Observing Christians

Warning - Partially Flippant

Christians are, generally unintentionally, funny - a fact often found true not in obvious cases of stupidity or in wince-some biblical puns, but rather in simple observation of the redeemed masses. The simple, everyday quirks of the average Christian are more colourful and undeniably funny than a preacher doing a one-man reenactment of Jesus Christ Superstar. On rollerskates.

With this in mind, I present to you some of the more bizarre tendencies of, as well as a few tips for, the average Christian (most points are things the writer has caught himself doing, and all can be read faster than your child usually says Grace).

(1) If the original Greek or Hebrew is made reference to in a sermon, it means (a) the point of the passage is made more clear by explaining a specific word (b) the preacher is pandering for time.

(2) Inter-faith dialogue always seems like a good idea until it turns out that the other person knows more than you.

(3) Children's talks are rarely only beneficial for children.

(4) Psalms should only be sung by those who have a tune in mind before they begin to sing.

(5) Many Christians harbour the suspicion their life would be a lot easier if Jesus had actually said 'love your enemies, apart from that one guy. Man, he's such a jerk.'

(6) It's often possible to identify the worship song coming next from the prayer beforehand ('And help us remember, Lord, that our God is an awesome God. That's you. You're an awesome God. Amen.)

(7) Friendships between denominations usually operate around the unspoken premise You're family in Christ so I'm willing to overlook the fact that you're very, very wrong.

(8) It is widely known a Spurgeon quote a day keeps those heretics at bay.

(9) Not everything should be attributed to spiritual warfare. There are probably no angels and demons playing tug-of-war with your lost scarf.

(10) 'Is Justin Bieber really a Christian?' Should not be one's most pressing theological question.

(11) 'Bible-based fun' often amounts to 'Hour-long lecture'.

(12) Ten years later, many Christians are still struggling to let go of Bruce Almighty as a source of conversation in youth groups.

(13) Tea and biscuits are the staple diet of every church member.

(14) Everyone secretly enjoys the tense standoffs that arise when two people begin to pray simultaneously.

(15) Occasionally, Baptists dance.

(16) Many pious deem 'How can I pray for you?' as a substitute for 'What's the gossip?'

(17) Struggling to bring in the youth to your event? Bring snacks.

(18) The affirming hum Christians make in response the prayers of others is actually a well-honed, delicate art, said by some to be passed down by the apostle Paul himself.

(19) Make sure you know your audience well enough before shouting a triumphant 'can I get an amen?' 

(20) When a typo appears in the hymn lyrics, all those singing undergo a fierce inner debate whether they should sing the error or the actual word. 

(21) Bible-based cartoons and films are always entertaining for nearly always the wrong reasons.

(22) The sentence 'Oh, you're a Christian are you?' doesn't necessarily imply 'please, let me help you evangelise to this oncoming Land Rover'.

(23) If someone opens a conversation by addressing you as Brother/Sister expect an intensive  loving rebuke to be inbound.

(24) One mistruth is continually told in churches across the world: 'no-one's watching you worship anyway.'

(25) In a sermon, the use of the phrase 'one last point' is usually code for 'I hope you brought a packed lunch to this gig'.

(26) When the preacher says 

'if you feel like the Spirit is speaking to you personally through tonight's message, raise your hand',

you will often find yourself fighting the urge to scratch your right ear.

(27) It's disrespectful to watch the congregation member getting frustrated that their final drop of communion has, once again, evaded their tongue and has decided to remain camped out in the glass.

(28) It's disrespectful to watch them, but they're always there.

(29) "It is known that name-dropping and quoting Church Fathers will boost your sanctification levels to somewhere around Augustine's" - Tertullian 

(30) When an awful worship lead says "And we'll get to spend an eternity in heaven like this!" it's within the bounds of orthodoxy to wonder if he hasn't got heaven mixed up with that other place.

Time to Summer Down

The funny thing about Summer is that it seems to be the Best Thing Ever(TM) a week before it kicks off. When students are (ideally) funnelling their waking hours into past papers, staring at lecture notes or wondering wistfully if Armageddon has been pencilled in for anytime soon, scores of hours of free time seem like the best thing since people stopped saying YOLO. And, to start, it is, even if you don’t do much. There's a lot to commend days that revolve around C-List Youtube videos and the eternal question how late does it have to be before breakfast is really lunch?

Such stretches of nothingness, however, can begin to grate - even if you’ve got a fairly busy social schedule these kinds of days can stack up on each other quickly and do weird things to your mind. Personally, so much time spent in purposeless isolation can cause my tolerance levels to drop faster than the fan base of Heroes. During summer, pet hates balloon into mortal sins; little quirks of everyday living become unforgivable slights. 

Think I’m kidding? Here are three quick examples of holiday-specific aggravations.

(1) Fun-sized snack bars

Now this is more like fun-sized.

