My favorite sports show on ESPN is a ten minute weekly session in which four commentators review the worst plays in the NFL during the last week. The biggest blunders, missed plays, penalties, fumbles, missteps, etc. are shown, and then the guys all yell out “C’mon Man!”. In case you missed it or don’t get the joke, c’mon man is a slang phrase meaning “That was a very poor performance on your part and you certainly need to play better and make more appropriate decisions.” As you might imagine, our Cowboys led this highlight reel of screw ups during the season. I won’t relive the nightmares for you so I won’t mention the one where we iced our own kicker or the game against Detroit when we had a 24 point lead and Romo threw two “pick sixes” (interceptions for touchdowns for the other team) to lose the game. Like I said, I won’t mention those because we need to forget the 2011 season. Some other favorites of mine were the punt returner who made a fair catch on his own one yard line, or the kick off returner who was trying to catch the kick in his end zone, whiffed it, it hit his toe and ricocheted out of bounds on his own one inch line—“C’mon Man!” The one I’ll remember forever was the pregame horseback ride in the Denver stadium. Apparently they had some budget cuts because they used to have a beautiful thoroughbred horse ridden by a lovely cowgirl riding across the field, but now they have a monkey riding a dog—yes that’s right, a monkey riding a dog—C’MON MAN !
Top Ten C’mon Man’s of 2011
Everybody has their favorites, but here are mine, and remember this is just an opinion:
10. The Kardashian wedding—never have I seen such a big deal made by the media over a non-event. Those two no talent dummies spent millions on some lavish wedding that the Kardashians obviously staged to put millions in their pocket, and a couple months later they were divorced. She can’t understand why he was upset that she was doing yoga with a totally nude yoga instructor—C’mon Man!
9. Republican debates—I can’t watch anymore of this rogue’s gallery of shmoes. Surely they can come up with a decent candidate for 2012—C’mon Man!
8. Greece (the country not the musical)—according to the best seller BOOMERANG by Mike Lewis, Greece totally tricked Germany back around the year 2001 with fake financials so it could get into the European Monetary Union. They swapped the dogmeat drachma for the Eurodollar, and Greece acquired for its debt an implicit European guarantee. Now they could borrow at the same rate as Germany, and they racked up about $ 1.2 trillion euros indebtedness which they can’t pay. That figures to about $250,000 euros owed for every working Greek person. In order to understand how inefficient the Greek government is consider that the national railway system has annual revenues of $ 100 million, but salaries and expenses of $700 million euros—C’MON MAN!
7. Goldman Sachs—as if their role in the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis was not bad enough, according to Michael Lewis they also played a role in helping Greece pull off this scam of the century. Goldman reportedly “engaged in a series of legal but nonetheless repellant deals designed to hide the Greek government’s true level of indebtedness.” These trades handed Greece a $1 billion dollar loan, and $300 million in fees for Goldman. They also taught the Greeks how to securitize receipts from the national lottery, tollway system, airports, etc. Any future stream of income was sold for cash up front and then immediately spent. There were no whistle blowers because everyone was in on the scam—C’MON MAN! You have messed up the economy of all of Europe and hurt the whole world.
6. Phone hacking by reporters of the newspaper News of the World whose office is in New York and is owned by Rupert Murdoch. Police report bribery used to hack into celebrities and politicians as well as the Royal family of England. They even went so far as to hack into British soldiers’ families who were killed in action, victims of the bombings in London, and the families of those killed on 9/11—C’mon Man
5. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act replaced the Glass Steagall Act that was repealed in 1999. The Glass Steagall Act was 35 pages of regulations that prevented the kind of fragrant fraud that caused the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, but our geniuses in D.C. saw fit to repeal it even though it worked for 70 years. They have now replaced it with the 850 pages of the Dodd Frank bill that nobody has read or understands. Already the red tape of this stupid bill that cannot be enforced has caused banks to lose money and start charging fees for debit cards, and other services—C’mon Man
4. The current Presidential administration’s $535 million loan guarantee for Solyndra, a now broke and worthless “alternative energy” company. The Government Accountability Office reported that the loan was made without any due diligence. It has also divulged that Solyndra spent $1.8 million in “lobbying”, I wonder who got that money? The FBI is now investigating the whole sordid affair—C’mon Man
3. John Corzine, the past Governor of New Jersey and former CEO of Goldman Sachs is now the CEO of MF Global (just sounds profane already). The commodities trading company is “missing” over 1.2 billion dollars of customer’s money and the company filed for bankruptcy. A large number of farmers used the company to hedge their crops, but now all their collateral is just gone. In testimony before the U.S. Senate, Corzine said “I have no idea where the missing money is.” Another executive said the funds were “re-hypothecated” to Canada. C’MON MAN!
