Becoming Mr. Pibb...

I was never a Mr. Pibb guy. I also don't really like Dr. Pepper, but given the choice between the two, I usually pick Dr. Pepper. To me, both taste like carbonated Robitussin.

But the "Put It In Your Head" subtitle on every Mr. Pibb can conveys words of wisdom that can be easily overlooked. Well, that's only because there is no real words of wisdom in that phrase but it's triggered a thought that I'm developing...

"Put It In Your Head." If I were to utter such a phrase about an idea or a philosophical/theological thought, I mean I want you to do more than just hear it. I want you to dwell on it. To truly understand something is to "put it in your head." Let it bounce around in there a while. Let it dialogue with your neurons and plug up your ears a bit to noise of the outside world. Get to know it. Don't let it bounce of your skull with a simple "courtesy nod." Really listen and dwell on it.

***

I graduated high school like every high school graduate. Overtly confident and excited about my future and my abilities and "how things were going to be better" in college, but secretly scared to death of change and being thrust out on my own.

I'd grown up in church. My closest high school friends were Christian friends. I managed to avoid many of the pitfalls of high school youth NOT because I was some sort of saint by any means, but because I simply had friends who were equally convicted about certain things.

I was naive, too. Being naive is easy when you've sheltered yourself from many of life's temptations. I'd seen girly magazines. I'd seen Skinemax movies when everyone else was asleep. A friend and I used to fire handguns at an embankment in his neighborhood (big handguns...44 Magnum-type handguns), which was highly illegal. Another friend and I rolled one of those big telephone cable spools down a street, where it mowed down someone's mailbox and destroyed a picket fence. Lots of little mischievous things like this.

But that's panzy-stuff. I did these things and thought they were rebellious. After all, I considered myself a good "church kid." While some of my peers were busy drinking themselves silly on Friday nights and testing the virginity of their girlfriends, I was happy to know that my greatest rebellion was doing something like...smoking a cigar on a youth trip.

Whoopty-doo. I'm a real rebel.

So college hit me like a bullet in the forehead. My first week there was an eye-opening experience that basically made me realize that what I considered rebellious was, in fact, just normal behavior for 90% of the people in the world. At least the people at Mercer University. I became wide-eyed at the things people did for fun...partly out of sheer shock and partly out of curiosity. Either way, it was no longer something I could ignore.

I had two roommates. Keith and Duke. Yes...Duke. Keith was a rather civilized, church-y kinda guy who had a girlfriend back home...and pretty much had all his ducks in a row. Duke, on the other hand, was what I would call a "good 'ol boy." And that he was. He had bullet holes in his old Dodge Omni that a neighbor had put there because he'd driven on his land. Wow. Hatfields and McCoys...almost literally. However, Duke's background might mislead you into thinking he was not intelligent, but he was...very intelligent. A deep thinker. Someone with whom late-night conversations led me to question a lot of things I called beliefs.

Keith and I started going to the BSU. Now I don't know how the BSU operates on most college campuses (or even how it operates at Mercer today), but I do know that I did not feel welcome. Or even when I did, I felt like I was joining some sort of secret society that eyed the rest of the campus with skepticism and disdain. In other words, even if I was welcome, many people wouldn't be. The safety of my hometown church experience had led me to believe Christians were warm, loving people everywhere.

Not so.

Befriending people in the BSU was like a peasant rising through the ranks of Victorian aristocracy. A great deal of effort.

Feeling a little disillusioned (and intrigued by the secular lifestyles I was becoming more familiar with), I decided to go through "rush." Fraternity rush, that is.

Eventually, I became a brother in Pi Kappa Phi. Why? I felt more welcome there in 10 minutes than I did in 10 days in the BSU. They didn't judge me because I was a Christian. Likewise, I found it easy to NOT judge them because many of them were not. At least not "Christian" in the "I go to church and am on the youth council" kind of sense I was used to.

They drank. They partied. I heard more sex stories in one year than I had in my whole life. They lived for these things. Classes were sometimes just obstacles that got in the way, and were it not for the fraternity's mandatory GPA requirements, I doubt many of them would've studied at all. And I'd be a liar to say they were not fun to hang around with. They were fun. Very fun. I understood quickly why fraternity brothers - in many cases - stayed brothers for life.

But more than that, I quickly overcame my naive, church-raised perception that these guys were heathen. One of my sophomore year roommates was notorious for doing things like...getting so drunk that he'd wake up and piss on the floor in the dorm room. But a nicer guy you couldn't find anywhere. He liked everybody, and was pretty much liked by everybody. At the time, I knew few Christians (if any) that could claim the same thing.

I got to see a lot of stuff.

I stayed up all night with a girl who'd drank so much fruit punch (mixed with no small amount of Everclear), that I had to keep her awake all night just to help the alcohol wear off.

I've driven 5 miles in my car stopping every 100 feet so a friend could stick his head out the window and throw up...before he passed out 50 feet from the dorm.

