golf is like God (EDIT)

caution: this was written under the assumption of sweeping generalizations that could be harmfully stereotypical, but are not exactly considered offensive by the writer. please note that all golf fans do not look alike, just as not all Chinese people know kung fu and not all Christians are jerks (some are though, just as many Chinese people know kung fu or are horrible drivers)

i volunteered at the PGA championships at Southern Hills, Tulsa, three times this past week. not exactly because i am a die hard golf fan... i think i might have been one of a very small percentage out there that wasn't the slightest of a golf follower. but i volunteered because i liked the idea of selling ice cream and getting to see the masses of crowds that come out from everywhere to watch the best compete.

upon my first few moments at Southern Hills, i realized i had missed some memo it looked like everyone else had received. apparently if i wanted to fit in with all of these golf fanatics, i should have worn khaki shorts, sometimes cargos, with a belt, and a solid or striped polo shirt tucked into the shorts. above that, i should have either really sweet shades or some kind of hat or visor (as it is amazingly hot) or both, and unanimously cool shoes are absolutely mandatory. i repeat, golf fans have really cool kicks. really cool. on top of that, whenever they use the term "couple," they always seem to mean the number 2, as in "I'd like a couple of frozen lemonades," and they might call you "guy," as in "I'd like a couple of frozen lemonades, guy"

just on the basis that i wasn't wearing a polo shirt had me isolated, feeling left out. and, on top of that, i didn't even like golf. based on all of these generalizations i have made, i started wondering what i would do if i wanted to like golf. and automatically, i considered that it would take a polo shirt and some really nice Nike's. and i would have to go to a bunch of tournaments, such as this one - the PGA championship - and withstand the smashing heat to spend an entire week of watching people hit golf balls around. i would fit in with everyone else, looking just like them, and i would sit in the stands and make sure to clap and applaud when someone hit a good shot and then say things like "I'd like a couple of frozen lemonades"

and then i realized that this is only what i would do if i wanted to associate with people who like golf. i realized i could fit in very well with them without liking golf at all; i could fit in and fool everyone without the passion that they shared... but i could fit in, nonetheless. but what's the point of looking like you like golf and hanging with people who like golf and perhaps reaping whatever benefits golf fans enjoy if you don't like golf to begin with? i think, when it really boils down to it, a golf fan has all of these characteristics regarding things they do and what they look like, but if you were to simplify a golf fan to one thing, their mannerisms wouldn't matter anymore. it wouldn't be about the clothes or the lingo or even the really nice shoes - it would boil down to something as cheesy sounding as "the love of the game."

in the same way, people look at Christians. what would i want to do if i were to become a Christian or if i wanted to fit in with Christians? i would probably go to church. read my Bible, do what is called praying to God or blessing the food. give some money to charity or something, go to Bible studies. and when everything is stripped away, it's not how well you looked or sung or whether you never missed a Sunday your whole life or whether you have a degree in divinity hanging on your wall. it's not even how many souls you might have saved or whether you spoke in tongues or prophesied or had enough faith to move a mountain. it's the passion. love of the game, but here, it's a love of God.

and this is what gets lost in translation, or in generation. because being Christian isn't about all of these different things that we do, about praying before we eat and going to Sunday every morning and shouting "amen" at the right time in a sermon. being a Christian doesn't take any of this stuff. it's all hype, someone could say - it's all just things that are supposed to bring us closer to God, and if they are used as anything but tools, then they're just things being done to fit in or a habit that shouldn't have ever become a habit or a regular rhythm.

on a last note, golf isn't for everyone. i don't really like golf, as of now, but i'm sure i would begin to like it if i could see what made everyone else fall in love with it in the first place. but still, golf isn't exactly for the blind or the physically disabled or middle aged women with identity crises. but i think God is for everyone. i think God is life and love, and i think everyone deserves that. not everyone can golf or fall in love with golf because golf won't exactly fix their needs or help them with their burdens. but i think God's for everyone. no one's an exception. but it doesn't take looking anything like what you might think Christians should look like. it doesn't take nice clothes or being a jerk or singing songs, and it should never be about these things. it should just be trying to get to God. falling in love, finding a passion.

and this is why i say golf is like God.

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here in college, my resident director Daniel is one of the most Christian guys i know, to use the term Christian as a follower of Christ, and he has said that he's not a very religious guy at all. he's said he has no problem with doing Bible studies in a bar. and he likes Family Guy. when i told my roommate Evan that Daniel had the first three seasons, Evan was surprised, because he said that just in knowing him for the couple of hours that he had, he would not suspect that he be a Family Guy fan. i told him that Daniel would surprise him. i didn't say it, but i realized later that what Daniel was doing was redefining faith.

some evangelists, some Christians will say that faith has to work a certain way, that in order to love God, you have to do certain things, and i guess it is essentially saying that if you love God, then you should appear in a certain way, like a golf fan might want to say that a certain person couldn't like golf looking like that, though that is taking the golf metaphor to an extreme (i wouldn't be surprised if golf fans were more inviting than Christians). doing gets caught up with passion, with love.

being around OU, where everyone is Christian, forces faith to be redefined. there's a difference between being saved and running to get closer to God. it is easy to stop at salvation and get in the rut of doing things and performing actions, but faith should be alive. it should be constantly put to the test so that it can be strengthened and renewed, it should be showing up in all areas of life because it is actually relevant to the now and what we deal with and how we live our lives.

in a sense, we're breaking away from all of this doing. we're going to keep praying and reading our Bibles and singing songs and taking communion, but it's not the doing of them that's important or that even justifies us as worshippers or followers. it's our hearts that God is listening to. because if you take a real Christian who does Christian things and a nonChristian who does Christian things, neither one is better. anyone can go to church their whole lives and learn the whole routine of how to be a Christian, but then it might just be doing. God listens to our hearts, and He does so in secret. He doesn't listen to our hearts and exclaim to Himself, "this guy is so much more pure than the next." He listens if we want to be better than the others. if we want to be successful, if we want to win our battles, if we want to be someones in this world and do things for Christ, if we want to make it to happen.

but i think what He really wants to be able to hear is a desire for Him. to know His heart. to realize that being someone to God means you don't have to be someone to the world, and so doing becomes irrelevant. i get into this problem where i really want to do something for God and i can't tell if it's just because i want God and i want to experience Him and let Him work through me, or whether i just want to do something to be someone, to be looked high upon instead of lifting God high. in this case, it would be better that i not go off and start a church or do anything. it'd be better that God keep me from doing anything so that i could fall in love with Him instead of falling in love with who God makes me to be. and that even in my doing something - even if i am partaking in the work of God - it's not about the doing. it's about falling in love with God.