My girlfriend Laura and I went to this bar the other night. It was called The Red Room. They served cocktails and had an image of Che Guevara on the back wall, looking through the patrons onto 200 South. The back of the bar was divided up into neatly sectioned wood panels where they put the alcohol and there were a few small tables, red couches on both sides and a jazz band setting up in the lower left of the bar. When we walked in the door, a hunky man with blonde hair asked us for our ID’s. We, of course, gave them to him. He was wearing a black t-shirt and looking super ripped. But what I noticed more than this was his nametag. It was white on black like Mormon name tags, and pinned to the upper part of his chest. Now, the LDS nametags say this: Your name, followed by Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. It’s pretty standard. The guys’ nametag at the Red Room said this: Church of the depressed, broken and morally bankrupt. And I about wept for joy because I think that might have been the most beautiful things I heard all day.
You see, moving out to Salt Lake City to start a church should involve have people of strength, people of moral fiber, people of great spiritual Christian character, people who would rather read the bible than watch T.V., who fast three times a week, can bench press a proverbial 300 pounds worth of Kingdom advancing, and I usually do not put myself in this category. I would like to, I really would, and it’s not like I’m not trying, but I really can’t.
I would put the other people who are involved in this church plant as those sorts of people. But not me, and I am really not trying to be like one of those guys who just moans and weeps and tries to outdo you by saying really how terrible he is, “Terrible! Terrible!” I am a terrible person he says, “You don’t even know! Seriously, you don’t even know!”
Oh, we know.
But really I feel vastly under qualified to be a part of anything religious, which is probably why I am a Christian. I have a list of vices a mile long almost all of which I partook in today, which is probably why I felt the need to write this, because I felt guilty and had to get this guilt out somehow, or maybe I’ll feel better by letting everyone know how terrible of a person I am so they will say, “No, you are not a terrible person! You are a great person!” thereby using the same ploy people have used for countless generations, which is the putting down of oneself so that others will build one up.
Since I moved to Salt Lake City to become part of a the church plant, my rate of smoking has doubled, drinking is one the rise, this girl at the coffee shop where I work offered to smoke me up and I almost took her up on it, without a girlfriend here I find myself having more of a propensity towards lustful things, I masturbate, want to look at porn, or do other things, have very little desire to get in tune with God, and I could go on, but you get the point. Not that these things are anything new, they’re daily things, but I find it somewhat ironic that they have all increased since I’ve been here.
So basically when I give into these things I feel like a complete moral failure and wonder why no one has put a restraining order on me from churches or something like that. I also feel like I serve absolutely no purpose, if anything am taking up space, so sometimes I think of the nametags.
And I think how beautiful a church of the depressed, broken and morally bankrupt would be. Not that we couldn’t use some good old transformation, but my transformation looks like shit right now on a line graph, and transformation also takes a very, very, very, very, very, very, long time.