‘Good things come in small packages’ is what we’re told, usually at Christmas by someone who thinks you’ll be made made whole by another pocket sized Filofax. 

Sometimes the cliche is true - when I’m sent a document to proofread and end up after two hours drowsily blinking through eyelashes that feel sealed with wax, small is definitely better. When Samwise Gamgee is getting hitched to a nice lady-hobbit after all drama in the film ended half an hour ago, less is more. When someone asks how you’re doing, they don’t want to hear anything longer than ‘Pretty good. You?’.

Not always, though, is the smaller superior. Imagine: I’m rummaging in the cupboards for a snack. My fingers clasp around the thin wrapper of something that feels deliciously fattening. I pull my hand out of the cupboard and (to my unimaginable horror) see that the chocolate bar is small enough to make my thumb feel like a Titan amongst mortals. 

Such an event would be upsetting yet forgivable had the designers of the packet not had the evil within their hearts to tauntingly label the food ‘Fun-sized’.  Fun-sized! Is anyone actually persuaded by this move? Is there anyone with the capacity to read who looks at the fictitious adjective and exclaims “Oh, score! I thought I was having a plain old Mars Bar but I guess today’s my lucky day!” Hardly. 

Though I understand slapping “The Over-Compensating Snack” on the wrapper instead might not sell as well, I reserve the right to be mildly irritated.

Some Cola out in plain view. Rookie mistake.

(2) Refrigerator Hide and Seek

Say for the sake of argument that after some smashed windows and flipped tables, you’ve regained your cool. You’ve gone to the shops, bought some honest consumables and, now home, are in need of some fridge space to store the things that need cooling. Not so fast! You’ve forgotten that the fridge is the preferred hunting ground of that ignoble species: The Family. 

What’s that, you say? You’ve written your name on your purchases? Words can be easily overlooked in the face of hunger. 

What’s that? Parents wouldn’t take take your things without checking? Ah, you forget the “We’ve been feeding you your whole life anyway” response, the ultimate shut-down and worst possible afterward to all apologies. 

No, young novice. Best hide your purchase behind something less appetising - say that cabbage that decides being green is too mainstream - and avoid the tastebuds of Sauron sweeping over and devouring your property. 

Refrigerator Hide and Seek: saving over 50,000 cakes per annum. Thank me later.

What’s that? There’s a sandwich already stashed behind that cabbage? Dibs.

(3) Gratuitous Nicety

Now, it’s pleasant when you’re trying to turn onto a busy road and some other driver decides to decelerate a bit to let you in. This is actually called by some ‘being nice’. When the same road holds only one person and (s)he still drops twenty miles an hour to let you in first, this is ‘being unnecessary and a bit strange’.

If I’m walking through someplace with my rucksack open and someone taps my shoulder and points this fact out to me, I appreciate the concern and thank the stranger. If I drop a pen and that same person from miles away charges forward to pick it up for me, I wonder if they are trying to be kind or if the makers of Cluedo could have been a bit more comprehensive in their identification of weaponry.

When an aquaintance gets you a present and the tag reads ‘Happy Birthday, Melvin!’, it shows they care. If your name's Melvin, anyway. When a friend gets you a present and the tag says ‘Happy Monday! (present one of seven)', you might have to set set your social media to appear offline for a few years.

At this point, belief in the essential goodness of humanity being slowly drained with every sentence, you hold your head in your hands and wonder how somebody could get annoyed at such triviality. “Maybe”, you say, “He can get along on a day to day basis without being such a grump?”

Maybe.

Then again,

Probably not.

Things High School Taught Me, Part one: A Waist of Time

Back in March, I uploaded a quick list of things I’d learnt in my Primary school years that hadn’t managed to make it to the official syllabus. The post was fairly well received. Not in the usual X-Factor ‘I’m know I’m good at singing because my friends and family tell me I am’ sort of way, either. 

In the weeks following the post’s online life, I’ve been asked by some to write a sequel about my years in secondary education. To start, I wasn’t all that keen to do so - partly because I found high school rather an unpleasant period, and mostly because my alter-ego at that time would have to have been named Bland-Man or something along those lines. I had at that time of life, for example, a favourite vegetable; I had an unhealthy obsession with my Runescape persona (purely platonic, you understand); phrases like ‘outside world’ would all too easily strike fear into my innermost being.

As time has frittered away in the past month or two, however, I’ve found myself caught up in snippets of memories and quirks of my time at secondary school that hopefully merit a strongish post. Sit down, then, relax, never say the word ‘chillax’ in my presence, and enjoy part one of Things High School Taught Me.

Lesson one: Johnny B. Goode has been ruined by overzealous PE Teachers

Each year, between the annual downpour of sleet and the hallowed Christmas break, there existed a stint of several weeks where ‘Physical Education’, a grueling class that showcased my failings and flailings at sport, was swapped out for ‘social dancing’: a grueling class that showcased my failings and flailings at dancing with members of the opposite sex.

