Why I Wanted to Be Bob Barker

It’s kind of cool growing up in an entertainment town. Nashville is not as big as L.A. or New York, but there tends to be something happening every night of the week. And it’s usual to run into some celebrity when you are out on the town. And if you don’t run into someone famous, you will probably meet a bunch of people who think they are famous or are trying to become famous. At times, it seems like everyone here is a “musician.” I think 82% of the males in this town between the ages of 18-35 claim to play the guitar.

I wanted to be famous; well i used to.

I thought about becoming an actor. I think I’d be really good. I’d be good at pretending to be someone other than myself. I could get used to making a lot of money. I also wanted to be a TV game show host. I really wanted Bob Barker’s job on The Price is Right. I wanted his 70s style microphone/wand thing. And all of the old ladies who come up on stage and kiss me on the cheek, I mean who wouldn’t want that job?

If I became famous, I’m afraid I would get too wrapped up in myself. Maybe that’s why God hasn’t let it happen. I think most people have a desire to be somebody. I think most people wouldn’t mind being recognized for what they do. We all, in some way, seek the attention of others. We all have our own times when we say, “Look at me. Look how cool I am. Look at how attractive I am. Look at how funny I am. Look at how much higher I am on the social ladder than you.” Most people in some way struggle with vanity.

Honestly, I can’t turn on MTV anymore.

I really just get bothered by everything on there. Cribs. Seriously? If I watch this, I just become envious. I need a sub zero fridge filled to the brim with nothing but Crystal and a garage filled with way too many cars. All of those “reality” shows about beautiful people and their day to day drama. I just really don’t care about who broke up with who. I can’t even get a date myself, why would I care about somebody’s love life who lives in a house with 7 strangers? It seems like nothing but a bunch of people promoting themselves and telling me if I want to achieve a higher status I need to live like they are living.

Self promotion. It’s the idea of me showing others how great I am. You know, all of my writings, in all honesty I give credit to God. And if anything positive is taken from them I truly believe its God’s doing and not my own. But at the same time there is something in me that wants people’s attention. There is something in me that wants the approval of others.

It’s a struggle. Constantly.

I always have to evaluate my motives because I don’t want to get too caught up in “how great I am.”

And there’s this idea that if you don’t have this certain product, or you don’t look like this certain person, or that you don’t make this amount of money…well then you just are not that important. And most of us fall for it because we want to be important.

I like what John the Baptist said about Jesus. “He must become more important. I must become less important.” He had the right idea.

It’s about Him.

It’s not about me. It’s not about how great I am. It’s not about how good I look. It’s not about how much money I have. It’s not about how well I can sing or play the guitar. It’s not about how well I can write or how many things I can get published. It’s all vanity and it all leads to nowhere.
I want to decrease more often, so He can increase more often.

Christian Nudists

I find the stroy of Adam and Eve pretty fascinating. There only being two people on Earth. No one else. No bosses to watch over you at work. No bad drivers on the road. The activity of people-watching (which is a favorite of mine) hadn't been invented yet. Imagine living here with just your significant other. Soulmates. I doubt jealousy was that big of a deal in their relationship. I mean, really who else was there for your mate to talk to? To top it all off, they're naked. In the buff. Letting it all hang out. It wasn't dirty or sinful. Pure. Without shame. No embarassment. Just, "This is me and this is you. We are naked and unashamed."

(Actually this reminds me of an amusing article I read the other week about Christian nudists.)

I wear clothes sometimes. I mean, usually I have to. I probably wouldn't have a job if I didn't. This leads me to the question, why do we wear clothes? Forget the aspect of sexuality and lust. Why do we really wear clothes?

Most of us have things we don't like about our body. Let's be honest. I work out 4 days a week, but I don't think of myself as having this perfect physique. We are self conscience beings who want to hide our flaws. That's why we wear clothes. Who determines exactly what flaws are, though? Who says that looking a certain way is desirable?

Who tells me how to be me?

That's the main question I am getting at. Who tells me that in order for me to be acceptable I have to act this way or dress this way?

Anytime I give someone the ability to determine who Matt is, I give them authority that is not theirs. My senior research paper in college was on the negative effects of advertising. Chiseled faces, six-pack abs, big boobs, and a model like bodies apparently sell products. They also sell us lies. They say, "This image is the standard. This is what you should wear. This is how you should act. This is what you should look like." And we fall for the trap. We give someone else the ability to define who we are.

And it's not just physical things. We have all adjusted who we are to impress someone at some point in our lives. Most guys will do it at some point for some girl and most girls will do it at some point for some guy. I have tried to adjust my personality at some point to try to impress a girl. It didn't work. It never does. I once knew a girl who dated a friend of mine and she agreed with everything he said. She didn't have any opinions of her own. This really annoyed me.

