between the pews and to stretch forth their hands under and between the cracks in the pews and if they lacked not faith, refreshments would be provided. Afterward, he picked up 7 baskets overflowing with cheerios and gold fishes. And all left filled, if not a little queasy too.



Have you ever counted how many cheerios and fishes you can find at church or wondered how the hymn books seem to be so "experienced"? Have you had any strange thoughts while cleaning the church?

Unfinished Posts

One reason I haven't been posting too much is that I have a problem finishing tasks. I read in the first chapter of a book somewhere that having difficulty completing tasks can be a sign of ADHD. That was as far as I made it before I switched to a more exciting book.

So here are some ideas for posts I thought about writing but never completed:


Ways to Describe Extreme Sports

Courage: Fortune favors the bold. But only after misfortune weeds out the stupid.
Experience is the best teacher. Some lessons are brief.
Courageous: Because 'moronic' just sounds mean in a eulogy
Adventure: You'll either have a great story to tell when you get back, or a fantastic obituary.


Following Jesus
I don't wear a seat belt. Seat belts and airbags don't save lives. Jesus does. You'd only know that though if you follow Jesus.

Oh you are Christian, but I bet you don't follow Jesus. Right now he only has 300,000 true followers and I bet you're not one of them.

So you want to be true follower? Go to twitter.com/jesus


The Last 3 Presidents
Read my lips.
I did not have sexual relations with that woman. OR It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is.
Mission Accomplished
I wonder what Obama's signature gaffe quote will be? Hopefully not the one about having visited 57 states; that's pretty boring and I bet he said it on purpose.

Possible Obama Slogans
Change you believe In*
*subject to federal regulations
(its funny not a political statement, so don't bother commenting about how he may or may not have done anything about regulations)

The Carnal Sexual Man

Growing up going to church, I learned that the carnal man isn't a follower of God. And that we need to put off our carnal desires and submit to ourselves completely to God. I can't tell you how many times I've heard sermons and lessons about mastering our human desires.

But what about sex?

Are we still supposed to put off our carnal (maybe even kinky) desires? How speakers at church and conferences talk about sex seems dry. We acknowledge that God created humanity and thus created sex, but act like he was completely caught off guard when sex was an enjoyable activity. We act like he created it as a clinical activity designed for making babies. I think that is really how we approach it publicly. "It's beautiful" is the most common thing to describe sex at church. Funny how they describe child birth the same way.

Where does the beauty of sex come from? It's not me, so it's gotta be from my wife right? Child birth is also described as beautiful so maybe they're similar. It's the emotions. It's the feelings. It's the intimacy we feel. The love that is shared.

I can get a lot of those same emotions by cuddling and talking. That's what for years, I was taught to do.

Growing up, I can't tell you how many times I heard that we should control ourselves. That sexual purity just wasn't about what we did, but also about what we thought. That gets translated in a youth's mind to "having sexual thoughts is bad".

Here are some of my observations about how sex is discussed at church:

1. We teach guilt
Lots of churches teach their youth groups for years that "sex before marriage is bad". I agree with that statement. The problem is how the teenage mind works. It isn't able to handle such a complicated statement. Instead it forms a short hand version: "sex is bad". Then magically their wedding night comes and it is no longer "bad" but it's so engraved in their mind that it can haunt their marriage for years. Combine that sex is bad thought with the doctrine to conquer the carnal man and you have a guilt vacation instead of just a guilt trip when even considering sex as a pleasurable marriage pastime.


2. We have 20 lessons on lust for 1 on the gift of sex
It seems like the conversation has become very one sided. Lust is the "strong sexual desire for someone" (see Google if you don't believe me). I've never heard an exception carved out that is OK (maybe even good) to have a strong sexual desire (lust) for my wife. Maybe lust is like the force: there is a dark side and we are afraid that the dark side will win. Sometimes I wish every time we we taught that unmarried sex is dangerous, hopeless and sad, we also taught that MARRIED sex is AWESOME!


3. We don't have anywhere to discuss it
We see intimacy is beautiful, holy, and sacred. Maybe so much so that we're afraid to discuss it anywhere. Sex is being attacked fully by the world and the best we can do is to abstain from talking about it! We can't even seem to talk about how good it is, maybe a small struggle we've had. If we ever did that at church we'd probably be labeled as part of the world. As far as I can tell, you're only supposed to discuss sex with your partner and if neither of you know what to do tough luck.


The reality as far as I see it.

1. God loves sex
Why else would he give us that as one of our greatest desires? Even though I wanted to throw up when my mom used to tell me, “Sex is a wonderful gift from God,” she was right.


2. Sex can get better the longer you’re married.
Yes my wife knows I'm saying this and yes I know Andy will probably want to throw up if he ever stumbles on this post as a teenager, but I can say that after 7 years of marriage our sex life is way better than it was during year 1. There is one big caveat though. Sex won’t get better if your marriage isn’t getting better.


Don't let our culture divorce sex from God. We can talk about it normally with our spouse and with our friends and maybe even publicly.

Solid Wood

Aside from complaining on my blog, I brag because it makes me feel better than you and how I feel is generally more important than actually reality.

So Masha got it in my head that I needed to make her a new kitchen table. We'll just say that so far it rocks. Not literally. My carpentry is much better than that. It is level and stable.

Now we just need to sand and finish it and we'll have an awesome 4ft by 6 ft SOLID WOOD table.