Not So Famous…

Alright, I think this is the most important rant I’ve ever written. I just spoke with someone whom I work with, and though this rant is coming directly out of a conversation I had with this person, (we’ll call him Steve) this conversation is a rather frequent one in my office.

As many of you know, I am getting married next year. And I am looking forward to it. This is a concept foreign to many people. People I work with look at me and laugh at my anticipation of this happy event. They say things like, “We’ll see how you feel in 20 years.” Or, the great one, “yeah, that’s how I felt before my first marriage.” Why I even bother to listen to someone who’s been married 3 or 4 times talk about marriage, I’ll never know.

But Steve has been saying things recently that are getting me rather irate. (That’s “angry” for those of you who attended public schools.) His favorite phrase is, “You never know.” Isn’t that the whole point of the freakin’ dating phase???? You date a person to get to know them. The problem is, that’s no longer the point of dating. Dating used to mean you went to dinner with the girl’s parents. You went out with friends and talked…a lot. You brought her to meet your family. You did things that helped you to get to know the other person in all types of situations. You learn how she treats her family. You learn how he jokes around with his friends. You learn who the other person is by observing him or her in all of their natural environments. You stay with her long enough to have hard times. (How people behave in hard times is usually nowhere near how they behave in easy times.) Learn what happens when crisis hits his family. How does he react? Yes, this all seems rather clinical. In the midst of this observation, you have fun. It’s sort of a given, but you need to really know the person you plan on marrying. This is the difference between me and these guys at my work. That’s only one reason I know they have no clue as to what they’re talking about.

Another reason is that I have one thing they do not…no matter how much they’ll assert that they do. My deeply held religious beliefs have instilled in me a proper understanding of the permanency of marriage. Steve talks to me, and I tell him that my commitment to God precludes divorce. (Meaning, because I love the Lord and He is my all, I submit myself to his rules, and “’till death do us part” really takes on meaning.) He says, “We were the same way.” And then I stop and think that during his first marriage, he owned an adult entertainment business, where for a cost, they provided strippers for parties, etc. (Steve himself stripped quite often, to hear him tell it.) Look at those deeply held religious beliefs. (That was laced with a liberal amount of sarcasm, by the way.) Even when I discussed this aspect of my problem with a self-proclaimed non-Christian, he said, “Well, they’re not Christians…no matter how much they say they are.” They tell me stories of getting drunk and fornicating with women, and in the next breath say that they feel they are Christians.

Let me tell you something. A Christian is someone who gives glory to God. No, not all the time, but someone who habitually does the types of things they do can not be called a Christian. James 2:18 - “Show me your faith without works, and I’ll show you my faith by my works.” (Emphasis mine.) Faith without works is dead, said James, the author of the book of James. And it’s true. You are not saved by your works, but you can show your faith by your works. And these people have no faith. It is dead. So for them to tell me that they were the same way is really starting to tick me off. And I resent the implications they are asserting about Kim.

Steve always tells me, “You may know about yourself, but you can never know about another person.” Well, I disagree. And I am really starting to get mad at him for saying it. He is implying that the woman I love and have dated in a Christian manner for 4 years (no sex blinding us) is going to walk out on me for another man. When I tell him what I feel about this, he shakes his head and says, “so young.” Never mind the fact that in my 24 years of life I have garnered more wisdom than he can hope to gain in ten lifetimes. Never mind the fact that every situation is different, especially ours. And never mind the fact that there are people who have been married for 30, 40, 50, 60, and I even heard of a couple that had been married for 75 years today!