Every week, the classes would be marched into the games hall and the genders would establish themselves at either side of the room. Only the most beautiful and confident of souls would ever strut across the no-mans-land for a chat, while those at the other side of the social spectrum would watch these human peacocks and very much miss our virtual crossbows. Most, somewhere in between the extremes, stuck to their side waiting (perhaps a little nervously) for the teacher to bellow ‘Choose your partners!’ like some kind of failed gameshow host and, only then, venture across as a team.

If I had to choose one part of my whole social dancing career I really did enjoy, it was this ‘choosing of the partners’, which involved the entire group of puberty-suffering youngsters trying to toe the line between scoring the person they wanted to lock hands with while still pretending not to care about anything much, ever. Such a ritual usually includes deliberately positioning yourself within a ten-foot radius of your target; absent-mindedly/deliberately catching their eyes, then asking if they would like to double up - normally with as few words as possible:

“Want to dance with me?”

“Hi. Partners?”

“You?”

As time went on, actually, these lines of questions became an increasingly honed art - by our fifth year all it took was an eyebrow twitch and you had three weeks’s worth of dancing and a prom date all lined up. 

After maybe a minute or so, ninety percent of the student body would be coupled and lined around the perimeter; the final ten percent were assigned a partner (though by their faces they may as well have been asked to read out a stack of ‘yo’ momma’ jokes to a firing squad), and one way or another I’d be facing a girl in my year and fighting the urge to apologise in advance. 

Now came the dancing itself: a terrifying prospect filled with all kinds of woe. For one, where was I supposed to look? Should I have watched my shoes? Should I have kept my neck snapped away or stared straight into her eyes as like I was about to whisper “and what became of your lamb, Clarice”? Usually, I ended up flicking between them all in three or four seconds like the star of a low-budget sequel to the Exorcist.

Another obstacle for the 13-year-old myself was the business of placing my hand round the girl’s waist - a move that at the time seemed next door to impregnation. I had no desire to become one of those underage fathers you read about on the news and so I always panicked, placing a closed fist on my dancing partner's side instead. 

Worst of all, these kinds of problems usually went by unanswered and piled up on each other. Doing my best to look like I was enjoying myself, attached to my peer by a single pair of joined hands and a few knuckles, I’d spend most periods of social dancing snapping my neck to the side, down to my shoes and then straight into my partner’s soul; all the while pondering why people were so anxious for Johnny B. Goode to go away in the first place. 

To this day, my favourite part of a ceilidh is when the nibbles come out.

Lesson two: Every pupil has their own ongoing skirmish with the office

You may recall that my primary school post featured a faction of pre-pubescent midgets joining forces to meet a shared goal, namely, the acquisition of the hallowed Hill. A high schooler’s War with the Office is generally of a different sort - each student is forced to carry his/her fight and shoulder his/her burdens by him/herself.

I have to admit that my personal conflict with the school office was kicked off by (A) my desire for a temporarily free lunch and (B) my tending to thrust all my problems on a future version of myself. At least twice a week for a large part of my second year I’d treat the room beside the school entrance as half office, half bank and ask the increasingly irritated woman at the window for a lunch slip intended for who’d forgotten their lunch money, and not for those who’d blown theirs on Jaffacakes the day before. 

I would always uncategorically swear to pay my debts the next day, though was fascinated by how ‘next day’ and ‘next wednesday’ could be so easily conflated.

After several months of taking advantage of the school in such a way, I realised my system wasn’t the most selfless of actions. Repentant, I turned over a new leaf, paid my dues and began to buy my lunch like any other. I thought, insodoing, I’d stopped any conflict with the office before it had started. I was rather surprised, then, when one morning I showed up with a single note to pay two seperate (and not lunch-caused) fees. Apparently, this was a heinous sin and very much not to be done. Instead of asking me to come back the next day with two seperate payments, the lady’s face in front of me puckered into a giggle before she turned to a colleague still at her desk. 

“Hey, guess what?”

“What?”

“This boy” - I would have preferred student, pupil, gentleman, but I let it pass - “wants to pay for two things with one note!” 

Said colleague shook her head back and forth and began to chortle.

“We don’t do that”, she said.
“We don’t do that.” The woman at the window said, turning back to me, shaking her head and still snickering.

Maybe it was a running joke on that side of the glass, but if there was it was lost to me. Embarrassed, bewildered, and having not yet fully understood the concept of ‘turn the other cheek’, I fled back to class and prepared myself for the next round of war.

To be continued, etc, etc.

If you want to see the original primary school post, go here.

If you want to read about my long-winded day out in London, go here.

If you are interested in acquiring a black belt in the ways of the dish towel, go here.