GOD'S SIMPLE PLAN FOR EXTRA-TERRESTRIALS

When I wasn't developing my gymnastics abilities, I was spending the majority of my tween years philosophizing to no good end.

-on the sidewalk

-in the grocery store 

-at work

-with the cashier

-with the policeman

-with my Yugoslavian landlord

-with a total stranger on the sidewalk

-did I say at work already?

-on the phone

-while swinging on the parallel bars

-while watching movies

-while taking the trash out 

Philosophizing never made me any money, but it was one of those enjoyable ventures into which I didn't mind investing every asset, including precious brain cells.

During college I actually had encouragement from an eclectic brotherhood of philosophizers who, to be quite honest, were more interested in the rhetoric of presentation than in the discovery of actual answers to the problems we posed to ourselves and others. Topics ranged from ethics to politics to education, to sociological concerns, each framed within an ethereally theological construct we found elusive enough to differentiate a myriad of original-sounding topics, plagiarizing the brilliant parts and bumbling through the disjointed ones. 

Of all the vital subjects we covered, however, we never talked about aliens. 

I have wondered about aliens for over a decade at least (My children aren't afraid of monsters at night. They're afraid of aliens. They don't dream about monsters. They dream about aliens). The existence of aliens has been taken more seriously since well before Spielberg's Close Encounters (1977... I actually saw this movie in the movie theater in Germany. I had to have been 5 or 6) and ET (1982). 

I've actually had my own thoughts about aliens, chief of all being:

If you had the opportunity to evangelize an extra-terrestrial life-form, how would you go about it? 

The first relevant question would be To what end would you evangelize them? 

I mean, what do you know about them to even have a need to evangelize them? 

-Do you intend to colonize said alien race to the end that you diminish their power (very much like the ancient Pharaoh did to the Israelites)? 

-Do you intend to build within them a subservient spirit to the end that compliance to New Testament platitudes you pick and choose to preach render them intellectually and functionally impotent to fend for themselves? 

-Do you intend to provide an ideological superstructure to the end that each successive generation of aliens, being subject to your elitist cultural prototype, becomes more and more isolated from their own alien race (after all, there is nothing even remotely redeemable about the larger alien culture) to the end that they have no culture of their own and must by the sheer gravity of your culture stacked against them become (at best) inferior replicas of your very own? 

Maybe their language is unacceptable, having all of the linguistic and world-view trappings of an "other-planetary" culture you can't stomach? 

So you teach them King James English to the end that the salvific, cultural transfer has a chance to catch and to endure, transforming alien terms like "klj^doqp", which is derivative of "kljdq^yrp" which refers to the "Great Enlightenment" (a "supernova") of the XVI epoch of the rule of the W^/vh in which sanctions were put upon the filthy practice of Gl^n (which is too inappropriate a topic for me to discuss in this blog. That term, by the way, was the closest the Jupillian people could associate with the word "transgression." But the powers that be deemed the term etymologically inferior to the word "sin" which... add an "^"... roughly means "tickle." So the Juppilian, misunderstanding of an injunction associated with that term, outlawed any sort of playful touch, and involuntary itches carried with them the equivalent stigma that "fornication" has in our culture).

What mode of evangelism would you use? 

-Physical force? Probably not, because the Juppilians each have five arms and a diaphragm that pumps like a pipe organ. 

-Intellectual force? Each single brain neuron has a baseline functionality on par with the MacBook Air. 

No, what you would need to do is to create a default switch that leaves them helpless for a mere three hours a week, whereby you could upload viruses onto their "hard-drives" (I know Macs don't "have" viruses, but bear with me) that would systematically render them less and less logically competent. Better yet, why not call that three hours a week "church"?

Of course, it's "tinkering." But it's for the glory of God, so who cares?

Of course, the mode cannot appear to be anything less than normal custom that needs no apology or explanation... no legitimate story. This is what everyone does should be enough, and if they object we could even say This is what ^-^- taught us to do. Combined with the ethically spurious deprogramming, that might have a chance to work. 

