Shoot The Moose

Didn't go fishing yesterday - we still had too much shopping to do. A few observations:

Big buffets are the only place I can go that I don't feel fat.

I really wish Middle Tennessee had a Barnhill's Buffet. It's like a poor man's Golden Corral, and the food is always great. As it stands, the nearest one is in Jackson, TN.

I think I'm at a crossroads in my life healthwise, I'll tell you more about it next week.

Pensacola feels like Murfreesboro to me.

Did you know that former WKRN personality Tom Siler is the weatherman at the local Pensacola TV station?

OK, a new direction:

Sorry I'm late with this (as you can tell I've been a little distracted down here). All day yesterday I had this post by Katherine Coble running through my mind. A small quote:

There are no holiday songs about a scared twelve-year-old girl having her innards ripped out while lying in the stink of a barn. There are no joyful songs about cutting (or biting) the cord and looking for water to wash the gunk from the crying baby, about wrapping him in an old towel and putting him in an overgrown dog dish.

The rest is along the same lines. I want to make it perfectly clear, I am not criticizing this line of thinking (especially when it comes to the later suffering of Christ) - I believe that it is good to fully appreciate the sacrifice our Lord made for each of us. Many times we mouth the words, but we do not really give much thought to what it really means.

But the implication of this kind of thinking is that the faith of most who call themselves Christian is superficial or weak. As a friend of mine once said, "A mile wide and an inch deep". BUT, I think the need for stark realism when thinking of the life of Jesus, while admirable, is not a requirement for true faith, and I'll tell you why. I'm sorry if some of you might have heard these arguments before. Let's go back a few steps first, shall we?

When Mel Gibson released The Passion of the Christ, I noticed something very strange: most Christians were moved in a life-changing way, most non-Christians found the movie to be absolutely horrible. I asked myself "why", and the answer I came up with surprised me: vacation slides.

(I'm old enough to remember slides, if video works better for you, use that analogy). Have you ever noticed how, when you're watching someone else's vacation slides (or videos), it's incredibly boring? But the people showing them are all starry eyed, like they are watching an Oscar caliber performance? Well, that's because THEY have an emotional connection to those images: they feature people they know and love, a special time, a special memory. To outsiders, there is no such connection.

So it was with The Passion. For Christians, it featured someone we knew, someone we spoke to every day, some one who knew us more intimately than anyone else. We felt every emotion exponentially because we were watching it happen to a member of the family. (the very HEAD of the family, indeed).

That leads us to the question at hand. Thinking of stark realism when thinking of the birth (or life) of Jesus is unthinkable, because you just don't do that with Family.

When you celebrate your mother's birthday, do you reflct on how she tore up your grandmother's innards? Do you think of your siblings having bowel movements? Do you let your thoughts dwell on the thought of your own parents having sex?

No - this is what we do with those we love - we idealise them, we never dwell on those base things that are part of being human. We acknowledge the humanity of our family, but by no means do we dwell on it. Certainly by the time they are gone and we remember them, the parts of their lives that make them fully human are long forgotten, only the idealised memories.

And this is a good thing.

So, although I sort of agree with Kat, I thought I'd offer an explaination why people do this with Jesus. I hope I've been coherent. I haven't yet had enough coffee.

About to leave to go Fishing in Fort Walton Beach - if there are any pictures, I'll post 'em later.