Notches

A sex notch is a person you have sex with just because you like their body. After having sex, you have very little to do with them again because you broke off the relationship, or moved on to someone else. The other person is your sex-notch. If you’ve ever been in the other position, you were made into a notch.

I first encountered notches in the newspaper office I work in. A girl walked in and described this great guy she met over the weekend. He had a smokin’ hot bod and was a great kisser. As an afterthought she added, “His nickname around the house is ‘heartbreaker.’ ” Another girl responded that he was going to make her his notch. The first girl didn’t seem too worried by this.

It wasn’t long before other girls in the office were suggesting the she make him her notch.

 

Before I pounce into this round of viewpoints, I must make one confession:

I’m notch-less. Oh, and I’ve never been notched. 

 

 

my view

I disagree that the bible is an end-all-and-be-all book. Anti-emergents, of course, disagree with me. But in all reality too many people look at the bible as an instruction book (ever heard the acronym Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth?). To assume that the bible is an instruction books assumes that life is black and white. Life is not black and white. There’s not a fast and hard rule to decide when to kick your son or daughter out in the act of tough love. There’s not a hard and fast rule about how to talk to an atheist, homosexual or terrorist. 

On the other hand, the emergent suggests talking it through. I like this idea as a concept, but not as an action. Talking things through is important, but talking is not an appropriate action. God is the only being that can speak things into existence. The rest of us have to get up off our couch and work to make things happen. This means actively working to cultivate love and fellowship within the family.

 The anti-emergent also advised prayer. I like this idea, but it’s a very complicated one. What does prayer mean anyway? How does prayer work? Have we really been taught how to pray? This is a discussion left for later. There will be another post. For this reason of complication the view on the emergent side didn’t even touch prayer (their ideas may be too complicated to put on paper at this moment).

Each view is a bit too action-less, if you ask me. Things don’t get done by talking or praying. These things are only the beginning. If you can’t go out and then do something about it, what good is it?

Talking things through is great; I’m a BIG advocate for communication.

Praying without ceasing is an amazing why to live life, but if everyone is praying and doing nothing else, who is God going to use?

Great ideas can only get you so far. Please see my Progress section to see how I’ve taken these thoughts and applied it to this situation.

emergent

I imagine an emergent (notice all these group titles are not capitalized; it’s not a mistake) would want to have a conversation. They would want all the details. Who, what, when, where and why. Then they’d push to make me think even more, reminding me that life is all about experiences.

I tried to write out an imagined conversation, but I felt that everything I wrote would be really unfair. And I think emergents would like that. Emergents claim to be complex, to operate on a third level (see “A New Kind of Christian” by Brian McClaren). There are, however, key elements I believe would be in this type of conversation.

1.  Jesus was about relationships. He loved people, and showed this through relationships.
2. Each part of the situation needs to be taken down and analyzed. It must be asked if each thing is really as it seems. For example, is the problem the tension, or is there something else.
3. It must be questioned if what we’ve been taught from the bible is really what we need to be doing. This is not questioning if the bible is correct, only if it’s been taught correctly throughout time.

The conversation would most likely end with an encouragement to keep my head up. I could always come back and have another conversation if I needed to…

 

 

anti-emergent

I imagine that an anti-emergent would start out by picking up the bible. They would tell me to examine what the bible says; it will tell me what’s wrong in my parents’ household. They might pick a verse like the one in Galatians that tells us what the fruits of the spirit are. Obviously my parents’ household does not have God because it does not have peace, a key fruit. If there’s tension then there’s no love. Love is a fruit. If everyone is leery of each other because of the tension there’s no joy. Joy is a fruit.

Maybe they would commend me on not living there because the bible says that we sometimes have to give up our family to follow Christ. But be careful! I should also work to save them, so that they can go to heaven. Because they obviously don’t have God. Remember, they’re missing fruit. The bible states that non-fruit bearing things get thrown into the fire. Whatever the hell that means (pun intended).

