Welcome to K-ADM. All Adam, All The Time

I've been thinking a lot about Blue Like Jazz. Again.

It's probably my favorite book right now (wow, that sounded so Napoleon Dynamitish). I think I've been thinking about it because I loaned my copy to my brother-in-law for he to read on his family vacation at Hilton Head. He's an amazing guy whose life has changed in huge ways since I met him. He was raised Catholic and pretty much turned away from the church for a long time, but the past three years or so we have seen he and his family start attending a church, then going to a Sunday School, then teaching the Sunday School, then co-leading the huge summer VBS they have, then leading men's accountability groups, etc.

Now I want to entice him over to the dark side - the emergent side, that is. So I'm hoping this book does the trick.

Anyway, I've been thinking a lot about Blue Like Jazz, especially when Don Miller talks about how almost all of our time is revolving around ourselves - what we want to do, where we want to go, how people will react to us in this situation or that situation. I honestly believe (as Miller does), that the injustice we see in the world today, as well as the past sins America has endured (slavery, etc.) all is based on the fact that we are preoccupied with ourselves, and that is the root of all evil.

There's a great story about G.K. Chesterton (I'm reading Heretics and Orthodoxy right now; his works remind me a lot of C.S. Lewis books that aren't Narnia related - chew slowly, word by word, sentence by sentence - then rechew four more times, ask yourself if you've properly digested those words - and then chew them a couple more times just to make sure). Some newspaper/magazine/periodical wrote some famous authors to ask them to come up with an answer to this question: What's wrong with the world today? Most answers came back as lengthy responses, full of reasons. Chesterton's came back with two words, and two words only: "I AM."

I am what's wrong with the world. Actually, I and 6 billion other "I's".

I think another reason I'm thinking about this is that I read a very disturbing Time Magazine article. By the way, I subscribed to Time for $1.95 for eight issues, and it opened up their entire archive to me - articles from 1922 to the present. Pretty cool stuff. For example, I looked up the word "momentum" in the archive, since our theme for this Sunday at church is "Maintaining Momentum", and the first time the word is used in Time Magazine is in 1922 in an article about President Woodrow Wilson. Pretty cool...

Anyway, the article I read was about how there are a ton of websites that are actually encouraging young girls to be anorexic or bulimic. I am not going to post any names of those websites, but it is appalling to me that these websites are out there. Most of them are designed and run by college age girls who are anorexic or bulimic. The creator of one of them is a 19 year old college student who has been anorexic since 2002 and "is quite candid about her belief that an eating disorder is less a disease than a lifestyle choice - a decision to pursue perfection." On these sites, girls as young as 10 share tips for losing weight, tricks for hiding the signs of malnutrition, and other incredibly scary advice.

My heart breaks for these women (and girls) who give in to these lies. I wonder if there are any websites run by Christ-followers who are devoted to helping these women change their idea about what it means to be perfect.

But I can't judge them. I think about myself all the time too. I don't express it in how I eat (or don't eat), but it gets expressed in other ways. I'm pretty good about throwing "pity-parties" for myself; thankfully I don't invite anyone but my wife to them (who is gracious enough to hear me whine about my life, and then of course has to remind me that what I am going through at the time isn't really that bad. I think she keeps getting her quotes from Notting Hill, but she does honestly try to listen and help.)a

My "life verse" (I really don't know what that means, but I hear about it all the time) is John 3:30, which says "I must decrease, He must increase." These words were first spoken by John the Baptist in response to questions about he being the Messiah or not. John realized that life wasn't about him. It was about the one whose place he was preparing, Yeshua. (I've been using that way of saying Jesus for awhile now, because I like how it sounds). If I can move from liking that verse a lot to actually living out what that verse is saying, I think my preoccupation with myself would slip away and be replaced with a preoccupation for God and the things of God.

Anthony, in his blog, reminded me of that great quote "Break my heart O God with the things that break Yours." I'm sure, Lord, that my preoccupation with my self is one of those things.