Immoderation

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.   Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.  Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air.  No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize.  (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).

I cannot help but think that Paul was an immoderate man.  First he is a Jew’s Jew, chasing the nutty followers of Jesus Christ from synagogue to synagogue with orders from the Sanhedrin to put them to death, and literally holding the coats of the men doing the stoning.  Then, in a blink of an eye, he switches sides and is just as adamantly preaching it the other way—because he claims to have seen Jesus in a vision on the road!   If Paul were writing a column for the Charlotte Observer today I think he might be labeled as an extremist.  And judgmental.  And (the worst sin we have now) a hypocrite.  We might even threaten to stop reading his description of love at every single wedding we have.  Naah.  We wouldn’t go that far.  That would be extremist of us.

What is all this wackiness anyway in 1 Corinthians 9 about “strict”  training, “fighting”,  and Paul beating his body to make it his “slave”.  There’s three things right there that are just downright immoderate.  Everybody knows it’s not nice to be strict.  And fighting?  We’re not supposed to be doing that.  Give peace a chance Brother.  Be a lover not a fighter.  And slave?  That’s just harsh.  The mere use of that word might harm someone who doesn’t like the mere use of that word.  How about a little moderation?  Do we really need to work up that much sweat to follow Jesus? 

It’s funny that Paul chose to insert his epistle of love (the stuff we probably won’t stop reading in weddings) in 1 Corinthians 13—only four chapters after all this extremism about strictness and fighting in the name of preaching the gospel.  And he seems just as immoderate about love as he is about everything else.  “If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”  (v.3).  Huh?   It’s almost as if the guy thinks love is more important than anything else—even charity!  What a nut. 

Handrails and Backstops

Yankee Boy that I was, land navigation was not my natural strong suit.  To make sure I was going in the right direction through the woodline I paid careful attention to my compass.  I also methodically counted my steps—kept my pace—so that I would know how far I had gone.  These were the methods I had been taught as a young soldier to enable me to find my military objective.  I had to watch that compass needle and count those steps to make sure I came out exactly on the objective.  I gave myself no margin for error.  While this method worked (most of the time—I got lost a lot), it was slow.  And if I was navigating at night, when the needle was hard to see, it was even slower.  I would stumble, and my pace count would get messed up.  Land navigation this way was an exhausting mental exercise that hurt my head as much as my rucksack hurt my back.  But, as the team leader, it was my responsibility to make sure we reached our objective.  On occasion, I delegated this responsibility to Goofy.  When he was navigating, I noticed that he hardly looked at his compass and did not seem to be working too hard to keep his pace.  Not only that, we moved a lot faster and we never seemed to get mis-oriented (Army for lost).  One day, I asked Goofy how he did that.

 “Well Cap’n, I don’t really navigate off the compass.”  Goofy replied.

 “Then, how do you know we are on the right azimuth?”

 “I look at the map and kind of do it by feel.  You know, unlike you I’ve been running around the woods since I was boy.”  He said.

 “But what if your feel is wrong?  Doesn’t that ever happen?”  I asked.

 “Sure.  My feel isn’t perfect, but it doesn’t have to be.  I use handrails.” 

 “What’s a handrail?”  I asked.

 “Well, it’s something that runs along the route we’re travelling that I can lean on.  You see, I know I tend to wander to the right, so I set the route up so I’ve got a road, or a river or ridgeline to my right.  Then, if I’m rubbing up against that, I bounce to the left a little.”  He explained.

 “Okay, I get that.  But how about the distance.  You don’t seem to count your pace.”  I asked.

 “Well see, that’s kind of a feel thing too.  I know how far it feels to walk a click so I just kind feel that out.  But, I don’t trust that totally.  I put a backstop out there behind the objective to keep me from going too far.” 

 “A backstop?”  I asked.

