IKEA

The other day my wife and I made a visit to IKEA in Atlanta, a huge home furnishing type store roughly the size of 21 football fields...or something like that, to purchase a bookcase. For a guy that lives in a small country town, this place borders on culture shock.

IKEA is a wonderfully different store though. It's internationally-based, meaning that you can go to your choice of IKEAs in Belgium, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Kuwait, and around 35 other countries, yet it only has 35 locations in all of the United States. The layout of each store is both elaborate and practical. The second floor houses the showroom of basically everything they offer, already constructed and in cozy arrangements like you'd like to find in your own home, and the first floor is where you'd find all those cozy little lamps and tables and computer cabinets unconstructed and for purchase. It's the ultimate in giving the seller a true vision for what he or she could have, and then, because the store is so huge and there aren't as many store locations to keep up as say a JCPenney or Target, they can offer large quantities of nicer stuff at decent prices.

So it was with great pleasure that we settled on a nice bookcase, that will make our home that much more organized, in a matter of minutes. And then we got to looking at other stuff. You see the store layout is such that to leave the showroom you have to take a short marathon to reach the exits, because the floor has a "start-line, finish-line" design, and if you dare take a "side street" you're likely to get very lost in the abyss of Lazy Susans, kitchen devices, pillows, shelving units, vases, European-style sofas that are 2 inches off the ground, etc.

Some 50 minutes or so later we came near the end of the store, with sore feet, headaches and our pocketbooks relatively unscathed, when we encountered a large bin of inexpensive chair cushions. The price was right, the color was good and we had eight chairs around our kitchen table at home that were not only hard as, well, wood, but also had gotten scratched up a little due to use and a lack of protective covering. After a few moments our conversation went something like this:

"It a good price and who knows when we're going to be down here again."
"It will protect the chairs and...oh but, I wonder if these would be wide enough fit our chairs..."
"Oh, I bet they will. Let's just get out of here and get home."

Of course when we got home we discovered that not only were the cushions a tad too small for the chairs but they also made sitting in the chairs that much more uncomfortable. My wife and I just looked at each other with "we just got screwed" looks on our faces. The cushions only strap from the back of the chair, meaning that the front of the cushions are in a perpetual state of crookedness, like sitting with a monster wedge, and the area of the seat not covered makes your legs feel pinched. Not surprisingly, we removed the cushions from the chairs less than a day later (except for one that I guess we were too lazy to take care of), but only after removing all the tags from four of them, so they're with us forever or at least until we won't feel awful for getting rid of something we never used. The other four may never make it back to be returned either, since it's about a 360-mile round trip to IKEA and the store has a 90-day return policy.

And I find it funny that something that seemingly promised to make our lives more comfortable at an affordable price is doing quite the opposite. We're now four (or eight...time will tell) chair cushions richer and $40-something poorer and our butts are still semi-sore if we sit for too long. We're also short of space in this two-bedroom apartment, so now we also have the question of what do we do with these...things? Yes, the bookcase is nice, but the experience is tainted somewhat by our being taken by a bin of cushions. In my mind now it's sort of equivalent to training arduously for a marathon, running the first 26 miles like a champion and then taking a stop to gorge on a mammoth ice cream sundae before running the final 385 yards.

And it's silly to think that something so small as chair cushions diverted my attention and broke my heart, but there are far smaller things that distract me every day. Things that I'd be embarrassed to tell you about.

I John 2:15 says, "Do not love the world or anything in the world..."

We're not only given a command in this verse, but there's also an strong implication that our hearts will be tempted and toyed with. The world is a big store where we can seemingly get whatever our hearts desire. We will be promised comfort and security and friends and love, but the sad truth of the matter is that those promises are nothing more than houses built on sand. And they'll look really good.

What things are you distracted by right now?

Trick Question

It was once asked of me by a good friend, "how competent spiritually do you have to be to adequately lead others?"

Ah, a trick question, I could tell from the start. I knew that human adequacy had little to do with the answer, yet still, I wasn't quite sure how to answer. You see, the problem is that despite our deepest understandings of the Scriptures and our highest aspirations to godliness, we'll never actually attain adequacy, spiritually speaking.

I was reading today in 2 Corinthians, 3:5-6 to be exact, which says, "Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God, who also made us adequate as servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life."

Each summer I look forward to a time of refreshment, of perspective on life and what lies ahead. I expect a word from the Lord that will focus my heart and strengthen me to serve and lead the other nine months of the year, something that will rebuild my confidence in myself and my abilities to provide sound wisdom and guidance and direct someone to jump off a cliff. And oddly, I came to an understanding recently that the time of refreshment is nearing an end, and if anything, I feel less adequate to lead young men into another season.

I suppose somewhere in my thought process I had an idea that getting married and being responsible for the spiritual, as well as physical, well-being of my wife would pave the way to greater things on the road to discipling my guys. But the truth is that marriage just confirms that each day is a battle to be won or lost, and the next day you start all over again, making mistakes and learning from them.

What I'm finding out is that human competency is probably more of an enemy that a helper in the pursuit of adequacy, because the more competent or adequate I feel to lead, the less likely I am to keep up my guard and depend on the Spirit's working. In our attempts to attain adequacy through our own means we fail to recognize that we're taking the dead end path of the Law.

And that's easy to see from 2 Corinthians 3:5-6, but what's difficult to understand and keep focus on daily is what it means to live by the Spirit. Until we understand what that means and live it out consistently, our feelings of adequacy are nothing more than paper houses.

