Without Jesus, I'm Fucked

Do you figure He'll damn me for saying that?

I've never been to a church where the church-going folks didn't use a hilarious list of childish euphemisms for every bad word. I mean, I know that at some point, certain words in the English language were defined as "good", and "good" words are appropriate for a certain class of society, and certain other words are "bad", and "bad" words are never appropriate for that class. Church-going folk like to think they're high class, so we're taught not to use the "bad" words.

I believe, contrary to our postmodern culture, that words have specific meanings. A word has a list of meanings, these can be found in a dictionary. These meanings are well-defined, but do not in and of themselves carry a moral value. We string words together into sentences, these sentences combine the meanings of the individual words to form a statement. This statement contains the message of the speaker, and that message may contain a moral value.

So, for example, if I tell someone to "fuck off", it's not that the word "fuck" is bad, nor that the sentence "Fuck off." is inherently evil, but that my desire for them to "fuck off" is. Angrily telling them to jump off a cliff or into a lake would have very similar meaning, but to the high society folks, wouldn't carry the "bad" moral value attached to the word "fuck."

Now, back in a Bible college I got thrown out of, I heard a lot of kids talk about things that were "frikkin' cool!" or "jacked up", and sometimes I heard them say something was "bullcrap." I even once heard a kid say, in shock, to "Shut the front door" in response to whatever he'd heard.

I've read the Bible, I don't remember it saying that God doesn't see right through euphemisms. In fact, I remember it saying that God not only knows what's in our hearts, He judges us based on them.

At what point do we think avoiding the Seven Words We Can't Say On TV will trick God?

Back to the title of this post, it's how I talk sometimes. Without Jesus, I'm fucked. My life has been, and may yet be, a world of shit, and the only thing that gets me through is my faith in the Almighty God. Who, by the way, knows exactly what I'm thinking, at all times.

He knows what I really mean to say when I drop coy little euphemisms. I know what I really wanted to say, I ain't even close to fooling Him.

Now, amusingly, I don't cuss nearly as much as I used to. I've calmed down, and with that calm comes fewer situations where I use anything close to "bad" words. It's not that I mind them, it's just that I don't feel that the sentence I'm about to speak requires a word like that as often.

When I talk to people, I try, to the best of my ability, to give them the absolute, unvarnished, no-frills truth. If you ask me for my opinion on something, you'll get it. I'm sure that I could develop the ability to lie my way through life and give everything a nice sheen of euphemisms, but I'm not in the business of making people feel good, I'm in the business of speaking the truth.

The truth doesn't often make anyone feel warm and fuzzy, but it's not meant to. The truth is what we measure ourselves against, to see if we're full of shit or not. If we are, it becomes obvious once actual Truth shows up.

Funny thing is, the more practice I have with simply speaking the truth, the harder it is to get confused about what I'm supposed to say in a certain situation. There's no concerns about who'll get offended, or whether or not it's appropriate, it's the truth, and it'sa ALWAYS appropriate to speak the Truth. 

The truth is that without Jesus, I'm fucked.

I think He understands what I mean.

An Ode to a Broken Nose

I had my nose broken in a mosh pit on Saturday. It's Monday night now, and it's still sore, so naturally, I've been thinking about it a fair amount. It's an interesting topic to think about, what a broken nose means, and I figured it's worth writing about.

First off, I discovered something about myself that I'm very proud of: I got headbutted in the nose by a guy in a mosh pit, and didn't get angry at him, or the accident itself. Considering my legendary temper, I'm very pleased that I appear to have grown up, and in no small measure. That's new.

Second, I don't intend to get it "fixed" unless it causes actual health problems. I mean, it's my nose. It's basically there to hold my sunglasses up and allow me to smell stuff. Half of what it smells for me, I don't like, but at least it's functional. As long as it's functional, I don't really care what shape it is.

I mean, I could worry that my nose being misshapen would have an effect on my good looks, but I don't consider myself particularly good-looking anyways. Perhaps I am, but the important thing is that nothing in my life depends on my good looks. I'm an aircraft mechanic, a good one for how long I've been at it, and my nose has nothing to do with it. Half the time, it's giving me info on what MEK and acetone smell like, and I'm not a fan.

I could go to a doctor to get it fixed, I suppose. Of course, when I walked into the doctor's office (probably the ER, because they've always got a bonesetter on duty), I'd have to drop a c-note on the counter. Then it's another to see the doctor for 15 minutes, another for the anesthetic they'd have to shoot me up with, and probably another just to mess with me. I highly, highly doubt I could get out of there without spending $400.

For a nose. A part of my face that's only there for aerodynamics. Seems, you know, kinda vain. I'm not a big fan of vanity, or doing things for aesthetic reasons. My face is lopsided to begin with, I took a terrific knock to the head when I was five when a car I was riding in got broadsided, and I was sitting in the seat that got hit most directly. My right eye is slightly lower than my left because of that accident.

So, to hell with getting it fixed for reasons of vanity. I'm not going to get prettier as time goes by anyways, to start spending money on it now would simply be, as Solomon put it, "chasing after the wind." It'd be a waste of cash.

Third, a broken nose feels a lot like having a head cold, and makes cleaning boogers out of it a lot harder. The right nasal passage got slimmed down a bit, I'm dreading my next actual head cold.

Fourth, I'm disappointed that I didn't get to have a fountain of blood when it got broken. For all the trouble of having a broken nose, it didn't bleed, which means I didn't get to use it to score sympathy points with anyone. Lame. There was a very pretty girl who performed at that show, I would have happily sat next to her and talked with her while waiting for the bleeding to stop.

Then again, blood doesn't come out of carpets, and everyone would have been all "Ermagawd, are you OK?" all night long. I'm a low-key guy, I'd have hated all the attention that didn't, you know, come from a beautiful slam poet.