8 AUG 09: Curious George

(BLOGGER'S NOTE: You may find the following item humorous, serious, or a little of both - but we offer these thoughts from time to time, as we keep a seventh-day Sabbath.)

Sometimes it's not easy to be me. This past week, I fear it became a good deal harder -- and I didn't have anything to do with it. Before you ask: no, I was NOT in a position at Walt Disney World to have my picture taken with Goofy....

While I enjoyed a day with free admission to Epcot Center, another man was plotting something much more terrible. Police say George Sodini walked into a dance exercise class near Pittsburgh with several weapons and opened fire. Sodini's blog claims he "chickened out" of such an attack in January - and this was one time when being a yellow-bellied coward would be a good thing.

The problem is that George Sodini and I have a good deal in common. He was born about two years after me - but we both entered middle age and came to this week with no wife, no girlfriend and hardly any dating life. At least Sodini reported he had a date in May, with a woman he met on a bus. I clearly need to visit libraries more often, to earn free METRA passes.

But before you call the Pastoral Institute in my behalf, George Sodini and I have some significant differences. For starters, I don't own any firearms. Some men in the church group I attend consider that weird, all by itself. They're comfortable talking about hunting and classic guns before and after a service. Your weird ol' blogger prefers to talk at church about the Bible.

One of this blog's most controversial entries came when I declared myself "The 47-Year-Old Virgin." [27 Aug 05] The label still fits four years later. But George Sodini admits he had sex back in 1990, and became a father the next year. If he remembered the dates that well, maybe there's something good about it....

But George Sodini's blog makes clear he never became comfortable with "living single." That's where we're different again -- because I've grown used to it. If women aren't interested in dating me, maybe it simply proves females are the smarter of the species.

While George Sodini apparently became overwhelmed by the lack of a love life with women, I've come to accept it as part of my life. And here's another key difference between us -- I've accepted it as God's will for me. If God wants me to be married, He'll bring the right woman along at the right time. If not, I still get to lick the brownie pan whenever I wish.

This brings me to another big difference. George Sodini claims he attended a church which teaches "you can commit mass murder and still go to heaven." Amazingly, as of Friday afternoon that church had yet to do "damage control" and post a response online to this. And the staff somehow still thinks George W. Bush is President.

If George Sodini really was taught Jesus paid in advance for any sinful mass killing he might commit, he wasn't told the proper story. My Bible says in Galatians 5 murderers "shall not inherit the Kingdom of God." Revelation 21 adds murderers are bound for the "lake of fire." No, this is NOT what Bob Seger was describing years ago in the song "Fire Lake."

Cascade Hills Church Pastor Bill Purvis once gave a sermon called "Grace Gone Wild." As I recall, it was based on Romans 6 - where Paul warns against continuing in a life of sin. Instead, we're supposed to live righteous lives. That means NOT engaging in shooting sprees at fitness centers - and perhaps not keeping a blog which complains about your sexual abstinence.

With the help of God's Holy Spirit working in me, I'm striving to walk a righteous and sex-free path. After all, I agree with something George Sodini wrote Monday: "Maybe soon, I will see God and Jesus." In fact, I expect to do that. And if I don't have to answer for deadly attacks on innocent women, I think the meeting will be a lot happier.

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