Before long, we have a nice, fat document we call "God's Simple Plan of Salvation for Aliens" that any alien (if the alien really read it and wholeheartedly followed its dictates) would find itself becoming a fine specimen like ourselves. 

But isn't that the big problem in the first place? The "Plan" we have for them is not the same "Plan" we have for ourselves. In fact, their "Plan" is way too constricting than our own. The "Plan" we have for ourselves is less dogmatic and more open-ended, less specific and more ambiguous, less angry and more merciful than theirs. 

Oh, but there is a further problem. We make no correlation between the alien and ourselves. Probably because we see no similarity between the alien and ourselves. In fact, it takes everything in us not to react in genuine horror when we come face to face with them. We are sentient bigots and even privately refer to said alien people-group in question as "Juppies" (But only when they aren't listening). 

All of that theory. All of that conniving. All of that translating. All of that missionarying. And to what end? 

We don't know. Not really.

All we know is that we can't let a race of aliens have the edge on us. It would mean the end of life as we know it. Even if that life is inferior, it is familiar. It is ours. It is comfortable. 

So if stopping the aliens means infusing their culture with the virus of an inferior Gospel, then let it be, amen. Notwithstanding. If a race of aliens truly exists, wouldn't its deepest need be the same as our very own?

Look at it even more carefully, and we might realize that we didn't consider what exactly it was about the aliens that needed saving. 

You know why? 

Probably because we each do not really know what it is in each of us that needs saving. After all, who wouldn't want to be like me?

Of course, none of these steps, well-intentioned or not, would EVER work unless we want to replicate the horrors of colonialism. After my second trip from China, a very well-meaning and religiously devoted person asked me about my trip. When I explained how I went to a Chinese church out of interest, he quickly followed the heels of my story with the harshest of prejudice in a simple statement the equivalent of...

But they can't be teaching the true Gospel. Chinese are Communists.

And that sums up the most patronizing and damaging of Christian evangelism...

... that before an individual can be a bonafide believer of any use they must FIRST be American or conservative or Reformed or exposed to medieval literature or infused with a smattering of MacArthur or Piper or Schaeffer or owner of the KJV or ESV or exposed to some rare and hard-to-come-by Christian curriculum or any other list of regulations a culture hails as "baseline."

When the ONLY prerequisite for an alien to become a believer is that the alien...

... first be an alien.

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LEASHED: WHY YOUR GROWN CHILD WON'T LEAVE THE HOUSE

I used to think that the majority of high school and college graduates who did not leave the house would not or could not leave because Mom & Dad's house was just too comfortable. I made that assumption because I assumed that parents who made home uncomfortable for their children raised kids who wanted to leave the house. 

Parents who maintain the same relational equidistance between their children and themselves at age 18 that they had with each other at age 0 tend to raise dependent children who will remain emotionally dependent upon Mom and Dad indefinitely. 

I know of a 40+ year old man who lives in the basement of his parents' house. That is not the bad thing: he still has to observe his parents' rules. And stupid, senseless rules. And he does. Every once in a while when he is at odds with them he asserts himself by leaving the house unannounced between the hours of 6 and 9 p.m. much to the delight of his parents (they thought he was "growing" up), but he comes back when he falls upon hard times, each time becoming more and more accustomed to his 0-year-old self. Now he lives at home and can take care of Mom and Dad by taking out their trash on rainy days and washing their car on non-rainy days. 

What a "helper" he is.

Some parents (especially controlling mothers and fathers) cannot ever imagine having a mature relationship with their children (mainly because they consider it to be disrespectful). This is no lie, I have actually heard of 20-something-year-old daughters who are not allowed to move out of the house unless their parents give them permission to marry. Further, I have heard of fathers and/or mothers restricting their 20-something daughters, and even spanking or striking them for "disobedience." 

Other parents are more subtle. They punish their children...

-by silence

-by ignoring them

-by actively not supporting their budding independence...

...and all because the child wanted to make a decision not scripted by his parents. I have a friend whose parents are a part of a sectarian Christian group. She wanted to attend a particular college, and the parents stopped speaking with her. She married an amazing man, and the parents refused to come to the wedding. She recently had a beautiful baby boy, and the parents still have not made a move towards her. 

