What's that noise? (or "That's not supposed to work that way!")

Our house has a mouse. And no, we do not eat green eggs and ham with it. If you listen close enough, you can hear it squeaking. Unfortunately, it's not the cute little fuzzy gray kind of mice. To which my wife and many other women would say there is no such thing as a cute mouse. But I digress. Before you become too grossed out or frightened at the thought we have some tremondous sized, disease carrying, ferocious rat running loose in our abode, the mouse of which I speak is our computer mouse. Everytime you press the left button it goes "Squeak". I've been tempted to spray WD-40, whose multitude of uses is rivaled only by duck tape, in its innards, but I'm fairly confident that might cause more harm than good. I do not have an alternative solution, but I'm pretty sure it's not suppsed to sound like that.

As a person on a Christian faith journey, I'm sometimes compared to our noisy computer peripheral. People look at me and say, "You're not supposed to do that." Sometimes they are legitimate criticisms as I allow the fallen nature of my flesh to rule instead of the new creation powered by the Holy Spirit. Other times the admonition comes from other believers who give more creedance to their personal convictions or the status quo than to the core of what it means to be a Christian.

The surprise declarations of my malfunctions that bring me mixed feelings are the ones that come from people not on a faith journey. They come in two forms. Sometimes people are surprised that a Christian, a former pastor no less, actually behaves and acts in certain ways. When I am able to show them I am a normal person and that my behavior/beliefs do not contradict anything Biblically, they are pleasantly surprised. It's like a barrier between them and God has become weaker. The ones that bother me come from the non-believer that has sold out to the status quo, even though they do not subscribe to it in their own lives. They can be more condemning that the fellow believer. I worry about being a stumbling block to them and their faith despite seeing that they have decided to throw the stones in their own paths.

Regardless of who's commenting, everybody's watching. The only thing I want people to see is not a comparison of my behavior to their preconceived notions but the actual revelation of Jesus Christ and therefore God himself at work in my life. That IS the way it's supposed to work.