 “Yeah, I look for a big thing I can’t miss that’s behind the objective, so if I go too far, I’ll hit that.  Like, if I know there’s a swamp behind the  hilltop we’re looking for I don’t worry about missing the hilltop until my feet are getting wet.  You see what I mean?  See, if I spent all my time counting my steps and staring at that compass needle, I might miss the enemy lurking out there or even walk right by the objective.  Plus, staring at the needle and counting every step takes too much energy.  What good is finding the objective if I’m too tired to fight when I get there.   It’s better to trust your feel knowing your handrail will keep you straight and your  backstop will keep you from going too far.”  

 Years after Goofy taught me this, I began to see that my technique of living was a lot like my initial efforts at land navigation.  I kept a careful watch on my moral compass needle and counted my steps (and compared them constantly to the number of steps taken by others).  And, like before, this method left me exhausted and lost much of the time.  Slowly I came to realize that I needed some handrails and backstops for navigating life just as much as I had needed them for navigating the woodline.

Old Cups

                When I was a young lieutenant I was issued a steel canteen cup.  It was a wonder of military equipment.  In the field, it was one of the most useful tools I had.  After I boiled my morning coffee in it, it became the wash basin from which I shaved.  Twenty-five years later, I still have it and eat my oatmeal from it for breakfast.  Over time, from the rough use to which soldiers put all of their gear, my canteen cup became scratched and marred.  And, although it still held water just as a new canteen cup would do, I wanted to exchange it for a new one, an un-marred  cup without scratches.  So, I took my old canteen cup to the issue facility and asked the old sergeant there to exchange it for a new one.  The sergeant took my canteen cup and inspected it carefully.  He traced his fingers across the scratches and looked closely at the marred finish.  Finally, he pushed it back to me.

                “Lieutenant, I can’t give you a new canteen cup,” he said.

                “Why not sergeant?  This one is scratched and marred.”  I replied.

                “Yeah, I see that Sir, but it’s still  serviceable.  I can’t give you a new cup because your old cup is still serviceable.  They way  troops treat their gear in the Army, all we’d ever do is hand out new canteen cups if we did it that way.  My advice to you Lieutenant is to take better care of this old cup, because it’s probably the only one  you’re ever going to get.”

                The old sergeant was right.  Soldiers are hard on their gear.  I had been hard on my canteen cup, even though it was one of the most useful pieces of equipment I had.  So, I took back my old canteen cup, scratched and marred as it was, and I kept on using it.  It was serviceable then and it is serviceable now, twenty –five years later.    

                Those of us who come to the Lord later in life often do so with considerable scratches and dents in our earthly hides.  When we feel the changes to our character and heart that are the by-product of salvation, we gaze sheepishly at the effects on our old self that resulted from the hard use to which we put ourselves before we accepted grace.  We want our worn exterior to conform to the new interior.  We want a new cup, one without scratches from wear and tear.  This happened to me.  But like my old sergeant, the Lord pushed back my old dented self and told me that despite the wear, it was Serviceable—though in dire need of better care.

Hands Of The Repentant

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus' knees and said, "Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!" For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon's partners. Then Jesus said to Simon, "Don't be afraid; from now on you will catch men."  (Luke 5:8-10)        

               I was in Indianapolis a few years ago and I was taken by how nice Hoosiers are—they are like the response to the riddle “what do you get when you cross Yankee Weather and Tarheel Attitude?”  It made me think of the movie Hoosiers, which is usually on most men’s top five Sports Movies lists.  There is hardly an overt reference to Christ in the movie but I believe the Lord has snuck his message right through the back door of something secular, like the Centurion risking his life to get Paul to Rome. 

                Simple story: Norman Dale is run out of college basketball coaching for life for the one unpardonable coaching sin:  assaulting one of his players.  After serving 20 years in the Navy he is given a chance by his old friend, a principal of a small Indiana high school, to coach the school’s basketball team.  Dale quickly realizes he is in untenable position.   The town garners its identity from its basketball team and the local star, Jimmy Chitwood (note the initials) who will not play on the team for personal reasons.  Not surprisingly, the town fathers are deeply suspicious and resentful of Dale.  The only apparent way to earn their trust is to convince Jimmy to play, which Dale promises he will not do.   Without Jimmy, the team gets off to a losing start and Dale is brought under increasing pressure by the town fathers who take each loss personally.

