I just finished Sex God, by Rob Bell. It was very good. I think it ended a little abruptly, but if you think of it more as a book to be thought provoking, rather than to express a complete thought, it’s great.
Anybody that is single or married should read it. Don’t let the title scare you. It’s really about that, but it’s not about that, it’s about something else.
Now I’m on to another book. We had a ton of Audible credits left about to expire, so I got Green Eggs and Ham and The Cat in the Hat and some other stories for the kids. I also got I Am Not but I Know I Am by Louie Giglio. It is good. There are a lot of good quotes that I have to keep rewinding to type out.
“We can cling to the starring roles in the little bitty story of us, or we can exchange our fleeting moment in the spotlight for a supporting role in the eternally beautiful epic that is the story of God.”
It’s a beautiful thing to wrap your daughter up in a blanket, give her a hug and tell her you love her, and to have her say, “Muh nomamano.” to you.
So I was talking about my life with police and the things I thought in my head while being harassed and mocked, etc. and one of my friends told me I had been watching too many Jason Bourne movies and American television like 24. I told him I had never seen 24 before. He said if I liked the Bourne movies, I would like 24.
So I checked it out. And I started at the beginning, Season 1, Episode 1.
And I was repulsed.
In 42 minutes, there were two different couples having sex on my screen in my house, and one other couple talking about how they had cheated on their spouses. My wife and I both had the same reaction: that was just not worth it.
So I asked one of my buddies about it. Are all the episodes like that? There was more sex than action! I thought this was an action/adventure, not a smut show.
And he offered an interesting observation:
“you tend to be very upset about sex on TV, but you’re alright with violence.”
And that got me thinking. A couple hundred un-involved people died on the airplane in that movie. And what message comes across from the show? Here is a way to solve your problems, shoot this guy and blackmail him, break into this, etc. etc. Jesus taught us to solve our problems differently, just like He told us not to commit adultery.
It gets me thinking about the whole nature of entertainment and escape. I have a lot of stress relieved by escaping into other worlds and watching people do things that are exciting and amazing, but at what cost? I get an even bigger escape and thrill from diving into my Bible and discovering wonderful and unimaginable things in God’s Word.
“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,”
(2Tim 3:16 NIV)
“Go up to the land flowing with milk and honey. But I will not go with you, because you are a stiff-necked people and I might destroy you on the way.”
When the people heard these distressing words, they began to mourn and no one put on any ornaments.”
(Ex 33:2-4 NIV)
The people just got done turning all of their gold earrings and ornaments into a golden calf, and then God struck them with a plague as they travelled onward. So now they hear that God isn’t going with them and nobody put on any ornaments.
That’s almost funny.
“oooh! Remember? God doesn’t like our earrings. Moses took what we made with our earrings and burned it up, ground up the ashes, dumped it in water and made us drink it because he hated our earrings so much!”
This one is right up there with people sleeping together and when they realize that it’s wrong, instead of exploring how they can have a pure relationship together, they say “We’re going to get married to make it right.”
But what if getting married to each other isn’t right?
What else have we been rebuked for, or corrected of, and instead of seeing what God said, we look at some totally unrelated thing as evil, and we got rid of it, or we baptized it and made it Christian (ie. violent Christian children’s super-heroes who quote the Bible while they beat up the ugly, dentally-challenged bad guys.)
Let’s try to listen closely to the real things God is cleaning out of us. The problem wasn’t the earrings. The problem was the people giving up on God and turning their earrings into a calf and worshipping it and giving it credit for something God did.
God told them to take off their ornaments before they went on. I wonder if God took them away so that none of them would even have a remaining symbol of what they had done. Later on, those ornaments would be beaten down and shaped into the ARK OF THE COVENANT!
I could explore that more, but I’m out of time! Fill in the rest with comments!
The impulse in our world when faced with tension is to come up with the seven
steps or the formula so that if you do things in the right order the tension will
go away. But that doesn’t always work. One of the marks of someone who has
experienced significant growth in their soul is their ability to live in the midst
of tension.
Rob Bell, in his newest book, which to avoid bad Google links or ads I will call SG.
