Love's Labour's Lost to Lust

I want to write a monthly post in the form of a polemic against Cosmo Magazine... This was inspired by a casual bored skimming of the magazine, the most intellectually and morally bankrupt, slime-depositing skim of my life. I'm pretty convinced that Cosmopolitan magazine is symbolic of so much that is wrong with our culture. Who knows if I'll be able to keep it up month after month, or if I'll even need to? I suspect I might find that they've a shallow bag of tricks and recycled material not worth responding to... nevertheless I'm curious to see what comes of it.

Curious? Let me know if this is something interesting to you, or pretty irrelevant?

Read the "How Cosmo Changed the World" blurb from their website: 

Back in the 60's, young single women were enjoying a new level of freedom. For the first time, they were beginning to bust their butts in formerly male-dominated fields and explore premarital sex. But the phenomenon was still so new that no one was really talking about it.... Enter Helen Gurley Brown. In 1962, the just-married copywriter penned Sex and the Single Girl, a fictional book about a swinging singleton who was leading this new kind of life. Not only did the book tell women they didn't need a man to be happy, but it also encouraged them to enjoy sex with whomever they damn well pleased- without guilt.

Read the whole article on How Cosmo Destroyed the World here.
...This is just the tip of the smutberg.

Self Control, the Vegetable of the Spirit

Ask any server, and they're guaranteed to come up with at least a couple of times when they wanted a free pass to kill a customer for being exceptionally rude and difficult. However, I've always taken pride in the fact that I have never once lost my cool with a patron. The ruder they become, the kinder I get. Sort of a "kill them with kindness" routine. Usually it works quite well. However, this particular customer made my blood boil. His manner was condescending, obstinate, and uncooperative. My usual M.O. of 'heaping hot coals' in retaliatory turn-the-other-cheekiness didn't quite slake my escalating bloodthirst; my saccharine smile belied my intense desire to spill scalding soup in his lap. Despite my indignance, I didn't betray a single emotion other than compliance in the spirit of customer-is-always-rightitude. On my drive home that night I marveled at my own patience in that encounter.


My self adulation continued until I noticed that my heart was pounding and my fury was coming back... I felt anything but patient and peaceful. And then I wondered: does it count as patience if I have a myriad of angry and borderline murderous thoughts toward this person? Does it count as patience if I'm really only restraining myself? Is acting patient when I'm not feeling patient the same as tithing when I don't want to... begrudgingly obeying in those moments when I can think of a thousand things I would rather be doing with the money? Oh yeah, I'm a joyful giver... most of the time. And until now, I'd thought I was becoming quite a patient individual, a marvelous demonstration of that fruit of the Spirit... then it hit me. I wasn't being patient. I was having Self Control, which is like the younger, less experienced, more volatile sibling of Patience. If I had been patient, my indignation wouldn't have flared up in the first place. I certainly don't disparage self control because I believe that one of the hardest things to master is yourself... but at the same time, I think self-control is like anger management. It doesn't get rid of the problem, it just shows you how to live with your impulses. Patience, it seems, is more of a transformational fruit. It is a testament to the work of the Spirit throughout your innermost being. If I'd been patient... maybe I wouldn't have been angered by this customer at all. Self control is dandy, like anger management. But I think anger elimination is more favorable. Rather than putting a lid on the boiling pot, I'd rather just extinguish that flame of indignation and stung pride. The Lord isn't slow to show his anger. He is slow to anger in the first place. I want that trait! 


And I want to call self-control the vegetable of the spirit. I know it's probably wrong on all counts, literarily and spiritually and theologically... but it just isn't quite as sweet as the other fruits. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness... oh, and self-control, for all those times when you can't quite get a grip on the other eight fruits. Here, have a carrot.

Entitlement vs. Expectancy

In my job hunting, I've use all those tools like CareerBuilder, JobMonkey, NES Staffing... and sometimes I find legitimate leads. But all the more I'm noticing that there's an uncomfortable level of truth to the adage, "It's not what you know, it's who you know." I've already whined about the job market in my previous post, so I will try not to be repetitive. Sure, I work as many hours as I can get at my job, but it isn't one of those jobs that I can respect myself for as a college graduate. I am grateful for a job at all, but the hours are so few and the sense of purpose, virtually non-existent. Old customers come in and recognize me, we chat, and very quickly the conversation inevitably turns to this one question: "Why are you still here?"

