Looking for contentment

If we’re searching for something we can find justification or even validation for it most anywhere.  I did that searching for contentment this week.  It’s always been one of those things that’s been elusive.  I wasn’t raised with much materially, so I’ve always thought I was trying to compensate somehow. I still don’t have much.  Sometimes I secretly wish a close friend or relative would win a PowerBall or MegaMillion and throw me a bone or two.  After all, it’s illegal for a Bapticostal to gamble, right?

So I’m preparing a talk for this weekend and the topic I was given was “the family as the primary disciple-maker.”  No problem.  Deuteronomy 6 was a good starting point.  Plenty of material there.  After a little study, I just seemed like I needed to go to the Ten Commandments.

I became transfixed and distracted from my subject matter.

I read the Decalogue and reread it.  I had already read it like a thousand times.  I even had most of them memorized.  (You may be able to quote them all without a lot of mental gymnastics, but I’m not you, OK?)

For the first time I saw the Ten Commandments as a statement of how to be content as a human being.  Adam and Eve weren’t content.  We haven’t been content since then.  In God’s infinite wisdom he knew we needed something to show us how to live as the human beings we were created to be.  The radical minimum standard of human behavior included, even if inferred, our need to have a character that includes contentment.

Be content with a Creator God alone.
Be content that I can’t successfully craft Him in my image or any other image.
Be content with a God that is indescribable instead of throwing His name around loosely.
Be content with completely unplugging and spending time with the Creator one day each week.
Be content with my parents and I’ll actually live longer.
Be content and I won’t get angry enough or careless enough to kill someone.
Be content with my wife.  Discontentment here just causes a lot of pain and misery for a lot of people.
Be content with your BlackBerry Pearl and PowerBook G4.  Contentment keeps me from getting arrested.
Be content to keep my mouth shut.  Let other people make themselves look stupid with gossip, lies, and slander.
Be content with my house that doesn’t have a media room.  I’ve got HDTV and a PS3. A servant or two might be nice…sorry.

It was a good study for me.  It wouldn’t get an “A” from my hermenutics professor but he’s probably already content.

I’m still working on it.  I’m content with being a created being, but I’m getting an iPhone 3Gs when my contract rolls over in November.  Just sayin’…

Marriage stats that will blow your mind

One of the most interesting sites on the Internet there is to survey the popular view of American culture is at SoulPancake.com.  I

follow the site on  Twitter as well as Rainn Wilson, one of the site’s editors and Dwight on “the Office.”  It’s not a mainstream Christian site, so if you visit it and start asking me why I frequent the site I won’t respond to you.  It’s designed for dialogue, not for Christian devotion.  Anyway…

SoulPancake.com asked the question, “WHEN DID MARRIAGE BECOME AN OUTDATED CONCEPT?”  I personally thought it was a great question to ask.  I’m pretty interested in the whole marriage thing anyway.  So I put my two cents in.  I did so with the help of a really great document that’s chuck full of great statistics.  One of the stats that absolutely blew me away was how cohabitation has become a norm in American culture.

Major props go out to The Association of Marriage & Family Ministries.  They twittered the doc so I’m guessing they wanted to make it public.  I have an email into them asking permission in order to be ethical and all.  I’m taking the liberty of posting it for your viewing pleasure/displeasure.  You can download it here.

Perez Hilton’s and Miss California’s “firestorm”

So Perez Hilton, the celebrity blogger, asked a question to Carrie Prejean (Miss California) pertaining to California’s same sex marriage law and followed up with, “”Do you think every state should follow suit? Why or why not?”. Not only did he say that her answer (born from her values and spoken with authenticity) cost her the title, he then vilified her by calling her a “dumb *%$@#”

“If you can’t say anything good…“
Let me start by saying that I think the structure of Mr. Hilton’s question was solid. Great setup, good application, and then a qualifying wrap. My appreciation for his interview skills and as a reputable blogger and especially a beauty pageant judge pretty much ends there.

“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.“
So it seems that just about anyone can be a judge at a beauty pageant. I mean after all, I could be one. I blog. I’m a guy. I’m a pretty good judge of beauty (you reading this Michelle?). I am a student of popular culture and have been told I have some mad relationship skills. I haven’t even gotten to my signature square glasses and my ever evolving “doo”. My question is, “When do I get my phone call to get that gig?”

The answer will be, “Never”. Mostly because I’m happily married and Michelle would slap me into next year. Another stellar reason is that just because I have the same qualifications as Mr. Hilton doesn’t mean that I should take the gig. In fact, even though I have one more qualification than Mr. Hilton I shouldn’t take the gig. You see, I’m not gay and he is. I have one more qualification than Mr. Hilton does in this instance.

Out of sheer curiosity I ask the question; Why would a beauty pageant ask an openly gay man to be a judge for a clearly heterosexual event? That’s like inviting a livestock judge go to the Westminster Dog Show. It just doesn’t make sense. Don’t get me wrong, I’m far from homophobic. Quite the contrary. I have gay friends. It just seems stupid to have a gay man judge a beauty pageant.

What’s worse is to have an inconsiderate, under-qualified judge at a competition that’s clearly lost any relevance that it could possibly have ever possessed.

Oh yeah, the whole just because you can doesn’t mean that you should thing comes from an ancient spiritual text that says something like “everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial.” Smoke some of that.

As a side note, I’m positive that if someone called Mr. Hilton a “@#&^%$# whatever” for responding with his clearly biased opinion of Ms. Prejean’s answer, he would use his media leverage to smear someone else.

The constant among many variables

Sixty eight year old Linda Wolfe has been married twenty-three (23) times. You can read the full story here. It’s an intriguing piece, to be sure.

When people move from job to job, church to church, relationship to relationship, and marriage to marriage I become Dr. “Ducky Mallard of NCIS. I dissect and inquire why a person has so many relationship problems. People that move through relationships seemingly on a whim are usually oblivious as to why they “just needed to move on”. For them, it’s easier to change the human landscape than to address the issue of why it is that they have so many relationship problems.

When people have been married at least twice and they come to me for counseling because they’re contemplating going for number three, I ask them the following question…

“What is the constant among the variables?”

More on this later, but if you know a serial monogamist you might want to help them do the relationship math.

Just a thought…

Bravo, Prince!

Prince is giving away, yes, giving away his new CD as part of a covermount. Nice. He’s ticking off record retailers by doing so. I say, they need to get over it. It will probably be a catalyst to him selling even more copies than if he had gone the regular distribution route.

Maybe there’s another monster hit like Purple Rain on this new project. I hope so.