76. Joe

Okay, so it has been ages since I posted.  Long enough that the last post was during my last vacation in the Philippines, and this one is coming just prior to my next vacation to the Philippines!  

My time there kind of shook me up a bit, made me think about what I’m doing with my life and what I want to do with my life.  Just to reassure you all, I do think I’m doing the right thing being here right now.  It is the financially responsible, adult thing to do… and I do think I need to do it for a little while longer (until I’m out of debt).  But I have to say that even thinking about teaching in the Philippines, or a place like it, makes me ridiculously happy for the few seconds that I’m thinking about it so I am fairly certain that that is what I am going to end up doing… I almost finished that off with the phrase “with my life”, but I’m leery of making committal statements like that.  I have trouble planning ahead.  

That having been said, I have a lot of blog-relevant thoughts to share, and I’m hoping to get back into the swing of things blog-wise.  Today I was writing a dear friend a letter explaining a minor ‘revelation’ I had yesterday.  I don’t quite know if ‘revelation’ is the right word… it’s just that yesterday I figured out how to explain something I’ve often tried to explain and never could.  It came on the heels of realizing that I’m pulling away from my neighbour S., not because of any conflict or problems in our friendship… I still think she’s awesome and love hanging out with her… it’s just that while we were in the Philippines (along with my other coworker – “Lick-my-boob-girl”, who I’m going to call A. from now on because it’s much shorter) I discovered that I don’t really like hanging out with A. at all… she’s not a bad person, but you can’t like everyone… and she sort of chafes me.  While I was discovering this, S. was discovering how much she likes A. and now whenever I hang out with S. it almost always has to involve A. and I’ve recently noticed myself pulling away from that.  Because I’m rather introspective (hello, I have a blog for crying out loud!), I thought about this for a while and realized that as much as I like S., I guess I don’t value our relationship enough to put up with spending time with A.  (I should point out that it’s not like S. has a lot of free time anyway, between her now fully flourishing dating relationship with D. and work, and her tutoring, her spare time is rather minimal… and I understand her wanting to cram all her friends in at once.) As I was thinking I suddenly realized I had an answer to a question I get all the time.  “Did you hear what Jerry Falwell/James Dobson/Exodus/Your mother just said about gays?  How can you still be a Christian?”

I’m sure the savvy among you can see where I’m going with this, but here it is (basically transcribed from the letter I wrote today).

Let’s say I’m friends with Joe.  Joe is an awesome guy who enriches my life.  He challenges me, he helps me grow as a person.  He helps me understand myself and the world around me.  I really enjoy my time with him and feel my life is better with him in it.  Let’s say that Joe, being this awesome guy, has lots of other friends – and the vast majority of them treat me like shit – as less than, as unworthy, as a threat… I will now have a decision to make.  Is my relationship with Joe worth the aggravation I will have to endure when I am forced to interact with his other friends?

I’m sure this analogy is easy to see through.  Joe, is of course, Jesus… and I have decided that He is worth it.  The analogy works on other levels though… In my little story, Joe’s friends treat me badly, lie about me and make ridiculous demands of me that they wouldn’t even consider making of each other… and I can’t help but have questions about Joe because… well… aren’t your friends a sort of reflection of you?  If I can’t trust many of the people around Joe, it’s going to be more difficult for me to trust Joe himself, because why on earth would he surround himself with such people?

Of course, here is where the analogy breaks down… because I don’t want Jesus excluding people from His “group of friends” because of character flaws… because then I’m out, and despite what many of His ‘friends’ may think, I really don’t want to be out.

So, what do I do?  I continue to relate to (and with) Christ despite all the crap that is spewed out by groups like Focus on the Family or Exodus… or, for that matter, my mother.  Christ is worth it.