SCL

“We found a family of mice that nested inside the cushions of your couch, so we need to throw it away.”

That was what a woman on a recent television show said to a homeowner. This is the moment where the homeowner says, “Wow, I had no idea. Gross, a whole family? Ugh, let’s throw that out.” But because the show I was watching is called “Hoarders,” that wasn’t the response she gave. Instead, the old woman whose home was on the borders of being condemned said simply,

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“Promise me if you go on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, you’ll take me so I can sit in the audience.”

This is my father’s only request when it comes to the book release of Stuff Christians Like. I’ve never been on television. Two people attended the only meet and greet I’ve held. I’ve been assured by one of the biggest publishers in the world that Christian humor books simply do not sell. But I think that parents are required by DNA to hope. To believe that anything is possible if not down right probable.

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“Can I talk to you for a minute in a conference room?”

A co-worker asked me that a few weeks ago. My first thought was of course, “I’m about to get fired.” Even though this was a peer and not a superior, I still thought that maybe I was about to get the ax. Call me paranoid, I just assume that when a girlfriend says, “We need to talk,” they’re about to dump you and when someone at work asks to “talk to you for a minute,” they’re about to fire you. I admit, it’s a very sweaty existence I lead.

But when we went into the conference room, the one that smells like dry erase markers and disappointment, he turned to me and said something I wasn’t expecting, “I watched someone die yesterday.”

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In the 8th grade, the other wrestling team burst into laughter when I got on the scale in the locker room in my tighty whiteys because I was so skinny.

In the 9th grade, I shaved stripes into my eyebrows so that I would look more like Vanilla Ice.

In the 11th grade, I got dumped by a girl in a coat closet of a dance at the Polish American club in Worcester, Massachusetts.

In college, every frat rejected me.

I’m no stranger to failure and it’s many flavors, but what about you?

What if you fail?

What if that thing you want to do, just bombs? What if you get embarrassed? What if you leave a safe job for a new adventure and it’s all a big mistake and you regret every stupid minute that you thought you could do it and you end up gaining a lot of weight because you’re unemployed and eat macaroni and cheese for breakfast? (My summer of 2001.)

What if?

We worry about and that makes sense. I know right now, that if you’re like me, you wonder if you’re really doing what you were designed to do. You wait for the weekend and wonder if there’s a job where that wouldn’t happen. You wonder if there’s a mission or a goal or a journey you’re supposed to be on right now because such a small percentage of who you are, who you really are deep down is getting used at your day job.

And you think about trying something new, but that voice comes back in and you wonder,

“What if I fail?”

I wonder that too. The Stuff Christians Like book comes out in April and I sit down at night with my wife and talk about it not selling. At all. People have said that. Smart people with pleated pants and straight teeth have told me Christian humor books never sell. And I worry about that, about failing.

But I think as Christians, we have a duty, a responsibility, a call from on high to look at failure differently. So in the last few weeks I’ve come up with 3 new ways to answer the question, “What if you fail?”

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“Are you OK?”

That’s my wife’s polite way of saying, “Why are you being such a distant, distracted jerk right now?”

She said that to me about a week ago and she was right. I was distant. I was distracted. I was a jerk. Above all, I was surprised.

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If you change clothes in a handicapped bathroom stall at work, never start with your pants.

For some reason, people in other stalls freak out if you strip your pants completely off in a bathroom. I find it’s best to start with your shirt or sweater. Focus on your torso until the bathroom is empty and then change out of your jeans.

These are the valuable lessons that people like Max Lucado refuse to share, but not me. I’ll tell you everything, because right now, everything is weird.

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Please don’t be offended, but the Acuff family leaves vacations like bankrobbers fleeing the scene of a crime.

When we go on long trips or short weekend visits, we like to get up ridiculously early on the last day and beat the traffic home. I blame my upbringing. My family hit rest stops like a NASCAR pit crew. We timed our average miles per hour speed when we road tripped to Sunset Beach, North Carolina from Hudson, Massachusetts and sometimes I don’t think my dad even brought the car to a complete stop. My brothers and I would just tuck our shoulder and roll out into grassy medians like Hungarian circus performers, sprinting to the bathroom while my dad circled the parking lot.

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I’m a little terrified of my friend Nathan.

