Mechanoissues

(Pre-note to reader: This was one of my submission pieces to Blistered Thumbs when they first asked for Culture Contributors. Hope you enjoy!)

(Note to reader: parts of this story are true, and a few of them have been humorously exaggerated for the sake of making the most of my Jenn's oh-so-infamous red-headed temper flares. She really does understand my gaming habit, even if she doesn't understand it, and she's been more than supportive. Just wanted you to know she's not really a wench.)

"It's a robot chicken. How is this cool?"

My girlfriend's tone showed her disparaging attitude toward my favorite pixelated addiction. Her left eyebrow scrunched down, and I could almost swear her hair turned a darker shade of red as she contemplated the notion that I would rather spend my time running around on a noisy, dilapidated "robot chicken" than say, go shopping, watch a chick flick, or (heaven forbid) go line dancing. I tried to explain myself, but not to much avail:

"M’dear, it's a mechanostrider, and..."

Oh, fudge. Good job, Aaron. Do the geek rant, do it like you mean it, insist on the full and proper names of things like a Trekkie talking about Next Generation with his mom, and cement your place as a dweeb (albeit lovable) in her mind. You get a gold star. She, like most females that see a chink in the grammar armor, took full advantage of this, and fired back her retort:

"IT'S A CHICKEN, AARON. A STUPID CHICKEN. YOU'D RATHER SPEND TIME WITH A CHICKEN THAN WITH ME? I SEE HOW IT IS. I SEE HOW IT IS."

"...izza mechanostrider..."

"CHICKEN."

And with that, my small, beautiful bundle of fury flounced off to talk with the rest of my family, leaving me with my ego in the proverbial dumpster, and my mechanostrider rumbling in the midst of the Trade District. It almost seemed to be cowed by her statement, its smoky fluctuations almost seemed to sink to a saddened level. I put a supportive finger on top of my poor, trusty steed, shaking and depressed after such a callous insult.

"It's okay, you'll always be a mechanostrider to me."

Softly as I said it, I should have never underestimated the power of my girlfriend's hearing.

"IT'S A CHICKEN, AARON WINFIELD WAITE, A STUPID ROBOT CHICKEN THAT YOU'D RATHER SPEND TIME WITH THAN YOUR FAMILY! IT'S ONLY A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE YOU LOSE YOUR JOB, LIVING ON JALEPENO POPPERS AND CRAPPING YOURSELF SO YOU CAN STAY IN A BIG GROUP THINGY!"

"...izza raid..."

"I HEARD THAT, YOU DORK!"

Ah, young love...

Well Done, Good And Faithful Retweeter (Being A Christfollower Instead of a Christian)

If you ascribe to the Christian belief, and you are a part of the social networking juggernaut/productivity slayer known as Facebook, you may have had your news feed assaulted with a status something like this:

"Why are you such a bad person, when you claim to be a good person? Why do you mess up, and you shouldn't? You wanna make up for it? Post this in your status, and Jesus will like you again. 99% percent of people won't repost this. If you don't repost this, Jesus will deny you in front of God and the devil will chase you with a pitchfork for the rest of eternity. Now doesn't that make you feel bad?"

Now, I know that various groups and organizations use something similar for their ends (and trust me, it's annoying), but it doesn't aggravate me nearly as badly as when Christians use it. It's a Pharisee move, a ploy to make your status holier-than-thou.

And yet, many of us fall for it, and not just on Facebook, either. It's just a symptom of an all-encompassing disease of legalism. This bravado, this front we place to guard our broken hearts is prevalent in our everyday lives.

Think about it.

When's the last time you messed up in public, and you felt you needed to make up for it?

You swore, so you need to join the choir to purge yourself of the terrible words.

You lied, so you need to throw yourself into the youth ministry to cover your faux pas.

You cheated on your taxes, so you feel guilted into volunteering at the soup kitchen.

You know what the biggest problem people have with Christianity?

Inconsistency.

We are one person in the pulpit, another at work, and another at home. People have no idea what to think of us, because we are so many different people that they can't lock the down the Jesus we're supposed to represent. We feel that if we admit we have problems, we will tarnish the image of God, and so we (sometimes unassumingly) become two-faced. Instead of working out of a love for God, we work for His grace.

No wonder so many people hate God.

If I thought God was a dishonest, lying, cheating, raping disaster of a Deity, I'd hate Him, too.

As the song "Sanctuary Hum" by Project 86 states, "God save us, God save us from Your chosen ones."

Grace sets Christianity apart from other religions.

We don't have to work for it; we inherit it. We don't have to be perfect; we're perfected in the sight of God. We don't have to pay for our sins; our sins are paid for.

And yet, we flaunt that grace. We step on it, we desecrate it, we spit on it, we defy it, we are entirely ungrateful wretches. How? We try to work for the grace we have accepted as free instead of humbly opening our lives its changing power. We revel in our sins instead of confessing and turning from them.

I would know.

I am one of those wretches.

I fight with my sinful nature everyday. I fight the Aphrodite of lust. I fight my own building anger. I fight the urge to throw it all away, to give up on this narrow road and leave it all behind me. I want to destroy those that bring me down, I want to be bitter and spiteful, and I hold the guilt of past misdeeds in my heart far too often.

But I strive for consistency, to not hide my problems, but to boast in the fact that God's not done with me yet. Even though I may stumble, I will get back up because of the strength that God gives me every single day.

I am not perfect. No one follows Christ perfectly. No one ever will.

The problem comes when we use that as an excuse, a crutch.

"I'm always going to be this way, but at least God will save me in the end."

Christianity isn't a crutch for weak people.

Christianity isn't a bandage, a heal-all for the broken life.

Christianity doesn't make your life peachy.

Christianity is a commitment to the God that saves you, a commitment that draws strength from the God that upholds you, a love that can overcome any hatred this world heaps on you.

Christianity isn't for the frail.

I hate to break it to you, but Christianity is hard.

But in spite of the challenge, we need to be consistent. Our lives should be open, vulnerable, and transparent. We don't want our hearts hidden behind church doors, like we're perfect people in a perfect place, but people changed and motivated by the Spirit.

If we hide our sins behind our deeds, we lose our witness.

Let's be honest.

We fall.

We break.

We fail.

We get crushed by the weight of our stresses.

But greater is He that is in us than these temporary setbacks.

If Christians would strive for God's perfection instead of striving to appear perfect, I think we wouldn't be the laughingstock of society.

A hypocrite is someone that claims to have grace, and doesn't live by it.

A true Christfollower is someone that claims to have grace, acts on it, and doesn't hide the fact that they're not quite there yet, that they NEED that grace.

We should be stretching out a helping hand, not a using the Bible and the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as a way to plague someone's life with countless rules and regulations.

To quote Rob Bell's controversial yet fascinating book Velvet Elvis, do we know what we're doing with the Bible?

We have been using the Bible to create a prison for both ourselves and those we wish to save, yet we're surprised when no one wants anything to do with us. Who wants to be saved into a prison?

I want to end this with a few questions.

Jesus said to come as you are.

So why on earth do we feel the need to put on the proverbial fig leaves whenever we approach Him? Why throw up a facade when He knows our hearts? Why do we desecrate His grace by trying to earn it? Why do we devastate the guilty, and not the guilt?

Why do we live as if we are offering a burden to the world instead of life more abundant?