1. I have a deep-seated affinity for numbered lists.

2. I heard someone say the other day: “That guy always messes up my order. He’s such an idiot!” It got me thinking. Y’know when Jesus says, “Anyone who says to his brother, 'Raca,' is answerable to the Sanhedrin. But anyone who says, 'You fool!' will be in danger of the fire of hell”? I wondered to myself if this would be the modern equivalent of that statement.

The thing is, I say stuff like that all the time. I say things like, “Get this n00b out of my way!” when I’m driving, or “I can’t believe we both went to Moody. He’s such an idiot,” or, “This preacher is an awful. Why is he condescending to his audience like that?” So maybe I’m guilty of the same sin.

I think the issue here is hardly one of vocabulary, but rather one of opinion of our fellow men and women. When we scorn another person and demean them in our hearts, we violate God’s command to love one another. “Love…is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful.” In that moment I have judged another person to have less worth than myself and reminded myself (and maybe those around me) of their inferiority and my superiority.

Although certain words are not sure-fire indicators of my motives, maybe examining their use in my everyday vocabulary can serve as a good place to start…

3. We talk a lot about pornography in the church. I was wondering the other day if maybe watching people have sex is a secondary issue to watching other people be naked. Right before God kicked Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, he made them clothes. That seems to me to imply that God was affirming that it’s shameful to look at another person’s nakedness. It doesn’t seem like nakedness was shameful before the fall, but sin messes everything up.

Of course there’s a place for nudity between husband and wife in a sexual way, and for parents and children when the children are too young to take care of themselves. But overall, it seems like when sin entered the human race, our nakedness became something that is unholy to display in everyday life.

This makes the issue bigger than pornography. This reaches into media and advertising, especially. Sometimes we evaluate movies with sex scenes by asking, “Am I mature enough to handle this?” But maybe maturity has little to do with it. Maybe there’s something inherently shameful about looking at someone else’s nakedness. The story of Noah and his nakedness and the responses of his sons (Genesis 9 – I had to Bible Gateway it) seems to affirm that.

“Jesus could watch this sex scene and not think about having sex.” I have no doubt that’s true. I just wonder if he would have avoided it for other reasons.

4. I was talking to a friend last week, and she mentioned her disappointment with God after becoming a Christian. Where was her holiness? Where was her life change? She didn’t feel much different than before she was a Christian. Won’t “the tree be known by its fruit”? She realizes that there’s lots of bad stuff in the church, but she questioned whether, overall, the church was actually any different than society at large.

Without answering those questions, my conversation with her reminded me again how unfamiliar I am with Jesus’ teaching. How much did Jesus talk about ethics? How much did he talk about salvation? I have no answers to those questions. I could look them up, but really? Everything Jesus said is recorded in, like, 50 pages, and I still don’t have a handle on it? I’ve been spending too much time studying Jesus’ disciples (modern and ancient) and not enough time studying Jesus himself.

5. This final item only applies to those who love video games. Any and everyone else may skip it.

Have you watched the new Starcraft II trailer? “Battle Report Episode 1” – it’s on gametrailers.com. It’s everything a good teaser should be: expert play, extended and consecutive in-game footage, and developer analysis to help me understand exactly what I’m seeing. Bravo. Why don’t more games do this sort of thing? Make video game trailers, not movie trailers featuring video games…

-tim