Quote of the Day

This weekend, Sherri was gone on a retreat so I was at home with the children. What exactly does that mean? It means I cared for them during the day, put them to bed early, and I watched movies all night! One of the movies I watched was Green Street Hooligans, a movie recommended by some of my students. It does have a decent amount of violence and language (there's my disclaimer so I can't get in trouble). Anyway, Elijah Wood plays a young man about to graduate from Harvard who gets wrongly kicked out and moves to England to see his sister. Long story short, he gets involved with a British style, European soccer groupie fight club. As he becomes one of the guys, he does the voice-over narrator thing about half way through the movie and says something that leveled me. In reference to being part of the GSE (green street elite), he says, "It's not knowing that your friends have your back, it's knowing that you have your friends back." This is the difference between being a consumer and being missional (okay, yes, everything I hear and see goes through a "church" filter).

Ok, so you think I'm spiritualizing this? Hear me out... When I want to be assured that someone has my back, all I am thinking about is me. My chief concern is me. It's not about them, it's about me. "You watch out for me." It's like I am sucking the life out of the people around me. I want them to defend and care for and think of me first. While that may make me feel good, it doesn't make me a good person. I do want to know that someone has my back, but I what is more important is that I have their back. It's the difference between giving and receiving. I want to live my life in a way where people see me as someone who will get their back, not as someone who's back needs to be gotten.