Born Again

For a long time, I never really knew exactly what to say whenever I was asked to share my testimony of how I came to be a Christian.

I used to wish that I had a stirring, powerful story of how I became saved. I used to wish I had some sort of dramatic story that would move audiences to tears. I used to wish I had an epic life filled with abominable sorrows and glorious victories that were beyond human description. I used to wish that the story of my life could be a story that would save lives.  You know the spiel. I wish could give you a tragic, emotional tale of how I neglected to trip a thief while he was running from the cops, only to come home later and discover that my uncle had been murdered by a burglar who turned out to be the same thief I could have stopped earlier, and then that’s how I learned the hard lesson that with great power there must also come great responsibility. But I can’t tell you that story. I’m not Peter Parker. I’m not Spider-Man. I can’t stand up here and tell you that I’m the sole survivor of a dying planet and now I can leap tall buildings in a single bound. I’m not Superman. I’m not the apostle Paul. I didn’t fall off my horse on the road to Damascus or anything like that.

The truth is, how I came to the faith is not a dramatic story.

I used to worry about this a lot. Seems like most Christians can point to the specific moment they were saved. I knew a guy who was like, “Yeah, I was listening to a Petra album on cassette back in 1987 and that’s when something just clicked and I accepted Christ.” I knew another dude who had a rough, tumultuous upbringing, whose family was basically destroyed because of the L.A. riots in the early ‘90s, who had some exposure to the gospel but didn’t truly come to a saving faith until he was in college. I mean, that’s TNT right there, you know, We Know Drama.

For me, I can’t even put a date on when I became a Christian, to be honest with you. The best I can give you is an approximate, give or take a year or two.

My background is that I grew up here, in San Francisco, and my parents took me to church throughout my childhood. They also enrolled me in a Christian school, West Portal Lutheran, and I went there from kindergarten to eighth grade. I had plenty of exposure to the Bible and to the gospel as I was growing up, what with going to Sunday school and having regular religion classes at normal school. I learned a lot about the Bible back then. I still remember, even in kindergarten, having to memorize the 23^rd Psalm. (Don’t ask me to recite it now, though, ‘cause I probably can’t.)

Growing up in a Christian environment, I kind of took it for granted that the stuff I was learning was fact. Facts like how God created us, and how we are sinners and need to repent from our sins by believing in and accepting Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. I bet if we had a time machine and traveled back in time and talked to 1991 Dru, he would say he’s a Christian. But I don’t think I really thought to examine what a saving faith truly means until probably somewhere in my middle school years.

By then, I think my mind and awareness had developed to the point where I could understand and accept that I am a sinner and only Jesus Christ can save me and lead me to heaven. Ever since then, my life has been a process of spiritual growth. Maybe there are some ups and downs in there but ultimately I can say that God continually draws me closer to Him.

I went to a public high school, and it was during those years that I started to more fully grasp and appreciate this gift of salvation God gave me. One of my childhood friends brought me out here, to this church, SFBC, to LIFE Fellowship. I still went to my parents’ church on Sundays, but as there weren’t really people my age there, Friday nights at LIFE were something of a revelation to me. I started to see what it looked like to live in faith everyday, and it was refreshing to be around kids my age who also wanted to learn more about God and the Bible, and to be around adults who wanted to see me grow.

When I went off to college, I was involved in a couple of campus ministries that gave me opportunities to grow some more in my walk with God. I made lasting friendships with other believers, learned what it meant to hold each other accountable before God, and how to share my faith with others. I spent time serving with and even leading other college students. All these different activities taught me how to see God is active in my life. Even during the many times when I served with a stubborn or prideful heart, God still found ways to remind me that my story wasn’t about me, but about Him.

After college I moved back home and though I endured a period of time when my spiritual walk wasn’t too great, God still provided me grace. I still had a couple of close friends at SFBC and they brought me back out here to ETC.

I had a non-Christian friend back in high school who would always tell me, “The only reason you’re a Christian is because you grew up with it.” He insisted that to me whenever I would try to share my faith with him or press him to make a decision for Christ. That actually got me thinking, though. I’d wonder, privately, if what he said was true. I wondered if I would be a Christian if my parents didn’t take me to church or enroll me in a Christian school. I wondered if the fact that they did somehow lessened the importance of my status as a believer.

