What Do You Want?

Well, it is time to blog again, and, once again, I am at a loss for words.

The men's group at church is having a fish-fry tonight. As much as I like fish, and as much fun as it promises to be, I find myself really not wanting to go. I don't really have a reason not to go, I just don't want to. I don't even have a reason why I don't want to. I'm going to go; and hopefully I'll have a good time. Maybe I need to pray about that.

It's funny how sometimes what we want and what we need not only don't match, but are directly opposite of each other. Of course, sometimes what we want and what we want are in direct opposition. For example: I want to be built like Governor Schwarzenegger, but I also want to eat like a pig, and lay on the couch and watch TV all the time. I want to be able, at any time, to give an answer of the hope that I have of eternal life, but I would rather take a nap than study my Bible. You can probably think of lots more examples.

I'm going to do a little travelling down a rabbit trail, now (just letting you know). I know a lot of people who want to be spiritual and want to go to Heaven, but they don't want to study the Bible, or they don't want to do any of the things in the Bible. I've had people tell me, "Oh, as long as you're doing your best. God will let you into Heaven." What I'd like to know is, if doing your best doesn't include reading the Bible, then what makes you think any of the rest of that is any good anyway?

Once I had somebody use the 'car wash analogy' on me. What he said was, basically, "If you owned a car wash, and you had an employee that didn't do things exactly the way you wanted, you wouldn't just fire him, as long as he got the cars clean, right?" That makes sense, in and of itself, but let's look at it a little deeper. First of all, you have a lot of chemicals in a car wash. There's glass cleaner, detergent, bug cleaner, degreaser, tire cleaner, and whitewall cleaner. OSHA (Our Savior Has Arrived) will expect any employee at the car wash to be familiar with the safety precautions and interaction warnings of each of these chemicals. If you, as my employee, don't get to know these things, OSHA can, and probably will, shut down my car wash (I am not letting you get my business shut down--besides, I don't want any of my employees to get hurt). Furthermore, although the main objective is to make sure cars get clean, I, as the owner, want to make sure that ALL the cars going through my wash get clean. If Ray normally brings his car through on Tuesday, but this week got something nasty on his car on Friday, and comes in Saturday for a wash, he's going to expect the exact same treatment that he normally gets on Tuesday. For that reason, I'm going to have a checklist made up to make sure everything that supposed to get done gets done every time a car comes through my wash, no matter which of my employees happen to be working that day. That means that I'm going to have some written material at my car wash: The checklist and the MSDS sheets for the chemicals. Each of my employees is going to know these things. If you haven't read, indeed, are not familiar with, the written guidelines of my car wash, then, no, you are not going to collect a paycheck. Having said that, do you really think that God gave us the written material that he gave us just for it to sit on a shelf and collect dust? Granted, God isn't worried about OSHA shutting Him down, or maintaining ISO 9001 certification, but there are things in there that He wants us to know. Isn't it just common sense that we read up?

I read somewhere that the Bible is still the best selling book in America, but that more Americans have actually read the IKEA catalog. I think they were being facetious, but it's kind of a scary thought, just the same.