For Mr. Krischin adulting sucks. Why? Because his wife wants him home and his friends want him to go to the next bar and drink some more. That wife is so annoying. Says Mr. Krischin, “I have a right to the cornucopia of first world depravity. Damned bitch needs to understand. It’s fucking Saturday and I lost the golf round.” However, not adulting sucks more. I’ll get to that later in this essay.
Let’s start with some back story. I picked up a foursome at a rather bougie country club. They had spent a fair bit of time at the 19th hole. As guys do, they were talking smack. But one of them wasn’t a believer. He hadn’t come to CHEEEEEEEZUUUS. So another of the foursome felt it was his duty to make that heathen come to heal. It’s life and death, you know.
The dutiful krischin doing God’s work was sure that it’s St. Lucifer’s fault and that his heathen buddy was going to DIE if he didn’t come to his senses. It’s always nicer to be compassionate about somebody else’s shit. Owning your own shit isn’t safe or happy.
Wise Heathen
The heathen shut down the evangelism rant, almost. Drunk people sometimes get up a head of steam that isn’t stopped until a couple of hours after they are in a restraint chair in the drunk tank. So Krischin was a nice guy and had put the rant on pause. Until the ride started.
What I was supposed to do is get Mr. Heathen to come correct. If Mr. Heathen understood he’d come correct and come to CHEEEEEEEZUUUS in the half-hour of the ride to the next bar. Mr. Heathen wasn’t having it. Good man.
It’s not effective to threaten apocalyptic, dystopian doom if someone won’t come to Jesus. Much less effective is apocalyptic, dystopian doom driven by a mythological narrative. CHEEEEEEEZUUUS isn’t a very good boogeyman.
It’s God’s Fault
Mr. Heathen roped me into this. WOO, “What do you think, driver?”
“About what?“
“About predestination?” Oh crap. tbh I don’t know, “I think predestination makes my hair hurt.” I have to get to the end of this ride with a good rating. Taking a position on predestination could be a problem. Nobody in the car acted as if they heard me. Drunk people, drunk Mr. Krischin, “God has a plan for everything. He planned this golf outing where I lost. I hate God right now. Adulting sucks.” I hope this guy goes home and sleeps it off. Alcohol makes some people morose and angry. Wait, right, it’s God’s fault. Forgot. Sorry.
Now we get down to the bottom of it for Mr. Krischin, “Everybody says God is a loving God so why am I miserable, why is there so much misery in the world? Couldn’t he fix it? Why can’t he protect me from sucky adulting?” Yeah, drunk confessions.
After almost twenty years of rideshare/cab driving, I have a pretty good instinct with people. I can feel subtext well. Mr. Krischin seemed to have a conflicted relationship with his image of God. His God was authoritarian and comforting. He could let God protect him from the evils of sucky adulting. God would take care of him in the way he wanted to be taken care of. But . . . he didn’t like it that God’s plan for him didn’t include a cornucopia of first world depravity.
Jesus is Annoying
Mark 10:25, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” Christ can be a pain in the ass. Where we might wish material wealth Jesus says we need spiritual wealth. Right. Sure. Can I have my mansion now? This isn’t much comfort: Matthew 6:25-34, “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
God isn’t helping with the plan for an abundance of first world depravity here. Rather, he is suggesting we trust him. Ok, fine. The average middle-class family has a monthly burn rate of a little less than $5400.00. I know, I know, that’s a little more than seven months’ salary in a lot of the world. Still . . . Mr. Krischin is entitled to the cornucopia, no? Besides, happy wife, happy life and telling the wife she can’t spend $5400.00/month isn’t a solid plan for a happy life. I mean, what about the kids? And well, golf at the country club with drinks after, right?
Why Not My Way?
That’s one thing. Money is absolutely a thing in our country today. The other is the way in which this world just won’t behave. Mr. Krischin wants God to force everyone to behave in a manner he likes. Good luck with that. After all, Mr. Krischin with his legalist leanings is in a car with his friend, who is a non-believer. C.S. Lewis said, “if God is wiser than we, his judgments must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil.” Ruh-roh. If God doesn’t agree that we are entitled to all the first-world depravity, we can consume then maybe it isn’t Him that is messed up. That can’t be right.
At the final third of the ride, Mr. Krischin’s friends started to push him to go to another bar near his house. Mr. Krischin’s wife was texting him about coming home. It was 5:00 on a Saturday and he’d been ignoring the honey-do list. She wasn’t happy. She was messing with his entitlement. The battle inside Mr. Krischin flared up. Fight to keep his entitlement or let the depravity get a little further away from him. The good disciple that I am I know the answer, let go of the depravity. I am not Mr. Krischin though. He still is in the fight for his entitlement.
In “It’s Eve’s Fault” a friend of mine wishes she could slap the apple out of Eve’s hand. She’d rather give up free will for safety. My friend wants protection from her fears actualized. The evils of men, etc. Both my friend and Mr. Krischin value safety over freedom. Good on them. I value freedom over safety.
Not Adulting Sucks More
Mr. Krischin is headed for a cycle of escalating negative consequences—the usual cycle of hospital, rehab, jail and either recovery or a toe tag. I got the feeling his marriage was already on the rocks and that his coping mechanism was to escape to the bar. After all, God planned this. God planned to fuck him over and interfere with his buffet receipt entitling him to his first world depravity.
He’s a grown-assed child. After six decades of life and facing my final third, growing up is a process of letting go, of dying to childish things so we can live closer to God. Mr. Krischin is stubbornly holding on to things of his youth that are gone. He clings to an authoritarian father God who will bring hellfire on those who don’t behave to his impudent liking. That’s not what I hear in St. Paul’s words—1 Cor 13: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”
I’ll say this to Mr. Krischin. Not adulting sucks more. I had my fill of first-world depravity. For me, it wasn’t liquor that caused my descent into escalating negative consequences. It was a love of anger and conflict. With a measure of overindulgent introspection for good measure. I lost a marriage and a close relationship with my son to that addiction. I’ve been homeless a half-dozen times, lost countless jobs, and bounced along the floor of first-world life for a long time. Not adulting sucked more.