I wrestled with this question deeply and I answered it (or should I say God answered it) to my satisfaction. 2 Peter 1:10-11 says:

 ¹⁰ Therefore, my brothers and sisters, make every effort to confirm your calling and election. For if you do these things, you will never stumble, ¹¹ and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Maybe to that friend of mine in high school, my faith would have seemed more legit and I’d have more street cred if I didn’t grow up surrounded by Christian influences. But to me, everything that happened to me is a blessing because the end result is that it all pointed me to Christ. The way I see it, yeah, I really can’t change the fact that I grew up surrounded by various Christian influences and people, and with so many opportunities to repent from my sins and turn to Christ. But you know what? That’s a blessing. To me, that’s a blessing that I don’t deserve.

All that stuff I was saying earlier about how I wished I had some fanciful, amazing, dramatic story about my moment of conversion? It’s only my own selfish pride that wishes I could impress you all with my “glorious” testimony.

The thing is, everyday I know how blessed I am that I’m saved at all. I know God chose me to be an heir of Christ, and nothing I ever did deserved that calling. I know this. I think if you think on this fact for any decent length of time, you can’t help but feel a stirring in your heart. When I sit around and really take the time to ponder about what it means that God has called me to Him, it truly is like I am being born again daily.

My testimony isn’t about the great things I have done for the Lord. It’s about the great things the Lord has done for me and continues to do. I know that I’ve done a lot of stupid stuff and probably said a lot of even stupider stuff. I am so obviously a man in need of a Savior. It’s so tempting to think that I’m a Christian because I decided to be one when the truth is that God graciously chose me. And that’s the main thing I wanted to say, is just to tell you that I have been saved, I am saved now, and that I’m up here because I want to show my commitment to the people of this church.

...And I Don't Feel Any Different

So this is the new year
And I have no resolutions
For self-assigned penance
For problems with easy solutions

A Commitment to Excellence

Sometimes I just really identify with the Oakland Raiders of the 2000's. The early years of the decade had some highs but everything since then has been a laugher. Every season begins with some hopes and dreams but they always end up in the pits. Even when it feels like we're making progress, it's hard to say for sure because the end result is that nothing really changes. It's demoralizing and discouraging but there's really nothing else to do other than to keep stubbornly trying, even if there are no guarantees that next season will be better no matter how hard we hope to turn things around. Things could very well turn out even worse.

That's what I think of when I look back on the last decade of my life. The autumn wind is a pirate. But I feel a nocuous chill in the air.

Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys

http://scores.espn.go.com/nba/recap?gameId=301207006

I'm not gonna rail about how we keep losing games. I just feel compelled to point out Alexis Ajinca's quote at the end of the recap article.

"I guess French guys don't like Golden State," Ajinca said, laughing.

It angers me that a French guy would laugh at my team. I still haven't forgiven Mickael Pietrus for those missed free throws in Game 2 of the Jazz series back in '07. And that incident was capped off by his infamous (in my mind, at least) decision to take his puppies for a walk in Golden Gate Park so as to get his mind off his errors. Gah. (You can't see me, but I'm shaking my fist in rage as I type this.)

A Little Learning Is a Dangerous Thing...

I've learned a few things over the past few days. On Sunday, during lunch, I learned that the female counterpoint to "bromance" is "womance." Look up "womantic" on Urban Dictionary. It's legit. I don't think it is as good a word as bromance, though. Saying "womance" out loud just makes me sound like I have some sort of lisp.

We also determined that "rotic" is a one-person romance. (Romance without the "man.") I hesitate to use this word as well. It's only one syllable away from erotic.

On Monday night, I went to the Warriors game with Justin Travis and G.Woozy. It was totally spontaneous; when I woke up Monday morning I had no plans to go to Oakland. I had a job workshop thing from like 8:30AM-3PM all the way in the heart of the Tenderloin, so I took public transportation. Now usually when I take the bus I bring my backpack to carry my stuff. When I drive myself, I usually don't bring my backpack unless I need it for some purpose. After the workshop, I got a ride from someone to go to work. From there I bussed it over to the BART station and met up with the other guys.

So what I learned when I got to Oracle Arena is that there IS an advantage to having a purse. Garland also came straight from work and he was toting his manbag/murse/whatever you wanna call it. I still had my backpack.

Did you know that you have to check in your backpack at a claims check before entering Oracle? But they let people bring their purses right in! So I had to check in my backpack, but Garland was allowed to enter with his murse. It wasn't like it was a tiny murse, either. I'm sure it could fit just as much stuff as my backpack. But they let him right in. I saw women in there with purses that were even bigger than his, too. It just ain't fair that they were allowed to bring those in there.