Inexplicably, Dale does the last thing a man in his position should do, he takes Shooter, the town drunk, on as his assistant coach.  Shooter is so far gone that his own estranged son, who is on the team, tells Dale, “this thing with my Dad . . . I’m just not seeing it.”  The town fathers, outraged at Shooter’s ascendency, call Dale to task, but he refuses to yield, saying simply “I apologize for nothing.”  Ultimately, Dale is only kept from being fired by the team’s messiah, Jimmy, who finally agrees to play, but only if Dale remains the coach. 

With Jimmy back, the team begins to win and Dale pursues his project of redeeming Shooter, without apparent success.  The first time Dale is thrown out of a game, Shooter takes over the team but has no response when his son asks, “well what should we do dad?”  Same old Shooter, he shrinks back from the need of the boys for leadership and slumps onto the bench, letting the team flounder forward to a loss.  The look of disappointment in his son’s face drives Shooter back into his bottle and that’s where you would expect the story to end—but  for Norman Dale.  He forces Shooter back to precarious sobriety, drags him back to the team and, incredibly, gives him a second chance to take over the team by getting himself intentionally ejected from a close game that the team needs to win.  This time Shooter does not fold up, instructing the boys to employ the “Picket Fence” on an out-of-bounds play that ends up winning the game.  Ultimately, despite more missteps by the recovering Shooter, his son visits him in the hospital to tell Shooter that he loves him and that he wants the family to reunite when Shooter is fully healthy.  And thus is  Shooter reconciled to his family and redeemed. 

What blows me away about this story is not that Shooter is redeemed but that it is Dale who is the ultimate agent of his redemption.  That’s where I see God’s hand.  The Hollywood answer would have surely been to have Shooter redeemed by the messianic Jimmy, his son or a maybe a social worker—anybody but the basketball coach.   Dale is not even a particularly sympathetic character—middle aged and crusty, his fall from grace was so rapid, complete and unexplainable that when he confesses it his girlfriend, he can only say “what was so strange about it was, he was the best kid who ever played for me.”  Dale epitomizes the kind of person we have been trained to demonize.  And yet, Dale, himself pulled from the World’s trash heap and redeemed by the principal, was willing to risk his chance to return to coaching just to lead the seemingly unredeemable Shooter to life.    

Why does the Lord put his net in the Hands Of The Repentant?  Why trust hands that once were so soiled in sin to perform his holy works?  Could it be that men who themselves once near drowned in the dirty water yank with abandoned zeal on the collars of those the World assumes long lost to the deep?  Perhaps, forgiven so much, the Repentant just won't quit.

What Fatigue Makes

Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize.  Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever.  Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air.  No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. (1 Corinthians 9: 24-27)

            Upon reporting to my Special Forces battalion for the first time I had an odd surprise.  The usual Drill for a new officer reporting in to his battalion is to arrange with the “One” (the battalion S-1—the personnel officer) for a time to meet the “Old Man”, the colonel in command of the battalion.   Then, at the time appointed, the One has Captain New Guy (in his best and shiniest pair of boots) stand outside Colonel Old Man’s office door, leans his head in and says, “Sir, Captain New Guy is here.” 

            “Send him in One.”  Old Man barks, downloading command attitude appropriate for the occasion.   

Cue New Guy, who marches through the door into Old Man’s office, centers himself in front of Old Man’s desk, snaps to attention, renders a crisp hand salute and says, “Captain New Guy reporting sir.”  Unless he screws up down the line, New Guy will not have to stand in that spot in that way his entire time remaining in battalion.  The relationship between colonel and captain is much more relaxed.  But that first time, the Report, there is ceremony that has to be played out.   

