I hate Wii Fit

I got my wife a Wii Fit for Christmas. She loves it. I hate it.

Basically it is a jerk. The thing is rude. Maybe it knows how I feel about it, and that is why it treats me the way it does. I don't know. Every time I step on the thing it tells me I'm obese. Now, granted, I know I can lose a couple pounds, but obese? C'mon now. It decides that I'm obese because it thinks that at my height (6' 2") I should weigh 185 lbs. I haven't weighed that much since I was a Jr. in high school. All I wanted to do at that point was gain weight. It doesn't seem to understand that there is more to obesity than your height to weight ratio.

I hate the treadmill too, but not as much. It waits for me in the morning - its little lights glowing green and yellow and orange. It taunts me with all the flashing and blinking, trying to make me believe that it is fun in some way. It isn't. It is the modern day equivalent of the old stretching machine torture device. It pushes my body to its utter limits, trying to break me - but I can watch TV while it happens! At least I get to sweat all over it with reckless abandon.

So, why does the Fit rank above the treadmill on my hate list? It measures the wrong thing. I connect my phone to the treadmill and it records my workouts. When I get home I can upload the workouts to Nike+ and it tells me what I've done. It keeps track of how faithful I've been in my runs. The Fit just tells me if I'm fat or not. It's all about success; according to the Fit I'm a long way from success. (But that doesn't stop it from telling me each time that I've failed.)

Way too often we look at God more like the Fit than the treadmill. (Bet you've never heard that one before.) We think that God wants success, that he wants us to win, to conquer and to triumph. He doesn't. (He's the winner, the conqueror and the triumpher, not us.)

In Matthew 25 we find the parable of the talents. The highest praise the master gives is "Well done my good and faithful servant." He never says, "You've won" or "You succeeded" or "You raised more money than the other guy" or "You could've done better". He says, "You were faithful."

"Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit." So what is that fruit? "But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." Notice anything missing? "Success" is not a fruit of the spirit. Yet I try to make it one.

So does the Wii Fit - and that's why I hate it so much.

Untamable

It doesn't make a difference to me what Obama did or didn't see in China, but I love the determination, bravery and moxy of the house churches in China. (It's also great to see this message slipped into the Wall Street Journal of all places.) When people fully turn their lives over to Christ and become disciples, no government can keep Christianity down.

Inspiration.

Multiples

I hate failing (especially when other people know).

Can you picture Elijah throwing himself over the lifeless body of the widow's son, crying out, "O Lord my God, let this boy's life return to him!" and then... nothing.

Ouch. But Elijah doesn't stop there. He goes for it again.

And nothing.

Chances are, if I fail at something, I'm not going to do it again.

Elijah goes for it a 3rd time and succeeds. There's a lesson here somewhere.

An open question

The Bible is the inspired word of God. It contains everything that God wants us to have and know and use. But it certainly is not a record of everything God has ever done.

In it, we find the story of Paul - a man to whom Jesus appeared, who radically turned his life to accommodate the new reality he discovered.

Was Paul the only one? Did Jesus appear to others in a like manner at a similar time?

Was there a man who led a similar life but couldn't write like Paul, so we have no record of his actions?

Was there a man who led a similar life, but couldn't change like Paul, so he stayed in his old life (or stayed blinded because he couldn't bear to submit)?

Was there a man who led a similar life, but couldn't persevere like Paul, so when the going got tough, he walked away from God's call?

The Audacity of Faith

Paul is standing before the Jewish King and the Roman Governor. He is on trial. Once again, he falls back to telling his personal story, but he takes it one step further and explains to these men how his story connects to Jesus' story and how Jesus' story is the culmination of the story of the entire Jewish nation.

His judges lose it. The Governor accuses him of being crazy, "You're great learning is driving you insane." But Paul isn't done with the King. He pushes him, as a Jew, as to whether he believes the words of the prophets regarding the messiah. He won't let Agrippa hear these things without pushing for a response.

"Do you think that in such a short time you can persuade me to be a Christian?" There is no way that Paul could have persuaded a King to change his stripes. That would be insane. But, Paul wasn't doing the persuading. Paul's words and Paul's story were driven by an outside power. He could believe that these men could change in an instant because he wasn't driving the change. He was doing his part, but God had a part to play as well.

It was Paul's knowledge of his team, that he did not have to face these men alone that allowed him to have such audacity. It allowed him to lay out his personal story and relate it to God's story. The two were written for and by one another, they were inexplicably intertwined, as our story should be with God's.

Take Courage

In Jerusalem Paul is almost killed by the crowd, almost beaten by the Roman guard, almost torn to pieces by the Sanhedrin. It has been a rough time, a harrowing experience, not something anyone would want repeated. Lucky for Paul, the Lord gives him some encouragement.

"Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome."

Oh, that's just wonderful.

Broken Rearview

The wheel feels familiar beneath my hand, the worn leather over soft foam giving beneath my skin as the stitching pushes back against my grip. The gas pedal gives way beneath my foot, as the orange needles on the dashboard shakily climb higher.

In a sequence practiced hundreds, thousands of times one foot rises as the other lowers, one presses and the other releases. An orange needle drops and a tug on the gearshift causes the pinion to disengage with a dull click like a key being removed from a lock. For an instant things flow freely on their own, power disconnected from direction.

Pushed up and to the right, the gearshift finds the next ratio. The mechanism gives with only the slightest effort and grasps the intruding lever, holding it tight as the clutch reengages, the pedals switch places and power and direction are joined again, hurtling the vehicle forward and causing both needles to rise again.

Outside, things become more and more confused. On the right, telephone poles whiz past, their proximity is felt in the ears as much as it is heard. On the left, the lane divider seems to change from short white lines to blurred white dots to a single translucent white line. Trees, houses and oncoming traffic quickly come into a peripheral focus and even more quickly disappear, devoid of detail and strangely misshapen by speed.

Up and to the right a different view is found. A small window to a more stable world. The things behind are clear. Dotted lines remain dotted lines. Telephone poles are not blurs, cars have detail, houses have shape. The world looks right, normal, calm, comfortable.

Ahead, insanity reigns. Curves, turns, traffic, lights and rules jump out in front, demanding action, demanding effort and reflex and change and pain. The mirror shows peace. It shows where I’ve been, what I’ve come through, what I’ve learned, what I’ve loved. There is no madness, no grief, effort, turmoil.

The mirror shows an image of the best of what was. But it is only that, an image. And it is a twisted one at that. It is protected, shaded from the true harsh nature of what is there. I protect myself by dulling the edges and angling the details. The view through the mirror is nothing like the view was through the windshield.

No matter how pretty the picture, how comforting the view, my focus must be forward, on the road ahead, not the one behind. I cannot go back, I cannot retreat. And even if I could, what I found would be much different than what I remember. The good old days are not as good as I delight, but they are just as old. And no matter how much I may painfully long for the contrary, objects in the mirror are NOT closer than they appear.