He’s not physically scary. I mean he’s kind of a brawny, weight lifting type of guy, much like myself if you’ve seen the video from Cross Point. And he has a breakdancing ministry in inner city Atlanta so clearly it’s not a pop n’ lock issue. It’s just that he tends to ask tough questions. He tends to say things that make me uncomfortable. And that’s exactly what he did at Willy’s a few weeks ago.

We went there for a burrito because unlike Chipotle they don’t charge you for chips. (At this point in the history of burrito consumption, I feel like charging extra money for chips is like a restaurant asking you to pay for the use of a fork. Boggles the mind really.) During lunch I was telling him that I felt like I had hit a spiritual wall. I was stuck. There wasn’t any one thing I could point my finger at, some neon issue I had jumped back into with both feet, but for some reason I just seemed off kilter.

After hearing me ramble for what probably felt like 19 years, Nathan asked me simply,
“Where is all this stuff going? Your quiet time, your study, your reading, your Bible work? Where is the outward expression of your faith? Who are you serving right now?”

Ahh come on. I don’t want tough questions. I want easy friendships where I show up and you show up and we tell each other how awesome we are. “You’re a fantastic Christian!” “No, you’re a fantastic Christian!” I don’t like questions like that.

But as I thought about what he asked, I was confronted with the reality that I really only want to follow the first and greatest commandment. Are you familiar with that one? In Matthew 22:37-38 a guy named Jesus says, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.”

I am down with that verse. When I read it, I think to myself, “Yes, that is what I am talking about! I will focus inward and learn to love the Lord with all my heart and my soul and my mind. This is fantastic. I can twist this into some sort of God-flavored self improvement course. This will be like a Biblically based version of that productivity book I’m reading right now, ‘Getting Things Done.’ I’ll find a quiet spot, cocoon myself in self effort and just go to town growing my faith in a little greenhouse of me.”

That’s what I want to do. But Jesus doesn’t stop thought there. I want him to. I want him to drop a hard period at the end of that sentence and move on to walking on water or multiplying fish with his bare hands. “End scene Jesus, end scene!” I want to shout. But He doesn’t get down that way. He follows verse 38 with this gem about the second commandment:

“And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Nards! Really? There’s a neighbor involved? Can’t I just go on a deep spiritual retreat to a cave in the desert where I grow a beard, and live alone as I work on my faith, perhaps keeping a wolf as my only companion? I’ll name him “Timber” after the one Snake Eyes had in GI Joe. Can’t I turn the Bible into a self help book and God into a self empowerment guru? Can’t this faith thing just be about me?

But it’s not. There’s a second half to that thought. There’s a neighbor and a call to love and an outward expression of faith and Nathan challenged me on it.

The truth is, I sometimes want my faith to be like a bonsai tree, the miniaturized versions of trees made famous in the Karate Kid movie. I want to manicure it and study it and prune it and move piece by piece around with tweezers, never once taking my eyes off the small little tree and refusing to admit there is a forest outside my window. Never once admitting that there are deep woods all around me. Never once realizing that I walk through groves of trees every day that need to be loved and served.

Is there an inward direction to faith? Is there a place for being deliberate about your heart and your mind and your soul? Without a doubt. I don’t think Jesus made a mistake when He called loving the Lord the most important commandment. I think the internal life is a critical part of our faith experience. But Jesus didn’t stop there. He didn’t end the thought with that foundation. He didn’t end the thought with a single tree. He jumped into the forest. He finished by calling us toward our neighbor. He ended by calling us toward outward love.

And whether I’m afraid or lazy or selfish or a million other things, I can’t escape from the fact that He wants me to have more than bonsai faith.

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Kanye West deserves less grace and forgiveness than I got.

I don’t know the exact amount, unfortunately the Bible’s not terribly clear on measurements. I mean sure, I know Goliath was six cubits and a span, everyone knows that, but when it comes to doling out grace, there’s not a clear form of measurement.

Is grace a liquid? In the songs people sing about God’s love it’s always in the form of water, “fall down like rain,” “wash over me,” etc.

So let’s say that Kanye West deserves one less gallon of grace and forgiveness than I got.

