How Much Change Does That Hold?

This is hilarious. I was trying to find acceptable boxer briefs on Ebay, and I located something not too horrible, and I made an offer. Then I was made aware of the existence of Under Armour products, which appeared to be completely superior and not nearly as gay. Fortunately, my offer was declined.

In the email notice I received after I declined the counteroffer, there were photos of other stuff this guy sells. You have to see this. I obscured the really horrifying details because I don’t want perverted material on my blog, but you’ll still laugh yourself to death. Don’t click if you don’t want to see terrifying underwear.

Relatively breakfast-safe link.

That has to be the funniest thing I’ve seen all week, including the story about the Obama Nobel Prize.

I did order a pair, though.

That was humor.

By the way, I also received a Nobel Peace Prize. They notified me by posting on my Facebook wall. Now that the franchise is utterly devalued, they’re awarding it every week, and on Monday, it’s my turn. They’ve reduced the cash part considerably. I received a gift certificate from Burger King and a Hugo Chavez bobblehead. I contributed to peace by not poisoning my neighbor’s dog, which he releases every morning before six a.m. so it can exercise its lungs.

The medal itself is lead. I guess it’s time for me to go ahead and buy a bullet mold so I can shoot my Nobel at the range. Or I could grind it up and bake it into dog biscuits.

No, I’m pretty sure that would be a forfeiture.

Next year they’re going to award it by lottery and call it the scratch-off Powernobel. Free ticket with every bottle of Night Train.

What does a Christian do when a neighbor has screaming dogs that get released several times a day? Personally, I pray that they’ll get taken away and given to someone more responsible. I figure that’s better than praying they get hit by lightning, and it’s more realistic than praying the neighbor will straighten up. I think these things also scream inside his house, because I sometimes hear muffled barks. If that’s true, keeping the dogs inside won’t completely fix the problem.

The neighbor with the dogs has one of those disturbing houses nobody wants to live next to. It’s in disrepair, and the landscaping is horrendous, and there are junk cars out front, under tarps. The yard used to be a jungle. I guess the city made them cut down the randomly occurring trees and shrubs that filled it. I wasn’t able to get a good look at it, but it appeared to be a wasteland of sapling stumps with no lawn. I’m pretty sure the pool is where the neighborhood mosquito problems came from.

I don’t know how someone like this manages to remain in Coral Gables. The other day a code enforcer knocked on the door and ticketed me for buying French’s instead of Grey Poupon. And he mumbled something about how next month we would all be required to start wearing brown shirts and spying on Jews. Karl Goebbels, the City Beautiful.

I always wonder how this guy can afford to live here. Somebody must have left him that house. I’ve never seen him do anything but stand outside in a housecoat. I can’t help hoping he gets behind on his taxes and decides to move some place more rural, or at least farther from me.

If you turn a guy like this in, what happens? The cops rat you out to punish you for bothering them. Then you get eggs everywhere. Slashed tires. Crimes you can’t prove. An endless neighbor feud you can only solve by moving.

Something is wrong over there. Physical problems with a house and a lifestyle reflect spiritual problems. There is also a house across the street, with teenage kids who never seem to be in school and parents who never seem to be home. A young woman sits on the steps most days, smoking cigarettes. Is she a hired nanny who gets run out of the house? Seems like it.

Maybe some day I’ll be a big brave believer who wanders around the neighborhood offering to help his troubled neighbors, but I’m not there yet. Right now I’d be happy if the dogs would just shut up.

My hope is that my future compound/gun range/Bible-clinging academy/possible-right-wing-terrorist training facility will put me far enough from other people’s houses to get a good night’s sleep. But a really bad neighbor can ruin even a rural setting. Maybe God puts these people next to Christians so they’ll get some prayer.

This morning I was desperate for something new to read. I’ve run through all my Christian stuff. Then I remembered I had the booklets that go with the Robert Morris DVD series, Elevate. I started reading the one titled “Freedom.”

Wonderful stuff. It was all about habitual sin and curses that follow families.

Lots of people run around claiming a Christian can’t be under bondage, which is absurd, given that many sincere Christians are junkies, alcoholics, wife-beaters, gluttons, perverts, and gamblers. You don’t automatically get free from all your habitual sins at that first altar call. Only the Holy Spirit can get you out from under this stuff, and you won’t beat every chronic sin on the same day. It comes in stages. It’s been happening to me, with fasting playing a major role.

Reading what Pastor Morris had to say about it, I got so stirred up, I had to put the book down. It’s amazing how God tells different teachers the same things, in different ways, without any earthly communication between them.