“At ease New Guy,” Old Man says.  He might even have him sit down.   I’ve had it both ways.  Then Old Man asks New Guy if: a) he has any kids, and b) where he’s from.  Once that’s out of the way, Old Man tells New Guy why his battalion’s “command climate” is different from every other battalion in the United States Army:  “New Guy, let me tell you how we do it here in 12^th Battalion.  I don’t know what you’ve heard, but it’s not like they do it  in 11^th Battalion.  We set and maintain high standards here in 12^th Battalion.”  Wow, Captain New Guy thinks, I’m glad the Army didn’t send me to 11^th Battalion—they sound like a bunch of bums over there.  Actually, New Guy doesn’t think that.  By the time you are a captain, you know the Drill, and that the Old Man of 11^th Battalion is telling his New Guy the same thing about 12^th Battalion.  The whole Drill only lasts about 10 minutes.  Old Man and New Guy know they will have a couple of years to find out whether they love or hate each other (usually a little of both), so they don’t try to read each other’s Emotional Facebook pages. 

I knew the Drill was different in my Special Forces battalion as soon as I talked to the One on the phone.  He didn’t tell me to come meet the Old Man in my best and shiniest boots.  He told me to wear my field boots and bring my rucksack.  Hmmm, I thought.  That’s odd.  When I got there, the One put me and my rucksack in the backseat of his HMMWV and drove us out into the back woods of Fort Bragg.  It seemed like we drove a long way before  the sergeant driving the vehicle pulled over and stopped.  Then the sergeant and the One turned around and looked at me and my rucksack sitting together in the back seat.  I said, “something tells me you boys want us to get out of your HMMWV.” 

That’s exactly what they wanted.  Out on the dirt road, with my rucksack on my back, the One pointed me back towards battalion headquarters and said, “It’s twelve miles back to battalion from this spot.  You have three hours to get there.  There’s no prize for getting there any faster.” 

“What’s the prize for getting there slower?”  I asked.

“You don’t have to report to the Old Man.”  The One replied.  “You get to go to some other battalion.”  Then the One got back in his HMMWV and he and the sergeant drove back to battalion.  And I walked back. 

When I got to battalion, the One sent me into the Old Man’s office.  I marched in (gritting my teeth against the limp-blisters that I got from the hot road), centered, snapped, saluted  and reported.  This Old Man didn’t ask me about my kids or my hometown.  He didn’t tell me about his Command Climate.  He just looked at his watch and said, “you made it.  That doesn’t tell me anything about you other that you are in good shape.  You still have to prove yourself.  But if you hadn’t made it, I would have known that you are not in good shape, and that makes you subject to fatigue.  And, Fatigue Makes Cowards of Us All.  I won’t have any cowardly officers in my battalion.” 

Imperfect Practitioners of IT

           Every lawyer has heard this one, “still practicing law?  Let  me know when you get it right.”  Ha Ha.  Actually, it is kind of funny because it’s true.  No matter how long we practice law, we never do actually get it right—we just die or retire.  I think Christianity is like this.   A new Christian is like a lawyer who just passed the bar.  He’s got the rest of his life to get it right, but he’s destined  to die trying.  And that’s not a bad thing at all.  It’s the trying that matters.

When I was a newly licensed Christian, I met a man named Bill Grier.  He taught me something very important and useful in my fledgling practice of Jesus, and he did it without letting me know he was teaching me anything—which is good, because I surely would have resisted learning IT had I known what Bill was doing.  It took me about two years of watching Bill for me to even start putting IT into practice and I assume I’ll be trying to get IT right for the rest of my life because, right now, I have to admit that I am really not very good at IT.  Not good at all.