I had to convince one of my roommates (who was literally dressed as Indiana Jones for a party...complete with a real whip) that he did, in fact, just order the pizza that was delivered...though he didn't remember ordering it. "No I didn't," he screamed as he literally cracked the whip, taking out a ceiling tile in the process. Then he snatched the large Domino's pizza out of my hand and ate the whole thing...until he eventually passed out with the empty box on his stomach.

I got up in the middle of the night and drove with a friend and two girls to Savannah, GA just so we could see the sunrise on the beach.

I learned that Southern Comfort mixed with Coca-Cola makes for an excellent drinking experience....without getting drunk.

I learned that Milwaukee's Best is, actually, the WORST beer on the planet.

But beyond all this...

I found friends that I could lean on during anything. And I learned to be a friend when people needed one. More than once...

And just by being there among my college friends, I got my first taste of what it's really like to try to be Christ to people.

One of my best friends in college was the ex-girlfriend of one of my fraternity brothers. She was a Rhode Island native named Elizabeth. One night, she'd been to a party where she'd run into her "ex," and he had ridiculed her publicly. She called me up, and asked me to come walk her home. When I reached her, I realized that she was plastered. She'd been drinking something called "Green God D***," and it had messed her up. I just about literally carried her home (back in the day, I could physically do things like that).

I sat with her for hours as she cried and cried about the lost relationship with her ex-boyfriend. Slowly, she began to sober up. But the emotions stayed the same. They had been secretly engaged, then something happened that led him to accuse her of cheating on him (which she hadn't done), and they broke up. The single most important man in her life...who had meant so much to her...was now her worst enemy, and he bad-mouthed her at almost every opportunity.

I just sat with her...and listened.

At one point, she looked up...and told me I was her best friend. That through everything she'd been through, that she'd found in me someone she could trust. Someone who would listen. Someone who would carry her home when she drank too much. Though the romantic potential I was hearing in the conversation was something that excited me, what she asked to do next was amazing...

She asked to read the Bible. She wanted to open up this book that supposedly meant so much to me (which I claimed did, but didn't read near as often as I made it seem).

So we did. We read for a while. We read about God being the kind of person we all need...someone who can give us real love that never fails. After reading some of it, she said, "I think I'm finally beginning to understand what you try to tell me sometimes. I mean, I think I finally understand why you're the kind of person you are."

I was floored. I hadn't been an evangelist to her. No gospel tracts in my pocket. No pithy Bible verses recited from memory. I was just her friend. That was it.

Though my friendship with her did take an eventual romantic (and very short-lived) turn, schedules and the complexity of maintaining a friendship after failed romance led to some distance between us. However, I will never forget that night. A night I realized that I had inadvertantly done something I did not set out to do.

***

The best thing that happened to me in college was not finding a place to belong in the BSU. I had to find somewhere else to belong. I had to turn to the so-called secular circles. I made a lot of friends, and somehow wound up being Christ to a few people. Oh sure, I failed. A lot. So saying I was Christ to people seems profoundly arrogant now that I think about it.

But moments like the ones with Elizabeth P. showed me that what people need is not a bunch of Christians standing on the sidelines scoffing at the worldly behavior of others, but Christ-followers/Christ-imitators willing to get out...make friends...no strings attached...and simply love people where they are at. Besides, I found love in the process. Like I said, I found more love and acceptance in my fraternity and in my other so-called secular friendships than I ever found in the first Christian circle I tried to get involved with. Ironically, I saw more "Christ-like" love eminating from the secular people than I ever thought possible.

Secular...such a bad word. As if God somehow isn't among people other than Christians. As if he's not working in them, through them...even if they don't know who He is...yet. How arrogant to make such a distinction.

...

Put this in your head: Dare to give people a chance. Dare to get involved with them in friendship. Dare to walk where they walk. Put their thoughts and ideas into your head. Know where they're coming from. You can jump into their world without jumping into a sin that would drag you down. And they can show you what they need. You may even see Christ in them even if they don't know who Christ is. Yes!

Bottom line is this: You can't be Christ to anyone unless you're there for them. Christ didn't sit at the temple talking to the religious people about how bad the Gentiles were. He went TO the Gentiles. And when he did, he went not only as a teacher or a savior, but as a friend.

...

Now that I think about it, I really miss all those friendships. I miss the surprise in how great they were, since Christian-psychology had told me solid, lasting friendships with non-Christians were doomed to fail apart from Christ. But I also miss being among people where Christ is interested in being. You really want to see Christ work in your life? Then GO where you think he would be working...

You think he'd be the pastor on staff at a church? I don't think so. I think he'd be sitting on the front lawn of the Pi Kapp house on a chair at a party on a Friday night (maybe even sipping a SoCo mixed with Coca Cola)...talking to everyone he could...making friends...and making a difference in the lives of everyone he came in contact with.

No, you protest? But I ask, isn't that the sort of thing he did 2000 years ago?