It's been a while

a LOOONG while. Here's what's up.

I got married to Amanda. We were hitched in August. Being married has been very little of what I thought it would be, but it's wonderful.

I graduated earlier this month. B.A. in psychology, which means I spent a butt-ton of money and 6 and a half years of my life on a worthless piece of paper unless I go to Grad school.

I'm a Youth minister, and it's awesome. I have concluded that I am in ministry because I don't have a strong enough faith to be a layman in the church with a "secular job." I just need to be forced to grow, and ministry does that for reals.

What am I doing right now? Reading a psychology book. Lame, nerdy, but I am enjoying it. It's called "stages of faith," and builds on Piaget's and Kohlberg's work on developmental Psychology. The author, James W. Fowler, actually was a college of Kohlberg's, whose work on moral development I've studied in 3 or 4 different psychology classes. So far, it has succeeded in challenging how I even define the word "faith."

The book is the result of empirical studies done in a similar style to Kohlberg's interviews. The operant definitions he takes from past teachers and thinkers, and those definitions are strikingly different from what I operate under currently.

In this study, Faith =/= Religion =/= Belief. Weird.

These definitions he draws from all say that Faith is basically what we focus our lives on. Religion is a collection of "cumulative traditions" that expressed the faith of people in the past. Belief is the "holding of certain ideas," and this is a way that Faith can express itself.

So, take for example, Paul.

Paul's faith was in the Gospel, "power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith, to the Jew first and also to the Greek." (Romans 1:16, NLT) Everything about Paul's life after meeting Christ was focused on spreading the Gospel, being a living example of the Gospel, studying the implications of the Gospel, and defending the Gospel.

His religion was a collection of traditions established by Christ and the Early Church (communion), as well as some much older traditions from the Hebrews (intimate knowledge of the Torah).

He had beliefs that were expressions of his faith. His faith in the Gospel was expressed in the belief that Jesus Christ is who he said he is, the Messiah, the Son of God. He experienced something transcendent, became very loyal to that transcendent something, and developed concepts and propositions about it. Those concepts and propositions are "beliefs."

How does this change my notion of Faith, Religion, and Belief? Well, it makes my definition of the last two a LOT less ambiguous, but I'm just not sure what to think about their definition of Faith. Faith, as I define it now, is "the assured knowledge that what we hope is going to happen will, in fact, happen." That is a very different definition from "What we focus our lives on."

More to come as I read on.

Catch up and communal minds

I'm not quite sure what happened. I thought this blog was going to be a regular thing when I started it up.

Oh Well.


Well, here I am right now.


I'm at my mother's house. Up in the mountains. It's pretty cool. I've been hangin out with my awesome nephew. His name's Luke, and he's two years old.

Yesterday, I taught him how to play the bass guitar. We've been playing this other cool game, where he stands up on the bed and I push him over. He laughs and laughs and gets back up for another go. It's great. ^_^

I've also been seeing a lot of friends. Really special friends. I've been catching up with the people who first influenced me toward Christ. My old youth minister Danny Joe. One of my best friends in the universe, Josh. I can't get enough of these people.

I've been talking to my lady on the phone a lot. She's moved off for a semester or four, so we're probably going to be doing a lot more talking on the phone. I hate talking on the phone. But, I love Amanda, so it's really not all that bad. I guess I hate talking on the phone to MOST people.
Everything here makes me think of her, it seems. Josh is engaged and getting married this May, so he and his fiance make me think of Amanda and me every time I see them. My friend David has a g/f named Amanda. Geez, even the commercials on TV make me think of Amanda. I don't know how I managed to con her into thinking that I'm something cool.


Lately, I've been thinking a lot about community. All semester long, it seems, I have been thinking about community. Everything has a communal aspect. Or, at least, everything I've thought of and encountered this past semester. Do you ever just look at the church (that is, the universal church) and try to picture it as a community? I try to do that some times, but it takes a LOT of effort. We're so fractured. Yes, I'm talking about denominations. I think that there are some good things to a denominational type system. I mean, if some one says "I'm Southern Baptist," then you automatically have a pretty good idea of what they believe. But it's sad to see denominational disputes that end with "you don't believe like I do, so you're clearly not a Christian."