And yet, as poorly as I now practice IT, the effect on my life has been explosive.  As a result of IT, my wife loves me in a way I thought was impossible, my children honor me in a way that was unimaginable, I have made more friends in the few years since I learned of IT than the preceding 40 years combined, and (this part is weird) the practice of IT has made the practice of law seem like something I could do until I die, God willing.  I can’t believe I used to live without IT, yet I know I did because I looked in the mirror at least once a day.  OK, this is IT:  the practice of looking at other people through the eyes of Christ.  IT is asking yourself not what Jesus would do, but what he would see if he was looking through your eyes.  What Bill taught me was for a man to conform to Christ’s image, one had to imagine what Christ saw when he looked at a man—and that included me.  What did Christ see when He looked at me?  What I saw of me reflected in Bill’s eyes was a man sufficiently beloved by Christ that He went to the Cross—for me, and you and every other man, no matter how loathsome we may seem to one another from our high perches of self-regard.  To Christ, each man is beloved and Bill taught me that the only way to see that truth was to engage in the practice of looking out through the eyes of Christ.  And he taught me to keep trying, however imperfectly, until the day I die.  Anon Anon. 

If Falling, Dive

                My primary objection to the concept of Utopia—the notion of the perfectibility of man through human machination—is not so much that it leads inevitably to tyranny, as a good chunk of people always seem to stubbornly resist the efforts of the well-meaning Utopists to reform them.  After all, what is a hard-working Utopist supposed to do when Imperfect Man blindly clings to his god and guns—he has no choice but to force him to see the Utopian light, and that omelet usually comes at the cost of more than a  few broken eggs. 

                No, my primary objection to the Utopian Agenda is that it is a giant waste of time and effort.  Witness the latest Utopian effort:  The Elimination of Bullying.  Yes, we all agree that bullying is a bad thing and that it in a “perfect world” there would be no bullying.  But where most of us put “perfect world” in quotes to connote that no such thing will ever exist short of the second coming, the Utopist sees it as an actual goal that could be achieved if we all came together and followed his program to the letter.  And if we fail the first time, well that’s because somebody wasn’t fully on board or we didn’t invest enough money in the whole idea. 

                Let’s take a step back and a deep breath on this whole bullying thing.  Does anybody believe that any amount of money or re-education or anything else within the hands of fallen man is going to stop a broken-hearted and/or half-crazy bully from trying to subjugate the weak or meek who populate his immediate area of operation?  Come on Utopists, we are Fallen, Dive and stop flailing around. 

Forty Long

I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear and put their trust in the LORD. (Psalm 40:1-3)

      Spring comes, the days  lengthen and lent is upon us.  In Forty Long days comes Easter, counting not each day of our Lord’s victory over the death that once owned us. 

     Just as for Forty Long days the Lord cleansed His earth (Genesis 7:12), and as for Forty Long days Noah waited to seek dry land thereupon (Genesis 8:6), and as it took Moses Forty Long days on the mountaintop to put His law to stone (Exodus 34:27-28), and as the Israelites were consigned to wander a year for each of the Forty Long days her spies had faultingly explored the Promised Land (Numbers 14-33-34), and as Goliath strutted proudly for Forty Long days before David brought him down (1 Samuel 17:16), as did Jonah warn the Ninevites that they had Forty Long days to repent (Jonah 3:4)—and then, as our saviour was temped for Forty Long days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1-2) before the Devil departed for a time—but then, as Christ appeared to His Disciples for Forty Long days from His suffering (Acts 1:3) to convince them that He lived and triumphed, to empower them to spread that good news to the four corners of this earth where, by His grace, it finds us now to provide the rock upon which we may stand together.  In Forty Long days then—we will celebrate.  Amen.

In This The Faithful Gather

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.  Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand.  Ephesians  6:12-13 (NIV)

Eating, fortifying positions, cleaning weapons, planning, maintaining equipment—even resting, all must be done deliberately and constantly by troopers in the field in preparation for the enemy.  The leader, assuming that the attack may come at any time and from any direction, coordinates the troopers’ preparations so that the unit is not vulnerable to a surprise attack.  So, one man sleeps while the man next to him stays alert; one machine gun is cleaned while the other one is fully manned; one man fills the canteens of five men who work.   

