Politics of Perfection

Our lives are a canvas of stories that are told from our actions and events that either happen to us or we make happen and sometimes stuff just kind of happens that we neither plan nor could have a hope of making happen primarily because they are just too awesome to dream up. My good friend Ricky was relating to me a story that happened to him not long ago in his home town. He was apparently driving and chatting with his girlfriend when he said to her “oops looks like I’m being pulled over, I’ll call you back shuga”. Well, he DID manage to call her back, but it was about 17 hours later. It seems that his driver’s license had expired previously without his knowledge and when the deputy pulled him over, he was immediately arrested and taken into custody. I was blown away by the decision of the officer because I’d never heard of an arrest being made for what seems to be such a minor offense, but he was booked into jail and everything.
I found out about the story somewhere in the middle when his girl texted me asking for prayer because she had no idea of what was going on because he was arrested after he hung up… needless to say I was freaking out, Rick is a pretty humble guy, but as far as men of God go… he is the Apostle John in my book.
Well…I found out the next day when he told me about the story that it really was a divine thing, his arrest I mean. It turns out, he was placed in a holding cell with a guy who was a gang member and the guy had lived a pretty rough life. He related to my buddy how he had been kicked around all his life, typical deal, no family, street dwelling upbringing, never heard about the Love of God, probably a really great guy, but all he knew was take from others and selfish living because of the way he was raised. Rick… being Rick was just real with the guy and didn’t judge him or look down on him with some moral haughtiness of religion; he just spoke to him like he does everyone… with the love of God in his words. The guy listened and began to question my buddy and wanted to know of his kindness and why God was so good. The funny part is when Rick was getting ready to be brought in front of the judge; the guy thanked him for his words and actually gave Rick a hug. A gang member! I laughed out loud when Rick told us of his ordeal… that is sooo just like God to let it happen like that. The real kicker of the story is when he talked to the judge who was apparently “cornfuzzlated” (as my friend Lisa says) about Rick’s arrest. The judge wanted to know WHY he was being detained, because apparently it’s not an offense to be put in cuffs over. He was given his things and released. Like Peter or Paul, Rick ran to tell his friends and share with much exuberance about how awesome it was to be used of God like that. It didn’t shock any of us because Rick’s just that kind of dude.
I find it very interesting that in the midst of our semi cruddy lives, God is able to stick his finger in the middle of the muck and pull out a pearl.
I live my life most days like many others trying to make the awkward pieces of the puzzle fit together with very little success. I have those mountaintop experiences where I’m smiling and high fiving everyone around me, but they are vastly outnumbered by my screw ups that so encumber most of us. Most days are filled with hustling from place to place to find comfort to the need to fill up the brokenness with the love of others, or the need for money or endless business for the sake of being busy. Most everyone has a sense of who they are and when I am real with myself and God and I mean REAL, I am slapped in the face with just how broken I really am. Most of my friends are completely undone when I do this because they think I’m just being down on myself and I love them so dearly for their words but I don’t live in a la la land of grandeur about my being better than I really am. I don’t look at others with a microscope wondering about them either, but I do know we all seem to find a place of acceptance for who we are out of self preservation because if we didn’t we’d go out of our minds fretting over our troubles.
Politics are king and we are all masters of it whether we know it or not. Very rare are the times when we run across someone who is just a really good person who hasn’t polluted their lives with selfish virtues and lies and doesn’t have to keep their closets protected to keep the world from finding out just who they really are. Some are better than others at putting on a great front and with that skill comes great acceptance in our fallen world, but for those who are real or simply broken by life in the dark alley of sin, the world stands in the street clucking their critical judgments and calling out what a fool they are for being found out.
Christ never came to make bad people good…. He came to make dead people live. If we read our bibles instead of letting someone regurgitate what it says from a pulpit, we find that Jesus never criticized people who were not “church folk”. In fact… the religious people usually drew his ire because of their haughty actions and lack of grace for those God loved. Our belief in God is not nor has it ever been a call to a higher morality or judgment of anyone. It is a place where we are all little kids together and our father comes home with his tie undone and grabs the football to chuck to us and smother us with his love and acceptance and a gentle ear to hear of the bugs we stomped and the jungles we explored behind the neighbors back yard with our sticks and rocks as weapons. God is love….period. His whole existence is to give himself away and I long to be more like my buddy Rick who finds the biggest smiles in life when he gets hugs from gang members in a jail who for the first time in life encounter Jesus in the brokenness of who we are. Rick will be the first to tell you that God loves using broken people to love on those who need to hear of his love. It’s not the clean cut and perfect… it’s those who are simply willing to be used. ; )