Fold Your Socks

Zip has a sock fixation. Seriously, we can’t leave a discarded sock alone for more than, say, twenty seconds before she absconds with it to places unknown. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of meeting her, Zip is our cat.

There is precious little method to her obsession. One time, I might find fifteen socks randomly distributed throughout the living room, another time half a dozen, each displaced from our various clothes hampers to its own individual stair, forming a sort of foot path to the upstairs bedroom, but I have always been under the impression that I had a handle on this. You see, there are preventive measures you can take, for instance, she has yet to figure out how to open my sock drawer, and, for some reason or other, she doesn’t fancy socks that are folded together (you know, like your mom taught you). So, I figured I was one step ahead of her. Silly me.

The other day, Janelle, my daughter, was performing a very rare chore; she was actually cleaning her room. Her mom was helping out and was trying to unearth the bureau in the corner so Janelle could sort some of her mountain of clean clothes into its drawers, when she made a startling discovery. Underneath this bureau, in the corner of Janelle’s room, was Zip’s secret repository of white, poly-cotton treasure. The final inventory yielded nearly fifty socks in all shapes and sizes.

This is a perfect example of what is wrong with thinking you have it all figured out. When you think you know what everyone’s thinking or what’s around the next corner or even how many socks you own, you’re more likely to get outsmarted by a three-legged housecat with a brain the size of a walnut.

Don’t get me wrong. Just like you, I can’t function without a few formulas or recipes or help menus, but some things in life are just too messy to fit into a five-step plan. So what do we do?

Solomon explains, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps,” and Jeremiah quotes the Father in a letter to the exiles in Babylon, “For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

We are much like those ancient Hebrews Jeremiah addressed. Just like us, they thought they had God all figured out, and just like them, we are once again God’s people in exile. While they were in exile, God promised that, if they sought Him with all of their heart, He would bring them once again out of captivity. As we are no longer the controlling institution of the western world, we are once again in exile, and this promise once again applies to us. God has plans for us – plans to help not harm. But, notice He says, “I know the plans I have,” not “You know the plans I have.”

Quit obsessing over where all the socks are. You’ll find them; they’re around somewhere. In the meantime, keep folding your socks like your mom taught you, but try to enjoy life’s unpredictable nature as God allows it to unfold before you. Get intentional about living in community and watch things play out in each other’s lives. Go ahead; make your plans. But remember, God determines your steps, and they’re good ones.

Slackers and Hijackers

Just yesterday, I was channel surfing and landed briefly on IFC (The Independent Film Channel), during The Henry Rollins Show. For those of you who don’t know, Rollins used to be the lead singer of Black Flag, the predecessor of just about every hard rock band presently in existence. He was a screamer before screaming was cool. Now in his forties, Rollins is the self-proclaimed guardian of our national sanity. In his mind, this means spending all of his time railing against the Bush administration, Fox News, and anything else that smells vaguely like a Republican. Apparently, most episodes feature The Disquisition, a stream-of-consciousness-style rant from uber-liberal actress, Jeanine Garofalo. In this particular installment, Garofalo spent her five minutes of expletive-drenched airtime equating those who don’t oppose the war in Iraq with Eva Braun, the mistress of Adolph Hitler, and Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, Charles Manson’s main squeeze. Excuse me? Did someone just equate me with Eva Braun? Now, don’t get me wrong; I’m all for freedom of speech, but Garofalo’s rant was tasteless, reckless, offensive, and intellectually dishonest. As I see it, this is just one more indication that our culture is embracing postmodernism. As post-modern “intellectuals” continue to discard all our trusted metanarratives, we are left with an every-man-for-himself attitude that is both unhealthy and unnatural.

“Wait a minute,” you say, “What is a metanarrative?” You may not know the term, but chances are much of your life and most of your decisions are determined by one or more of them. A metanarrative is the big story that shapes your worldview. For the ancient Hebrews, it was the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible), during the medieval days it was the Holy Roman Church, the Enlightenment embraced a God of order that informed scientific inquiry as their big story, for the pioneers it was Manifest Destiny, and our modern age has been completely dominated by the metanarrative of Darwinism.

Postmodernism suggests that all of these fail to adequately explain the universe so we must discard them. Left with no big story, the postmodern thinker must fend for himself, writing his own independent mini-narrative as he goes along, with no objective standard by which to measure. Is it any wonder that such a directionless worldview would create such a bitter, angry commentator as Ms. Garofalo? But here’s the rub; I don’t believe it’s her lack of metanarrative that’s the culprit; she subscribes to a worldview, but it is one characterized by what it is not. It is an anti-metanarrative. Its coherence derives from its opposition to tradition and, frankly, common sense. It is a “not you worldview.” Because it opposes our previous metanarratives, it looks like postmodernism, but it’s really just a cop-out for intellectual lightweights.

I believe this need to oppose our past springs primarily from our culture’s distaste for the Christian metanarrative of our forefathers, mischaracterized by rigid formulae and iron-fisted authoritarianism. My question? Who hijacked our metanarrative? Who took Jesus’ story of self-sacrifice and servant leadership and turned it into the list of dos and don’ts that so frustrates today’s culture? Nowhere in scripture is our journey toward salvation, mission, or discipleship characterized as a vending machine – put in a quarter and out comes your selection, salvation or forgiveness or peace or whatever candy bar you choose. Neither is it characterized as a switch you flip -- saved, not saved, saved, not saved, saved…

Life is much messier than that and that is why God had to come down here and get messy with us. Rollins and Garofalo would probably appreciate that if they weren’t so busy disagreeing with us. Perhaps that is why Paul instructs us to do everything “without arguing or grumbling.” Instead we should wrestle with the simple metanarrative at the center of Christianity: God created the world and it was good, but we messed it up, so He had to come down and give us a way to make it right. Now, even though we don’t deserve it, we can have a right relationship with God through His son, not by keeping a bunch of rules but by loving one another.

Wow. What a positive message. That’s a metanarrative I can live with. Unfortunately, angry “not you worldview” subscribers control the conversation and we are stuck defending hijackers.