He grabbed his hard hat, keys, and what was left of his wallet, and headed out the door.  George Wikley emanated a complete sense of frustration at what was happening at his home this morning.  George woke up having to work like any other Saturday, and the idea of fighting with his wife AND teenage son wasn’t first on his “to do” list.

Let’s see, he thought to himself slamming the door of his 1950’s cape style house in Paxton, Massachusetts, They’re mad because I was too loud.  They’re mad because there was no food in the house for breakfast.  Gee, I wonder if there is anything else we can blame me for? I’m glad I wasn’t around for Pearl Harbor.

The problems George faced paled in light of hunger, AIDS, and famine in Africa, or war in several other parts of the world, or even financial difficulties that so many fought against right there in suburban U.S.A. because of layoffs and the economic breakdown.  No his problems stemmed from relationships.  He hated his wife, and he hated his son.

No, not really hated…but almost.

Communication at this point in the Wikley household consisted of asking George for money, asking George for more money, or swearing at George because he announced after the question (or sometimes before) that he had no money.  And so on a daily basis George yelled, screamed, and swore back, leaving him a zombie each time he walked out the door of his own house.

Thankfully this Saturday was sunny and cool, not really a normal late June day even in Massachusetts.  The last several weeks brought little but rain, rain, and more rain to his world, so if nothing else, today was a brief respite in the sky.  Thank you weatherman, he smiled as he opened the door of his Verizon truck the supervisor postion he held at the popular phone company allowed him to drive home.

After a few minutes of driving as the sun beat down on his face, the newness of the beautiful day wore off, and the clouds of his heart came flooding back to him, remembering the earlier fight with his family.  He transformed into a zombie again.  Realizing he needed gas before he drove in to get his orders for the day, he turned left instead of his usual right onto West Mountain St, then an immediate right onto W. Boylston St.

The Mobil gas station was the closest, so he drove in, got out of his truck, and started pumping gas.  Today he didn’t care what the environmentalists thought about the company.  It was the closest, and he would almost be late.  Plus his son was a newbie environmentalist, thanks to the local  “treehugger” club at the Wachusett School he attended.  He joked to himself, He always had the money sucking vampire traits of my wife, and the desire to change the world like me.  Sick combination.

Through the intense thinking going on in his mind today, he neglected to realize the pump kept stopping and he kept squeezing, causing the gas to eventually flow out onto his brown work boots.  That’s okay.  Brawn (his best friend at work) smells like gas every day at work. He jumped into his truck, turned the key, and began the short half a mile drive to work from this station.  He drove around the back of the gas station, and towards the exit deep in thought.

As he drove past the pump on the other side of the station, a women got out of the passenger side of a white GMC Sierra 1500, and leaned her arms on the truck bed, stretching her legs out a few feet into his driving path.  Besides the woman was blond, small, and beautiful, he had to get to work.  George always froze when he talked to beautiful women, so he decided instead to beep her out of the way.  Clearly her husband or boyfriend or whoever he was that was pumping the gas on the other side of the truck did not like the beeping of his woman from 4 feet away, because he moved around the front of the white truck and had a few words to say for George and his “stupid Verizon truck.”  But those were the only intelligible words he could understand as he drove out of the parking lot, and back the way he came.  So I guess I won’t tell that dumb idiot that he’s putting regular gas into a diesel engine.

George remembered when he used to care about people.  What they thought and who they were.  He remembered having a desire to help people and to do something important with his life, because as his priest used to say, “More bliss can be got by serving others than merely serving oneself.”  Yeah well, I wish I would have kept going to church and dragged my wife and kid along too.

George finally arrived at work thinking about what he used to be like and what he used to want. He parked next to Brawn as he always did, and the two walked in together as they always did.

“How ya doin bron (as George pronounced his best friends nickname)?”
“Oh, I’m great for a fat old man George!” Brawn responded.  But I’m about tired of  my wife and daughter.  You wanna trade families?

Last night I played basketball after life group.  My team had a game, and so I decided I would play in it.  I have tons of thoughts going through my head right now about the value of teamwork that I’m learning from this team, my life group, and my church in general, but I’ll save that for a later date.

We were bringing the ball down for the last time, the game was locked up, and we had successfully beaten our rival team (the Green shirts).  The buzzer sounded, and just then I turned around to see our senior statesman on the team being thrown down for no apparent reason by a green shirt boy wonder 25 years his junior.  Senior statesman, a man I greatly respect, was pretty mad when he scraped himself off the ground.  I was mad too, actually, as Green shirt boy wonder stared Senior Statesman down and mouthed the words “What’s his problem?”

“Well,” I thought to myself with immediate disdain for Green shirt wonder boy, “for no apparent reason you have just thrown a man 25 years your senior about 5 feet and down to the ground (and continuing in my thoughts I added), stupid Green shirt wonder boy.”

It is in these moments I wonder what to do.  Because I want to get up in his face and ask him why he didn’t shove me that far, to which of course he would say,  “I will” and the fun would be had by all.  Or I could let it play out, and just sit by and rejoice that we won the game.  But I really want to help our Senior Statesman out, plus I know I also have the back of Policeman Hercules on our team.  Also I don’t want to be like Alpha males Marine or Car Salesman. Yet the headline, “Pastor in Holden goes to jail for a public fighting display,” doesn’t sound so appealing either.

So it played out how it played out and I’m sitting here at my computer sharing with you the story of my evening, and I wonder, with all the honesty you can muster…

Just exactly how you would have let it play out?

I was talking to Steve earlier today about the recent mean-spirited blogs I’ve seen recently between Calvinists and Christ followers who are not Calvinists.  I’m not going to link to any of the blogs, but I find them quite ridiculous and they piss me off (which may indicate some needs in my own life), plus, I’m not looking for a lot of people getting on my back telling me how “I hate God because I feel this way” .  This is really just me thinking out loud.

I only share this because of the impact it has on Christian Culture.  I don’t think we have to agree with everyone who follows Christ and I’m not naive enough to believe that everyone who claims to “love God” is actually following Christ, but I’m having trouble finding evidence of where we are supposed to act unlike Christ towards other people in order to prove how much we know about Him.

And when people see the culture of Christianity as mean-spirited and divisive (even if it is in the name of truth), I don’t see God being glorified from that at all.  Maybe I’m blind, and maybe I’m mislead, who knows? 

I just wonder sometimes – whether I’m healthy, like I am now, or I’m sick and about to pass on to the afterlife – what’s the most important thing I could be doing as a part of a Christ following culture? 

Should I be fighting about his Word?

Or should I be living them out?

This article was a cultural thought written for Randy Elrod’s Watercooler Wednesday.