I haven't experienced that since I've been here, so don't think that at all. Just the opposite. Josh has been a shining example to me. He was talking about a book that he read to Danny Joe, and told me that I'm not allowed to read it because, as he says with a wink and a smile, "It'll just fuel some of your crazy theological ideas." That, however, in the same day that he calls me brother and worships beside me. I still remember what was at that point in my life a CRAZY idea, when Josh's father Bob stood up in front of the church with leaders from other denominations and churches in the city, holding hands with all of them, and saying "Unity, not uniformity."

But, that too seems to me to be something a bit off. Not the unity part, but the part about "not uniformity." I mean, there has to be a line somewhere, that's not even a question. However, I think it's more than just believing in the authority of Christ that is important to the community here. How far are we to take Paul's urgings to be of one mind?

But, of course, this brings us right back to the point where I feel it's wrong to say "If you don't believe as I do, then you must not be a Christian."

I don't think that this post was actually going anywhere. It's just what's on my mind right now.

Nonmagic

And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.
Romans 8:28

That doesn't include non-believers.
But it could include you. And he wants it to. It just takes love, dude.


That's all he's told me to say. ^_^

For any who may be looking for me...

I haven't posted anywhere in a few days. It's because there's some real mess going down where I am.

The campus ministry I am a part of is in a state of mourning. One of our guys shot himself Sunday night/Monday morning and is dead. His brother, who's been in our ministry longer than he has, was in the house when the gun went off, and was the one who found him.


There's a core of the leadership team getting ready to take a crash course in grief counseling or what the heck ever. Our campus minister's wife is working on her dissertation in Psychology, so she's going to do that for us.

Personally, I didn't know the guy very well. We were acquainted, but that's about it. I know his g/f, though. She's on the leadership team. She's doing about as well as can be, as are the others here who were closest to him. And even though I didn't know him, there's still a different timbre to the sound of the students massing in the living room. Like taking a string quint piece and transcribing it for brass quint. It's the same music, but it still sounds different.


It's weird here. No one knows exactly what to feel. We were all blindsided. His g/f was with him just last night doing laundry at his house. She says she had no clue anything was wrong with him.


It's weird how these things change the way you look at your faith. All those cliche "Why's" and what not. I wonder, if I didn't have a faith that answers so many of those "Why's," what would I feel now? Would things be harder? Would it be easier?

I saw some one talking about the loss of a friend, who posted that she imagined that the Christian Faith seemed like it might be comforting in these times. I disagree, though. Knowledge doesn't change the feelings that come when these things happen. People have asked me "why does an all loving God allow bad things to happen? Why the possibility for hurt?", and I have always had an answer to that question. I was taught how to answer that question before it was even asked of me. However, that knowledge doesn't make the hurt or discomfort go away. There's still a voice missing, there's still people who miss him.


Days like these are the ones where people develop intimate knowledge of their shoes, and the paths that they walk.

Speech Therapy

Let's talk like she isn't there.

No, screw that. Let's bite our thumbs and frown instead.
It just seems more satisfying that way, like we've actually done something for it.

Who cares whether or not the law is on our side?
All that matters is that we're on the same page here, any way.

These tongues wouldn't look quite so forked in a private space,
but, hey, it's a style.

And while she's licking her wounds,
We'll stick them in her. She's done.


It seems that we just don't know how to talk

Well, crap.

I posted this on the Raytractor's blog yesterday.

So, I had a conversation with God earlier today.

It started off at church. Four weeks ago, we started a study of 1 Corinthians, and got to chapter 4 this morning.