That’s another aspect of what is making me very angry! There are people that have made it a long time…explain that. Not every relationship is destined for divorce. There are things you can do to ensure the permanency of marriage! Get to know your fiancée in all situations before getting married. This requires a proper amount of time! 6 months is not nearly enough. As hard as it has been, I would suggest that in some cases, 2 years is not enough. When I was younger, I dated a girl for 2 ½ years, and had I married her after 2 years, I would have been a very miserable man right now. There’s something to be said for taking the time to do a relationship right. Another thing that is important is to not have sex before marriage. I know, I know…a very unpopular notion right now, but if we were to place sex back where it should be, only in the covenant of marriage, then sex would be something special again. It will be special for Kim and I, because we’re waiting until marriage. Because it’s nothing special to those people who have sex with whoever they want, it’s really not a big deal when they screw around on their husband/wife. And then the husband/wife has the nerve to be surprised and hurt. This is a stupid, self-destructive practice that should stop!

Finally, I’ll just say that I’m pretty darn sick of people coming in here and telling me my upcoming marriage will fail. I’m not going to take relationship advice from someone who’s been married 3 times. If they haven’t been able to get it by now, they won’t. And I’m not going to listen to them, because if they had it to do all over again, they’d make all the same mistakes. Because they don’t know what the mistakes are.

Oh yeah, one more thing, and this is going to offend someone. If you don’t attend church and/or read your Bible regularly, and try to live every day seeking ways in which you can give glory to God…DON’T CALL YOURSELF A CHRISTIAN!!! You aren’t. And you are making things more difficult for those of us who are. We try to explain to someone what Christianity is about and then we have to answer for to actions of people like you who “acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their lifestyle.” (D.C. Talk on the album, Jesus Freak.) Furthermore, you are not a Christian just because you are an American. As an American, you are certainly free to not be a Christian. So please, unless you live as I describe above, don’t tell anyone you are a Christian. Or perhaps try actually behaving in a manner that gives glory to God. Then you can be a light shining in the darkness to an unbelieving world.

I just talked with someone who believed something that I thought was impossible to believe in. Defense lawyers always question the nature of reality…it’s their job. That’s what they do. But I never thought that they actually believed what they said…and I thought the same of their clients. But it seems that the nature of reality is a bit confused by a great number of people. But never fear! I am going to clear this up for you…you’re very welcome.

In order to pontificate upon the nature of reality, I feel the need to recount my conversation with this person, who will be hereafter referred to as Howard:

I was perfectly content to work the day without an incident, but God had other plans for me. Today we found out that one of our co-workers passed away yesterday. This woman was not that old, and had she caught what killed her early enough, she might have lived another 30 or 40 years.

Howard walks into the office that a co-worker and I share and announces that this incident proves that we all should be “right with God” because we never know what might happen. (Never mind the fact that this guy doesn’t even know God, let alone be right with him…and no, I’m not judging him…I’m looking at the fruits of his character, but that’s another rant.) My co-worker, who we’ll call Katie, says that she’s right with God but that she wonders if Howard is. Howard answers in the affirmative and tells Katie not to judge him. I would have left it at that because I know Howard. I know what his position is concerning God, and he’s rather wrong. But then he decides he’s going to use Scripture to back him up.

“’Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.’ So you can’t judge me Katie”, he says.

“Alright, Howard,” I respond, because now I’m annoyed. “We won’t stone you, then…because that’s what Christ was talking about there. But if you want to take the symbolic view, why don’t you quote what Christ said after that? He asked if her condemners had condemned her. She answered negatively. Then he said, ‘then neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more.’” (But he didn’t want to talk about that aspect of Christ’s ministry.)

Then he started talking about how I needed a witness if I wanted to judge him. (I had no idea what he was talking about…I had said no words of condemnation, or judgment. I merely pointed out that his understanding of that passage was flawed and incomplete.) He also said that if I saw him do something, I needed to get another witness, otherwise it didn’t happen. I told him that it happened whether I had a hundred witnesses or no. He said no, because then it was just my word against his, and nothing can be proven then. I told him that it didn’t matter what I could prove…if he did something, whether or not anyone witnessed it, it happened.

Now we’re getting to the crux of his completely incorrect assumption about reality, and that is nothing can happen unless someone perceives it. Perception is the only reality. (Which is obviously bologna!) So now I must explain to everyone what reality is.