The Weather Channel

I love the weather channel. I can't get enough of it. It's probably my favorite channel after ESPN and whatever is showing re-runs of Law & Order.

There something about the combination of comfortable, lazy music serving as the background for complete unpredictability that creates a humorous and strangely appealing experience for me. Sweet sax music dances euphorically from my tv's speakers, while menacing dark clouds hang on a golden sun for Tuesday, and sharp pointy lines shoot off the same golden sun on Wednesday. It's almost like their trying to trance me into being comfortable with the thought of torrential downpours and hellish heat jerking me back and forth. And let's face it, they never really know what they're talking about.

I wish I could be humored by my own attempts to create calm from chaos. While mankind has dominated most of our planet through the ages, interestingly enough he cannot control himself, nor the fact that he has no true control over the events of his day. When it all comes down to it, we're all on a level playing field. And we're no closer to successfully prognosticating our days than we are at laying eggs.

My friend Jason once came to a startling conclusion while writing a script for a short film that would hopefully jumpstart his career as a filmmaker. The film was about a young aspiring screenwriter, so caught up in writing his own stories of heroes and damsels in distress that he didn't realize that he was taking too much creative liberty and making himself the hero in the story that was playing out in his own life. The only problem was that his actions in the movie were not heroic...they were heinous. Yet, in the main character's mind, what he was doing was righteous, probably because it fed a desire that he had for himself. A desire to do what he wanted ultimately.

So, Jason's conclusion? "It all comes down to control." It seemed every situation always came back to this same realization for Jason for the next three or four months, and quite rightly, I often would mock his epiphany after growing tired of hearing it once again. It didn't matter what we were talking about, it all came back to the issue of control. I think I eventually countered that it was less about control and more about selfishness...and I'm not sure that there's a whole lot of difference, but the important thing is that I gave Jason something else to think about.

I've grown more attached to this thought over the years, this control or selfishness issue, and more so now as a married man. Marriage breaks down most of the walls that shield us from seeing our true selves, and in most cases, yields a most unpleasant view of a selfish person. And I fight this knowledge, almost longly for some sweet jazz music to be played in the moments when life is not easy, when either I or my wife or both of us are living for ourselves.

This is an earthly life...enduring through the discomfort of change and the certainty of uncertainty for a life incorruptible and whole. May we embrace the music, enjoy the moments and see less of the bent toward self every day.

Oh, and Jason...it doesn't all come down to control.

The Dark Knight

Dark Knight is, well, dark, for lack of better term and to be concise. And I'm fine with that. It's what makes this movie one of the best films I've ever seen. If it wasn't for some untimely car issues, I would have gone to see it a second time today. The storyline, while complex and jam-packed, is well-thought and crisp, and the character development (with the exception of Bruce Wayne) is so much richer than Batman Begins, which was a goldmine in its own right. I really hope that Dent shows up in the next film, because there's so much there to work with, and of course, we have Heath Ledger's Joker.

Let me say too, that The Joker was far more interesting a character than Bruce Wayne/Batman in this film. Christian Bale's performance dominated Batman Begins, and rightly so, but I was disappointed that Nolan didn't focus more on Wayne this time around. Still, there was plenty of righteousness on display through most every other major character in the film, making for what I believe is a typical, though extreme, "problem of evil" film by director Christopher Nolan.

Okay, on to The Joker.

I'm not sure that I've ever been more disturbed by an evil on film. In my opinion, Ledger stole "The Joker" title away from Jack Nicholson within the movie's first 30 minutes.

Ledger did an incredible job at portraying an evil that hasn't been seen much in film. I think what made his portrayal so disturbing was the fact that he was just a human. There are no superpowers or "alien-like" nature about the Joker, yet he seems so other-worldly. I kept thinking to myself throughout the movie "how could a human being be so void of a figment of humanity?" How could he be so human, yet not need even the common things that mankind normally lies, cheats, steals and kills to get? He fed off of chaos. In many ways, I see Nolan's Joker more as a portrayal of Satan than of a fallen man entangled in sin.

And while Ledger's performance was great (I'm not going to jump on the posthumous award bandwagon), I really don't think the movie theatre was bursting at the seams with highly-thoughtful film critics making mental notes of Ledger's quirkiness and cackling and responding with laughter and applause.

Shortly after Rachel Dawes had been killed and half of Dent's face had been blown off (by the way, two of the film's characters fighting against evil) we see a scene where The Joker "visits" Dent in the hospital. He's wearing a wig and a nurses uniform...aaaaaaaaaaaaand people were laughing and clapping in the theatre where I saw the movie...yes, kudos to Ledger for freaking the snot out of me with his flippant behavior in the midst of his killing spree, but I find it hardly worth applause (who are we applauding anyway...I didn't see Ledger or Nolan there) and definitely not worthy of a laugh.

I think that some, perhaps many, of the responses were a result of pure discomfort from the evil portrayed and the true darkness of The Dark Knight, which is a shame because I think to truly appreciate a film you have to let yourself become part of it and sift through the feelings later. But I also know that we live in a cynical world that worships anti-heroes because they don't believe true righteousness exists. Sin is way more fun, and I think that was quite evident in my theatre. The sad thing is that Ledger's Joker isn't even an anti-hero. He's not a Danny Ocean from Ocean's 11 or a John Creasy from Man On Fire...he's completely void of anything remotely redeeming on a human level. Which makes me question what was so attractive about him to the audience in which I sat?

Don't worry, I'm not becoming a "doom and gloom/hellfire and damnation" preacher, but we live in dark times. Maybe "Dark Knight" speaks more to our time that people want to believe.