Adam never had GQ magazine to tell him how to look. Eve never had an image of a Playboy model to live up to. So what or who defined them? Adam couldn't define Eve because she was the only woman he had ever met. She was his standard for womanhood. And he was hers for manhood. So how were they defined?

God defined Adam and Eve. He created them in His image. He determined their true identity. He instilled in them the standard to live up to. No one else. Just Him. Eugene Peterson translates it best in The Message when he says, "God spoke: 'Let us make human beings in our image, make them reflecting our nature' ...God created human beings; he created them godlike, reflecting God's nature."

I was created to reflect Him. I wasn't created to reflect the image that's on front of a magazine. I wasn't created to reflect a different personality than the one He uniquely gave me. I was created so that He could define my life. I want to stop having standards for others. I don't want to think that for someone to be higher on my own list of importance they have to look a certain way or act a certain way or even make a certain amount of money. (This is not to say physical attraction is not important. God gave us physical attraction to others for a reason. But physical attraction is from God and not outside things telling you what is beauty and what is not.) I want to see the reflection of God in others.

Naked and unashamed they were. Because God defined Adam and He defined Eve.

Seeking Counsel

I began grad school the other day. A new chapter in my life. A chapter that I have wanted to start for the past year and a half. Now it is actually happening.

It was around 1 1/2 years ago when i felt like I heard God telling me to pursue this path of counseling. It wasn't like I awoke one morning to His thunderous voice telling me to pursue a career of helping people work through their problems. A friend would toss out a random comment like, " Hey, you'd be a great counselor." Family members would ask me for advice on problems they were dealing with. And as these things were happening, a interest inside me began to grow for this pursuit. I remember one day looking through a bunch of writings of mine and I realized that alot of them had to do with getting over problems and issues in my own life and what I have learned from them.

So I knew counseling was the path, but I had no idea where to begin. I knew I would have to go back to school, but I didn't know where. Now, let me say something. I wasn't exactly the model student during my undergrad years. I didn't fail any courses or anything. My grades were just average. I think I was more concerned with the social aspects of college. I guess I have changed alot since then. I like to read, and write, and learn, and think. And now that I have no social life, I will have alot more time to study. (okay. I have a social life, but it's not so great that it will cause me to study less.)

It was basically a series of God shutting and opening the right doors that lead me back to my undergrad university for grad school. Back when I decided I wanted to pursue counseling, my college didn't even have a graduate program in professional counseling. While trying to figure out where to go to school, they announced they were starting a program.

He provides.

And looking back now I can see how He has guided me to this new chapter over the last ten years. With all of the messed up things that came along with my parents divorcing, it's just a reminder to me that He can bring good things out of negative situations. He can bring life to the broken. He's in the redeeming business.

So that's where I am. I am actually looking forward to learning all of these new things. I'm not jumping-on-the-bed excited or anything, but I am looking forward to it. The other people in the class seem interesting too. Being around good people is always a plus.

I'm ready for this chapter. At least, I think I'm ready. He is good.

The Realness Of Being Fake

I read an article the other day. The article was about young adults who grew up going to church, but now they are in their 20s and they don’t go anymore. Catchy, right? The article went further than just saying that a bunch of twentysomethings are leaving the church. It said that a bunch of twentysomethings are leaving their faith.

I liked the article. I am not saying that I like the fact that many people my age are choosing not to have faith in God. I like that the article was written.

I am a twentysomething myself. Twenty-five, actually. So I am exactly a mid-twentysomething. I can relate to many things that were said in the article by the twentysomethings who no longer have faith in God. I mean, I still have faith and all, but I understand how they feel.

Mainly the article equates that the absence of faith in these young adults is due to a lack of discipleship in many churches. Other factors are explained such as: The Church is very good at instructing children and teenagers on what the right answers are, but does little to engage on applying the answers to everyday life.

Still, sometimes today I get tired of going to church. I grew up in the Bible Belt. I grew up going to a traditional, southern, conservative church. I know all about church. I love the Church as a whole. I love the sense of community and family that it promotes. But as I said earlier, sometimes I get tired of going to church.

In the article, a girl is interviewed about how she grew up in a Christian home (just like myself), she was very involved in her youth group (just like myself), and she attended a Christian club at her high school (I helped start one at my school). And to sum up the rest of her story, she lost her faith because due to a lack of fellowship with other believers after she moved. I have been there. Feeling disconnected. Sometimes it feels like I am there now. It’s hard not to feel disconnected when you are the only single guy in a couples Bible study class.

