the bride.

I really like this Derek Webb song, especially in conjunction with the video from Donald Miller's website (bluelikejazz.com).

if you could love me as a wife
and for my wedding gift, your life
should that be all i’ll ever need
or is there more i’m looking for

and should i read between the lines
and look for blessings in disguise
to make me handsome, rich, and wise
is that really what you want

i am a whore i do confess
but i put you on just like a wedding dress
and i run down the aisle
i’m a prodigal with no way home
but i put you on just like a ring of gold
and i run down the aisle to you

so could you love this bastard child
though i don’t trust you to provide
with one hand in a pot of gold
and with the other in your side
i am so easily satisfied
by the call of lovers less wild
that i would take a little cash
over your very flesh and blood

because money cannot buy
a husband’s jealous eye
when you have knowingly deceived his wife

Wow. So wait, the church is the bride of Christ but dang girl, if we're not whoring around before the honeymoon has started. I used to think that biblical imagery that had me in a dress was kind of weird... but i suppose that the church is asexual and that the imagery isn't about gender. Rather biblical language is just descriptive of the most intimate relationship we're aware of. Miller describes it like this; Jesus invites us to come to him and says, "take my righteousness, take my name and marry me... marry me". I used to make fun of people who spoke like this...probably because, as a sexually frustrated (as in...not having it) 22 year old male...i think that marriage = sex and Lord knows that is not what i think about when it comes to Jesus. So i rejected all this lovey, bride and marriage imagery until it finally clicked when this large white man said it. Those words made me want to take his name and enter this covenant relationship immediatley when i realized that i already had. And so, i've decided to drop the hyphen in my last name from Lewis-Jesus to just Jesus. Only his name. All of this to say that now i understand the allegory, after all... i am a whore i do confess but i put you on just like a wedding dress and i run down the aisle.

a night on the town...

A couple of days ago I went to a club downtown with a bunch of people from school. After about an hour of doing the whole club scene, I sat down at our table and began to contemplate what exactly was happening here. Admittedly, I am unfamiliar with this scene but as I was watching the hundreds of 'beer in hand 20 somethings' get down to 'you shook me all night long' I started to wonder if this is a religion. Let's think about this for a second. A place where people congregate regularly that promotes community, consistent attendance, friendship and dare I say worship? It occurred to me (as a couple who had decided to join me at my table started making out) that things I had heard about worship before became very real. All of us worship something. That's about as cliche as look both ways before you cross the street, but I actually learned this from my clubbing experience.

I think clubbing attempts to answer these questions and the way they do this is through a worshipping community. What they worship is debatable,--themselves I think would be a place to start, each other, the opposite sex, sex, alcohol, materialism...it seemed like the whole place was consumed by these matters. If that is the case, and I think it was, are we surprised that clubs exist and are in fact thriving when churches are empty? No, because people like to worship these things because there is nothing else. But if people understood why they desire for these type of needs to be fulfilled we'd have a revolution on our hands...

Anyway, just a little rant on why I think that right now thousands of people are dancing and drinking the night away...because they desire something God has put in them but misplaced their means of fulfillment. If that's the case, how will they know?...