Lame!

"That's lame".

I hear that expression a dozen times a day. Half the time the expression is coming from my lips!

Sometimes it's a reference to a bad song on the radio or a lousy advertisement on TV. Sometimes, it's a reference to the behaviour of others, particularly behaviour that disappoints me or lets me down in some way.

In these cases, I'm essentially using the word "lame" as a acronym; i.e., Lazy And Making Excuses. You don't want to be around me when someone is lazy and making excuses. Just ask my church -- they'll tell you what I'm like! (Ugh.)

I'm not saying laziness and excuse-making shouldn't be confronted. When people slip into L.A.M.E. behaviour, they're letting others down. They need to know that. They need to hear how their actions (or lack thereof) are impacting other people. The rest of us owe them an intervention.

Which is my point. There's something about the L.A.M.E. behaviour of others that can quickly trigger our own L.A.M.E. tendencies. There's something amiss when we use the L.A.M.E.-ness of others as a reason to write them off. It's especially a problem when we wanted to write them off all along and their L.A.M.E. behaviour just happened to give us a reason to do so.

Who's L.A.M.E. now?

Relationships take work. By work, I don't mean putting up with the inaction and indifference of others. What I do mean is something the Apostle Paul calls "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4.15). In fact, the Apostle describes speaking the truth in love as essential to our spiritual connection to Jesus.

Easy to say. Hard to do. I've seen a lot of people speaking the "truth", which is usually some self-centered rant about how they're offended, shocked, and disappointed by someone else. On the other side of the equation, I've seen a lot of people perpetually put up with the neglect or abuse of others out of the mistaken notion that love is analogous to a limp noodle.

Truth and love belong together. Truth is an attempt to express what I really think and feel. Love is the recognition that the whole world does not revolve around what I think and feel. Speak the truth in love -- let these two elemental qualities interplay with each other in your relationships with others.

Are you game?

Or are you L.A.M.E.? Do you have what it takes to speak the truth in love with your family, friends, co-workers, the people in your church, etc.? Or are you going to let their L.A.M.E. behaviour turn you into just another person being lazy and making excuses?

Taxation without representation ...

I pay my taxes online. Why do I have to vote in person?

For the record, I marched my patriotic self down to the local school today to cast my vote. There, I encountered one of the last vestiges of the pre-computer age: the Canadian polling station.

As I walked into the gymnasium, I was greeted by a friendly representative of Elections Canada who asked to see my voter information card. And that's when the trouble began. He looked at my card, grimaced, and informed me that I'd have to wait in a long line to cast my vote. I was surprised by the news, as there were three polling stations in the gymnasium and two of the stations were completely inactive. Not a soul waiting in line. Nada.

However, the gods had deigned that I be assigned to polling station #43, which indeed had a long line of voters waiting to cast their ballots. At first I thought to myself, "This should go quick. How long can it take for these people to cast their votes?" And this is when I came face to face with the marvelously multi-dimensional inefficiencies awaiting the Canadian voter.

The cardboard polling stations are bad enough: a complete waste of paper.

The paper ballots add impractical to wasteful. The clerk at my polling station had so much difficulty finding and tearing the perfs that he mistakenly opened the ballot and exposed the vote.

The pre-printed voter information cards seem like a good idea, but their advantage is defeated by poor execution. The problem? Too many people have information cards that don't match their photo ID. This particular misfortune grinds the process to a halt: no one in line can vote till the person with the defective ID sufficiently demonstrates their identity (i.e., fills out the paperwork).

And so, on election day, in my quaint little neighbourhood, I found myself slowed by tedious paper ballots, stymied by line-halting paperwork, and staring at two empty polling stations across the gymnasium. And I asked myself ...

• Why don't we have voting machines instead of convoluted paper ballots and cardboard ballot boxes?


• Why isn't there a side table or separate line for people to prove their identity?


• Why are there long lines at some polling stations and no lines at others?

and, most of all ...

Why am I here in the first place?

If I can pay my taxes online, why can't I vote online? As far as my online personhood is concerned, it's taxation without representation! Maybe it's time for an online Boston Tea Party!

I don't think I'm alone in my complaint. Check the stats. No one is surprised by the outcome of the Canadian federal election. The real news item in Election 2008 is the voter-turnout stat: the lowest-ever at 59%. (The prairies take the title for lowest turnout in Canada at 55%.)

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On another note ...

I'm sad to report that Hard Rubber didn't win the CBC Anthem Challenge. Still, I'm glad I did my best to give Canadians a new hockey anthem. My thanks to the boys in the band and a special note of appreciation to Winnipeg's #1 morning show host, Larry Updike, who featured the anthem on his show.

Maybe I'll shop Hard Rubber around to another sports program?!?

You can't be serious ...

Don't get me wrong: I understand the concerns of the pro-life movement. I appreciate their angst over Canada's manic pre-occupation with abortion and euthanasia. I'm glad someone apparently has marginalized persons such as the unborn and aged on their agenda.

But I think the pro-life agenda would do itself a huge favour, credibility-wise, if it would spend more time loving marginalized people and less time lobbying for them.

Case in point: this week, a pro-life coalition -- comprised of Defend Traditional Marriage & Family, the Canada Family Action Coalition, and the Campaign Life Coalition -- issued a press release announcing their Election Guide for Serious Christians.

According to the press release, their voter's guide "specifically targets church-going, conservative Christians with a bold message of voting for candidates who support five Non-Negotiable Moral Principles". As it turns out, the five non-negotiable moral principles aren't really principles at all. They're pro-life positions on 1) abortion, 2) euthanasia, 3) embryonic stem cell research, 4) human cloning, and 5) homosexual marriage. The voter's guide declares these five so-called principles should be "ranked above all other issues that come up in political debate".

The coalition hopes churches will print up the guide as a Sunday bulletin insert. Failing that, lay people can stand outside the church on a public sidewalk and distribute the guide as a handout "to help fellow Christians vote the way they should".

Hmmm ....

I'm pretty suspicious of a Christian coalition that goes around deciding who's a serious Christian and who isn't. When that coalition thinks it's discerned five non-negotiables on complex social and bio-medical issues, I'm definitely doubtful. And when that same coalition thinks it can rank its agenda above all other issues and tell Christians how they should vote, I assume they're not really serious after all.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world. - James 1.27

Seriously.