Or maybe a jug. It’s hard to say what the precise amount is but that’s what I was thinking when I heard he ruined Taylor Swift’s moment at the Video Music Awards. After he walked on stage, and interrupted the nervous teenager to tell her about another performer who deserved the award more than she did, a few thoughts popped up. I didn’t think about the whole situation a lot, on the Jon scale of thought I gave the incident more time than Salt and Vinegar Pringles but less than the new season of “So You Think You Can Dance.” But here’s what ran through my head:

“Kanye West always does that. He’s got a history of doing that kind of thing.”

“Kanye West probably did that on purpose, it was staged. He planned it.”

“Kanye West just wounded a teenager, a kid, that is horrible.”

“Anyone who supports him is dumb.”

“He’ll probably apologize but it won’t be real.”

And I felt pretty good hating on Kanye. I got a hit of that, “I’m not as bad as somebody else” drug. I felt better than him and told my wife the whole story with smugness.

But then I thought about it. That was a worst moment, staged or not, that was a mistake and I am so happy my worst mistakes were not televised.

Then I thought about Kanye the person, the son whose mom died. The broken man with a savior who is longing to see a glimpse of him on the road back to the farm. Then I thought about who I wanted to be in the prodigal son story, the older brother who condemns or the servant who helps plan the party? I know which one is easier. I know which one I usually run to. But this time I couldn’t.

Suddenly I didn’t like the first things I thought:

“Kanye West always does that. He’s got a history of doing that kind of thing.”
So do I. I’ve never committed a single sin, a single time. I am a repeat offender. I have a longer history with sin than Kanye does with running on stage at events. Have you ever repeated a sin more than once?

“Kanye West probably did that on purpose, it was staged. He planned it.”
My worst moments were planned. I didn’t fall down the stairs and suddenly find myself landing in a heap of unexpected garbage at the bottom. I made plans. I was deliberate. I set things up that at the time seemed to be what I needed. I did the things that crippled my life on purpose.

“Kanye West just wounded a teenager, a kid, that is horrible.”
He did and it’s inexcusable, but I wounded my own kids, not a 19-year old stranger. I hurt my own kids by working 70 hour work weeks and chasing money instead of them and mortgaging everything that mattered about being a dad. I did that.

“Anyone who supports him is dumb.”
Do you have to support to show love? Do you have to condone to offer grace and forgiveness? Clearly Proverbs spells out a million reasons you shouldn’t support fools and foolish behavior and what Kanye did was foolish. And it’d be equally dumb to judge people for judging Kanye. Are there only two options though? We love him which means we’re pro “running on stage and hurting people” or we hate him? Can’t we disagree with the behavior and offer love to the person? (I think I just invented the phrase, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” I should put that on t-shirts.)

“He’ll probably apologize but it won’t be real.”
According to whose standards? Mine? Is that what Christ says is the second most important commandment in Matthew 22:39 “Love your neighbor as yourself, only if their apology is legitimate and you feel that their repentance is real?” Or is it written, “Rebuke your neighbor as yourself?” Or is love the thing we’re supposed to do? And let’s be honest, what are the chances that I get to heaven and God says, “You offered too many hurting people grace. You over graced the world Jon. That is whack.”

The more I thought about it, the harder it was to hate Kanye.

So I tweeted and wrote on facebook:

“If we all had our worst mistakes televised we’d give Kanye West grace instead of hate.”

Some people got mad and defriended me (worst verb ever) and some people were cool with that idea. I understand both reactions. I’m not justifying a dumb mistake from Kanye or desupporting Taylor Swift (second worst verb ever). I can only tell you what my experience was because it’s 100% of the experiences I had yesterday. When I heard the story about Kanye, I judged him. I hated on him. I did not correct him or try to offer wise counsel, I hated.

Maybe you didn’t.

Maybe you laughed at how silly and insignificant the whole thing was because it’s just a bunch of celebrities, who cares. Maybe you threw on Kanye’s “Jesus Walks” and got down like the awkward girl from the rich part of town that inexplicably moves to the inner city high school and has to learn how to dance to survive some sort of all girl gang but ends up falling in love with a tough on the outside by soft and tender on the inside street youth while learning the valuable lesson that if you believe in yourself, anything is possible.

Maybe that was your reaction.

Mine was hate.

And I hate that.

And I love that God loves me like He loves Kanye.