Do you know what would please her parents (if anything will)? 

-if she gave up her child

-if divorced her husband

-if she gave back her college degree

If she came home crawling on hands and knees or in any penitent form they prescribed. This dear lady is not allowed to have a life approved by her parents (And her parents are under the impression that they "glorify" God each day of the week because their miserable lives are wasted away in their little, exclusive church where women still wear bonnets and men pretend they don't like beer). 

It seems that a key ingredient to raising healthy children is the incremental but dramatic change that happens between parents and children over time. 

Child rearing can essentially be described as raising a child to maturity or peerage. Children who mature to adulthood and never leave the house or who keep coming back to the house were never raised to be emotionally independent of their parents, whether or not the parents were permissive or controlling. 

If independence is not central to child rearing, then child rearing seems to me to be a clever way to raise slaves. 

If you liken the raising of a child to the birth of a baby, it should make perfect sense why a baby does not leave the womb of its own volition. True, he or she is quite warm, quite comfortable, quite fine in the such cozy surroundings. It is only when contractions begin that the baby, initially distressed, is coaxed out into the land of the living. Sometimes quickly. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes much longer.

No. If grown children are not ever made to leave home, it is not a problem with the child. 

It's a problem with the womb.

Here's how your grown child can take a step in the right direction (out the door)...

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PARENTAL ROOTS OF HIGH-FUNCTIONING CHILDREN

At the school I founded in 2000 I used to cater to a large number of middle-school boys who either had (or were believed to have had) ADD or ADHD. Mixed in with that number were those with dyslexia, Tourettes, ODD (Oppositional Defiant Disorder), CD (Conduct Disorder), EDD (Emotional Detachment Disorder), DBD (Disruptive Behavior Disorder), OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), ASD, (Autistic Spectrum Disorder) BD (Bipolar Disorder), NVLD (Non-Verbal Learning Disorder), MD (Manic Depression), and general anxiety. 

While it sounds like a zoo, school was quite the contrary. My school was in rural Williamson County with sprawling hills and verdant green valleys. The actual property of five acres was surrounded by a horse & cow farm to the right, wheat fields and a mountain to the back, and private property predating the Civil War to my left. Dozens upon dozens of acres cushioned us from civilization. 

On the property was a pond inhabited by frogs, several aggressive turtles, and snakes. Blue heron visited our pond during winter with Canadian geese making several stops nearby, their signature squawking a comfort during those long Tennessee winters (especially when we would run out of propane to heat the school). Coyote, deer, and turkey used our property as a thoroughfare.

Because the property had been uninhabited for several years before I took possession of it in August 2000, it was a hangout for vagrants and passersby. During the winter I would get to school early to turn on the heat and to check windows and doors for signs of break-ins (which I did occasionally find. Bums occasionally used our little schoolhouse and property as a base, camping on the grounds or trying to find an open window or unlocked door to stay the night). 

It took a while to train these people to stay off the property. I never called the police. The best antidote for discouraging these types seemed to be my emerging from the school after they entered the property. Whenever I would come out the front door to talk to them, they would take off if they were far enough away. If they were close enough for me to surprise them, they would nervously say they were mistakenly in the wrong place and leave. They could not understand what I, a Black man, was doing in a little school in the country. 

Anyways, I describe these things so that you understand the very pastoral and therapeutic setting for my school.

Because it was my school, I modified regular school to aid my students in the total captivation of their focus and in the elongation of their attention spans. I knew that exposure to a wide array of experiences was important to students as a reference point for other complex experiences. So we simulated what I call "backdrops" to their educational experience. We had school...

-sitting on the ground outside under the trees with ticks raining down on us 

-walking around the school property

-marching up the mountain

-sitting around a campfire while eating turkey legs (that set the coyotes yipping)

*We played an all night game of Sack of Rome in which case the Romans slept in the school house all night while the Goths had to sleep outside in the 30-degree weather (upper 20's with a wind chill) in makeshift tents by fires that kept getting blown out. The Goths had to find a way to break into the school (doors and windows) where they had to "tag" all the Romans and retrieve several items (which they finally did between the hours of 4 and 5 in the morning before I pulled out donuts and orange juice). 

