as i am the “arts guy” at the church i work for, i get to choose what goes on the big screen at our sunday morning gatherings. we try pretty desperately to have an inclusive spirit, to make a place where everyone would feel welcomed. we don’t always succeed, but we try.
to that end, we decided to have a sunday gathering focused entirely on bringing our friends who don’t have a place to belong. in our incendiary originality, we called it “bring a friend” sunday. so, i put an announcement-thing up on ye big screen, because there are statistics that say when people both see something and read it as well, they are more likely to remember.
so i put up a picture of everybody’s Friends: chandler, joey, monica, rachel, phoebe, and ross.
about two weeks after it had been in the rotation, my A/V person said, “hey did you notice that our Friends are smoking, drinking, AND gambling in that picture?”
wow, those are like the three cardinal sins for churchgoers, i think. thank God they weren’t dancing.
“uh… no. never even noticed.”
oops. (don’t care. oops again?)
i just saw Rent, the movie adaptation, for the first time a couple weeks ago. i won’t lie to you, i love musical theater like crazy people love the desert. i’ve known the music from the original broadway cast of Rent for probably a couple years now, but had never seen the show. so we finally rented the DVD and it’s phenomenal. wonderful. love it.
it’s full of rampant hardcore drug use, blatant homosexual content, and pretty “bad” language. but, frankly, i don’t see any of that. i see a story about love, friendship, and getting past regret.
it’s all about perspective.
everything. always.
we choose what we want to focus on, and that is what we see. often, it’s all we see.
i don’t think this is a bad thing, though. in fact, i’m pretty sure God made us this way. if we couldn’t filter our contexts the stimuli would probably overload our brains, they’d explode, and there would be pieces of brain everywhere. and that’s just gross.
maybe our perspectives are more than “normal;” maybe they’re GOOD. maybe we can use our unique perspectives to see what others might miss…?
Right on!