Today I lived a hipsters' dream. I went to a coffee shop and in no particular order talked about beards with friends, wandered aimlessly on facebook, talked about the Christian's attitude towards capital punishment, and typed on my computer for about four hours. Then I went and got a chili-dog, went to Starbucks, wandered facebook some more, and read Kierkegaard. While I was at the coffee shop I ran into many folks that I knew and had varying degrees of interesting conversation with them. Now I'm at the same coffee shop drinking a yerba mate, listening to a local hipster kid sing John Prine, typing this blog post. If this was life all the time, I think I would be happy.
While I was struck by the perfection of my day, I was struck by the happiness of the chili dog place. If my day was the hipster's dream day, then Coney Island Lunch is the Scrantonite's dream spot. The owner is a connoisseur of baseball and a collector of classic baseball memorabilia with which the store is chock full. There are bobbleheads, pennants, and old newspaper clippings plastered on the walls. The employees are one of two kinds of people. They are either middle-aged men, or twenty-something girls. Everyone knows everyone that comes in the little shop and they all talk a little smack, a little sports, a little politics, and chops are being busted like plastic Christmas gifts. I feel like when Scranton was founded, that the little chili dog shop scene was exactly what the founders had in mind.
As it is, my hipster days are few and far between, and while the original vision for the city was that everyone would just own a storefront and bust each others' chops, this is not how it always is. Sometimes people flip you off. Sometimes they curse you out. Sometimes they fire you.
I think we all have our own visions of what life could or should be like. I think we all flock into groups that share our vision, and I think most of the visions are pure, albeit idealistic. And it's a shame that they're idealistic. It's a shame that despite their distinctive purity, that they are in competition with each other. We cannot all have our way.
I also think that most of us have never exactly thought through our vision. For many of us, it is undeveloped or sub-conscious. But either way we act on it, more often than not in ignorance of why we're really doing what we're doing; without any idea of what we're striving for. We call this the human condition.
The nice thing about religion is that it gives us the vision and the method outright. It does all the work of figuring out the meaning of life for us. We just have to do what it says.
So I'm a Christian. (If you're an old subscriber, you know this.) I don't believe in the hipster way. I believe in Jesus' way. But Jesus' way is hard to believe in. I read in Luke yesterday that Jesus' asks me to follow Him. And then I realized his destiny was the cross. Of course the hope is the resurrection, but the cross is inevitable. Jesus says I can only have life if I am willing to give up my own; if I am willing to lay down the hipster way of life. Some might think that this means that the ways we find to live in this world, whether it be "hipsteresque" or Scrantastic are by self-definition sinful. I wonder if when Jesus says if one is willing to lay down his life he will not fail to receive it back sevenfold when His kingdom comes, if he means that these pure but various ways of life which we choose to embrace will not be given back to us, but in a form in which they compliment each other instead of compete against each other. It makes sense to me that one must be willing to lose his life, to gain it. For God is not able entrust us with our own life while we live in the flesh. Our flesh is under the influence of our common ancestor, Adam. But the second Adam, Jesus, has by his own sacrifice, freed us through faith in Him to have our life without the hindrance of the flesh, but we must pass through the fire. We must actually be willing to stake no claim on our own life. We must entrust it to Him, and then we will be free, despite the fact that the decision of faith, that is the decision to entrust our life to Jesus, is a sacrifice. It is a sacrifice that returns freedom.
While I was struck by the perfection of my day, I was struck by the happiness of the chili dog place. If my day was the hipster's dream day, then Coney Island Lunch is the Scrantonite's dream spot. The owner is a connoisseur of baseball and a collector of classic baseball memorabilia with which the store is chock full. There are bobbleheads, pennants, and old newspaper clippings plastered on the walls. The employees are one of two kinds of people. They are either middle-aged men, or twenty-something girls. Everyone knows everyone that comes in the little shop and they all talk a little smack, a little sports, a little politics, and chops are being busted like plastic Christmas gifts. I feel like when Scranton was founded, that the little chili dog shop scene was exactly what the founders had in mind.
As it is, my hipster days are few and far between, and while the original vision for the city was that everyone would just own a storefront and bust each others' chops, this is not how it always is. Sometimes people flip you off. Sometimes they curse you out. Sometimes they fire you.
I think we all have our own visions of what life could or should be like. I think we all flock into groups that share our vision, and I think most of the visions are pure, albeit idealistic. And it's a shame that they're idealistic. It's a shame that despite their distinctive purity, that they are in competition with each other. We cannot all have our way.
I also think that most of us have never exactly thought through our vision. For many of us, it is undeveloped or sub-conscious. But either way we act on it, more often than not in ignorance of why we're really doing what we're doing; without any idea of what we're striving for. We call this the human condition.
The nice thing about religion is that it gives us the vision and the method outright. It does all the work of figuring out the meaning of life for us. We just have to do what it says.
So I'm a Christian. (If you're an old subscriber, you know this.) I don't believe in the hipster way. I believe in Jesus' way. But Jesus' way is hard to believe in. I read in Luke yesterday that Jesus' asks me to follow Him. And then I realized his destiny was the cross. Of course the hope is the resurrection, but the cross is inevitable. Jesus says I can only have life if I am willing to give up my own; if I am willing to lay down the hipster way of life. Some might think that this means that the ways we find to live in this world, whether it be "hipsteresque" or Scrantastic are by self-definition sinful. I wonder if when Jesus says if one is willing to lay down his life he will not fail to receive it back sevenfold when His kingdom comes, if he means that these pure but various ways of life which we choose to embrace will not be given back to us, but in a form in which they compliment each other instead of compete against each other. It makes sense to me that one must be willing to lose his life, to gain it. For God is not able entrust us with our own life while we live in the flesh. Our flesh is under the influence of our common ancestor, Adam. But the second Adam, Jesus, has by his own sacrifice, freed us through faith in Him to have our life without the hindrance of the flesh, but we must pass through the fire. We must actually be willing to stake no claim on our own life. We must entrust it to Him, and then we will be free, despite the fact that the decision of faith, that is the decision to entrust our life to Jesus, is a sacrifice. It is a sacrifice that returns freedom.
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