The above may be a gross hyperbole. It may not. I don’t claim to be anti-emergent, so I can’t really say. The statements are fair though. Many anti-emergents do claim that the emergent movement has left the scriptures behind. When emergents have used it, it’s in a twisted and complicated way that includes words like ‘contextualization.’

Below is an imagined dialogue between an anti-emergent and myself.

 

Anti-Emergent (AE): Colby, there is something wrong with your family.

Colby Stream (CS): I guess so. I mean, that is why I came to you.

AE: You don’t understand. There is something really wrong with your family. God says that we should have peace in our lives. Tension is not a sign of peace.

CS: Then how do I fix it?

AE: Pray. Pray hard. The bible says to pray without ceasing. Only prayer can save them. There’s nothing you can do. But you should try to save them. If God’s not in their household they’ll all go to hell. You don’t want them to go there do you?

CS: No.

AE: Then you’ve got to save them!

CS: How? How do you save a person?

AE: You don’t. God does. All you can do is pray. Pray hard. Without ceasing.

CS: But what does that mean?

AE: What do you mean what does that mean? You’ve got to pray! It’s a basic principle, prayer, really.

CS: But what does it mean? To pray.

 

Is this an unfair depiction? No. Not really. Why would it be? Nothing I’ve written so far has disagreed with this point of view. I’m simply telling you how it is. An anti-emergent would simply tell me I need to pray, read my bible, let God save them.

Lastly, I’d like to point out that nothing on this page disagrees with the bible. Explicitly anyway.

The path I’ll follow…

Many have called Emergent Christianity the faith of heretics. Others have defended it in argumentative interviews and blog posts. I will do neither. I aim to look at the ideas both views present. It is not the institutional religion of either sect I care about. It is the ideas, and how they can go into effect, that really matters.

My first idea struck me one night at my parents’ house. I’ve spent the last year out on my own, away to University. In response to my new life, I built a new foundation, a new core set of values, and a whole new persona to go with this Colby who lives alone. It’s a life very different from the one my parents’ and their household have. Before we go further, though, I want to give you an idea of what my parents’ household is like. Here is who lives there:

• Dad, head of the household and elder at the church the family is a part of.
• Mom, stay-at-home who left her job to help her brother.
• Sister, senior in high school and Culinary Arts hopeful. The middle child.
• Sister, sophomore in a different high school and American History buff. The youngest child.
• Grandma, maternal side. Her husband died and she moved off of the ranch, selling it to my parents. She now lives back on the not quite two-acre ranch in a mobile home.
• Uncle, maternal side and previous top official at Boeing. A stroke created a blood clot in his brain. It left his right side immobile; he is unable to speak. His wife abandoned him. He is currently in the process of relearning how to talk and move his right side.

If I were looking from the outside I would commend this family for taking care of their son/uncle/brother. And it is a commendable thing. Kind of.

Back to my idea. I discovered that their life is nothing like mine. My life, though crammed tight with homework and a job at the school newspaper, is stress-free. Sometimes I sleep for five hours a night. This can go on for many nights Others I spend doing hours of math homework only to get nowhere. But I love it anyway. I’ve purposefully made the highest goal in my life to love people.

Where my previous goal was to graduate University with a 4.0 I now strive to talk to those I don’t want to. To get to know the real person inside. I’m not perfect, but it’s the journey that counts. This atmosphere I’ve created is one of love. Or rather, it’s one bent on learning how to love. It’s the journey that counts. At my parents’ house it’s another story. I feel like I could break the tension with one mispronounced word as easy as an iron man can snap a corncob. I’m not sure why this is. That’s why I’ve written up this post.

I’m going to take this situation and imagine what each side - anti-emergent and emergent - would say about the situation. In a final post I’ll make my decision about what/who I agree with. I must warn you, though, that this won’t be what you expect. I can tell you right now I won’t agree with either ‘side.’ Instead I’ll take the ideas from both and somehow mesh them together. Will this be right? Probably not. Will this be wrong? Probably not.

But that’s not what counts. I’m not a person that believes it’s all about where you’re going. I believe it’s about how you get there. It’s about the ideas, events, people and things you experience along the way.

In short, it’s the journey that counts.