Coffee Break

I like my coffee strong and black. Sometimes I like it with a little Irish Cream just to mix things up. But do you know what I wish my coffee lacked? That mandatory ruler that seems to come with every cup to measure my manhood.

I grew up where the way you drink your coffee defines how much of a 'man' you are. Growing up in the Calvary Chapel scene (thank you Lord for delivering me from evil) drinking coffee was a manly art. It was a marker of just how much of a man you were. The blacker and the stronger you were able to drink your coffee, the more of a man (a good man) you were. Which, in hindsight, makes perfect sense since the Calvary Chapel I attended in Hanford, California, didn't really have any other way to truly mark out a man. (Yes we had 'be a man' Men's Conferences, but faith and practice were truly two different things).

I have also worked in environments where drinking coffee strong -and bad- enough to put hair on your chest, or kill you, is considered a sign of a man who can be trusted and counted on. I cannot begin to tell you the number of stories I have heard from grizzled old angry men who recount drinking coffee so strong and so bad that it would have eaten a hole in the side of a U.S. Navy war vessel. It is as if somehow this strange ability to drink crap has made them good men.

I can drink strong black coffee with the rest of the pack. I grew up with bad coffee, and it has grown on me. Yet I am not quite certain if I am ready to allow that to be any kind of indicator of how much of a man, a good man, I am.

I have made some serious mistakes in my life. Big ones. Awful ones. I have hurt people whom I loved dearly; both intentionally and (more often than not) unintentionally. I have shipwrecked myself and my relationships with others on more occasions than I'd like to confess in this place. I have made people angry, I have made people cry, and I have made people hurt. I, despite my ability to drink swill, am not a good man.

However, I have owned up to the things I have done in my life. I have offered apologies, attempted to make amends, asked for forgiveness, and have worked -despite the initial reactions of some whom I have hurt- to restore what I have broken. I know what it is to have a repentant and contrite heart, and I would argue that it is these very things that, if anything could, would define me as a good man.

Still, I am not a good man. Not as far as we could define good. I am, however, a redeemed and forgiven man. And I am so not because of anything I have done, but rather because of what Christ has done. In laying down His life for my sin, and rising for my Salvation, He atoned for my sin and redeemed me for Himself.

The good I have done in my life has been because of what Christ has done, and is doing, for me. It has nothing to do with the coffee I drink. Coffee that is strong enough to strip paint from walls will never be strong enough to strip my sin from me.

If you want to define me as a good man, do so because I have owned up to what I have needed to own up to. Do so because I have done something about those things I have owned. But do so knowing that I do these things because of what Christ has done for me ( i.e., regeneration, faith, redemption, sanctification, and one day glorification), not because of what is in my coffee cup.

Now, excuse me as I add a little Irish Cream to my mug.