Ever since the whole metrosexual thing became trendy and guys started sporting the murse, I've had nothing but scorn and derision for manbags. Just didn't see the appeal of them. Now I have learned a valuable lesson.

I ain't saying that I'm gonna go out there and buy one for myself. I can't justify spending the dough right on such a frivolous item right now. And I ain't saying that I have a newfound respect for the murse, either. I'm just saying that I've learned a valuable lesson.

So it's like they say, Knowledge is power. And with each passing day, I only grow stronger.

I Is for Imagination

Sometimes, when I am sitting in the passenger's seat while someone is driving on the freeway, I imagine what it would be like if I grabbed the steering wheel and swerved into the divider. I wonder how hard I would have to swing the wheel to cause us to hit the divider at an angle to do some real damage. I wonder how much it would hurt.

I imagine scraping against the divider for a few meters before wildly spinning around and getting slammed by the cars behind us, who don't have time to react. I imagine metal smashing into metal, glass shattering, fuel tanks leaking, and someone's lit cigarette landing on a puddle of spilled gasoline. I imagine being trapped by a malfunctioning seatbelt, with a few broken bones in my body, in a burning wreck of a car. Would I die with my eyes opened or closed?

I imagine how simple and easy it would be to grab the steering wheel unexpectedly from someone. I imagine how tidy and tragic death would be. I imagine going home.

I don't have a deathwish. I just like to imagine. Sometimes, that's all I can do. It's all I can do to feel alive.

Even Wolverine Does Not Have an Adamantium Heart

I'm strangely moved by these three panels.

Bullseye

One of my all-time favorite short stories is "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff. It's particularly short, but it's a real gut punch. It's about what happens in a man's mind when he gets shot in the head. For such a short story, it's richly textured, thoughtfully crafted, and carefully executed, appealing to my senses on multiple levels.

If you enjoy reading a good short story, check it out here:
https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/ro/www/LiteratureandMedicineInitiative/20080304/bullet.pdf

There's a whole lot I love about this story, but one of my favorite bits is the end, when the main character, Anders, relives a summer memory from his youth. Anders remembers playing pickup baseball in his neighborhood, and a boy who says, "Short's the best position they is."

Anders can't get over that phrase. He wants to ask the boy to repeat the words but doesn't ask because he thinks the others will accuse him of mocking the boy's grammar. They is, they is, they is. But the truth is, he is "strangely roused, elated by those final two words, their pure unexpectedness and their music."

That line reminds me of this conversation I had with a custodian at my workplace. This conversation was probably almost two years ago, but parts of it have been ingrained in my mind ever since. The guy was telling me how he, when he was much younger, was once in a car accident where his car flipped over a few times into a ditch off some lonely freeway.

Now, I can't remember all the specifics of how he had survived. All I remember is that he talked about how lucky and blessed he was to have survived. With great relief, even years after the fact, he looked me in the eye and said, "I coulda been took."

When I heard that, I wanted to ask him to repeat it, too. Like Anders in "Bullet in the Brain." But I didn't want him to think I was making a thing of his grammar. So I just replayed it over and over in my mind. What a beautiful phrase.

I coulda been took, I coulda been took, I coulda been took.

I thought about this tonight, about "Bullet in the Brain" and my acquaintance the custodian. There's something poetic, something nakedly honest and even humbling about these grammatically broken phrases.

I often pride myself on my fine grammar, but the truth is that I am not a real master of grammar. Nope. I know some stuff, sure, probably more than the average bear, but I dare not consider myself a master. And yeah, I've most likely corrected people on multiple occasions (usually in jest, although I wouldn't be surprised at all if people didn't understand I was joking). But I am not a master. I can't explain all the rules of it and if there's a grammatical rule I struggle to grasp, I'm more apt to just rephrase the sentence into something that still means the same thing without having to learn that grammatical concept.

But I thought about this tonight because, as I was praying, I realized how messed up my grammar was. Is. Was? Is? Man, I don't know.

When I pray, especially out loud, I don't really premeditate the words I speak to God. I think of what I'm praying about and then I just pray. This often leads to awkward sentence structures, stuttering, run-on sentences, and starting way too many sentences with the word "and."

It makes me wonder how my prayers would sound if I took the time to write them down and then recited them. It makes me wonder what God thinks of my busted grammar. I hopes He finds a humbled spirit prostrate before Him.

I hopes, I hopes, I hopes.

Automatic, Baby

Whenever I go to the bank, the workers there always go out of their way to greet me and be friendly. They must be trained to do so. Soon as I walk into Wells Fargo, someone standing near the door welcomes me. Then there's someone like 20 feet away across the room, sitting at her desk, saying hello and offering me assistance. It's rather disconcerting.

