Audacious Knee Bending

Can you imagine the gall of someone asking you to bow down before them? “Hey, you piece of crap over there. Drop to your knees and worship me! I am the Lord, your freaking God, and you will praise me, … or I will end you.”

That’s what we imagine we hear anyway. “Don’t even think of worshipping another god, you puny, pitiful sheep, you. Get down on your knees.”

We whisper under our breath, “Oh, yeah? That’s how it’s gonna be?” Where’s God’s humility, for goodness sake? Hmmm. Did I just apply a human expectation to God? How audacious of me ….

The word “audacious” has two major meanings. First, a willingness to take surprisingly bold risks; and second, an irreverent attitude of impudent, insolent, and shameless disrespect for another.

It was our generation, by the way, who took the word audacious to another level. Dictionaries added the word “bodacious” in the 80’s to both accept and justify our 20th Century impudence. We were both bold and insolent. Audacious wasn’t enough for us. We were bodacious. We were proud of our audaciousness. We admire someone who sticks it to the man, who passes a police car on the freeway, careless at getting a speeding ticket, who spits in the face of the wind, and who shouts aggressively at “Yield” signs.

We’re all bodacious Americans now. “Drop to your knees and worship me!” Not gonna happen.

Bodacious is part of our culture. We read about people in the news on a regular basis who become quite violent when the police arrest them for various and sundry criminal activities, from stealing a car to drunk and disorderly behavior. The common response to police arrests are, “You can’t do this to me!” Celebrity types add an intimidating threat to their astonishment at being arrested. “Do you know who I am?”

We don’t have to be arrested to be defiant and astounded when we feel someone else is trying to Lord it over us, or tell us what to do. “Eat your vegetables!” “Don’t touch that!” “Knock before you come in here!” “Who invited you?”

What’s with these dictatorial people? Who do they think they are? I pay the bills around here. I’m a free citizen. I don’t have to take this nonsense.

Even our cars tell us what to do. “Ding, Ding, Ding”, telling us to put on our seat belt. What kind of pushy nagging is that? GPS voices directing us to our destination. You can hear the subtle rudeness in the animatronic edgy female. “Turn right in 400 feet, you moron.”

I also don’t like it when my computer reminds me to do stuff. It brazenly tells me what to do all the time. I get these annoying calendar reminders, obnoxious update warnings, and the indecipherable blue screen that tells me it is broken and I am now expected to fix it. So needy.

We don’t like traffic rules, shopping discounts (just charge us the right amount!), security screenings, warning labels, blood tests, and deadlines. It’s like God is in all this stuff, poking us in back. “Watch yourself, Mister.”

Why would any of us pay attention to a God who follows us around, telling us what to do? Is God like all this other stuff? Do we really want the almighty creator of heaven and earth looking over our shoulder all the time? What’s he bothering me about? He made me to have free will, and I’m simply operating the way I was built. I’m a 420 Chevy, four on the floor, a Shelby Cobra GT500, a 750 horse power mean machine flying down the highway with the top down. Get out of my way, because I’m going so fast the shocks on this baby are taking a nap.

And about then the fence I don’t want holding me in is right there. I drive through it, and it lets me go. I leave the smooth mind-numbing highway for the freedom of the wild. It’s not quite what I expected.

The shocks wake up and rattle my jaw at every bump in the field. The tires pop on rocks sharper than my pocket knife. I slide across a riverbed, hidden from the view of anybody who may be wandering down the highway several hundred yards behind me. The liquor high, ego high, or whatever high I’m on, wears off, and I’m as lost as Luke’s defiant sheep who left the flock because the shepherd was too nosy, the fence too fency, and the other sheep too stupid to be around anymore.

I wake up with a long line of damaged property laid out behind me, confused friends who don’t know where I’ve gone, loved ones thinking about bad seed in the family’s DNA, and worse, there’s a bunch of young, curious kids watching my wreckage with admiration. They’ve never seen anything like it. Bodacious.

And I’m immediately heartbroken over my stupidity, angry with myself. I’m frightened that I can get so worked up and cocky and obstinate. I don’t want to be a bad example.

Before I can get down on one knee and ask God to come and get me, he’s there. I’m a damn fool, and God’s thrilled with me for coming to my senses. I’m a lost coin that rolled down into a heating grate, and God’s found me and put me back into his purse with all the faithful coins.

He was there through all my shenanigans. He’s not like any common shepherd, because he doesn’t leave any of his sheep alone to come and get me. God’s not looking over my shoulder. He’s in my heart, my head and my hands. He loves me.

He’s worthy of worship and praise, because he’s forever faithful. He’s not the one that has to be humble. That would be me. God has plenty of exciting things for me to do right here in the flock, and right here among his investments in his generous purse. He offers a wealth of opportunities. He’s not the enemy. And more importantly, his flock is not oppressive. They’re looking out for each other, including me.

God is the bold one, the humble one, the worthy one. God is the bodacious one to admire.