I ask myself that question everyday. Every. Day. Not just at work, but in general. I came home for a job opportunity that fell through, so now I'm back in my hometown, struggling to reconnect with my old life when old friends are pretty much scattered to the four winds, going their various directions. I miss my college town in Southern California, a place that quickly became my home. I miss the beach, the friends that I have there, and the church that I loved so much. I hoped that those feelings would fade when I returned home, especially since I came back here out of a sincere sense of obedience. I set aside what I then thought to be immature and more immediate desires (friends, fun, community) and did what I thought God was leading me to do, and what I thought any responsible adult should do: go where the job is. Because job=future. Right?

But the job isn't here. Hiring freezes and budget cuts made sure of it.  And this place isn't home anymore; my family is here, but I feel like I'm trying to crawl back inside a cocoon that stopped fitting a long time ago. So I just look stupid. Perhaps the trouble is that I made up my mind that it wouldn't be home, and it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But now I'm floundering, wondering what God is up to. I try to formulate future plans, but in the meantime I just need a good real job. Yet that means some sort of anchoring to a place that I didn't want to be at in the first place. And I guess I've always assumed that God prefers us to work; it seems part of the natural order. So then I figure, God wants me to have a job, right? But does He want me to have a job here?

I wonder what response the Lord would have from me and people in similar circumstances; are we supposed to react to this situation (unemployment, discouraging job market) with optimism? Believing that the opportunity is there, and we have only to find it? Are we supposed to accept our current circumstance as God's will, or are we supposed to simply try harder? As Christians, we are supposed to be expectant of great things. Bill Johnson said "It is unnatural for a Christian not to have an appetite for the impossible."That rings true to me. The God of the universe loves us and adores us! He is earnestly invested in bringing about good from all circumstances! Jesus is alive and the Spirit is moving! Why shouldn't we expect every good and perfect gift? Why shouldn't we approach the throne expectantly? Aren't we supposed to expect His best?
Expectancy:

Well good grief, what does that actually mean, practically speaking? What does the "best" look like? The more I think about it, the more I find difficulty in drawing the line between expectancy (knowing that God has good things for His children, and will provide for me) and entitlement (feeling like He owes me something because He loves me and has every resource at His disposal). I don't know where I end and He begins. How much of my future is in my hands? How much of it is up to me? My grandmother once said "It's easier for God to steer a moving ship than for Him to blow it out of the harbor." Obviously she couldn't have been giving me this advice, because I totally have a grip on this concept.... except for those times when I don't have a grip, and I get paralyzed by uncertainty. Naturally, then,  my thought is to make like a ship and get moving until I sense a shift in the wind, some kind of divine intervention. But then I wonder... is this the best direction? Is this what I should be doing? In my quest for God's will, I become paralyzed in my own indecision, frozen in my own mind. I don't want to be angry at God for not showing up where I thought He'd be (entitlement) but I don't want to just stop expecting Him to show up, merely to prevent disappointment.

Entitlement:                  

Maybe His version of moving in my life doesn't match mine. That idea doesn't thrill me. It's like sitting at a bus stop, waiting for ten hours for the stupid bus to get there and take you to your aunts house in Duluth. You sit there, sweating, putting up with a bunch of bad weather and getting hit on by homeless people and truant high schoolers. Only the bus never comes, because what you thought was a bus stop was really just a park bench. Drat. Then you come to find out that your aunt wasn't in Duluth at all, because you'd gotten your dates confused. She was out of town, so you wouldn't have had any place to stay anyway. Oh, and her house got broken into while she was gone, and you narrowly avoided being smothered by a burglar. So in retrospect, you start thinking that maybe your ten hour bench warming sesh was a blessing in disguise. But was that really necessary? Couldn't that suffering be made simpler?! That isn't my idea of a good time.

That was a really mind numbing analogy. The point is, maybe God moves in mysterious ways (read: He is God of wonders, we are dust):


Isaiah 55:8-9 
For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lorrd. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.