Here's a small excerpt of what we read:

5So be careful not to jump to conclusions before the Lord returns as to whether or not someone is faithful. When the Lord comes, he will bring our deepest secrets to light and will reveal our private motives. And then God will give to everyone whatever praise is due.


So God says, "Look, you can disagree with Ray all you want. That's fine. But take another look there at that verse. That one's for you right now."

So, I said to God "Yeah, but didn't you specify in the gospels that there's a difference between judging and being judgmental? I'm not judging hypocritically, which is the thing you have a problem with, right?

Aren't you? What have you said about ministries?


I have said many times that if one ministry is harming another ministry and taking away from it, it needs to shut down.

And besides that, Ray is being faithful to his calling in the way he best knows how. It's not the way I would do it. I disagree with the way he does it. Dislike it, even. But the fact of the matter is, that's not my place as I read this morning.

I can disagree with Ray all I want, but as long as I'm part of a group of people whose sole purpose for banding together is to "Detract" from him, then I can't call myself a faithful follower of Christ.

I will still comment and post on Ray's site. I'll still disagree with Ray. I'll still admit openly that most of you are smarter than I. I'll still tell you the ways that you're cool and actually try to explain how my views are different from yours and why. But I can't do it here any more.

I hope you all find the truth about Jesus. But you know that already. I've never kept that a secret.

And I hope that maybe the college and/or youth kids that I train in the future will know their faith well enough to be able to hold a conversation with you without loosing sight of how cool you are.

Another (really longs) conversation about God.

It's like this;
A really smart man whom I don't really know all that well (except that he's obviously pretty intelligent) posted this treatise at Ray Comfort's Blog.

He also posted it at the Raytractors.

I posted my response over at Ray's, but felt that since my response really had nothing to do at all with Ray Comfort, it wasn't appropriate to post at the Raytractors blog. So, I'm posting it here instead, and hoping that people might see it.


Anonymous:
I'm feeling a bit philosophical at the moment, so I'd like to make points against a few of your beliefs and where they lead, Mr Comfort.

Please note: the following is way out of line for me. I usually limit my comments to scientific claims, because I really don't have an objection to modern christianity. But occasionally, I decide to tell it like I see it. I don't actually want to spark any deconversions here, though it may seem that way, but I do want to make it clear why I don't consider christianity any better than any other religon.

This comment is directed at anyone who shares Ray's beliefs.

You believe that all humankind is tainted by sin, and that the only way to remove that sin (and gain eternal peace) is by accepting your Lord into our hearts. We are miserable, pathetic, sinful wretches, living out a meaningless temporary existance on a tainted world before passing into eternal punishment. Only His mercy and sacrifice can spare us this fate, and bring us to eternal peace in heaven.

What hope is there for the future then? None on this planet, certainly. Indeed, your bible portrays an enless spiral into sin, until finally God steps in on Judgement day and destroys it. Our decendants cannot hope for a better life than ours: they will be born into a progressively more and more sinful world, until the final generation is burned off of the earth in God's final act.

So all of your hope is regulated to the afterlife: where God will purge you of your sins and keep you in eternal peace. This existance, means nothing compared to that, right? You have sold the only life you will ever have to slavery to religon, to an invisible Lord, in return for the promise of eternal life. But you have no way to ensure that promise is kept: you have no way to ensure that promise was even made in the first place. Even worse, as part of this slavery, your Lord demands that you do not question the promise, condemning any doubts rather than allaying them.

You claim we are all miserable sinners: worthy only of hatred from God, and eternal punishment. How then can you love another human? Rather than seeing them as beautiful, you see them as hateful sinners, evil by nature. God can forgive us only with eternal mercy: do you claim to have the same level of mercy for your loved ones? Do you compare yourself to Him?

Love is a shared respect for the other individual, an accceptance of everything that they are, including their 'sins'. To steal a quote from the 2004 Hellboy movie: "we like people for their qualities but we love them for their defects." How can you accept anothers sin, when even God's infinite mercy can only go so far as to forgive it, and even then only if we accept Him first? I hate to ask this, but are you even capable of love?

