The Spectacular Now: What is Love?

Love is a funny word, so funny in fact that many people

lose sleep over it

argue about it

search for it

calculate a formula for it

compose songs about it

and even…

write LONG novels about it!

            Let’s just say it gets people all twitter patted (from a scene in Bambi. Look it up!).  Now people receive love in two different ways, either they accept it or they reject it. In Sutter Keely’s case he rejected it- He full heartedly rejected it! When it came to his girlfriend(s) he believed that there was no way in this sweet carbonated world that they could actually love him. He had assured himself time and time again that it was impossible. There was two situations where he rejected their love. First, after his ex-girlfriend Cassidy and him broke up she tried to tell him that she honestly did love him, but he insisted that she is lying (Let's imagine how that conversation went).

            In actuality, Sutter didn’t believe that ANYONE loved him. At one point in the book Sutter and his girlfriend Aimee hydroplane off the side of the road and instead of Aimee lashing out at Sutter for not watching the road, she was solely concerned with how he was doing. She was attending to his needs and not her own (what is love?). Sutter’s reaction to her love and kindness is a bit odd. He pushed her away and seriously thought that something was wrong with her. He was so confused as to why she was not mad at him for almost killing them. He reacted this way because Sutter didn’t understand what love really was.

            Here was a boy who felt unloved by everyone around him, his uninterested mom, newly rich sister, absent dad, friends and girlfriends. In Brennan Manning’s book Abba’s Child he writes about love and what we as humans do with it,

“We cannot accept love from another human being when we do not love ourselves, much less accept that God could possibly love us”.

            In Sutter’s case this quote is all too true. Sutter seemed happy, relaxed and carefree in his outer shell. When really he was a teenage boy who was searching for a father figure and for someone to take interest in him. (If only he knew that there was a father for him up in Heaven who claims him proudly as His child). Sutter was searching for a purpose in his life. He wanted something to satisfy him but what he was constantly searching for couldn’t be found in earthly treasures or even other people.

            If you’ve read this book you can view Sutter Keely as many things, a joke, an alcoholic, an average teenager or a class clown. I see him as a broken person just like all of us who’s desperately searching for a fulfilled life in Christ. As broken people we don’t think that we deserve love from anyone- especially Jesus. But here’s some spectacular news from Brennan Manning,

“ Brokenness is proper to the human condition, we must forgive ourselves for being unlovable, inconsistent, incompetent, irritable and potbellied…our sins cannot keep us from God”.

            So even though Sutter rejected all the love that was offered to him, he still had the chance to accept the most perfect love there is and that’s the love from the Lord.

One last thought…

In my opinion you could listen to 1,000 songs about love and read all the books in the world containing theories and philosophical teachings on love itself, but you still would not understand what love really is without a relationship with Jesus Christ. Without experiencing Jesus in your heart and accepting the love he has to offer, you could never understand what true love is.

“He offers you an understanding and compassion which are like nothing you have ever found in a book or heard in a sermon”. –Brennan Manning

We know what real love is because Jesus gave up his life for us. So we also ought to give up our lives for our brothers and sisters. -1 JOHN 3:16

The Spectacular Now: Salvation in a flask

Sutter’s drinking habits

Sutter worships a God, he idolizes a God… but not the God I’m thinking of…his God is alcohol. His flask never leaves his side

he confides in his flask

his flask is there in times of joy & sadness

he doesn’t make a decision without taking a swig of whisky.

Sutter put his salvation into his drinking. He did not find a savior in a man who died on the cross for him or the man who created him. Sutter like many other people in this world put all his happiness, hopes and dreams into a small flask filled with whisky. 

Now when it comes to alcohol and Christianity many Christians are split on the subject. I’ve met people who are completely against drinking entirely or people who say… Jesus drank wine so I can too! Children who grow up in the Church are taught right off the bat that alcohol=bad because people in general don’t seem to grasp the simple concept of portion control when it comes to alcohol.

In Priscilla Shirer’s book Discerning the Voice of God (The best book I’ve EVER read)… she talks about personal conviction. Her examples are modesty and alcohol. Some Christians have a personal conviction about drinking alcohol. They don’t look down on people who drink, but they feel that it is not something they should partake in. Alcohol is not a bad thing, but humans have abused its power and used it excessively.(what a surprise!)

