Cheech & Chong - Part 2

After several months of working as Cheech and Chong’s lackey on a construction project, I was wondering how much more I could take. Then fate stepped in. The contractor informed my friend Mike and me that work was drying up, and he could only afford to keep one of us on board. Turning to me, he said, “Today’s your last day, Steve.”

Ever loyal, Mike said afterward, “That wasn’t cool. Maybe I should leave, too.”

“No, don’t do that,” I said, just to be nice at first, then with real conviction. Within seconds, the realization had taken hold that Cheech and Chong would never again require me to bear back-breaking loads or dig a trench in a filthy crawl space. Their drug-addled minds were finished conjuring up humiliating situations to place me in for their amusement. I was free.

“You stay on if you want, Mike,” I continued with a dreamy look. “I know exactly what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna get me an office job.”

And I set out to do just that. Surely an undergrad engineering degree earned me the right to do more than make sandwiches and haul lumber. So I began scouring the want ads for a part-time job with a high-tech company. Within two weeks, I had managed to land an interview with a small environmental firm in San Rafael. Upon arriving there, I found a beautiful redwood office building nestled at the foot of a tree-studded hillside. Inside, bright offices were filled with respectable-looking scientists working away in front of glowing computer terminals. What they were doing, exactly, was unclear, but none of them was serving as a human pack animal. That much was certain.

During my interview with a woman named Rhonda, I fought to keep my Southern accent at bay and sprinkled in a few ill-defined references to the “viscous flow theory” and “orbital mechanics” I had studied in college. Unfortunately, this worked too well. Rhonda finally shook her head and said, “You’re really overqualified for the position. It’s mostly copying and filing technical reports, and I think you’ll be bored stiff within two days.”

This couldn’t be happening. Given my recent employment history, thoughts of being overqualified for a position had never occurred to me. Fighting panic, I decided that complete candor was my only shot.

“Ma’am,” I began, ratcheting the accent up a notch, “I have spent the last several months hauling debris up and down a stone staircase in the heat of the day while being taunted by two middle-aged hippies. I am eager to be bored.”

It was a joke that changed my life. I got the job, and by the time I graduated from Golden Gate, I was worked my way up to a full-time engineering position—an unexpected career that I eventually returned to after 8 years as a pastor. And to think that none of it would have happened if it weren’t for Cheech and Chong.

Thanks, guys.

Cheech & Chong - Part 1

After briefly working in a local deli, my friend Mike and I found what seemed like the perfect way to put ourselves through seminary. We met a contractor at church who needed some help, and he hired us for double what we had been paid to make sandwiches. More money, a Christian boss, and the chance to learn some new skills—what could be better?

Unfortunately, our enthusiasm was quickly dampened by a hard dose of reality. Our contractor friend was renovating a house on a steep hillside that was inaccessible to trucks. Getting building materials to the work sites was difficult, and Mike and I were envisioned as the “human mule” solution. Our jobs consisted almost entirely of carrying lumber up the hill, then carrying down buckets of debris from demolition work.

To make matters worse, our only coworkers were a pair of ex-hippies who worked slowly and enjoyed smoking marijuana on their frequent rest breaks. Each day, “Cheech and Chong” (as we dubbed them) delighted in assigning us all gruesome tasks they had been carefully avoiding.

“Hmm . . . let’s have Mike and Steve break up that back patio with a jackhammer, then carry the broken concrete down a steep incline to the dumpster, shall we?”

Mike and I didn’t trouble ourselves too much over Cheech and Chong’s salvation, as it was pretty obvious that they were going straight to hell no matter what we did. Case in point: one day Mike and I noticed that the dumpster we were (as usual) filling with dirt and concrete was labeled “Organic Waste Only.” Mike suggested to Cheech and Chong that this container was meant for branches and leaves, not heavy materials.

“Nonsense,” Cheech murmured dismissively, “they couldn’t care less what you throw in there.”

But when it came time for the disposal company to pick up the dumpster, Cheech and Chong jumped into their pickup, shouted, “I’d throw a little brush on top of all that dirt if I were you,” and drove off laughing.

We took their advice, but our frantic attempt at concealment didn’t help any. When the flatbed truck from the disposal company arrived and began winching the dumpster up onto its bed, the massive weight caused the vehicle’s front wheels to pop up into the air alarmingly. Its red-faced driver leaned out the window and screamed, “What did you assholes put in that thing?!”

For the next 20 minutes, we took cold comfort in Cheech and Chong’s increasingly grim eternal fate, as the driver struggled to load the dumpster and continued to fill the air with curses. “Don’t bother calling us for another one,” was the nicest thing he shouted, as the truck inched away with its sagging load.

Small Group Aversion

Mt. Tam Christian Community had a casual, laid-back atmosphere (as described in a previous post), but Bart, its pastor, was deadly serious about that word “community.” Bart pictured church as a close-knit family of believers whose mutual love and support served as a magnet to the lost world around them. An admirable goal, to be sure, but given my introverted nature, I wasn’t always comfortable with the practical applications of this vision.