The time of day is immaterial to the troopers’ battle preparation.  Prior to  entering the field, their leaders have taught them to clean their weapons in the dark as well as the light.  There are two daily exceptions to these ceaseless preparations and they both occur when the sun is between 6 and 12 degrees below the horizon.  In the morning this is called BMNT (begin morning nautical twilight) and in the evening it is called EENT (end evening nautical twilight).  It is then that traces of illumination near the sunrise/sunset point are nearly impossible to discern as the horizon becomes indistinct.  For the individual trooper, these are the moments of Gloom, both within and without, when the pre-dawn darkness most fully envelopes, and then, when the day gives up its last hope in soft surrender to the dark pitch of night.

It is in these moments of Gloom that the troopers cease all of their preparations.  They strap on their combat gear and move forward to form a circle, aiming their weapons into the Gloom, where the enemy is.  They are silent, on full alert, because it is only by sound, smell or vibration that the troopers can hope to discern the approach of the enemy.   Each trooper concentrates on the ground in front of him, trusting his brothers’ vigil to his side and rear.  This requires discipline.  This discipline is called Stand To.  It was not passed down to us from the armies of Europe.  We learned it the hard way from the Indians, who knew that the ebb of a man’s sense and spirit was when his will was most vulnerable to attack—it is when he is most alone and isolated.  The Gloom is when they attacked, so it is in the Gloom that we learned to Stand To.  We practice it now, in peace and war, for it gives a lurking and watchful enemy pause. 

            Lest the sanguinity birthed of sun and star prove illusory, it is the Gloom that cloaks the Enemy’s approach, for he knows that by nature we crave the light.  He waits then for the Gloom to creep forward, to catch us asleep or distracted by our very preparations for an approach we would prefer in full light, when he can be seen.  By discipline we learn to Stand To in the Gloom, in God’s full armor, ready for battle. 

The Goodly Covenant of the Righteous Pimp

Then the LORD spoke to you out of the fire. You heard the sound of words but saw no form; there was only a voice. He declared to you his covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets. And the LORD directed me at that time to teach you the decrees and laws you are to follow in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess.  (Deuteronomy 4:12-14)

            The implication of God writing his law in stone is one of immutability and finality.  These, He seemed to say, are not rules open to human tinkering.  God’s words, as they so often do, also spawned a very useful analogy that man usually employs in the inverse, to connote a little wiggle room:  “well, it’s not written in stone or anything,” or “ok, pencil me in for Tuesday, but I’ll have to get back to you.”  We know that our little wiggle room disappears as soon as the stone is written upon, yet it is our nature to treat the Ten Commandments a bit like God had just penciled them in on the back of a manna wrapper and handed them to Moses for future reference.  “Here Moses, I’ve just jotted down some of my thoughts.  No, no don’t look at it now, I just wanted you to have something nosh on over, say, the next 40 years while you’re wandering around.  Call me.” 

            Our reason for doing this is simple.  God’s Law crosses Our Will—especially the way Jesus interpreted it.  He said that a man who lusts in his heart for a women has already committed adultery (Matthew 5:28).  Wow, that seems so, well, excessive.  I mean, who cares what’s going on in my heart as long as I don’t act on it?  Apparently God does, because He told us that the evil of our hearts fills His heart with pain.  (Genesis 6:5-6).  My junky heart hurt’s God’s pure heart?  Well, I don’t want that.  Maybe we can work something out, a compromise of sorts.  Luckily for me, my tribe already has one.  It’s called the Covenant of Goodliness (the “COG”).  It’s not written in stone or anything, but it’s got a lot of good stuff in it that more or less tracks God’s Law.  For example, where God says that to be angry with my brother is tantamount to murder, the COG says “revenge is a dish best served cold.”  Or where God says you shall not commit adultery, the COG says “you can look at the menu but you can’t order anything.”  The COG also has a couple of extra rules that God apparently didn’t even think about, like: thou must recycle, and thou must treat pets really well and thou must not be tacky.  The best part of the COG is that, unlike God’s law, it is written in pencil so it has a lot of wiggle room.  So, as long as I drag my recycle bin out to the curb on Tuesday, I’m pretty much good, even though it’s empty half the time because, frankly, I can’t be bothered trying to keep up with what goes in there.