  Alcohol should be handled responsively and the intention should not be to get wasted. Might I add that it does say in the Bible to not get drunk and its mentioned more than once to get our attention!

ANYWHO back to the Sutterman!

In the book Sutter justified why he drank so much in order to think that it was okay. He honestly did not see a fault in his drinking habits.  He started drinking at such a young age that he didn’t see anything wrong with it.

Sutter was stuck in an endless cycle that he couldn’t seem to escape and the thing is he didn’t want too. He felt content and comfortable in his way of life. On the outside he had it all,

a job

girlfriend(s)

parties

alcohol

popularity

But put aside all the charisma and jokes and all you find is emptiness. A hole that would never be fulfilled no matter how many 7ups you drink. FYI that’s another thing Sutter does to disguise his underage drinking. He puts alcohol into a 7up fountain drink. In the WAY back of his mind I think he knew that his way of life wasn’t stable or in any way ideal.

Sutter had no motivation what so ever to live a sober life. He depended on alcohol and weed on a daily basis just to keep him functioning. Getting drunk or “entering the different stages of the buzz” as he says is a way for Sutter to escape and live in the moment. This is obviously why he is so carefree. If only he knew that by living in the moment 24/7 he actually missed monumental events in his high school career. It seemed like Sutter was always entertaining or carrying an ongoing joke. Also, I find it both hilarious and completely odd that he referred to himself as God’s own drunk in the book.  It’s almost as if Sutter found humor in his brokenness.

For where your treasure is your heart will be also. –Matthew 6:21

The Spectacular Now: Jesus-Like Behavior

SO there is so much I want to say about this book that I’m going to have to split it into parts. There was so much Jesus leaping off the pages that I’m gonna have to categorize the characters and themes shown throughout the book.

In this post I’m just going to focus on the main character and his Jesus-like behavior.

In my generation living by the motto YOLO is more like a state of mind.

Living in the moment!

          Carpe diem!

There is no better character to exhibit the average YOLO teenager than

Sutter Keely.

            Sutter Keely might in fact be the most real, 3 dimensional teenage boy I’ve ever read on paper. Let me tell you good ole Timmy did a wonderful job on creating a relatable character (Tim Tharp is the author). 

            Sutter is a caring jokester, avid drinker, empathetic toward his peers, absolutely funny and has a relaxed “I’ll do it later” personality. He is all in all a good guy who’s all about having a good time 7 days a week.

           

            In my college group recently we talked about walking like Jesus walked. As a Christian I’ve heard this my whole life. But never thought to myself, what does that actually mean?

It wasn’t until I started reading this book that I realized what it truly means to live like Jesus and show Jesus-like character on a daily basis. Right away in the beginning of the book Sutter reveals Jesus like behavior without even knowing it.

In the first chapter Sutter is in a rush to be somewhere when he comes along a young boy who is running away from home. Does he lecture the kid? Ignore him? Or simply walk away like many people in a rush would?

No, he does neither of these things. Sutter buys the boy some food and talks to him. Sutter listens to his problems and in the end drives the boy home.

Now this is something that Jesus would do. 

I am not saying in any way that Sutter is a symbol for Jesus Christ. Sutter showed Jesus like behavior… but in a Sutter-fashion.

Sutter was completely buzzed the entire time he was talking to the kid and despite the boy’s young age Sutter had no filter when it came to his language (but then again what teenage boy does). But Sutter empathized with this boy who came from a divorced family like himself.

If Jesus was on a time crunch and came across this young boy at a gas station who had no money or food and was running away from home, Jesus would not pass him by. Jesus would care for this boy, listen to him and guide him.

So like I said before Sutter is showing Jesus like character without even acknowledging the significance of what it means. 

After reading all these different situations Sutter was in, another thought came to mind. When I was growing up I always thought that if a person wasn’t a Christian they were automatically not a nice person. I thought there was no possible way for someone who didn’t love the Lord to be a “good person”.

            However, this way of thinking went out of the window as soon as I went to college. I’ve met so many caring people who are nice, thoughtful and who do not love Jesus. This of course breaks my heart, but many people view Christianity like Sutter. Much later in the book when his friend Ricky starts to go to church Sutter says religion itself is out to turn people into zombies.