What about logic, and reason? The only feature that sets us human apart from the animal kindom is our brain, and your Lord expressly forbids using it. Look at Adam and Eve's tale: they ate from the tree of knowledge, and they and their decendants were cursed for all eternity with the very thing your God so despises: sin. If this isn't a metaphor for the promotion of blind obediance to authority, nothing is.

In comparison, those philosophies based on atheism generally promote the use of logic, reason and curiosity. The modern scientific endevour decended from those philosophies. Us atheists see hope in progress, in the ability to make life better for those who come after us, or at least not make it worse.

We don't see life as wretched, the twisted result of perfection lost: instead we see it as beautiful, something complex that has come out of the relatively simple laws of nature to make the universe its own.

Our life is the only one we have: it is something that cannot be replaced. In that we find value: how can we justify taking something impossible to replace? Where you see something temporary and meaningless compared to eternity, we see something that, despite it's brevity and seeming insignifigance, has more meaning than anything else in the entire universe.

You have sold your only life, your hope for the future of this world, your logic and reason and your ability to love another to the dictates of a 2000 year old book, in exchange for an empty promise from someone you can not meet in this world that He will spare you from punishment after death. You hang every speck of your hope, not on the beauty and nobility that is life, but on death, and the afterlife beyond it.

It is your choise to continue to worship death. I choose life.


Me:
Firstly, let me tell you that I don't agree with a lot, if not most, of what Ray posts here. If you were to look at the continuum of Christianity, Ray would be pretty far right and I would be just to the right or left of center. Haven't figured out which yet.

Having said that, your post does pertain to things that I believe.


Though I do not hold to original sin, I do believe that it is impossible for any human being to live long in this lifetime without sinning. Not that we are born with sin, but we are born as less than what we were originally designed to be and cannot avoid sinning because of our brokenness.

A thing gets value from who made it, and how much some one is willing to pay for it. Humans were made, in my belief, by God. And God was and is willing to give everything for it, even his son/self.

God loves me and God loves humans, even though we are broken. Not that he loves our brokenness, but he loves us in spite of it. That's the true love. Where you say "This and this and this are terrible, horrible things about this person. And yet, even though all of that is there, I don't want to experience life without them."

And you know what? It's not hard to see why. Look at the coolness that people are capable of, and have the potential for! Art, Music, Dancing, Humor, Love, Friendship (also love,) philanthropy, discovery, whit, intelligence, beauty, invention, strength, passion, ingenuity. And that's not even an exhaustive list.

That is the kind of love that makes marriages last to death, and the kind of love that makes friendships truly potent, and the kind of love that every disciple of Jesus is capable of (though many, for some reason or another, choose not to exercise such power.)

It's the kind of love that drives to protect, and heal, and nurture. Even at the cost of one's own life. It's the kind of love found incessant and unlimited in Christ. And it never gives up.

Love is a shared respect for the other individual, an accceptance of everything that they are, including their 'sins'. To steal a quote from the 2004 Hellboy movie: "we like people for their qualities but we love them for their defects."
Have you given up on humanity already? Where is the hope that people can Grow? Where is the hope that the people who we love so much can become something greater than what they are?

Am I to believe that my defects will never change, and that I should simply expect every one to live with the things that I do wrong? Should I be expected to accept the wrongdoings of people around me, and give up the hope that it will ever change?

Dr. Carl R. Rogers states that in order for therapeutic personality change to happen, there must be a therapist.
The Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Therapeutic Personality Change
Psychotherapy: Theory, Research, Practice, Training
2007, Vol. 44, No. 3, 240-248
Any one can be a therapist. If I can counsel some one in a way that will help them grow, it would be horrendous of me to simply "love their flaws." That is an injustice to that person more than any thing else.

My hope for humanity's future comes from Christ, from the promise that Christ can make all things new, that God can "call a thing that is not as though it were, and give life to the dead."