Because we are both in desperate need of it.

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In a few weeks the new Stuff Christians Like website is going to launch and I’m a little terrified. And not just in that way that I’m afraid of rollercoasters but pretend I’m not and come up with a lot of reasons that we probably shouldn’t ride Space Mountain today, look at those lines. Why don’t we go on Thunder Mountain at night so you can’t tell that I’m closing my eyes so I don’t see what’s coming around the bend even though my six year old daughter is sitting next to me with her eyes open. Not in that way, I mean genuinely terrified.

And the source of my nervousness?

I’m afraid to really try.

That’s a dumb sentence, and perhaps this is an illogical thing to fear given all the very real nightmares people face in their lives, but fear doesn’t really follow logic and that’s honestly the one in my head right now. I’ve got this weird belief that if I don’t really try, then I can’t really fail. I can always buy into the lie, “If I had tried, I probably could have done that.” But if I try, if I give it my all and my all isn’t enough, I’ll be crushed. It’s like never writing a book but always telling yourself you could have if you wanted to, you just didn’t have time or something came up or a million other excuses.

Paying someone to design a site, taking sponsors, admitting that I’m structuring significant chunks of my day to work on this as a ministry makes the whole thing feel “real” to me. I lose the fake security blanket of saying, “It’s just some ugly site on blogspot, it’s no big deal.”

Have you ever felt that way? Has there ever been some hope or dream that bubbles quietly inside but you’re afraid to admit it’s there? It’s a new career or a relationship you want to begin or some off the wall ministry that’s always been in your heart? Have you ever been afraid about putting your all into something?

What did you do? How did you deal with it? What happens when we’re afraid?

Those are the questions I’ve been asking God the last few weeks and it feels like the answer might be pretty simple:

Be as brave as a six year old.

Until a few weeks ago that idea didn’t make sense. I’ve never associated bravery with childhood, until the night before my daughter L.E. started kindergarten. We were sitting on her bed and I was trying to sell her hard on the idea. (“It will be awesome. So many friends and recess and gym!”) And in the midst of that conversation she bit her lip and admitted, “I’m a little nervous.” That’s all she said and then she turned her head and refused to look at me. She was doing her best to hold it together. She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want to fall apart the night before the big day.

It is a big day. She was going to change from a small three hours a day preschool at a church that she had attended for years to an 8AM-3PM day full of new people, new places and new experiences. She was going to get out of a car, walk inside a monstrous building, navigate her way through hundreds of kids that were bigger and older than her to a new classroom. And she was going to do it with limited life experience.

Think about how the age of the kid amplifies the size of the experience. When you and I change jobs, we have precedent to fall back on. We can say, “Wow, new job starts today. Fortunately I’ve had a few other jobs before. I have a decade of work under my belt, this won’t be so bad.” But for kids, there’s no history to fall back on. The first day of school is a gigantic adventure of colossal proportions.

Yet, she was brave.

In that moment, I felt like God challenged my understanding of who He made me to be. I’ve read verses about being more childlike all my life but never thought about what they’re really saying. In Matthew 18:3 for instance, Jesus says:”I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” What does it mean to become like little children? I think it might mean that we’re supposed to be as brave as a six year old.

I think it might mean we’re supposed to be as trusting as a six year old. They put their faith in God and their parents with an abandon that isn’t limited to logic or reason. They just trust.

I think it might mean that we’re supposed to be as creative as a six year old. Every kid comes onto the planet believing they’re an artist and often adulthood slowly chips away at that belief. Maybe I need to put aside my pursuit of perfection and just color.

I think it might mean that we’re supposed to be as curious as a six year old. A butterfly isn’t a bug, it’s a reason to yell and scream and point and maybe even jump really, really high. Kids step out into each day as a blank canvas, waiting and watching to see what new colors God brings into their life. Kids are curious.

I could go on with this list all day and there are certainly things I wouldn’t add to it. There is wisdom and maturity that comes with age. But it’s interesting to me that when Jesus wanted to make an example of how we’re supposed to live, he never said, “Grab that 112 year old man over there. If you want to enter the kingdom of heaven you gotta be like this dude right here.” He used kids as his example. We’re called to become like little children.

So today, I’m going to be as brave as a 6 year old.

How about you?

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