Brenda and I are looking for new flooring (still deciding if we should put in hardwood or that cool shag-type carpet). Anyway, we called Empire Carpet and they had a super-sailor-foul-mouthed man come over. Among his ramblings of which I paid no attention, he saw that I had a lot of religious books on my bookshelf. And out of nowhere he said:“Do you know what I think about living out your faith?”
In my head I said: Nope—don’t know and don’t necessarily want to know either if it is anything like what you have spewed out for the last hour. Instead I smiled and asked his thoughts. And out came a very unexpected profound statement! He said:
“My take is that there are four ways people live in death here on earth:
1. The obsessive need to look good
2. The obsessive need to be right
3. The obsessive need to avoid pain
and
4. The obsessive need to be in control”
And as soon as he was done telling Brenda and I his fully inspired and completely insightful and culturally relevant thoughts on living a stifled life in Christ, he went back to his old self—as if for one moment in time he was inspired by clarity.
I now refer to these four constructs as the Empire Carpet Theology.
Much love.
www.themarinfoundation.org
2 comments:
Maybe you should tell Empire(anonymously)about the foul mouth. As to his theology, it is pretty accurate about people!
Do we want to look good or bad?
Do we want to be wrong or right?
Do we like pain?
Do we want to out of control or in control?
It makes sense, but each area needs tweaking. Thanks for sharing this. There certainly will be something we can learn from that guy!
BTW, Color Tile is a lot cheaper! :)
Thanks for a great post, It is so gratifying when someone reveals part of themselves to us.
I am conflicted on the topic of obsession because I know that the best things I have achieved have been because of my obsessive attention to detail, belief and strengths. Yet I see others succeed by obsessing over what I feel are the wrong things.
I guess we have each to judge our own true motivation and act accordingly. I need to cut others some slack when our worlds collide.
Jmatt
jmride.blogspot.com
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