*We celebrated The First Thanksgiving, students giving up their recess (or being made to give up their recess. I do not remember) to go into the woods with handsaws to cut down twenty-foot saplings to form the skeleton of the gigantic teepee in which students further dug a gigantic hole in the middle of the teepee where we made a fire, roasting turkeys, white potatoes, and sweet potatoes, smoke filling up the tent and students coughing up their lungs (that's the way the original authors described it in the Captive Narratives). 

All of these experiences were intended to be enjoyably uncomfortable in order to create a kind of academic sobriety so students had a rhythmically circadian calendar to alleviate the stresses of their very cushioned, sophisticated, and technologically-savvy, culture that provided its own aggravating backdrop to their many disorders. 

That is not to say that students did not have legitimately disruptive behaviors. That is also not to say that students did not need medication like a few of them did need. That is also not to say that students did not need the counselors they were seeing.

All these children were functional and fun with the exception of a few I could not help (Their issues spanned severe & prolonged sexual abuse and severe oppositional behavior). As my school grew, the number of girls wrestling with similar problems increased, too. 

All of these students with whom I worked were within the Christian religious demographic, and the overwhelming number of them had parents who held to intriguing views of spirituality that I increasingly saw to be a significant obstacle to their children's betterment, even while their children were making "great strides" at my school. 

The following two descriptions of these dysfunctional family types is a montage of odd conversations I would have concerning their children:

THE SUPERSPIRITUAL PARENT

The first parent is the one who would speak in religious code.

PARENT, "Praise the Lord, Mr. Grayson." (I don't know whether or not to say "Good morning" or "How are you?" because I don't know what "Praise the Lord" means at 8:30 A.M.).

ME, "You seem energetic this morning."

PARENT, "Oh, the Lord has been doing some AMAZING things in our family!"

ME "Hmm. Like what?" (The parent in this situation is not inviting me to inquire. He is building a wall to keep me on my turf so that I am "amazed" at what God is doing in his life).

PARENT, "Oh, well, you know, He's just... shaking things up, and drawing us close, and teaching us the things we need to learn." (I don't know what that means). 

ME, "Ok. Anything specifically?" (Now, I'm on the offensive).

PARENT, "Well, God is just... you know... we are just seeing his promises come to pass. He is confirming a lot of things and... really... revealing a lot of things." (My brows furrow-flex, indicating that I have absolutely no idea what she means but that I will allow the mysterium of that cryptic statement to stand).

ME, "Well, your boy has done well this week in his papers. Last week he wasn't trying. This week he has written three very impressive papers."

PARENT, "Praise the Lord. We have been telling him to do his best as unto God." (Whatever)

ME, "He also completed the 100-question Philosophy Exam with flying colors."

PARENT, "You know, I told him to commit himself to the Lord and God will bring it to pass." (What does that mean? We're talking about schoolwork.)

OK, I'm done with this conversation. Such greetings and conversation are not normal or consistent with these sorts of parents, so I tend to take mental note that they are hiding something. This kind of religious talk correlates to the babbling of the hardened sinner stuck in a very tight place. Now, all of a sudden he wants to talk about the Lord."

Not only do I find this kind of talk to be obstructive to normal conversation, but I also find it to be simply embarrassing. 

I never know what to say except to encourage the person to talk in plain English. If a parent is telling me "The Lord's provision just makes me want to worship him more" when he really means "I just had a great breakfast at Shoney's" or "His grace is sufficient" when he means "I lost my job because I don't really want to work and my boss could tell" or "Everything is beautiful in his time" when he really means "I'm not really doing anything with my life right now nor do I feel any motivation to do anything with my life right now and my wife and I are probably going to divorce", I get a little unnerved. I am not sure what I am supposed to do with these kinds of conversations... except to put them in blogs like this one. 