Is the greater love that which accepts what it sees, or that which accepts what it sees and then compels it to grow into something better?


The problem with your perception of how Christians view the world is that you seem to think that it stops at sin in this lifetime. It doesn't. God is capable of taking a world of broken vessels and turning them in to an elaborate mosaic. Things heal. Things live, grow, and give life.

To steal from a song that I haven't heard in a long time:
It's a beautiful world. What a great idea! Your beautiful song is all I can hear! Your beautiful colors surrounding me! Your beautiful life is all I can see!

I am not under the impression that this world is horrid and nasty and it's just a matter of when's daddy coming home. Though there are nasty, horrid things in the world, there are also beautiful and brilliant things in the world, and to miss that is to miss something that God has given to us to enjoy. The beauty that the Earth can hold is the Rose in God's hand as he whispers sweet nothings into our ear.


Christianity that focuses on the afterlife and never sees this life is a sad tale indeed. It's so easy to fall into, and so hard to get out of. It's really another way that the church universal has painted itself into a corner. People forget that Christ said "The Kingdom of Heaven is near."

Study that word a bit. It's not "The Kingdom of Heaven is on it's way, and it'll get here soon so be ready." It's proximity. The Kingdom of Heaven is close. Reach out your hand and touch it. Everywhere Jesus is, so is the Kingdom of Heaven. And if Christians have him in their hearts and lives, then they are living in that Kingdom now. Why not enjoy it? That's not to say that we will all have it easy. There's still bills, there's still hurt and sickness, and there's still evil and bad things around us as long as we're in this body. But we have something that others don't, and so many times Christians want to hide that away and down play it's worth in this existence.


You seem, also, to think that our hope for the future stops at the end of the world as we know it. That's a bit more near-sighted than the picture that God has painted for us. There is a hope for the future, and it's a future that I get to see. When there is no more war, no more sickness, no more suffering, no more death, and nothing that comes in between me and the beauty that surrounds me. While it is a shame to think only of the after life and not ever of the beauty that encircles us every day, it is also a shame to forget that this beautiful world will not be destroyed. It will be cleansed, and restored to the perfection it was destined for all along.


As for logic and reason, God never condemns this. Nor does the Bible. The tree of knowledge is not the tree's name. It's the tree of knowledge of good and evil, not the tree of knowledge of anything. Before Adam and Eve knew the difference between right and wrong, they were innocent. They ran naked like a baby might in it's house. Or like my 2 year old nephew might like to do anywhere at all. Absolutely nothing came between them and God. When they ate the fruit, they hid like criminals. They tried to pass the blame onto each other. The whole story is a metaphor for a loss of innocence, not a loss of ignorance.

You are right about one thing, though. I am a slave. Not just a slave, but a bond servant. The difference is that a bond servant says "Hm, this master's pretty cool. I think I'll stick around," and serves out of choice. I choose to serve the master who shows me his love for me on a daily basis. I choose to serve a master who speaks to me. I choose to serve a master who is real and who I have met in this world.

God has never made a promise to me that he hasn't kept. And one of the foundational truths that I'm learning in my classes is that past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. There is nothing about this collection of books, letters, songs, and proverbs that he inspired that gives me any reason to distrust it. Not when it's handled responsibly, which is something I've been trying to do for a couple of years now.

Not that I've been a believer in Christ for just a couple of years. But that I've actually gotten up off of the couch, questioned the faith of my parents, and put effort into following the command in 2Tim 2:15.

My faith has not, as you suggest, quelled my hopes and dreams and ability to think and sight for the beautiful in the world. Ultimately, my faith in Christ gives me an enhanced experience of this life, an obligation to exercise what logic and intelligent thought I'm capable of, a near-sighted love for this world and the inhabitants therein, and a far-sighted hope for the future.

It is your choice to continue to exist until death. I choose to live more abundantly than anything I could have anywhere else.