Old Man Rant

Be warned, I'm going on an "old man rant" today.

I was in my car this morning headed across town to have breakfast with a friend when a song I'd never heard before came on the radio. I usually listen to Christian radio, but for some reason, this morning I was on one of the local stations.

The song was "In My Head" by Jason Derulo.

Right away, I knew this was a song with which I would have an issue. The first two lines are:

Everybody's looking for love. Oh. Oh.Ain't that why you're at this club. Oh. Oh.

And then the bridge:

Just leave with me now, Say the word and we'll go.I'll be your teacher. I'll show you the ropes.You'll see a side of love you've never known.

OK, old man rant time.

THIS ISN'T LOVE!

A one night stand isn't love. And while it may be exciting and new; it isn't even like.

IT'S LUST.

Lust is fleeting. Lust is fantasy. Lust is selfish.

Lust leads to regret.

Love.

Love is eternal. Love is committed. Love is self-less.

Love leads towards unity.

Jason Derulo proves my point in the second verse:

Some dudes know all the right things to say.When it comes down to it, it's just a game.Instead of talking let me demonstrate. Yeah.Get down to business let's skip foreplay.

This guy in the bar is in it for his own pleasure. Sure, he is saying the girl will also find pleasure, but her pleasure isn't his ultimate goal; he's selfish. He just wants to get to "the end;" the place he finds pleasure. Skipping foreplay is in essence saying, "I don't care if you have ultimate fun, as long as I get to where I want to be quickly."

OK, so I've tried to keep it PG-13 here, and maybe my "cleaning up the imagery" is weakening my argument, but please hear me today.

Ladies, don't fall for this guy. He is simply using you.

Gentlemen, don't be this guy. Women are to be honored, to be cherished, to be adored.

Women are not objects!

A real man isn't someone who can walk into a club and walk out with a beautiful woman willing to go home with him for the night.

A real man is one who walks her down the isle, and thirteen years later, twenty years later, fifty years later she is still madly in love with him.

You want to find real love, you have to be willing to commit everything for all eternity. Then, and only then, will you "see a side of love you've never known.

And It All Came Tumbling Down

Today's post will be a converging of two of my worlds.

As many of you who know me are aware, I've spent the past 5 years traveling the country working with churches who are upgrading their AVL (audio, video, lighting) systems. Today, I received a phone call from a church here I Lexington I've been working with these past few months; it seems their screen had begun to fall.

Sure enough, one of the three rigging points had failed, and the screen was tilting when I walked into the room.

As I got up on the lift and went to look at what had gone wrong, I found the person who had hung the screen originally had not used appropriate cables. The screen had been hung using lighting safety cables, and not high quality safety cables at that.

The screen had been hanging for some time, I'm not exactly sure how long; but it eventually failed.

As I was repairing the screen, replacing the three points with four new points, I starting thinking about how this failure of the screen rigging related to life.

Specifically, sin in our lives.

You see, sin can be just like those cables holding that screen. For a while, we don't even realize there's a problem. But right from the start, everything is just not safe. The longer we allow the sin to permeate our life, the closer to disaster we come.

Eventually, everything will come tumbling down.