Now that, I believe. It's a relief to surrender to that sort of providence. The interim period, between vision and fruition... it still sucks. I sometimes get overwhelmed too easily, forgetting what I believe in (God is good, God is love, every good and perfect gift comes from Him) and why (because it's true... and its been demonstrated over and over! I'm just dense!). In spite of my frailty, I don't want to exchange expectancy for bitterness or cynicism, because the more I think about it, the more expectancy and faith look remarkably alike. Well, how do I feed childlike faith? For starters, believing that God is bigger than me. And if Abraham's faith was credited to him as righteousness... if God decided to use the quality of faith as a measurement of right standing with Him, pre-Covenant, then obviously faith is a big deal in His eyes! As an RA, my floor theme was Faith; for part of the deco, I mounted a mustard seed up on the wall for display in all the quads (Matthew 17:20).  It gives me hope... I mean, have you seen a mustard seed? They're impossibly small. I love that Jesus chose that rather than, say, a double coconut seed the size of my head. He understood exactly how discouraged and faithless we can be, and wanted to make sure we knew that there was no need for superstar Christianity. It's like lowering the bar in midget pole vaulting: just when you thought the bare minimum couldn't get anymore... minimal... there Jesus goes, building a handicap access ramp and giving us boosts.

Nuns, Guppies, and the American McDream

So there are no misunderstandings later on, I just need to be straight forward about something: I'm not 100% in love with the economy right now. We are on the fritz. I'm serious. I want to kick the economy in the shins. I want to insult the economy's mother. I want to have a party and not invite the economy. If Kanye wants to interrupt the economy's acceptance speech for Suckfest of the Century, I'm okay with that. *steps off soap box*


I don't know about you, but I was pretty miffed when the market began to plummet at an accelerated pace last fall; not particularly anxious or fearful, but definitely annoyed. You were probably right there with me as we watched Wall Street nosedive like a drunken bungee jumper on spring break; we covered one eye and looked down the ravine with the other, muttering with bated breath, "Is it supposed to take this long? I can't see him. Did he fasten the little hooky belay thing?...no, Ponzi fastened it for him. Is he gonna come back up eventually? Has he hit the bottom yet?.... How long is this supposed to take, guys? .... Guys?" But honestly... who needs drunken demonstrations of awful when you have the likes of AIG, Bernie Madoff and the Fed teaching How to Destroy Everything You Touch 101. We all paid over $700 billion for this lesson so we'd better pay attention.


For those of you from the class of 2009... we've been let loose into a job market where we are competing with people twice our age, with twice our experience, for bottom rung entry-level positions typically reserved for inexperienced recent college grads. We're like guppies from a fish tank replete with the plastic trees and the treasure chests and the other fishes from Planet Pets, getting dumped into the Amazon River where there are no little plastic scuba divers or treasure chests... only other, bigger, more experienced, slightly strung out fishes that eat everything... food, boats, trash, you. People with Ph.D's are applying for MI's, for Pete's sake. I applied for an administrative assistant position- along with 800 other applicants. I also applied for a waitressing job at a restaurant that received 50 applications on one day for a single job opening that wasn't even advertised. A friend of mine who just finished his first year of law school last May was explaining the process of applying for internships; they made him jump through flaming hoops (literally... I know, freaky) and wanted everything but his spleen and firstborn. All this to be considered for an unpaid position. As he put it, "I've never had to work so hard to convince someone to let me work for them for free!" 


I had a conversation with someone recently about the nature of work, and how discouraging it can be... for many, it seems that no matter how lifeless and pointless our work might seem, it is necessary for survival. We slave away at seemingly menial tasks... filing paperwork, cleaning pools, parking cars, piloting commercial flights, de-paper jamming printers, drawing up contracts and lesson plans, selling, selling, selling... trying to convince everyone that they need what we've got. And if they don't need it... well, they should want it, and they shouldn't be happy until they have it. I quipped that in this light... the light that exposes us chasing after the carrot, baby-stepping to 5 o'clock so that we can go and do the things that we really enjoy but can't get paid to do... in this light, work is almost evil; a curse, the opposite of joy and prosperity and freedom, the abundant life's wicked stepmother. I was being facetious of course, but then I realized... it's kind of true. You know the curse I'm talking about: “Cursed is the ground because of you; In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; And you shall eat the plants of the field."(Genesis 3:17-18) Certainly it's a bit metaphoric because few of us are working in an agricultural setting anymore (and don't you think that's a shame?), but you get the point. "Life and work are going to be a lot tougher. You'll work longer hours and get fewer returns. Your boss will hound you, you'll kill yourself trying to get that holiday bonus, and your kids will constantly complain that all their friends have Guitar Hero and they don't... and you're ruining their life-uh!" I think that's the Message version. 


