A Muslim President?

I'm sure you've heard about it by now, as it's been pretty much the top media story of the day. A recent study by the Pew Research Center shows that the perception that President Obama is an adherent of Islam hasn't changed much over the past year. The poll indicates that a whopping 12% of Americans are under the impression that the U.S. currently has a Muslim president. Here are the numbers if you want to check it out: http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=509

Aside from the dearth of evidence to the contrary, it baffles me to think that so many people believe that there would even be a POSSIBILITY of a Muslim president right now. Just 50 years ago, it was a HUGE deal that we elected a Catholic president. Obama is our VERY FIRST black president. We still have never elected a female president. And unfortunately, Muslims are even further down on the social totem pole than Catholics, blacks, and women.

This does raise an interesting question though. When, if ever, would we elect a Muslim president? It doesn't seem like it would happen any time remotely soon, and if it were to ever happen, there would need to be some MAJOR changes in popular perception.

During my lunch breaks, I often watch videos on TED.com (Which, by the way, if you've never check it out, PLEASE do.) They add a new video every weekday, and today's video just so happened to be a talk by an Iranian-American who is a founding member of the Axis of Evil Comedy Tour . These are guys who are all of Middle-Eastern descent, and they are making a noble effort to use their comedic skills to both entertain and change perceptions of Middle Easterners. If you want to view this highly entertaining and inspiring video, here it is.

The thing is, fundamentalist, extremist Muslims make up a minute percentage of the total Muslim population. To the extent that we allow the few to dominate our perception of the many, we make the same mistake that has plagued humanity for millenia and has lead to so many atrocities in our world. And of course I wouldn't want a fundamentalist Muslim in the White House, but neither would I want a fundamentalist Christian. So I'm not saying that religious beliefs are irrelevant to what makes a good presidential candidate, but they are not as important as a sense of human decency, justice, and a desire for the common good, which are things that can be held by Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and atheists alike.

Surrender

"Mine" is a word we tend to learn pretty early in life. When we, as children, first begin to realize that there are things that we can call our own, we are, no doubt, thrilled to elation, judging by the overwhelming horror children seem to manifest when "their" toy is taken away. What a cruel reversal of fortunes then, when we reach adulthood and realize that maturity is about responsibility, sacrifice, and other such concepts that go utterly against that "mine" instinct. And it gets even worse if we decide to follow Christ, and he asks us to surrender--not simply making some sacrifices and compromises here and there, but actually saying, "My most precious possession, my life, is no longer mine."

I'm speaking in worldly terms, as if it's a bad thing, when it's actually the best thing in the world. When we first decide to surrender, we feel the liberating power of it, and then how quickly we begin to think, "What have I done?!" Because even though in the moment, we know, by the leading of the Holy Spirit, that's it right, we can't possibly understand all the implications. Fortunately, we serve a God of infinite kindness and patience, who allows us to work out the details as we go along. He doesn't make us sign a prenup!

Spiritual growth can essentially be summed up in this way, as a gradual working out of the terms of our surrender--a gradual loosening of this "mine" instinct that we formerly grasped onto with all of our power. I was in a church service recently, and one of the songs played during worship was the great hymn "I Surrender All" (if you know me well, you know about my love for hymns.) The refrain goes:

I surrender all
I surrender all
All to thee, my blessed Savior
I surrender all

I had a hard time singing along at first because I thought it would be a lie. I couldn't honestly say that I had surrendered quite everything to Jesus just yet. I'm not sure that I ever will on this side of eternity. But then I decided to make the words a prayer, that God would give me the strength to surrender more and more to him. I started to think about what I needed to surrender, and the combination of my love for hymns and the power of this prayer began to overwhelm me.