Then, when I get to the teller to take care of my business, the person usually asks me how my day is going. Sometimes they ask me about the weather, or what I did that morning, or if I have any further upcoming plans for the day or the weekend. It seems like the people who work at the bank are obligated to make small talk to customers. They always go out of their way to have a conversation with me but mostly I just wanna take care of my stuff and get out of there.

I ain't opposed to being friendly with the workers there, but the way they try to talk to me about the weather when they can look out the window makes the whole situation feel rather contrived. Or when they ask me how I'm doing, they know I'm just gonna say that I'm doing fine, and how are you? I hear them ask the same questions to everyone in line ahead of me.

I wonder what would happen if I decided to be a jerk one day and told the teller that I'm feeling like crap. I wonder if they're trained to deal with that sort of bluntness.

Me personally, I'm wary of asking people, "How are you doing?" Sometimes I might not like the real answer, and I don't wanna make anyone lie to me and say that things are "fine" when they're not.

You might think it's inconsiderate of me to not ask you how you're doing, but actually it probably just means I care too much. That's what I tell myself, at least, whenever I walk away from a friend without really exchanging pleasantries.

The Saga Continues

Anticipation is the joy of the journey.

(I don't know if anyone smart ever said that, but that's what I say.)

So much of my life is spent pursuing things, objects, that don't matter. I can spend hours surfing eBay, looking at things I know I will never bid on. I can spend hours at a bookstore or music store, just browsing. (Why is "bookstore" one word but "music store" two? Someone answer me that.) I can spend hours tracking down back issues of comic books that were never collected into trade paperbacks.

The search itself is an adventure of sorts. When I'm on the prowl, hunting for something I yearn to possess, my energy is focused on obtaining my heart's desire. Digging through dusty longboxes in a stereotypical comic book dungeon is the closest I ever feel to being a treasure hunter. (Well, either that or digging through the bargain bins at Green Apple.) I lack the vocabulary to sufficiently describe the feeling of anticipation, the anticipation of finding what I want. But I think everyone knows this feeling. It feels exciting to know how close you are to discovering treasure, to obtaining it, to winning it once and for all.

The funky thing is, when I find something and buy it and take it home, I am usually no longer as enticed by it as I'd imagined I would be.

The actual sense of anticipation leading up to the possession of the prize is more vibrant and meaningful than owning it. And I know this. Been through this process so many times, mulled it over in my mind countless times. I know this.

But like a sucker - no, like a chump - I keep on living the same way. I keep on searching and searching for more treasures, thinking they will satisfy me, telling myself that after I own just this last one, I can stop and rest. But I am such a chump. It's like I never learn; or maybe I do learn, but never apply what I learn. Either way, it's pathetic. And that is the very definition of a chump. I honestly think it's one of the most denigrating words in the American language.

You come to my house, you can look at all the books and comics and CD's I've hoarded over the course of my lifetime. I can look at most of the things I own, and still kinda remember when and where I got them, and maybe what I was feeling at the time, and generally what was going on in my headspace. But there are just stacks and stacks of books and comics I haven't even read. I spent so much time looking for that stuff, trying to find great, cheap deals, just wanting more than anything to HAVE them for the right price... And what's the point? Sure, I know that if I ever get trapped in my house during a heavy snowstorm, I won't be bored. I have an arsenal of things with which to entertain myself. But beyond that? What?

Even armed with this knowledge, I still go out and seek cheap deals, trying to satisfy the bargain-hunter within. My stacks of (unread) books and comics get larger every month. Let me put it this way: I have a lot of issues. Literally. (And possibly figuratively.)

Psychologically, I think most people enjoy the pursuit of happiness more than they enjoy obtaining what they think will bring happiness. I probably do. Thus, I simply continue to chase after things that I think will make me happy, not really comprehending that such a lifestyle is a vicious ouroboros.

Every day I chase the wind.

Why do I constantly look for the rush of seeking something? What is the point of desire for its own sake? I wish I could overthrow all the false idols in my heart.

I know that the prize I should long for is not something worldly. I know that I ought to press on, not dwell on the past and bygone failures or even victories. Worldly things can't satisfy my soul. Even if I do enjoy the things I possess, they don't redeem the blackness of my heart. And that makes the pursuit of such things so utterly meaningless.

There are two dogs in me. They battle constantly. One represents my willful lust for the wind. The other represents my desire to submit to Christ. Which dog wins? The one I feed the most.