He says the concept of freedom from curses doesn’t just apply to behaviors. It also applies to bad things that happen to you on a chronic basis, such as debt and failure. Although chronic problems are often the result of chronic sin.

Believe, give, repent, get the baptism of the Holy Spirit, fast, and so on, and you can put these things under your feet. Life won’t be perfect, but no responsible person claims that it will. Perfect living may be unnatural, but living as a junkie or a drunk is also unnatural, and it’s completely reasonable to expect to be delivered.

We’re supposed to have challenges. Does that mean we’re supposed to live in misery, fighting our habitual sins every day and losing over and over and then suffering the earthly repercussions? Surely not. I just don’t buy that. The notion that bad behavior always relapses on us–that we will always take another drink or regain weight or whatever–is a secular notion based on the experiences of people who tried to win their battles with their own limited strength. They were like the Hebrews who got routed at Ai. Jesus, on the other hand, said we would be “free, indeed.” When something goes out of you because God drove it out, when it tries to come back in, surely it finds its old room filled by the Holy Spirit. Isn’t that the lesson of the Gadarene demoniac? Sure seems that way. Our battles shouldn’t be like Ai. They should be like Jericho.

I’ve gotten to the point where I am careful about listening to obese preachers. Virtually one hundred percent of the obese are addicts, and an addict is under the control of something other than God and himself. If that thing can make you eat to the point where you become grotesque and ill, maybe it can make you teach something that is completely wrong. I don’t automatically ignore them. That would be crazy; God works through imperfect people. But I consider obesity a warning sign, just as I would be wary of smokers and drunks in the pulpit.

Obesity is a curse. I defy anyone to contradict that. Imagine yourself as lean and fit and healthy. Then imagine a genie pops up and puts 300 pounds of lard on you. Your jowls hang down. You have a flesh apron that rubs your thighs. Your face looks like a baby’s face, swimming in fat. You have huge breasts, even if you’re a man. Walking is difficult. Standing is uncomfortable. Wouldn’t you feel like you had been cursed? It’s a terrible thing. We don’t see it as terrible, because we’re used to seeing it, and it accumulates slowly. Our jaded perception doesn’t change the truth. You can get used to anything, no matter how repugnant or shocking.

Jesus criticized Pharisees who put burdens on people, when they themselves wouldn’t lift them. He criticized blind guides. If you’re going to teach others, you should be a success at what you teach. That’s just common sense, isn’t it? Are you going to tell me to fight Satan when you can’t fight a doughnut? When people come to your church fresh from drug dens or from the brothels where they work or from casinos, will you tell them to repent, when you have three hundred pounds of pizza and cookies around your waist, and you’re planning to add to it right after church?

Isn’t gluttony idolatry? Isn’t any habitual sin which you choose not to fight (or even recognize) idolatry? If not, what is the distinction? The body is the temple of God, not the temple of Mister Softee and Pop’n Fresh. It’s not the temple of the Marlboro Man or Captain Morgan.

The other day I saw a very obese preacher claiming Christians are supposed to command angels to do things for them. I heard very few supporting scriptural references, and they were not really on point. Is there a single example of this in the Bible? I can’t think of any. Seems like he was talking about commanding familiar spirits, which is witchcraft. I couldn’t accept it. Maybe he’s right and I’m wrong; as a career pastor, he ought to know more than I do. I couldn’t help thinking about his weight problem, as the message became less and less appealing to me. Maybe he’s in trouble. He’s definitely in peril from the standpoint of health. And I’ll bet his weight isn’t helping his marriage.

I think anything that controls a Christian will eventually end up controlling other Christians through him. If you’re too fat to do your job, other Christians will have to step in and accommodate you and fill in for you. If you’re too hung over to preach, your congregation may miss messages they need to hear. They may do without knowledge they need. If you’re a nicotine junkie, you may be out front desperately sucking a Lucky when someone in your church needs you. If you spoil your child and refuse to put him in his place, other people will have to put up with his whining or stealing or vandalism or hypochondria. You’ve made him your boss, and by making other people agree to your concessions, you make him their boss.

It’s funny how authority works. We’re all under it. The only question is whether we’re under the right one. Idolatry turns the world upside-down. In a family, to cite an example, authority should go God-man-wife-kid, but a doting mom can turn it upside-down so it goes kid-wife-man-God. The kid becomes god. And who is the kid’s god? That’s the real problem.

If you don’t train your dog, your dog becomes your master and your neighbor’s master. I think about that when I wake up at 5:45 a.m.

The world has been upside-down since Eden. Within this inverted world, a Christian’s life can be right-side-up. I believe it, and I intend to cooperate while God makes it happen for me. I certainly could not do it on my own.