What was I surrendering that day, you ask? What had I been holding on to? My right to define my own self-worth. My insistence on obtaining significance and value from performance and from other people's opinions of me. I was surrendering my greed--greed for respect, admiration, honor, and the esteem of my peers. As I surrendered, and to continue to surrender, all of those things, I make room for God. He's the only one who loves us unconditionally. He created us; he died on a cross for us; he has forgiven and restored us; he has made us righteous. He should be the only source of our sense of self-worth. My value comes not from what I can do or the tasks I can perform or the things I can produce. It doesn't come from how well-liked or respected I am by the people around me. It comes only from God's unconditional, unimaginably high, deep, wide, long love for me.

Just earlier today I struggled with this issue again, as I'm sure I will continue to. Something someone did made me feel like they didn't respect me or value what I had to say. I felt rejected and excluded. And then I thought about the fact that I haven't been rejected at all. In fact, I've been accepted by the God of the Universe. And the only reason I got upset was because I had forgotten that, and was once again desperately trying to derive self-worth from others, even to the point of overreacting to a false perception of rejection that wasn't even intended to be mean or disrespectful. I apologized for my overreaction, and in doing so, I won a small victory against my "mine" instinct. I surrendered the mindset of, "I deserve and demand the respect that I crave," and I allowed the love of God to replace it.

I hope these words can encourage you to surrender something that you're holding on to.

How to Not Be Triflin'

While there seems to be some confusion, even among experts, about the exact meaning of triflin', it's negative connotation is universally understood. Of all the adjectives in the vast lexicon of English, triflin' would probably be in the top 10 of most people's "I hope no one ever calls me that" list. Lately, I've been trying to make sure I ain't triflin', and so I figured I would pass on some tips to everyone else.

Urban Dictionary gives one definition as follows:

to play with someone in a bad & poor way, like in destiny's child's song "bills, bills, bills":
"You triflin',good for nothing type of brother
Silly me,why haven't I found another
A baller, when times get hard he's the one to help me out
insted of, a scrub like you who don't know what a man's about"

This particular editor made a slight mistake in the definiton--the definition is for the verb form of triflin', while the example from the Destiny's Child song is clearly the adjective form. For our purposes, we should attempt to adapt this definition into a more adjectival one. Before we do that though, it's helpful to look at the dictionary.com definition for a different, but related, word: trifling. As usual, the commonly-used, online dictionary gives a plethora of definitions, but they all share a common sense, and that is of something trivial, meaningless, having little value, minor, etc:

1. of very little importance; trivial; insignificant: a trifling matter.
2. of small value, cost, or amount: a trifling sum.
3. frivolous; shallow; light: trifling conversation.
4. mean; worthless.
–noun
5. idle or frivolous conduct, talk, etc.
6. foolish delay or waste of time.

So, with both the Urban Dictionary and the dictionary.com entries in mind, if I were to take a crack at defining it, it would be as follows:

triflin': adj., applied primarily to persons; having the quality of habitually living for trivial matters, or treating life as a game or a drama; lacking substance in important areas of life (relationships, career, etc.), esp. in such a way as to make one unsuitable for dating.

More clearly stated, someone who is triflin' is pretty much someone who ain't grown. It's someone who is living for games and fun, reveling in lack of responsibility, and reaping destruction by not giving due thought to the consequences of such actions. A triflin' person is a man or a woman who still lives like a boy or a girl.

It may surprise you to learn that in the Holy Bible, the Apostle Paul actually counsels some of his readers to not be so triflin'. He writes, in his 1st letter to the Corinthians (who were a triflin' buncha suckas if there ever was some):

"When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." (1 Corinthians 13:11)

I don't want to be the "triflin' type of brother" that Destiny's Child sang about. I don't want to live according the "get-what-you-need-at-any-cost" ways of the world, like a child screaming in Wal-Mart till he gets the toy he wants. I don't want my decisions to be based on a need for approval, or a fear of rejection, or a desire to manage my self-image. These are the ways of children and teenagers. I want to live according to the wisdom of God's word, and love for God and neighbor, and the desire to honor and respect others above myself. These are the ways of a real man or woman.

In the words of Paul, let's put triflin' ways behind us.