Bubbaville, Super Bowl, Love

When we lived in Colorado, Megan and I hosted a White Trash Super Bowl Party.

We took our inspiration from the Colorado Springs neighborhood - "Bubbaville" we affectionately called it - in which we bought our first house. The reason we called it that was because we lived down the street from the local Salvation Army, the police helicopters flew over our house every night as we happened to be in the center of their "suspicious behavior" circuit, and our neighbors (with whom we awkwardly shared a driveway) used to loudly ride their four-wheeler around our house for fun.

The idea of an actual party came a couple years later, after we had moved out of Bubbaville and into a different neighborhood across town. We encouraged our friends to “embrace their inner white trash." For our part, we let our then-very-young daughters run around in nothing but diapers; Megan put on a ton of cheap jewelry and frizzed out her hair; I didn't shower, fix my bedhead, or wear anything but sweats and a white T-shirt. We thought about putting a couple vehicles up on blocks in the front yard, but in the end opted for dragging a bunch of stuff out of the garage and putting up a couple of cheap pink flamingos instead.

Here's an invitation I sent out via email one year:

Our friends gleefully showed up and played their parts: guys wore "wife-beater" T-shirts, fake mullets, and jeans with holes a la Def Leppard; gals got "creative" with their makeup, giving themselves fake hickeys and black eyes as if they had just fought AND made up with their boyfriends/husbands in our driveway. There were other little kids running around in diapers and pull-ups, and we all sat around laughing at each other - sometimes watching the game, always watching the commercials.

It was funny...and fun...and wrong. Megan felt it...and so did I.

For someone like me, whose sense of humor can seem unfortunately more developed than his sensitivity, having fun at the expense of others is all too easy. I learned a long time ago not to use humor as a weapon, but there have been plenty of instances - some public, most private - when I have broken my own cease-fire agreement. The only thing quicker than my brain is my tongue, which can be unfortunate for others when the former follows the latter in an all-out pursuit of anything funny.

When we moved to St. Louis and I got my first full semester of seminary under my belt, the Holy Spirit zeroed in on a couple of areas in my life that caused me to regret and repent of some prejudices I never thought I had. Despite growing up in a county with next to no racial diversity, my prejudices rarely involve race; instead (and as my "white trash" years should have first clued me in), I have to watch out for "educational prejudice" - judging others on the education (or the sense of education) I perceive them to have or not have.

While there's more nuance to it than I can describe in words, basically it's a very quick process that goes something like this: if I think I'm smarter than you are, I win; if I don't think I'm smarter than you are, then I ask the question again and again until I can figure out a reason how and why I could be. (Ironically, the ridiculous part in all this is that I assume by default that I'm actually dumber than everyone, which is another example of how sin ratchets up my insecurities and feeds the aforementioned cycle.)

Thankfully - mercifully - I've grown in my understanding of God's love for me through the words and wounds of grace, but the Super Bowl (of all things) and the memories of the "white trash" parties of the past serve as an annual reminder of my need to love others as God loves others, which often simply means not making fun of them.

As Paul wrote to the Philippians (and as a good friend once shared with me because of my arrogance):

"And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment, so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God." Philippians 1:9-11

Go Colts.