Month: September 2015

The long days come, days in which all motivation escapes out of reach. No desire, no passion. Just an emptiness, a soul sucking barren wasteland. These are the days when I just want to escape, get lost, run away from my life.
I know that this will pass, these days always do. All I have to do is keep moving forward.
The odd part of all this is with my medication keeping me on an even keel I am able to look at my emotional state with a certain rational detachment. Sometimes it feels like part of myself is just an observer, watching from the outside. Part of me is crashing and the other part is standing at the window yelling stop but the window is sound proof.

Sometimes I ask myself the question, Am I right?
Now when we trade in measurable data or exact information then being right is important. It is also important when dealing with things like torque specifications or a medical diagnosis; things where right and wrong can be an issue. Most often though when we are insistent that we are Right; it is opinions, interpretations and points of view.
But when dealing with things like opinions, interpretation and points of view there often is not a clear cut right or wrong. Opinions, interpretations and points of view should in fact be shared and received with an open mind, so that it is a give and take of ideas. Unfortunately it is too easy to have a death grip on our own ideas, to relinquish that grip requires us to in essence make ourselves vulnerable. It also requires us to be open to the idea of change within our own thinking; deep down I think we are all afraid of change that we do not initiate.
Lately I have been trying to ask myself, Am I right and do I have to be right? If I am being honest then most of the time the answer should be, Maybe so and probably not.

Why do some people have such disdain for multiculturalism? What is it about the thought of interacting with people who are different that brings such animosity?
I started writing this and realized that there are specific people that I do not want to know or associate with on any level. I do not want to associate with white supremacists, religious fanatics or any hate groups for that matter. So how in the world are we supposed to love our neighbors, as we love ourselves when we quite honestly have neighbors who we feel are vile and evil. Why is this so damned complicated? Is that what true faith is, learning how to really love those who we find unlovable and that hate us or other people? Being able to actually forgive them and turn the other cheek when they attack, verbally or physically. Or is it just a matter of obedience?
I just do not understand.

I wrote the other day about my fear of the dentist. Now that is a fear that in my mind is sort of understandable, as a child one can have a bad experience that just sticks with you and grows in your mind until it becomes something to be feared. I also have this real fear of opening myself up to other people, I am not quite sure where it stems from but I have had the fear since at least first grade. This blog is a way for me to face part of that fear by laying my soul bare to anyone who happens across it or ends up here from Facebook, Twitter or Tumblr. Some days I question my sanity in doing this, I really do, because I have spent a lifetime keeping the world around me at a good safe distance.
As difficult as it is for me to write some of the blog posts I have written, it is even more difficult for me to enter into direct communication with other people. I get all tied up in knots; I don’t ever know what to say, have a hard time carrying on a conversation or even worse catch myself not being able to shut up and making sarcastic comments. Let’s face it I am not the dos Equis guy, more like the nada Equis guy.

In my Facebook feed this morning I saw this message and it made me pause to think.

“9/11 Never Forget, Never Forgive”

That at the core is who we truly are, unforgetting and unforgiving. It is how we survive day to day. We hold onto our pain, tallying up even the smallest of offenses even when the offender asks for forgiveness. How impossible then it is for us to forgive those who would use terror and the murder of the innocent for whatever they convinced themselves they would gain.

Maybe one day our hearts will soften and we will find it possible to forgive those who committed these acts. To find healing we so desperately need.

I was blessed last night to hear two powerful women preach God’s word, the Pastors Sheila White and Tabatha Walton. Pastor Tabatha preached on laying down our burdens, on how we tie ourselves down where we are in life. Pastor Sheila preached on how we are not ourselves when we are hungry; that we are wandering in the desert, grumbling in the wilderness wanting to be fed, set free by God and needing him to feed our souls. Powerful indeed.
I was thinking about this during my commute this morning, about the Exodus story and laying down our burdens. A life reborn in Christ is much like the Exodus. When we first accept Christ we are in a way like the Children of Israel set free by Pharoah. There we are bookin it towards the promise land, the life we have led persuing us relentlessly towards the Red Sea. Now some people never make it to the sea, instead they are swallowed back up by their lives. But the lucky ones make it to the parted waters and cross through into the wilderness. Then we wander through the wilderness headed towards the promise land, a journey to unburden ourselves, embrace the spirit of the law given in the ten commandments and feed our hunger with the bread of life. A new us can be born in the wilderness; one filled with the spirit, not tied to the burdens of this world, completely given over to God and entering into the promise land which is the Kingdom of Heaven, ready to make disciples of others and carry out God’s work on earth. Some of us though will wander through the wilderness all of our lives. I think maybe I am still running towards the Red Sea.