Take, for instance, Bart’s pre-sermon ritual. Before preaching, he had everyone break up into groups of 4 or 5, form their chairs into a circle, and discuss a series of probing questions about their spiritual lives. This practice was disturbing on several levels. First, it felt a little weird to be chatting away in the middle of a worship service. Childhood attempts to engage in this activity had left me at the business end of my mother’s elbow, and my ribs had been slow to forget these inducements to silence.

But the real problem, it must be admitted, was Bart’s questions themselves. They really were probing. For some reason, he wasn’t content to offer up a few harmless ice-breakers like, “Where did you go on your last vacation?” Instead, his queries were more along the lines of . . .

Describe a time when you felt spiritually/emotionally destitute. How did God meet you in that moment?

Such questions presupposed that I was of sufficient spiritual depth to arrive at a meaningful answer and, having formulated such an answer, was inclined to share it with a handful of underdressed strangers. Since both these assumptions were plainly false, I usually made a well-timed trip to the bathroom right before the interrogation.

Bart, however, had more community-building tricks up his sleeve. During the week, the church offered several “family groups” that met in various homes around Marin County, the purpose of which was to further expose us to probing questions about our spiritual lives. A friend from seminary who tried one of these small groups came back raving about the experience. “It’s not your average Bible study, Steve,” he gushed. “We really get to know each other.”

“I’ll bet you do,” I replied. “But I don’t think I could hide in the bathroom for 2 hours.”

Little did I know that, in one of life’s strange little ironies, I would someday be in charge of the church’s small group ministry. But that’s a story for another day.

Rating the Straw Men

So I just finished The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. (Disclaimer: I am not promoting this particular book, though I do promote reading books with a perspective that differs from your own.) At one point, Dawkins lays out a 7-point belief scale, with #1 representing strong theism (100% certainty that God exists) and #7 representing strong atheism (100% certainty that God does not exist). Dawkins' own "rating" is between 6 and 7, and his stated goal for this book is to move people toward that end of the spectrum.

This was frighteningly reminiscent of The Engel Scale I learned about in seminary, which rates an individual’s Christian faith (or lack thereof) on a scale from -12 to +4. The -12 value represented a posture toward God like that of Linda Blair in The Exorcist, while the highest rating was basically reserved for missionaries in Kazakhstan. The idea, I guess, was that even nudging someone to a -5 (Experience of Christian love) signified progress. Then Billy Graham or somebody else who knew what they were doing could take them the rest of the way.

But here's my problem with both of these scales. Once you set out to move people toward some predetermined position, the temptation becomes overpowering to present only the evidence that supports said position, while dismissing conflicting evidence (or creating "straw man" versions of that evidence). I'm sure Dawkins would say that he is honestly weighing all available evidence, and maybe he is—but some of the pictures he paints of religious belief have the whiff of straw about them.

Of course, Christians do the same thing. To cite a trivial example, I just heard a radio show presenting "scientific" evidence for a 6,000 year-old earth by discrediting radio-isotope dating. Talk about a straw man—this argument should audition for the Wizard of Oz. In the first place, scientists are well aware of the applicability and limitations of various forms of radio-isotope dating and would never use this technique in the way it was being presented. Secondly, I know of no scientists who are claiming that radio-isotope dating is the only (or the most compelling) evidence of the earth's ancient age.

Wait, did I just yank this poor schmoe’s comments out of context and erect a straw man of my own? Maybe so. But as far as I’m concerned, he’s welcome to remain at whatever Dawkins/Engel rating he currently inhabits. Just keep an open mind about it, is all I’m saying.

Redness of Eyes

Friends here in the Northern California wine country sometimes express disbelief upon hearing of Golden Gate Seminary’s alcohol ban, a prohibition I mentioned in a recent post. Coming from Tennessee, though, this rule didn’t strike me as even slightly odd. Back home, our pastor only departed from his normal subject matter—the need to accept Jesus Christ as personal Lord and Savior—for one reason. To denounce the evils of alcohol. No Bible-believing Christian, we were often reminded, had any business even shopping in a store that sold liquor, much less drinking the stuff themselves. When turning to this familiar theme, our pastor invariably preached from Proverbs 23:29-30, which says:

Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine.

Hearing all this, I, for one, had to agree with the pastor. Even though I wasn’t entirely sure what “contentions” were, they didn’t sound like something I wanted to “hath” any more than I wanted to experience anything else in that list. Especially redness of eyes, which sounded kind of gross.

Now, I suppose some folks felt that these denouncements of alcohol were a bit overdone, given the fact that Jesus’ first known miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana. But the preacher, being more wily than he looked, was ready for that objection. When preaching his “red eye” sermon, he patiently explained that the wine available in Jesus’ time had no more alcohol in it than the Welch’s grape juice we drank during the Lord’s Supper. Jesus had, in reality, been concocting a healthy, refreshing drink for all the wedding guests and could in no way be viewed as contributing to insobriety.

Hearing that was always a load off my mind, and it made me grateful that by the time Jesus came on the scene, they had stopped making that Old Testament wine that Proverbs said you shouldn’t tarry over. I had missed that fact completely with my simple, literal reading of Scripture, so it was nice to have things explained so clearly.