As I was walking back from a friend’s dorm tonight, I passed this confused couple on the lawn. They were confused because they had mistaken LeTourneau for a Southern Plantation and were apparently trying to reenact some awkward movie scene where the Southern Belle eloquently runs and jumps into her lover’s arms and, swooning; they embrace while he weightlessly spins her around.
This is not what happened. Actually, she said (in a not-so-eloquent-but-giggling-east Texan squawking voice) “You’re going to drop me or I’m going to like, head-butt you and knock you over”
To which he replied “Oh please, I’m not going to drop you, and there’s no way you could knock me over.”
And to which I wanted to say “Dude, I realize love is blind so I’m just gonna help you out by saying that when she says she’s going to knock you over, trust me, there is 100% probability that you’re going down if you try to catch her”
I kept my mouth shut though, and simultaneously slowed down so I could watch the Southern Bell’s jump(and her lover’s descent haha). She set herself, and then ran at him and did an awkward little *I’m afraid so I’m not going to put all of myself into my jump, only half and I’m going to stutter step before I do it so your timing is thrown off and we awkwardly just grab each other and kinda look like we’re trying to hop the 2-step*
I was cracking up. I’m not sure why, it just struck me as really really funny that they were doing that on the lawn in front of my dorm at 11:00 at night. I seriously almost wet myself. It completely made me double over trying to stifle the laughter and I probably looked like I had to pee really bad (and at that point, I think I did)
But I am not just telling that story because I’m mean and make fun of people. Well, ok I kind’ve am, but my main point comes from part of a text I sent someone after the fact. They asked what the couple was doing. I said (and I quote)” They, my friend, are trying to emulate something they perceive as romantic…”
Now, I definitely said that off hand and you should be able to clearly see the cynical and analytical approach I have to all things emotional in my response. But I went all introspective on myself (very common in my little head) and wondered if it was deeper than an awkward couple going all “gone with the wind” on the lawn. Emulation is defined as “To imitate”. Our society is way into it today. From artificial sweetener to botox like the models in Vogue, we are all , in some fashion or another, trying to get our own little shadow of the real deal. This piques my curiosity, because I noticed emulate doesn’t mean replace or replicate. It says imitate. To completely forgo attempting to get the real thing. To settle for something less.
We love being in love. Living in a college atmosphere has made me so aware of this fact. If you are not dating, you’re thinking about dating and in the process of liking someone and if you are dating, you’re trying to figure out how soon you can buy the ring. We also like security. We like peace. We like vitality. We like comfort. We like joy. We like being accepted. We like feeling good enough. We enjoy feeling like we belong. We are driven by how we feel, by emotion, even people who pride themselves on logical reason. After all, pride is accompanied by an emotional state too. And those needs aren’t bad, we were all made needing to be filled. We were born needy, we exist in dependence, and only when we die will we who know Jesus truly be whole.
I understand why people who don’t know Jesus act this way. It’s a logical progression, trying to blindly fill a hole you are sharply aware exists within you. But what interested me about this entire episode was the fact that it completely uncovers the grotesque masquerade that I feel like the body of Christ is playing at. I focus on the church mainly because we, of all people, should know better, but we don’t. We keep acting out our parts we feel like we have to play. We keep saying things we think we should because we want to feel like we think we should. We keep playacting scenes we think we want to happen so we can force results we think we want. Stemming from the needs above, we are trying to emulate methods and rules and ideas we feel like will fill the holes, we just do it more subtly and make it look a lot more churchy. We take pride in the fact that we “save ourselves for marriage” (I’m so tired of hearing that from couples on campus) but we don’t do it because we want to honor God and find ourselves in Him first. No, we do it because it’s right and in Christianity, right=happy and obeying rules=good life. We boast the idea that we are “mission minded” but it isn’t really because we have a heart for people, it’s because we kind’ve subliminally feel that if we sacrifice ourselves for the pagans, that makes us more “spiritually mature”, whatever that means. We go to church, because we should and isn’t it supposed to be a place of love and joy and peace? Wasn’t there a clause in this whole deal that said life got easier when you did God a favor by going and standing in a building for Him?
We aren’t really interested in what’s real, only that the result numbs the ache in our hearts a little less We chase the fulfillment, not the source, and when we don’t get that fulfillment, eh, just as well, we’ll fake it ‘till we make it. We aren’t so interested that we have an opportunity to have a relationship with God, we would just like to feel whole, please. We don’t really care that we get to be indwelt by the supernatural Holy Spirit, we’d just really like to feel loved and accepted. After all, isn’t that your job God? How are we ever going to make You look appealing to people if our lives don’t look different? And by different, we mean happy, at peace, comfortable, and relatively safe.
I am not sure that I have some great conclusive ending that calls people to rise up. Actually, I am sure that I DON’T have anything like that. I am still mulling over the idea of seeking only real things in my life. No more imitation. No more fooling myself. No more messing around with things that only satisfy as long as a pool of water remains in sand. Seeking to be real, and seeking hard truth that convicts and cleans. I wonder what the body of Christ would look like if we’d just stop settling for faking it. If we’d just be honest, with ourselves and the rest of the world. If we’d ask God for hearts that truly desire what is real and lives that reflect that prayer.
If we’d stop running and half jumping/stumbling into the arms of tradition and stereotypes and realize that the only way to find what we’re after is to seek its only source.
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