THE RELEVANT PARENT

The second parent likes to "mix it up" with an ingenuous combination of profanity and holiness. I think he does it for shock value because I have said something or he has heard something or I've done something or she thinks I have done something that intimidates him (or her).

PARENT, "Oh, God, what a crazy night."

ME, "Something happen?"

PARENT, "You didn't hear? My son got picked up by the cops--it wasn't his fault." (It is never your child's fault, haha).

ME, "And?"

PARENT, "Those damned bigots had nothing better to do so they jump all over his ass at the movie theater." (This kind of aggression is meant to make me think the parent is stressed beyond the point of reasoning. So I am not supposed to inquire. But I do).

ME, "So the police just decided to target him?" (The parent takes an exaggerated deep breath).

PARENT, " Well, you know, he was doing what he was supposed to do but he was with these two other little, thug-wannabes and I've told him before 'Iron sharpens iron. You need to be careful about who your friends are.'" (The parent doesn't want me to ask anything more. He thinks the religious platitude is somehow going to satisfy me by convincing me he has fulfilled his moral, parental duty).

ME, "And?" 

PARENT, "But you've taught him for years. You know how stubborn he is." (Now it's my fault).

ME, "So what did he do?"

PARENT, "So I dropped them off at the theater and one of..."

ME, "So you drove your boy and his bad friends to the theater?" (Maybe I'm at fault for that, too).

PARENT, "What I'm trying to say is that they--not my son, but the other two--had words back and forth with some other little a**hole. They are shoving and the police come. My son didn't do s***, but they blame it on him. I told him later that it's always the righteous people who suffer."

ME, "So..?"

PARENT, "Oh, I talked with him about it." (Oh, that is wonderful. You talked to your son).

ME, "What did you talk about?"

PARENT, "You see, once your kids are grown you'll understand how hard it is to raise kids these days. Like you, I was idealistic. But it's hard. (Now, I'm ignorant).

The conversation has gone on for longer than it should. The parent never expected to reveal that much information. Yes, it is going to be hard raising kids when they know a parent does pot or porn or two women at a time. 

The parent is only angry because his children won't let him be a child. 

His little feelings, juvenile attention span, and truncated capacity for responsibility isn't large enough to even have a family much less a balanced opinion. He thought aggressive language would somehow illustrate his frustration over injustice, a virtue he assumes I value. He also thought I would respect his space. He thought I would somehow try to calm or comfort him. He thought I would take the heat for him like I'm his little nanny or his Negro.

It's obvious to me why many of these wonderful children never get the help they need: they have parents who block their path to genuine healing by insistence in ambiguous mediums of conversation (Who will ever understand what is really going on?) and in various levels of blame-shifting (Who will ever really know the real causes?). 

These parents often reinforce the right combination of dysfunctional environmental factors that replicate the high-functioning behaviors their children manifest and that eventually drive them to ever-widening circles of insanity. At a modeling level, if there is no change in the parent... there will be no change in the child. Period. No matter how fun a student thinks I am.

And I'm a lot of fun. 

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EMOLICIOUS: ON CHRISTIAN MASOCHISM

After my second year of having founded STONE TABLE, I decided to explain to my elementary students the lyrics to Martin Luther’s FROM DEPTHS OF WOE which I had them routinely singing for over a year, the first verse of which begins ...

“From depths of woe I raise to Thee the voice of lamentation….” 

As I began to explain the line, a third grader from South Africa, screwed up her face and corrected me.

"Wool" she said.

"Excuse me?"

"Wool" she said again. I paused to let her words compute.

“Wool what?"

“Wool. You mean ‘From depths of wool.’"

I paused. Then it dawned on me, paralyzing my train of thought. After a year of subjecting students to a song I thought they understood, I realized I had ingrained in them (by the looks on some of the other children’s faces) the correlation between praying and suffocation. I can’t tell you how aghast I was and even more aghast as the third-grader tried to explain her logic.

"No, it's like you are under all of these blankets and Jesus hears you crying. Like a little kitten."