The thought of sitting in a church and worshiping a man who lived over 2,000 years ago really seems insane to Sutter and people like him. And rightfully so I would not find Christianity appealing if I thought it was a bunch of robot-like people sitting in a building.  What my generation has been preaching over and over again is…

relationship

over

religion.

So my ongoing prayer to people who compare being a Christian to being a zombie is that eventually they realize that an intimate and personal relationship is what Jesus truly wants with each and every one of us here on earth!

Though you have not seen Him you love Him; and even though you do not see Him now, you believe in Him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.

-1 PETER 1:8

#1 The Fault in our Stars

The words of John Green really resonated with me. I love his humor and the way he writes is almost poetic. Some of the lines in his book were so utterly beautiful that I wanted to stop right then and there in the book and paint the sentence on a canvas and hang it in my room!

I love the personalities that he gives his characters. Many times I grinned at their honesty and exposed vulnerability.

In this novel God is mentioned and briefly talked about throughout the story…Obviously because there are cancer patients involved and death is a natural part of life.

I’m going to point out a few of quotes in the novel, now I could dig way deeper into these quotes or add many others, but these in particular stood out to me.

"That's the thing about pain," Augustus said, and then glanced back at me. "It demands to be felt."

This is why I love the Lord, he gave us so many feelings to cave into. So many emotions that we can’t necessarily describe… we just feel. God gave us emotions that make us want to soar with happiness, like joy, merriment and all those other fluffy feelings that make you want to skip like a little girl with a Hyppo popsicle.

However, there are other feelings like hurt, anger, pain and suffering. When we are in the pit of these raw emotions and we feel like there is no one to relate to us, we often forget about a man named Jesus.

Jesus lived as a human being just like us, He experienced loss of family and friends. He wept over his friend Lazarus when he heard about his death (JOHN 11:35). Think about the pain he felt while he was on the cross knowing he was leaving his mother Mary.

For instance, in the book Hazel is very concerned about what will happen to her parents once she dies. She is scared of how her death would impact them and their marriage. Jesus felt this same emotion on the cross.

Pain is one of those real emotions that make people question why God created it. I wonder the same thing sometimes. Think about this…with pain and suffering comes empathy, compassion and love. Jesus calls us to love one another (JOHN 13:34). He knows that on earth there’s going to be pain and suffering because we are broken people living in a broken world.

“Maybe some people need to believe in a proper and omnipotent God to pray, but I don’t”.

To be honest, when I first read that line it broke my heart. I had to stop reading for a few minutes and meditate on what Hazel had just said.

 I pondered on the word omnipotent. Unlimited power, meaning He can do anything (MATT 19:26). It made me terribly sad that Hazel thought that she did not need or want an all-powerful God.

Now I don’t know how I would feel toward Jesus if I had cancer and did not grow up in a Christian home. I might feel similar to Hazel and have the hope drained out of me like the liquid in her lungs.

But also it got me thinking… I don’t know how I would survive a serious illness

without having my faith burning inside of me

without having His words giving me strength

without having the presence of the Holy Spirit there to comfort me.

All of us have this need… this desire to be fulfilled. A hunger that we want satisfied. An emptiness that we try to fill with earthly things.

But the only person who can quench that thirst and give you this breathe of life that in the book Hazel so earnestly strives to find is Jesus Himself.

“You realize that trying to keep your distance from me will not lessen my affection for you”.

Now I will say Augustus Waters may in fact be every girl’s dream boyfriend. He says the most charming and beautiful things and his sole desire is to rescue people… to be someone’s hero. He has such an innocence and naïve-ness about him that reminds me of us as God’s children.

Now re-read the quote but instead of Augustus’s voice think of Jesus saying this to you

 …(PAUSE)

Does that not blow your polka dot socks off or what?! It did to me!

Both Christians and non-Christians alike push Jesus away. We distance ourselves from Him out of anger, selfishness or self-righteousness. And Jesus being who He is will never stop loving YOU. His affection for you stays constant despite all your efforts to deny Him.

Let us know; let us press on to know the Lord; his going out is sure as the dawn; he will come to us as the showers, as the spring rains that water the earth.

 –Hosea 6:3 (ESV)