Flashbacks, Bubblicious, and Hatred

            Do you ever have situations that you get angry with yourself whenever you remember them? It’s the classic, “Jon, what were you thinking?!” anger. In every one of those situations I experience there are details that are burned into my brain that give me that “what were you thinking?” response every time I remember them. Have you had that same experience? Maybe it’s just me. I’ll show you what I mean; let me tell you about why I don’t eat Bubblicious gum.

          First, let me explain the two types of break-up personalities in the world: breakees and breakers. Breakees have this ridiculous notion of “I know this is going to end soon, but I’ll hold on and let them break up with me so they don’t get hurt as badly and I don’t have to be a jerk.” Breakers are more of the opinion that “if it’s going to end I might as well get it over with so we don’t have to drag this out,” and “I won’t feel so bad if I choose when this ends.”*

It’s seventh grade. She’s one of my first girlfriends. Her name is Melissa. And I can tell where this is headed, and it’s not upward if you get my meaning. I am a breaker personality, and always have been, but when you combine that with being clueless about women, something stupid is almost certainly going to happen. Well it did.  In art class, I pull out a pen and the only paper I happened to have: a Bubblicious (Watermelon wave, if you must know) wrapper.  I take out my BIC pen and on that wrapper I scrawl, ^∆ “It’s over,” and slide it over to her on the table.  We were sitting next to each other! I still wrote this stupid thing! So to this day I cannot eat Bubblicious.  It is ruined for me, because it reminds me of my ridiculous break-up skills.

Jesus talked about these very same types of anger-inducing flashbacks in John 15:18-19.  He says (and I paraphrase), “If you sign up to be my follower, everyone around you is not going to like you.  In fact they are probably going to hate you, because you are going to remind them of me. Even if they don’t even know anything about me, you are still going to remind them that a lot of what they do is wrong.  But don’t worry; they hated me too, because I made them feel the exact same way.”

Jesus doesn’t come right out and say it, but what he is saying also carries the truth that if you are not disliked by the people around you then you don’t remind them at all of Jesus. If your life makes the people you work with aware of the fact that they aren’t the real boss of their lives they will hate you.  If the other students at school see (I didn’t say hear, this requires no “witnessing for Jesus” to happen) by the way you live your life that we are held responsible for the choices they make and the things they do, you will probably not be class president, prom king, homecoming queen, or most popular superlative. ^∞

I know what you’re thinking, because I would be thinking the same thing.  I can see myself being that person standing in the back with their hand up going, “Well what’s the point then?”  To which he would reply, “You have to wait until chapter 16, verses 13 through 15.  I am only halfway through chapter 15 now.”^‡

Jesus does tell us in 16:13-15 that our reward for all of this unpopularity among non-followers will be just two things, but what an amazing two things!  The first is that the Spirit of truth (Holy Spirit) will come to you. That means that one of the three persons of the trinity will come live inside you.  Would I trade Bubblicious-Melissa liking me for THE God to live inside me?  You bet.  Pass me another wrapper and a pen! The second is that because the Spirit is inside us Jesus will take everything that is his (which his Daddy gave him) and he will give it to us! WHAT?! So, the God who made the universe wants to share all he has with me? Let it sink in.

I hear you, being a follower of Jesus is hard.  It’s hard for me to.  I REGULARLY pick anything and everything else over following Jesus.  One small example: the other day I picked watching Criminal Minds over following Jesus.^≠  Are you picking superlatives, staying with your bae (I can’t believe I said it), or your number of likes and retweets over Jesus, who designed the mind that designed Twitter?  He will let you, because he loves you.  But he has something more planned for you, if you will take the chance of being disliked and unfollowed by being like and following Him.

*The best possible scenario is if a breaker and a breakee are dating, because both get what they want. We’ve all seen those relationships when both people cling to what’s not there anymore: they are both breakees.  But when you have to breakers dating, when that relationship ends its time to get out the popcorn because the fireworks show is going to be amazing!

^∆ Try this sometime.  It is almost impossible to write on a Bubblicious wrapper with a ballpoint pen.

^∞ It could get you teacher’s pet, but it’s not a life goal to be popular with people your parent’s age.

^‡ If your conversations with Jesus aren’t this sarcastic, that’s good. Our friendship is different than yours, that’s how it should be.

^≠ Three times, like Peter, only with more psychotic mass murderers involved.