What Drug Cartels and Christians Have In Common
Not recognizing our cars. « Stuff Christians Like – Jon Acuff
#659. Not recognizing our cars.
Nov 25th by JonIt’s always good to have a friend who is a cop and I’m excited to say I just met one. His daughter goes to kindergarten with mine and we walked around together on Halloween night. I peppered him with the kind of questions a 7-year old boy would ask McGruff the crime dog but he humored me. And then, he told me something a little surprising …
International drug cartels use caravans of different cars to run drugs through Georgia.
I read about that in article but secretly hoped the organizational savvy of cartels that are now using a Wal-Mart approach to outsourcing their crimes was exaggerated. He assured me it was not. Here’s how it works:
When a drug cartel is going to drive drugs up from Miami or Texas, they use three different cars …
The first car is kind of the “smoker” car. Its only job is to go 100MPH and smoke out any cops that might be on the highway. Its role is to get a speeding ticket and pull the cops out of their hiding places.
The second car is the disguised car. They often use unassuming elderly couples in boring looking vehicles to actually move the drugs. This car looks normal but could be carrying millions of dollars of drugs.
The third car is the popper. Its only job is to protect the car with the drugs. When the popper sees the police chasing the disguised car, it speeds up and pulls in front of them. The popper then slams on his brakes, forcing the cop car to rear end it. The cop car’s airbags pop off. When that happens, the car is automatically disabled and turns itself off. The cop is now officially out of the chase.
I was fascinated listening to him talk about the strategy involved in an operation like that, but realized ultimately that approach wasn’t that original of an idea. For me, the sin in my life works in a pretty similar fashion.
The smoker sins in my life are the big, neon, obvious stuff I deal with. These are the things I see coming a mile away. To be honest, those are usually lust and porn related. Right before an important speaking engagement or a key moment with God, something will unexpectedly tear down the highway of my life. A contact from my old life will email me after years of silence. Like a cop watching a car do 100MPH I’m tempted to get distracted or lost chasing the smoker.
The disguised sins in my life are harder to spot. These are the things that look like really great opportunities. They’re not so obvious in their deviousness. It just looks like an SUV with a family on vacation, but inside the shell of normalcy are hundreds of pounds of poison. Right now, these are probably new opportunities I’m being offered. It would be really easy to say yes to every opportunity I get to go speak or write. I could say yes and yes and yes over and over again, not realizing that doing so means I’m saying no to my family. No I won’t be there multiple weekends in a row for my daughters. No I won’t pour into my own family because I’ve got pour into a freelance project instead. Some of the opportunities I need to say yes to, but some aren’t the right fit and distinguishing between the two is a challenge.
The popper sins are those ones that stop you dead in your tracks. You’ve spotted the disguised sin. You’re eliminating it from your heart when all of the sudden something pulls in front of you, slams on the brakes and your car is disabled. For me, that’s pride. I’ve started to feel self righteous and prideful about how I am deliberately growing the Stuff Christians Like ministry. And what was initially a good thing, me going after the disguised sin of over committing myself turns into something gross. It turns into pride and I find myself with busted air bags on the side of the road with a car that won’t work.
I’m not sure if you ever feel the same way, maybe you don’t have three cars in your life that are constantly trying to wreck you. But if you do, I encourage you to think about them. Start to see them coming. Know deep down that the drug cartel’s methods are tiny and ill planned compared to how the devil is plotting to ruin your life right now. And pray that when God shows you what those three cars are, He’ll show you what to do.
Today, let’s play fill in the blank. Finish these sentences:
1. My smoker car is ____________
2. My disguised car is __________
3. My popper car is ___________
Third-Person Christian by Mark Batterson
Third-Person Christian
I think some people are what I would call third-person christians. I’m not a grammarian, and I don’t know if this metaphor holds up literally, but third-person christians read the Bible in the third-person. They think in terms of “they” instead of “me.” They don’t personalize it by reading it in first-person terms. And so Scripture is de-personalized.
Here’s another example. Third-person christians attend church in the third-person thinking about the people in their life that “need to hear this message” rather than processing it personally! They talk about church in “they” terms instead of “we” terms.
Here’s a thought. Simply insert the first-person “I” or “me” or “we” when reading the Bible. It helps you own Scripture. And more importantly, it helps Scripture own you.
A Reply To Those People | Shaun Groves
A Reply To Those People | Shaun Groves
A Reply To Those People
I’ve always ignored those people: The ones who get very upset at Target this time of year and decide to e-mail me and the rest of their address book about it. This year, to those people, I would now like to preemptively say Simmer down. And also…
There was a time in American history when Christians could be counted on to get angry about the right stuff – the stuff that seems to have made Jesus angry. In the 1920s, for instance, when Saint Nick became the patron saint of American consumerism, most Christians in this country opposed the holiday because of its inextricable connection to materialism and self-indulgence.
In 1931, the New York Times surveyed Christmas sermons and found that they held to one main theme: “the suggestion that Christmas could not survive if Christ were thrust into the background by materialism.” One sermon called the days leading up to Christmas, commonly called “Advent” by Christians, nothing but a “profit-seeking period.”
Fast forward to 2005. The American Family Association spearheaded a boycott of Target because the retailer wished shoppers a “Happy Holiday” instead of a “Merry Christmas.” The AFA wanted to make sure all our self-indulgence and materialism was being carried out in Jesus’ name.
Bizarre.
Skye Jethani, in his book The Divine Commodity, points out the nuttiness and inconsistency of those people better than I can:
In less than a century, Christians have gone from opposing over-consumption at Christmas to demanding it be done in Christ’s name alone. The explanation may be in the numbers. Two thirds of the U.S. economy is based on consumer spending, and 50-75 percent of most retailers’ annual profits are generated during December. This makes the weeks before Christmas the high holy days of consumerism. If Christians engaged in the Advent season as they did in generations past, by modeling moderation and self-denial or by ignoring the holiday altogether, it would likely destroy the economy. To ensure economic survival, consumers are stirred into a buying frenzy every winter with the goal of making this year’s shopping season more prosperous than the last. Santa Claus has been the mascot of this manipulation since the early twentieth century, but if more Christians have their way the season of shopping will someday be inaugurated by the appearance of Jesus Christ at the end of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Feel free to copy and paste this post as a reply to the angry e-mails you’re sure to receive this month. My gift to you. Merry Christmas.
I couldn’t agree more! You?
