Undercover God

I have returned from the Birthday Weekend in Leesburg, Virginia. A quaint little city a lot like Lancaster and designed to suck cash out my bank-account. The weekend was dedicated to victuals and I had the pleasure of hanging out with a college friend of over three decades.

When I travel to new towns and cities where I don't know anyone, I typically will attempt to find lodging that is close to where I want to spend time, must be walkable. It will usually be a hotel, maybe a B & B, but never AirBnB unless I am totally separate from the host and have a dedicated space where I don't have to interact and relate. I don't want to negotiate that and prefer a cordial yet  professional interaction with the staff. I want to do my thing with no drag.

One of the guilty pleasure of staying in a hotel is a full Cable TV package. At home, I am Basic Cable and spend my time watching CSPAN 2 BOOKTV and related geeky programs. Plus, Eagles football because I apparently enjoy pain. Yesterday, at the hotel early in the AM, I watched the World Cup Rugby Match between Japan and Scotland and Japan won the game and is now the first Asian Team ever to be in the quarter finals. Having Basic Cable gives me time to do other things rather than get old in front of the TV. Like spend hours on social media. Actually, I am a podcast junkie and like to work-out, too. So, it is not total social media. I am going to be mountain biking around 10:00 AM today where I get back on the healthy and hard ascetic trail.

On Saturday night at the hotel, done with my day of festivities, I flipped through the TV channels and came across the program on CNBC "Undercover Boss" and its cousin "Undercover Celebrity."  If you have not seen these shows, the premise is that a CEO or a celebrity dons a disguise and puts themselves in the muck. Rather being top-down, the individual is bottom-up, experiencing the day-to-day realities of being line staff or some other role where the privilege temporarily has been renounced. Both are good programs for television. General a positive message of the mighty having some type of revelation through the lowering of oneself. The shows' end with the leader humbled and helping those below him in a new way. The change of altitude changes the attitude type of deal.

The Undercover Celebrity episode had Deion Sanders as the guest. I have heard that he is actually a good guy despite his swagger. Learned that he had a hard life growing up and probably had a lot more depth than his pop image. He played football for the Cowboys which already puts him on my Shit List. He incarnated himself as some frumpy and somewhat grumpy middle-aged with thick glasses man trying to either start a youth football team or an inner city chorus for homeless men. Neon Deion had to keep his pearly white smile cloaked because it would have given him away. 

It was enlightening and encouraging. He was genuinely touched by the everyday heroes he hung out with, and then blessed them at the end of the show to further their work. Money, while not everything, is certainly something to people and organizations working with the disenfranchised, especially kids. All of the people profiled in the episode were strong and compassionate. Not wishy-washy individuals. Realists who still had high expectations for those they were trying to help. A hand-up not a hand-out as the cliche says.

About two weeks ago, I had some Twitter and Facebook interactions with total strangers who are skeptics towards Christianity. Some were downright insulting, saying that if a person was a Christian, he/she is by definition low IQ, and/or a hustler in it for the graft, a pathetic individual, etc. In the back and forth, I typically don't reveal I have a Ph.D. from a world-class university in a fairly challenging discipline. I also don't allude that I read a lot and know the critics arguments fairly decently.

I ask questions which are actually logical premises, such as "What is your basis for morality?"  Any morality not based on a transcendent system of thought that is beyond sociological and individual preferences is by definition temporal/temporary. The material world alone cannot rise up against itself and premise a right and wrong. So, let us stop this waste of time. As Francis Schaeffer wrote, "If you chop a man in half it is no more than chopping a tree in half" in light of evolutionary materialist dogma. If matter is all there is, nothing ultimately matters. Save your tears for a universe that cares. Let us be thankful that people are not consistent to their premises in terms of actions. 

Some harsh commenter wrote that the idea that God would choose one people, one nation, and then ultimately bring one person into the world to reveal his will to be really preposterous.  Cultural and religious hegemony.  Maybe even worse. Yet, everything in creation, within the time space/continuum, starts small and becomes big. Think an acorn that becomes a tree, a baby that becomes an adult, a brick that becomes a building. Not so ridiculous logically.

Undercover Boss/Celebrity shed light on the concept that the big in becoming small can greatly help the small in becoming big. That humility is the road to helping others, not haughtiness. People oneself in the mud and become one with those who need help. Get your hands dirty. Be close enough to hear the cries and sighs, sigh and cry yourself God. Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Believe me, I don't have it all figured out and am far of who and what I need to be. Yet, I take hope that God is at work in me to do his will, even as imperfect as I am.