Before I continue, I should clarify that this is not an indictment of our economic system, because despite current circumstances, the free market economy is the best system ever developed. Unlike Marxism, which is a joke, and mercantilism (think 18th century England and modern China... weighed, measured, and found wanting), capitalism works. Societies thrive because of it. In the best of circumstances - i.e., free of protectionism, interventionism, and alltheotherisms -  it benefits all parties involved. But it capitalizes on our wanting more; it is contingent upon our restlessness, our dissatisfaction, our malcontentment. Money isn't the problem...  if it were, redistribution would be sufficient. No- LOVE of money is the problem (duh, right?). But contrary to what utopian philosophizers and the communist manifesto would have us believe, no amount of government programs/programming can weed out the greed, because government can't better people. In dealing with the major root issues that actually plague us, people ultimately have only one hope- Jesus. But lets not make that into an argument for theocracy, because that's certainly not what I'm saying. And I'm also not saying that we're on a one way train to Doomsville; after all, necessity is the mother of invention. We are in need, and it is an exciting time to see what entrepreneurial methods of thriving people will come up with as a response to this adversity. But our current situation certainly makes you stop and think.


For my part, I do find that consumerism runs contrary to my intrinsic desire to live simply. Not that I want to be poor. Who wants to be poor? Nuns maybe. If I were to embrace a minimalist mentality, I might say something like "All you need is love"... or "All you need is good food, good music, and good company." I think there are many who feel the same way; certainly many from my generation. I recently had a discussion with a friend at a wedding about this very topic. About priorities and aspirations and the sorts of things that we might find fulfilling. And nothing that we came up with seems to fit the mold of anything that we've seen in contemporary society. We both had the sense that there is something more. Perhaps something previously dismissed as peripheral. I have many older friends and acquaintances who've lived long enough in the American McDream, and are no longer enticed by the house and 2 car garage, regardless of how low mortgage rates are. Now, this American Dream started out nobly enough... everyone with enough to support his family and live comfortably in freedom. That's honest! That's good! God bless those aspirations, for those who desire it. 


But I don't quite want that.  At least I don't think I do. I want to be unfettered; Suburbia scares me. Of course I'm young and unattached, so I don't have a family to think about; an older, married, mommy version of me might say "All you need is good food, good music, and good company.... and a house and a large savings account, just in case." All of it is intended to create a feeling of security... but security is a notion of human invention, anyway. It isn't found in nature! Of course there is wisdom in financial scrupulousness. But manmade security is a mirage. As the chimp from Babe, Pig in the City would put it: "Its illusory. It's ill, and its for losers." And on the topic of security, other hefty questions come into play. Am I so intently stalking security because I simply don't trust the Lord's provision? When does this fall into the realm of leaning on our my understanding? Someone once told me, "Fear is the antithesis of faith." Well, God went out of His way to say "fear not" 365 times in the Word. How can I help but see this financial meltdown as an opportunity!? An opportunity to approach the throne with more boldness? An opportunity for the Lord to do something big! If God is who I believe Him to be, there is a goldmine of untapped, unfamiliar providence awaiting me on the horizon. It might not be what I am expecting or looking for, (green papery stuff) but He hasn't forgotten me. Any of us. Blessed assurance.


note: I really wanted a compelling image to be placed here... something that would convey fearlessness and faith and stuff. But when I googled "fearless," I was inundated with images of Taylor Swifts cover from her latest album... So for the record I just want to say that I think Beyonce's album cover was the best album cover, and it really deserved to be featured.