            Of course there’s a couple of catches.  The COG is narrowly tailored to be applicable to my tribe only.  Following it won’t do me much good with God.  In truth, it is only designed to keep me from being tossed out of my supper club.  Here’s another problem—it goes no farther than my tribe, lovely people that we are.  I suspect that pimps have their own COG, and that a Righteous Pimp follows his COG as closely as I follow mine.  The Goodly Covenant of the Righteous Pimp might shock the goodly people of the Tribe of the Supper Club, but that’s only because we were raised in different surroundings.  When we Supper Clubbers try to back the Righteous Pimps into moral corners using our COG, they call us hypocrites, as well they should.  For what we call the “law” is only convenience, and what we cast today as “sin” is just as likely to be virtue anon because our goodly rules of tackiness change as fast as the acceptable hem of a women’s skirt.

            And that, I contend, is why the Lord wrote His Law in stone, and why He sent His Son as a fulfillment of His Law (Matthew 5:17)—so that we goodly pimps and supper clubbers could huddle together at the foot of His Cross and fully and finally know His Love, the greatest of that which will remain. 

The Muffled Boom of Higher Love

 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.  (John 15:13)

On December 4, 2006, a 19 year old American soldier named Ross McGinnis was killed in Iraq when he threw himself down on a live hand grenade.  He did it to save four of his friends.  Instead of a ballistic explosion, the grenade’s blast was only a muffled boom.  For this, Ross McGinnis was awarded the Medal of Honor. 

Obviously, jumping on a live grenade takes an uncommon amount of bravery.  But it also takes swift and deliberate movement.  If Specialist McGinnis had stopped to ponder this course of action at all, his buddies would have been blown up along with him.  It is also contrary to a soldier’s training.  It has been a long time since I was in basic training, but I am pretty sure we were taught to yell “grenade” and jump in the opposite direction.  What would make a soldier take such uncommonly brave and immediate action, that was both contrary to his training and virtually guaranteed to result in his death?  What would give a mere man the power to do something like that?  I believe that it could only be love.

I was taught to do many things in the Army.  Some of those skills have had value in my civilian life, but most have not.  There is not really a call out here in the World for most of what I was trained to do.  But even if everything else I had learned was now meaningless, I would still count my years in service of inestimable value because it was there that I learned to love.  It was there that I was taught (over and over again) that I had better care more for my men than I did myself, or at least do a really good job faking it.  And nobody can fake that, not when their will is crossed. 

I  went into the service a flawed boy of incessant self-regard—and came out nine years later a flawed man who loved his brothers.  That is what they taught me there.  It seems that is what they taught Specialist McGinnis, as the last sound he must have heard on this realm was The Muffled Boom of Higher Love.

Knocked Conscious

When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.  Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.  (Genesis 3: 6-7)

            Beach Week.  Every morning, we haul half of what we own down to the sand.  We plant our umbrellas in the hot breeze, and our faithful shorties gather, slathered in sun block and demanding juice boxes and cheese nips—the manna of Food Lion.  And then they scatter to their childish pleasures—each one uniquely hard-wired into them.  I have a sandcastle builder, a critter catcher and a kite flyer.  They do other things, but these are the things in which they become lost to themselves and their surroundings.  In these pursuits they are oblivious to both the mild dangers of the beach and the minimum standards of human interaction.  Holding tight to her end of the string, eyes on the fluttering pink plastic above, my kite flyer would walk right into the path of the beach patrol four-wheeler and right over the blanket of our neighbor.  But that is why WE are there right?  Well-trained sheepdogs that we are, we only have one eye in Stieg Larsson, the other is on them.