It is easy sometimes to forget how crippling fear really can become. As I sat in a dentist chair yesterday awaiting a tooth extraction for a broken tooth, I realized my hands were trembling with fear. No matter how hard I tried to relax, get control of my fear; I couldn’t control my hands. I have had this fear of dentists since I was a kid and unfortunately it is one that just wont go away. I even remember vividly the particular visit that led to this fear, a sensation of suffocating as the dentist used a drill, the sound and smell of burning tooth.Now as I sit and think about this fear of mine and how it affected me during the dentist visit, I start to wonder about other peoples fear and how it affects them. How others around us suffer from their fears or how their lives can be ruled by those fears.
Sometimes it is good to be reminded of our own weaknesses so that we do not forget that we all have them. To help us grow in compassion and mercy. To bring us to humbleness.

Luke 14:33

Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
Matthew 6:24

No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Money.

First let me be clear I do not believe we live in a Christian nation. Yes Christianity has helped to shape parts of this nation but if you go to the gospels it is pretty clear that those who follow Christ are to be part of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, which is the church of believers. This kingdom is to be entered into of ones own free will, no one can be forced into the Kingdom of Heaven and God has of his own intensions created this church outside of any political government to be about God’s work. This work is specifically laid out in the following.

The Great Commission

16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[a] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

I personally think people read nations in this and other verses and forget that the relationship is a personal one. There is also this mythos being perpetuated that the United States is this great Christian nation ordained by God. However if one goes to the four books of the Gospels one will find that this is completely unbiblical. Jesus did not come as a general or political leader but preaching the kingdom of heaven, preparing the way to eternal salvation through the sacrifice of his own flesh and blood on the cross. To claim his name for any nation is to denigrate the purpose of his sacrifice and usurp the Kingdom of Heaven for earthly gains. 

Second I believe that there are those who would become false martyrs, like the clerk in Kentucky. This is about her, not God, no matter what she or her supporters believe. I say this confidently as Jesus never said go get government jobs and enforce the Mosaic laws on those who do not believe in them. What he did say was to give up ourselves and follow him, make disciples and follow what he taught. 

Ultimately though we are cowards, we live our lives on our terms and find ways to wrap ourselves in God without actually giving ourselves over completely. 

There is a common theme that runs through the prophets of the old testament and I keep coming across it in many places. Verse 9 of the below passage in particular weighs on my heart. I read it and it speaks to me of the essence of the life I should be living, the rest is a warning to those who disregard the spirit of verse 9. Maybe if this theme keeps repeating and is the essence of much of the Gospels of Christ it might actually be important.

Zechariah 7
8 Then the word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying, 9 “Thus says the Lord of hosts:

‘Execute true justice,
Show mercy and compassion
Everyone to his brother.
10 Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless,
The alien or the poor.
Let none of you plan evil in his heart
Against his brother.’

11 “But they refused to heed, shrugged their shoulders, and stopped their ears so that they could not hear. 12 Yes, they made their hearts like flint, refusing to hear the law and the words which the Lord of hosts had sent by His Spirit through the former prophets. Thus great wrath came from the Lord of hosts. 13 Therefore it happened, that just as He proclaimed and they would not hear, so they called out and I would not listen,” says the Lord of hosts. 14 “But I scattered them with a whirlwind among all the nations which they had not known. Thus the land became desolate after them, so that no one passed through or returned; for they made the pleasant land desolate.”

I am having serious doubts at this point about my faith. That so many support the idea that it is OK to discriminate because you are christian. That the 14th Amendment to the Constitution means nothing to some people. I just do not know at this point. Is that what it really means to be a christian, that your religious beliefs trump the rights of anyone else. I have to really gives this some thought.