Miles of Giles

I have to admit to the guilty pleasure of reading Doug Giles because he appeals to me in the same way that William Hung appeals to others. If his columns are carwrecks, this one is a pile-up of eighteen-wheelers:

My devotion to God, for the past twenty-one years, hasn’t really been all that hot. My faithfulness to Him and His Word has had all the consistency of Papillon’s prison gravy.

[…]

To be frank—I’ve flunked more spiritual tests than Joey Tribbiani has flunked calculus exams. I’ve snapped under pressure like a weathered rappelling rope with a Mrs. Klump on the other end. And I’ve hit levels of frustration that are only eclipsed by the angst a white 16-year-old Baptist boy feels while watching the Victoria’s Secret special on TV with Tyra on the catwalk

[…]

Instead of a TBN-type party, I’ve often experienced an MTV-like dirge. Instead of singing on the mountaintop with Carmen, I’m frequently singing the blues to an old Creed song in a valley.

[…]

Trying to find some kind of solace in the scripture, some reassurance that what I’m plowing through is somewhat normal, I began to go through the Bible looking for times when God’s heroes went through major crapola and were hammered with setbacks and frustrations. I was looking to see if they spent as many moons as I have under divine darkness. And guess what?
I found huge, mondo chunks of scripture where the saints’ lives and walks with God sucked worse than an airplane toilet.

[…]

There are large blocks of time when our loving God allowed unlovely things to happen to those He loved. And, some of these dark time periods went on longer than Ben Stein singing “Inna Godda Davita” in Pig Latin.

Sigh.

It’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, you dink.