            How sweet our Lord is.  He hard-wires us for simple pleasures, and He provides us both the means of their pursuit and the venue within which they can be safely pursued.  But, we are fallen.  So it cannot last forever.  I know the day is coming when my kite flyer will not be able to hold her string without thinking about how she looks doing it.  Like Adam, like me, she is going to be Knocked Conscious.  Without Faith, this Consciousness would drive me mad.   Without Hope, that He will welcome us back to the garden of our innocence, this Consciousness would make me desperate.  Without His Love, what a mad and desperate man I would be. 

BackBlast--GONADS.3-1-11

Aye, The ShovelFlag was planted in The Gloom and The Faithful Gathered:  Affirmation Jones, Kenyon Slider, BoyMarlo, Mizer, WarDaddy, MudShark, OwlBait and The Colonel (BHWTU)

The Thang:

                Brisket:  4.27 miles at 7:00/mile (for MudShark—BoyMarlo, The Colonel and AJones were faster than that)

                Wiggler:  3.32 miles at 8:07/mile

NakedMan Moleskin:

1.       Brisket Nightmare  The one thing MudShark really dreads on the Brisket is seeing Affirmation Jones and BoyMarlo pawing the ground like two dang stallions ready to rip it up.  And they did Brothers.  Who knows how fast they actually ran.  It was brutal.  TripleClaps to AJ, Marlo and the dang Colonel who is not yet TU. 

2.       Down and Out on Sharon Lane  Note even a mile into the Brisket, MudShark went down hard (claiming he slipped in the mud), right in the midst of OwlBait’s description of Tara Servatius’ party gown at the Karl Rove LoveFest that Bait and HitMan went to this past Saturday.  Sure, it could have been the mud.  Whatever. 

3.       Zoot Sighting  Apparently, Zoot (sporting his best pocket square) cruised Mullrich in the Gator.  He didn’t stop and run, but he didn’t run down any GONADS either so . . . a wash?

4.       Excused Absence

a.       PBo—he’s had a tough couple of days.  Rock Steady Brother.

b.      Angrus—why?  Cuz he’s a stud, that’s why.  He always gets a pass.  Aye.

REMF

“In the spring, at the time when kings go off to war, David sent Joab out with the king's men and the whole Israelite army. They destroyed the Ammonites and besieged Rabbah. But David remained in Jerusalem.”  (2 Samuel 11:1)

            One need not have ever soldiered to hear alarm bells in this set of bookends:  “when kings go off to war . . . David remained in Jerusalem.”  At the very least, the King was not in the field where he was supposed to be.  At worst . . . well, it got much worse.  The author tells us that “David got up from his bed” and went up to the “roof of the palace,” and that is where he saw the beautiful Bathsheba bathing—doesn’t say anything about moonlight per se, but I think we all get the picture:  warm spring night and a restless warrior king—in the rear with the gear instead of in the field where the action is.  Danger, Will Robinson, Danger.

            There is a counterintuitive dichotomy between the danger in the field (where the enemy is) and the danger of the rear echelon (where, presumably, He is not).  The threat to the field trooper is obvious, existential and immediate.  The bad guys are the ones who persistently shoot at you when they see you.  In the rear, the bad guys are harder to discern.  They come in the form of a creeping corruption, on the back of boredom and energy expended in suppression of the warrior spirit that comes downloaded in our DNA. 

            War is Hell indeed, but at least you get to fight something you can see.  But the War behind the War, where the Enemy is a sniper destroying you slowly, hidden behind a jasmine scented screen from the rooftop below your palace.  I think I’ll take the field any day.  I don’t stand a chance in the rear.