I strongly objected, even laughing a little to ease the concern of the other students who seemed relieved that someone was finally explaining some of the archaic terminology I enjoyed using in my elementary classes. 

But it was no use. 

She, like many of my other students, didn't understand spiritual abstractions save in one area: the way spiritual abstractions are applied have a unique logic that doesn't often lend to rational deduction. That isn't the fault of the spiritual abstraction itself. It is, rather, a communication problem. 

From that point on I began to doubt my communication skills with my students or even with my own children (who have had nightmares more than once because of my miscommunication).

It brought about a concern I had only remotely felt until then, and that is that much of the masochism expressed in Christian culture is less a proper doctrinal view or legitimate judgment of God and more an area in which Christian culture delights. 

Consider that each of our lives are punctuated with disappointment, heartbreak, unrealized expectations, fears, social or psychological loneliness, injustice... and a lot of it without our own input. And we get to end it all by dying, each of us going through the Valley of the Shadow of Death alone with no one else other than the God of the Universe at our side...

A few months ago I had a nightmare (actually, it was a daymare). I dreamed I was some oily sludge going down the inside of a sink, fast approaching the drain. It was happening slowly, but there was no way that I, sludge, could grip the sides of the sink. I was being pulled down largely because of the contour of the bowl and largely because of the momentum of my own weight. I hit the drain then slowly and dramatically slipped through to the other side. 

I literally jumped myself awake, trying to grab onto something, my heart beating ferociously. It dawned on me with a nascent wonder that everyone has to go through that event and they have to go through it alone. Is that not terrifying? 

And at that moment I felt both a love and an admiration for every human being alive, good or bad. I didn’t tell my wife or my children or my friends, because I felt it would dampen their day (and their lives). I walked around the house looking at everything in a new light: Judge Judy was yelling at someone, the kids had left the refrigerator door open, music was blaring downstairs, and I'm going in my head “Surely, death can’t be that ugly. Or final.” 

What is interesting is that such realities do not seem to be enough for the average evangelical Christian. In many cases he must add his own severe rules and regulations that hamper enjoyment and restrict healthy function on top of the grief we must all suffer. 

-so s/he can't laugh except to repent at the end of his laughter because he should have been thinking about all of the unfortunate people out there

-or s/he can't take a vacation because that money should go towards the same unfortunate people

-or s/he can't have a nice television because the money could go to the starving

Or s/he can't have a nice meal or s/he can't take time to have a long walk for walking's sake, or s/he can't have a streak of continuous enjoyment with her/his spouse. Somewhere along the way he is always there sabotaging the little joys of life. He imposes grief upon himself because he doesn't think the grief of the world to be enough. He thinks that if he keeps his head down, then God will not hear him laughing and go...

Shame on you. You aren't taking this life seriously. I think a stroke will cure you. Oh, and I will also have you lose your job. Yeah, and your wife will cheat on you. No, your wife will leave you. You lose your wallet. You get pulled over by the cops. That should do the trick.

As much as the Evangelical talks about the differences between himself and the Roman Catholic or the Muslim or any other group that seems to routinely employ severe acts of penitence or remuneration, he often subjects himself to lashings and sufferings of his own design.

And happily so. 

Do you want to minimize this painful perspective?

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FOUR SIGNS YOUR CHRISTIAN HUSBAND MIGHT BE CHEATING ON YOU

I live in a county with a high volume and tolerance for the impromptu affair. It's also an overwhelmingly conservative, Christian county which makes it that much harder to determine adultery. I mean, Christians are supposed to avoid falsely accusing each other, to avoid causing "division among the brethren", and to avoid being busybodies. Consequently, some of the most unhealthy relational behavior becomes inadvertently protected. 

The elevation of these New Testament maxims over, say, the Ten Commandments (or common sense), discourages the ferreting out of adultery in the self-proclaiming Christian man more than in the man who makes no such claim (or who prefers not to market that aspect of himself).

