I still remember the pang of guilt when I bought my first "secular" album. I didn't grow up in a fundamentalist household, but I held myself to a high standard. In retrospect, it's funny. The Joshua Tree has more spiritual content than many of the Christian albums with which I grew up. But as I purchased that CD from my local Best Buy, I felt like I had crossed the Rubicon. I did not realize that I would find God on the other side.
Is it possible to love a bus stop bench? At the very least, I feel great affection towards one in particular. I wrote about this bench a couple of of years back. It's located near Belmont University in Nashville. I see it whenever I go for a run while visiting town. The thing I love is the graffiti on the back of the bench. Several years ago, someone sprayed the jubilant message, "Hello New World!" Seeing that always made me smile. It gave me a thread of hope. Is it possible to love a bus stop bench? If so, I have loved that bench.
Alright, so who here knows what prostitution is? Anybody? What about sex? Maybe we should start there. Yes, it's how babies are made. Okay so a prostitute is a person who gets paid to have sex. What? No, not so she can have babies. Well, the prostitute in our story does have babies, but we haven't gotten there yet. But prostitutes theoretically don't make good husbands and wives because if they're still active in their job then they are having sex with other people and they should really only be having sex with you. You with me? No? It's okay.
29 seconds. That's about all we could take of He Who Shall Not Be Named's acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination. Desiring to be informed, I did read the text of the address. It was something. To me, the King of Ludicrous Line Mountain was the candidate's brazen claim, "I alone can fix it."
There are two major conventions going on presently: the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and Comic-Con International in San Diego. Since the former is not exactly inspiring hope concerning the Quest for the White House, perhaps we can find the leadership our country needs in the latter. That's right: this looks like a job for superheroes. So let's dig into the lineups of DC and Marvel Comics and find ourselves an appealing Presidential ticket in each. For the purposes of our thought exercise, we're assuming that everyone is at least 35.
There was this guy in my college "Jesus and the Gospels" class who always seemed a bit too pleased with himself (no, not me, though that was likely true too). In our online discussion board he could be counted on to say something contrarian and try to have these "drop the mic" moments. One time he questioned Jesus' command to love our enemies. He thought it was hypocritical to talk about loving enemies. If you truly loved them, he argued, then you wouldn't call them "enemies."
Martha: Couple's therapy? Really?
Mary: We need to talk this out and I figured counseling would help us some...
Martha: It's couple's therapy, Mary. We are not a couple!
Mary: We're a couple of sisters.
Martha: Of all the stupid...
Mary: What was I supposed to do? Do you realize how many sermons have set us up as diametrically opposed? It's tearing us apart. We've been pitted against each other.