Reality happens. It’s that simple. Reality happens all the time, whether or not you have 2 witnesses, or 1 witness, or no witness. If you want to argue that something didn’t happen, that doesn’t change whether it happened or not. It either happened or it did not, and no matter what anyone says, it’s one of those things, regardless of who won the argument, or the court case, etc.

But even if you want to argue the O.J. defense with me, fine. Two witnesses have to see something happen before it actually happened? OK. Here’s your two witnesses. 1. You. 2. God. There you go. You want to get technical? God is actually 3 witnesses, all of whom are omnipresent, omnipotent, and all that. God perceives everything all the time, so everything has been witnessed. Oh, God can’t prove it in a court of law? OK. How about this…God is a court of law, and everyone, including you, me, and Howard will be judged by God, and let me tell you something. I’d much rather be judged by any judge on this earth than God. A judge can guess what might have happened, but not only did God perceive what happened…he was there through it all. He doesn’t need a jury, nor witnesses. Without Christ as my advocate, I would be condemned by my own actions and be sent to hell just like everyone else. Because God is the ultimate judge…so even if you escape conviction in this life, you’ll never escape it at the end of it.

Ok, so I’m at work, and this dude from Fiji, who is impossible to understand, is driving a forklift. This Fijian dude is driving WAY too fast, and drives into the treating department, and suddenly, (because the floor is wet), his lift stops responding to the steering wheel. (The “Slippery When Wet” sign should have tipped him off to the inevitability of this occurrence.) His out-of-control lift slams into a sliding aluminum door, puncturing it with the forks. Expensive door, because the guide-rails and EVERYTHING have to be replaced now. So what happens to him? Possibly a verbal warning…if that.

Fast forward a few months later. Not 2 months ago, we had a class on safe forklift driving. If you didn’t pass the test at the end, you had to retake the class until you finally got certified. Meaning all of us passed, or we couldn’t drive. Simple enough! This Fijian dude is working with the rest of us on inventorying the entire warehouse. The dude picks up two heavy bins, full of product and starts backing up. It’s common for this dork to get in a hurry, to where he screws stuff up constantly. Now, I realize it’s important to get stuff done in a timely manner, but if you can’t do stuff at a certain pace without many mistakes, you SLOW DOWN…but this guy can’t figure that out. Well, lo and behold, when this guy backs up, his lift tips, and the bins of product fall and spill all over. In our business, if product touches the floor, it MUST be thrown away!

Now, I understand that stuff happens. They’ve made millions of dollars off a phrase that says basically that: Stuff Happens. But you can help avoid some of that Stuff by slowing down and doing stuff correctly. So what happened to this Fijian dude??? He can’t drive a forklift right now. Not until he retakes the test. Although why that should fix matters I have no idea. He took the test before, and apparently it did nothing for him. By putting him behind the wheel of a 8,000 lb forklift, my company is endangering me and people around me.

Don’t get me wrong. I work for a great company, but based on all of the mistakes this fruit has made, he should be GONE. That’s really the topic of my rant. (Besides just getting it off my chest how annoyed I am at this guy.) I’m sick of some people being treated differently. Why is the Fijian dude being treated as the Golden Boy??? Because he’s a minority, and my company is afraid of a lawsuit. Again, don’t get me wrong…they have every reason to be afraid. Why do minorities spend so much time telling us that race should have nothing to do with anything, but the second something untoward happens to them, they cry “RASCIST!!!!” It is THEY that ensure race has everything to do with everything. I tend to agree with them…race should have nothing to do with it. In my life, it doesn’t.

My rant has more behind it than just the Fijian dude at my work. There are other people I talk with on a regular basis…and one of them happens to be black/African-American. He is constantly bringing race into everything. Now, I understand that not everyone thinks like me…and race is an issue with people. My problem is that the Civil Rights people are rather schizophrenic on this topic. Jesse Jackson “preaches” that race shouldn’t be an issue, but rather than living that philosophy, he brings race into EVERYTHING. Make sense, people, or shut up and get off my T.V.