Seriously, what do you do when you have a suspicion or proof even that a friend or acquaintance is cheating on his wife? And he has kids? And he has a reputation to lose were he to be found out? I'm not talking about going on a witch hunt or being a Wienersnitch. I'm talking about putting to rest the open loops in our minds when we see or sense peculiar patterns of the men around us who... whether or not it's true... consider us to be friends.

I've been in more awkward circumstances than I care to admit where a belligerent Evangelical or Charismatic male personality made it clear that something was not quite right about himself and was so comfortable with himself that he was too clever for his own good to realize the signs he was leaving the rest of us. Here are four signs that your Christian husband might have some shennanigans up his sleeve (or up his pants leg for that matter):

1. Exclusive Use of Evangelical Language. All day Sunday is one thing and Wednesday night (for some people) another. But men who have regular jobs Monday through Saturday and who exclusively (or as much as possible) use religious code to speak of work, politics, how they are doing, finances, etc. are intentionally hiding something. I mean religious code is not specific enough to communicate certain kinds of information ("Sarge, when it comes to pass, concentrate your men of God on the coordinates of the pagan enemy. Blast those idol worshipers to Kingdom Come in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." or "IT guy, my computer is infested with all sorts of unrighteousness. Would you be willing to move your bowels of compassion to help me purge it like hyssop, making it whiter than snow?"). It's called changing the subject, and it's not any more natural than it would be to use religious code to describe a Big Mac or a new pair of shoes. I've heard it hundreds of times:

Business Partner: "Hey, there was $60,000 in the operations account. Now, there is only $25,000. Where is the other $35,000?"

Blessed Business Partner: "Hey, Bill, stop panicking. Panicking is sin. Scripture says that God will provide. The Israelites panicked in the wilderness, and that's why they are no longer God's chosen people. I will find out what happened to the money, but you need to promise me that you are going to trust God and trust me, or God might not bless our company. Do you want to still be one of God's chosen people?"

Business Partner: "But you're the treasurer!"

Blessed Business Partner: "Bill, I'm warning you.... I'm annointed. Scripture says 'Cast thy cares upon the Lord.' You are in rebellion."

Business Partner: "All I'm saying is..."

Blessed Business Partner: "'Get thee behind me, Satan!'"

Religious code in these sorts of situations not only discourages communication, but it intentionally muddies the waters. I recently spoke with a man who has done his share of disseminating seed behind his wife's back. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: "So how are things with the wife?"

Him: "God's strength is perfect."

Me: "That's nice. But what does your wife have to say about your affairs?"

Him: "God's grace is sustaining her. And He's been giving us a calm we have never felt before."

Me: "OK, but does she know how many women you've been sleeping with?"

Him: "In his time."

This guy wasn't interested in reconciling with his wife, and his unrelated use of God-words clearly made that point.

2. Underscoring Chauvinism through Scripture. I'm intrigued with men who find the need to quote Scripture whenever the subject of successful women or their wives comes up. Even if you were just talking about a subject like sports or stocks where the language is industry-specific, all of a sudden you are subject to an antiquated sermon about women. The sermon usually surrounds some confusing nexus about why these particular husbands don't "allow" their wives to do certain things like not allowing them their own career interests, not allowing them social network outlets, not allowing them to have a voice that matters in any cultural conversation the husband does not directly control.

Man 1: "So, did you go to the game last night?"

Man 2: "Yeah, we frigging owned! It was awesome!"

Man 1: "Did your wife go?"

Man 2: "Oh, she was with the kids. She doesn't even like games. She wouldn't understand them anyway."

Man 1: "Do you take her out much?"

Man 2: "She loves being at home. These men who have wives who work or who gallivant all over the place end up causing themselves trouble. The Bible makes it clear that a woman's place is in the home. She should be doing whatever is necessary to support her husband, and last night my wife was supporting me by watching the kids while I saw the game."

Man 1: "What does she do for fun?"

Man 2: "Oh, she has a ladies night. Once a month or so. Other than that she's busy with the kids. She likes to sew. She reads. Hey, what about those Titans!"

I personally avoid these men's wives, because the hungry vibes they give off (or the deep breath they have to take to dive into normal, male interaction) are... well... uncomfortable.