I feel I can read people pretty well. I am not saying that people are easy to understand. People are quite difficult. Christians are the hardest people to read though. There is not that much transparency in the Church. I know this because I am a Christian and being transparent is one thing I struggle the most with. I think this whole transparency issue, a lack of authenticity, is what caused me to stray away from the Church for a few years. I grew up seeing people put on their Sunday Church masks and I grew up learning how to put on my own. I grew up learning the difference between what’s right and what’s wrong, but I never learned why. I grew up being taught that the Church was supposed to be a community of believers experiencing life together (not just on Sundays), but I didn’t have that many people disciple me Monday thru Saturday.

To be honest, that’s one thing that still bothers me. When church gets to be about how many people we can get in the seats, or how many people can we get saved/baptized, or how many hands we can shake on Sunday mornings. (Honestly, I get annoyed by those hand-shakers who shake my hand every Sunday, but don’t even know my name.) When I look at the New Testament church, I see a family. People eating with each other, people encouraging each other during difficult times, people being REAL with each other. No masks of self-righteousness. No fakers. No phonies. Okay, maybe there were some churches that dealt with self-righteousness, but that’s not what church was intended to be.

Deep down, my desire is to just be real. I want to be the same on Sunday as I am on Friday night. I don’t want to pretend to be more spiritual than I am, or pretend like I have all the answers. I don’t want to pretend like everything is going great, when I feel just like giving up. I want to be transparent. I want to go to Bible Studies and Sunday school classes where I can wrestle over issues with others instead of another teacher telling me what’s right and what’s wrong. I want engagement. I want to engage.

I wanted to share this story from my high school years. I went through 3 youth pastors when I was a teenager. I remember when my parents split up that the youth pastor at that time didn’t even talk with me about it. I don’t have some grudge against him or anything. I am just stating that I felt overlooked. There was no connection, no engagement, and it really affected me negatively for awhile. There are so many people in the Church who are hurting and yet most of the time no one even knows about it. I’m not saying that pastors should deeply engage everyone. We would need many more pastors. I am saying that maybe I could help others if I took off my mask a little more and invested in others outside of church. Maybe we could all be a little more real. Then we wouldn’t be afraid to let down our guard and invest in each other any day of the week.

Christian Bowling (How I Created My Own Christian Bubble)

"Christian Bowling." I think I cringed a little bit last week when I heard the announcement at church about forming a team for a Christian bowling league. What exactly is Christian Bowling, was my first thought. Is it it like regular bowling, except with an added prayer before each roll of the ball? Instead of Rock and Roll playing on the jukebox, are there hymns belted out by a choir?

But in all seriousness, what makes Christian bowling...Christian?

I have no answer.

I know I don't like the thought of a Christian bowling league. To me, a Christian bowling league says, "We think we are too good to be in a regular bowling league, so we will form our own." I guess this shouldn't surprise me, though. We as Christians have been forming our own little 'Bubbles' for years. We have our Christian schools, our Christian colleges (which I even attened), our Christian music , our Christian radio stations, our Christian books, Christian tv stations, and even our "Christian" political leaders. (I thought the quotation marks around Christian were needed when talking about politicians.) It seems sometimes that we are more exclusive when we should be more inclusive. But I am not going to go off on a tangent here. I want to share about my own little bubble.

I know I have shared this before, but I wasn't too concerned with God for a few years during college. I mean I believed in God and all, but I was more concerned with what I wanted rather than what He wanted. I loved God, but He wasn't high on my priority list. Around the end of my college years, my priorities started to change. I started to change. God became more and more a priority in my life. I wanted to follow Him more and more. And with any change, you have to figure out what to do with the past?

I created my own Christian bubble. I guess because I had this past, and now I didn't want to be associated with anything from it. This includes people. I stopped hanging around with old friends. It's not that my old friends weren't Christian; they just were Christian enough. (whatever that means)

I am at a different place now, outside of the Christian bubble I created. I have found I can breathe easier out here. I don't have thoughts like, "Oh I can't go to a party because there will be drunk people there and I can't associate myself with that." I don't think, "I can't be friends with these people because they are not spiritual enough." I really don't care if other people see me hanging out in a non-Christian environment. As a friend recently wrote to me, "That's why I have found it so easy to enjoy the company of unbelievers...they know they are messed up and don't try to hide it...they are more real than we are...they don't flaunt being "more spiritual."

It's funny because I feel that for most Christians I am either too Christian or not Christian enough. (again, whatever that means.) I know that some Christians judge me because I don't think alcohol, dancing, and wearing jeans to church are sins. And on the other hand, some judge me because I am actually not afraid to say I love Jesus and I want Him to be my first priority.

I know I don't want to be in a Christian bubble again. I know I don't want to seperate myself from the rest of the world.

I just want to be more like Jesus.

I want to go places that the religious folk don't think I should go. And be friends with the people the religious folk say I shouldn't hang around. But I still want to be known as a man after God's own heart.

In the world, but not of it. Just like Jesus.

I want to be a follower of Christ in just a regular bowling league.