Gabe, you rock. I was worried my ranting would be offensive or feel like written abuse, but it seems like we were saying the same thing, at least with being grown up. Interesting. It's good that you can clarify things, because apparently I just keep writing, hoping more words mean more transparency.
My question to you now comes from my recent reading of McLaren's Generous Orthodoxy, a question that has more to do with our Christian sub-culture and my concerns and aggravations with that than you, since I do hold your aims and thoughts in high regard. Not wanting to promote some water bottles along our route, but can we consider the race and the finish as a singular unit? I mean, I find a dangerous current that is hopefully fading within our "church culture" that tends to look so hard at the finish line, it almost forgets the race itself and the meaning that it contains. I don't think we should be against pleasures, because it is like you said, a foretaste of heaven, and a God-given gift. Pain is a necessary gift, I would say, concluding that pain in all forms is intended to keep us safe by telling us something is wrong or dangerous, but pleasure seems to not be a corresponding necessity. I just am unprepared to leave off pleasure in this world as though it is an ascetic spirituality we are called to. So then this time-wasting question in my mind moves towards identifying what is neutral and what is wrong, and trying to right the wrong, but leave those things which are neutral to be non-issues. And the thing I think we cannot fear is that we have wasted time that can never be recovered... only because God can redeem all things, and seems to be perfectly good at turing the wrong right. In no way do I wish to diminish the joyous anticipation of heaven. The earth's only promise to us is suffering and death. The government's is taxes. But, I've been wrestling with the idea of heaven and hell starting here with us, as though the finish line starts with the race, if that is intelligible in the least. It's just a knee-jerk of mine, not to you, but to the church that I at least grew up in trying to get me to figure out how to get my soul saved for heaven instead of seeking God's kingdom and will on earth as it is in heaven. I think some of those last frustrations I've felt towards the medium in which we lived at school and am just now coming out now, and I hope those frustrations of mine don't frustrate anybody else, unless it be in hopes of better things. I could just keep going, but I won't. I'm glad we've gotten to chat, Gabe. If nobody asks questions, I think answers are never found.