3. Irregular or Unexplained Absences. I'm not certain why it's OK for husbands to unexpectedly disappear for a time from dinner, from the office, from church, or from the city but it's not OK for wives to do the same. In the community I live in, work is so integrated as to be indistinguishable from break time or play. People work at Starbucks. They work at restaurants. They conference call when running. They network while doing Crossfit. They Facebook all hours of the day. So it only makes sense for men to use the excuse that they are "going to work" or "getting work done" or "having a meeting" when you see them at strange places around town (or out of town).

I was recently in a local store a few days before Christmas looking at JBL stereo systems when I ran into a friend I've known for fourteen years. When I asked about her husband (a friend of mine, too), she informed me that they were divorced. She described how he fluctuated between work and unemployment. One extended stint when he was not working, he set up a home office to deceive her into thinking he was working. He would tell her that he would be in the home office working on time-sensitive deals. Occasionally, she would intrude on him only to find out he was not there. He was always leaving out the back door. Whenever she would call him up (and she did this frequently), he was always "at the gas station getting cigarettes" or at some meeting.

I have a good friend who just moved across the U.S. I pretty much know his schedule. I can even call him at odd times and project where he will be. Nine times out of ten I'm right. He wants me to know his schedule, because he wants to be on the radar. I've spoken with wives who cannot even tell me what their husband's overseas schedule is much less his in-town schedule. I've had women complain to me that they cannot get their husbands on the phone at all during a 10-12 hour work day. The cell rings until it goes to voice-mail, or the husband prefers to text hours later.

I'm not saying that time will never allow you the use of these things, but as habits never. Such husbands don't even bother to offer where they were beyond the blanket "I was at work." It really isn't that hard to keep tabs on your husband or for your husband to let you know where he is. If he wants you to know, that is (and if you want to know).

4. The Overhauling of Relationships. Many a man I know has gotten extra-religious before his infidelity became public. In evangelical and charismatic denominations, it takes the form of an unexplained, theological shift. Not only does the man have a problem with the pastor of the church that he has willfully attended for years, but he also has a problem with the pastor's wife and the pastor's children and the pastor's teaching style and the pastor's personality and the pastor's choice of deacons and elders and the theology and the denomination and the history of the church, and everything in between.

Then he disappears for a time while he's "sorting" things out: checking out churches, studying the Bible, meeting new religious circles. Then one day he's gone altogether. And no one bothers asking why (or people think they know why). I have known many friends to unexpectedly switch to Anglican, Roman Catholic, Fundamentalist, and agnostic expressions of faith. And they can never adequately explain their choices, largely because they think that the rest of us just wouldn't understand. I've actually had friends advised by their new spiritual guides to completely leave behind their old life so that the new one can take root (And I'm sure it does. Like a weed.). That's a foolish and generous berth for these men to do whatever they want to do without someone who really knows them getting too nosy.

While only a few of these friends of mine ended up leaving their wives, sudden life changes, like changes in temperature, can ruin things permanently (I just ruined my freezer this weekend, thinking I could thaw it in the winter. Not only did it take extra-long to defrost, but it seems that the compressor froze up).

I remember seeing a hipster friend I've known for years, swapping cars with a lady not his wife in a part of town I have never since seen him in. As I passed by, I remember almost calling him and then changing my mind. There are fifty reasons he could be swapping cars with a woman not his wife (couldn't there be?). I let that bit of rationale suppress my suspicion. So that I didn't even make the connection to the suspicious-looking bruises I saw on his wife's arm months before. And I could have sworn she had been crying. But, there could be fifty reasons why she had bruises on her arm and why there were tears in her eyes at the same time. Couldn't there be?

What is pitiful about these four signs is that the wife almost never sees them. These are ways men appear in front of other men. Over the years my friends and I have agreed that it is better to be presumptive and preemptive than to allow these open loops to become ever wider. Who cares if your friend is offended? Really? What's the worse he can do but give you some Old Testament reason as to why he's screwing another man's wife?

I've heard those lines, too.