This is a video made years ago (circa 2006). I can’t remember where the idea came from. Probably from how freaky the Boobah show really is. In any case, here is a freshly ‘remastered’ version with subtitles for all those places where we didn’t know how to improve the audio.

A couple weeks ago, I was speaking with someone and we asked each other the question, “If you could go back and meet the 12 year old version of yourself and give them some piece of advice, what would it be?”. This wasn’t my answer, but after having some time to mull around the question in my head, I think this answer may by on the list of things I’d want to say.

Proverbs 1:8-9:

Hear, my son, your father’s instruction,
   and forsake not your mother’s teaching,
for they are a graceful garland for your head
   and pendants for your neck.

If I could meet the 12 year old version of myself and remind him of something, or advise him in some way, I would want to tell him that his parents are on his side. That his parents are on his team, so to speak.

As a kid (and in some ways, as a parent too), it’s easy to feel like the adult authority in your life is an opposing force. That it needs to be circumvented to really enjoy the things you want to enjoy. Kind of how a lot of people have a similar view of the police. This force isn’t benevolent, or acting in your best interest. But rather a challenging ‘obstacle’ in the grand game of life.

This isn’t so, but it’s not something we typically learn until we’re older. But, as Solomon teaches, it is wisdom and prudence to learn this young. To appreciate this ‘pendant for your neck’, rather than resist it.

Romans 1:16 says:

“I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.”

Most of the time, I feel confident saying that I am not ashamed of the Gospel. I don’t usually have the inclination to shrink back from talking about it or its power.

However, I am ashamed—very ashamed—to be associated with this:

(Can’t see the video? Watch it on YouTube)

Just for the record, a ‘rough rider’ (which this group of youth pastors from ‘The Father’s House’ in California repeatedly calls themselves in this song) is a type of condom designed to enhance sexual pleasure. It’s also a (gross) sexual technique. Painfully lame and uninformed.

What the hell? Wake up people! Seriously, there is absolutely no part of this that’s okay.

I’ve always had a number of questions about Jesus. Not huge philosophical or historical questions. More like, practical life questions. I think if most think hard enough, we’ve all had these questions.

For example, we understand that Jesus was both God and man. Fully God, yet fully man. And we understand that is a mystery which we may never understand—possibly even in eternity. But it still makes me wonder. Jesus was born to a woman, he was a child. He had a natural birth and went through the same ordinary functions that any other human being would.

We know that as a child he knew who he was. But what about as a toddler learning to walk? Did he know then? Did he know anything then? Or what about puberty? Did Jesus have the same natural inclinations that other human boys experience at that time, or are those experiences a part or by product of a fallen nature that Jesus never experienced?

These are questions that I find fascinating. In them are quietly embedded some of the most intricate understandings of what it means to be human. It’s unfortunate that the answers to those questions simply aren’t answered anywhere in this lifetime.

I started thinking of all this today because of the passage in Luke I read. Jesus is chased out the synagogue to a cliff which the people intend to throw him off of. He gets away of course, but this is what it says:

And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.

“But passing through their midst, he went away”? Huh? I’m forced to read this as if it said, “Somehow he got away”. We know that he was fully a man, but being fully God also, did he wield some power of the crowd that they just let him walk by? Or did some temporary metaphysical change take place and he literally walked through people?

This is one of those passages—peculiar enough to make me wonder—but offering too little information to ever come to a satisfactory conclusion.

I suppose as with many things that will be the case in this lifetime and maybe in the one to come. But if I ever get the chance, I’ll ask him about it. If I’m able, I’ll report back here and let you all know what he says!