2. Standard and Poors rating agency downgraded our U.S. Treasury debt last August which caused a bit of a panic for the stock market. Afterwards S&P admitted it made a $2 trillion mistake on its figures. These are the same guys who rated all the subprime mortgages as AAA, so are they telling us the subprime garbage deserves the highest rating but U.S. Treasury bonds do not? C’MON MAN !
1. My number one C’mon Man goes to our Congress and President. Everyone knows we must cut spending by about $4 trillion over the next 10 years but nobody has the guts to go against all their constituents, lobbyists, and benefactors to do the right thing—C’MON MAN
The Apostle Paul’s Top Two C’mon Man’s
1. Please read Ephesians 2:8-9, and Galatians 1:6-12. In Eph.2:8-9, Paul gave the truth of the gospel concerning our salvation from the penalty of sin. We are saved by the grace of God, and not by any works that we do, and this salvation is received by us only by our faith. Yet the churches in Galatia were deserting the gospel for “a different gospel” even though in God’s eyes there is no such thing. It has always appealed to people to add their works to the salvation process because we want to feel that we are worthy and significant and better than others. This definitely appeals to our vanity to feel that we do more than others, and we are special. Paul was outraged at their possible desertion from grace, and he let them know in the strongest terms possible by writing, “if any man is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which you received (from Paul), let him be accursed.”
Every time I see one of those polls about what professing Christians believe in America I am shocked. Today, in our country, the majority of professing Christians still believe they are saved by works or by some combination of grace and works. I think Paul would say, C’mon Man! How can we diminish the atoning work of Christ on the cross?
2. Read Romans 6:1-14, and 12:1-2. In Romans 6 through chapter 8, Paul explains the believer’s relationship to the moral law of God and also to good works that God expects us to do. The idea in these passages is that when we believe in Christ as our Savior we become new people with a new spiritual perspective. We logically obey God and do good works because we no longer live for ourselves, but we now live for God. Paul said it well in Gal.2:20, “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me.” This concept is simple, but following through was very difficult for the churches that Paul wrote to as witnessed by his letters he wrote that admonished them for moral failures and being influenced by false teachers. In Romans 8:4-11, Paul wrote that God has not left us alone in our current life, but He has given us His Spirit to lead us, convict us, and teach us. Our struggle is now between our fleshly bodies with all their desires and the Holy Spirit who is trying to help us live the moral life, have the spiritual attitudes, and do the good works. We are obedient, do good works, and please God only to the extent that we “walk by the Spirit” as Paul encourages us to do in Gal.5:16. Unfortunately, it seems that the majority of Christians are still living their own lives, according to their own ambitions and desires, and I think Paul might tell us—C’MON MAN!
What does Jesus Love and Hate about the Churches?
In Revelation 1, John sees a vision of the glorified Christ. Jesus is right in the middle of the churches in the sense that He is totally aware of everything going on with each individual geographic church and the people who belong to those churches. Jesus is scrutinizing, examining, assessing, and evaluating the churches. In Revelation chapters 2 and 3, Jesus tells us what He loves and hates about each church. The seven churches in the area of Asia Minor (modern day Turkey) that the Apostle John ministered to are specifically mentioned, but it is generally believed by theologians that these seven churches are representative of the churches as a whole throughout the church age.
Jesus loves good works, a good witness for Christ, correct Biblical teaching, love, faith, and service. Most churches have some of these, but only a few have all of these. Jesus gave “attaboys” to the churches at Smyrna and Philadelphia. The church that we can relate to was at Ephesus. Ephesus had plenty of good works, correct teaching of the Bible, and did not tolerate false teachers, but Jesus had something major against them. In Rev.2:4, Jesus said they “have left their first love”. By this I think He meant that they started well with all the right motivations of loving God and His Son Jesus Christ, but over the years they had become complacent, mechanical, and had no passion for Christ. In John’s Gospel, he had written that before Jesus ascended to heaven He told Peter and the other Apostles, “If you love Me feed my lambs” (Jn.21:15-17). The Ephesians had fallen into the trap of just going through the motions and “playing at church”. Jesus desires our love and passion to serve Him first of all. I think He might have said to them, C’mon Man!
The churches at Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, and Laodicea had even more serious problems. They did some good works, but they allowed false teaching, immorality, materialism, and religious forms without spiritual reality—C’mon Man!
Perhaps the church with the strongest rebuke from Jesus was Laodicea. This church was complacent, self reliant, and not loving towards God or people. They cared only about their own materialism. They thought they were wealthy, but Jesus said they were “wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.” A strong C’mon Man was too good for this bunch, so Jesus said “I will spit you out of my mouth”.
How should we respond today both personally and in our local churches? Let’s examine ourselves as Paul commanded in 2 Cor.13:5 and Peter commanded in 2 Peter 1:10 to see if we are “in the faith”. We should also react positively when someone says to us C’MON MAN!
CHARLIE TAYLOR
