News From the Frontlines

Some news:

• Derek picked me up some SkullCandy earbuds yesterday and I’m excited to use them… wish my iPod battery didn’t stop working… Apple fail.
• My brother is getting confirmed in two hours. I’m his sponsor.
• My mother took me shopping yesterday and spent roughly 83% of my Christmas present money on clothes. I’m not a big fan of receiving clothes, but realistically both my mom and I know that I won’t spend money on clothes unless I absolutely have to, so I suppose it was a good thing in the long run. Plus I do enjoy having some sharp-looking threads. Also, the excuse, erm,  reason for the shopping spree was that my brother is getting confirmed today and I need to not look like a slob.
• Another of my pop cans exploded in our fridge… I don’t know why it’s so damn cold in there even after I turned the fridge temperature up. Anyways, there is frozen Diet Cherry Pepsi all over the second shelf, door, and bottom of the second shelf. The top of the can blew clean off, but the rest of the can wasn’t even perturbed in the least. Strange.
• Yesterday was my brother’s confirmation practice (a confirmation in a Catholic Church is very ceremonial so confirmation practice is comparable to a wedding rehearsal). Anyways, the latest priest at St. A’s spent the first 15ish minutes of the practice bragging-up, erm, talking about the newly remodeled sanctuary including a lengthy schpiel about each of the 15-ish new stained-glass windows and their religious symbolism. By itself, this lecture is unremarkable; however, this is the fifth time I’ve heard it since the church was beginning to be remodeled–one lecture for every time I’ve been home. I’m guessing he visits the topic more frequently than just when I’m there, which makes me feel sorry for the St. Athanasius regulars.
• Friday night, Parker House and Theory played at the Hub. They are truly an amazing band and I was stunned that only 40ish people showed up. I watched them open for O.A.R. at the Dome a couple years ago and, in my opinion, they have better music and put on a much better show than O.A.R. Lindsey Sermons and I talked with the keyboardist and bassist afterwards and apparently the Hub was one of the bigger shows that they’ve headlined. They said they always love coming to Iowa because we appreciate them so much more, but they must have a problem getting the word out in bigger cities, because they are an amazing band for how not-renown they are. Navigate to their website and give their songs a listen if you don’t believe me (their website has a few songs on a loop that you can listen to for free).

Anyways, it’s getting to be that time… I need to make the journey to Jesup so I can sponsor my brother’s confirmation. Hope all is well for you.

- Craig

PS: I want to start adding pictures to the posts. Keep me accountable.

Post-Concert Ramblings…

I wrote this yesterday morning on Facebook. I’m posting it here now. Does anyone know if there’s a simpler way of syndicating Facebook notes and WordPress blogs?

So it’s currently 6:08 AM and I’ve been up for the last forty-five minutes. Last night we went to the Rock and Worship Tour concert at the US Cell Center in CR and now we’re staying at Kristen’s parents’ house in Mount Vernon. And I can’t sleep–I think I’m catching a cold slash my lips are burning. And not burning with the desire to share the Word of God or to sing some incredibly artsy creative song, no, I have two canker sores (sp?) on the inside of my mouth and they feel extra awesome [sarcasm] in the wee hours of the morning.

At any rate, I stole one of Kristen’s guitars and snuck away to their computer room for a little late night acousticness (I’m in denial that it is, in fact early morning. Side note: I’m looking out the window and it’s getting light outside… eew). I kind of feel bad about using their computer without asking. :S

Anyways, the concert was amazing… I tend to go into Christian events with thick skepticism, because I know a lot of people put on Christian events because it’s “what good Christians do” or because “kids who are involved in Christian activities don’t sin” etc.; however, I was comforted by the brief ‘tween-acts blurbs by the lead singers of Tenth Ave North, Mercy Me, and Sanctus Real. I don’t worship well if I don’t believe that those who are leading worship have their hearts in a good place. I don’t want to feel like I’m being conned into some manufactured emotion. If my faith is fake, I’ll happily be an honest Atheist rather than a lying Christian.

The first thing the T.A.N. guy said was how he was still working through the complications of growing up in a “Christian” community and attending a “Christian” school (by the way, I use quotes around that word, because it means a lot of different things to different people and the way I’m using it isn’t really how I think it should be used), and he touched on how we “Christians” approach our relationships with people and with God with a lot more arrogance and false-humility than we should… He said the hardest three words for Christians to say are “I don’t know”, which was said in jest but bears a lot of truth. Anyways, the overall theme of the evening was that we’re all broken people desperately in need of a God who loves us. None of us are better than anyone else. Basically, as Bethany and Derek and I phrase it, we’re all epic failures and the only way we succeed is because Jesus loves us enough to succeed for us. And that to me, far more than trendy “Christian” music and Alt-Christian clothes and even being in the presence of “Christian” music superstars, was cool.

So with that I sit here with a lot of thoughts swirling around in my tiny human brain… First of all, I wish that more Christians really believed that we [read "all humanity"] are all the same in terms of worthiness of Grace (in that we are all equally unworthy of His Grace).

Secondly, I wish people who don’t know Jesus wouldn’t associate Him with us Christians. I’ll elaborate on that one a little: Christians can be prideful and arrogant and falsely-humble and hurtful and a variety of other negatively-inclined adjectives that are in no way characteristics of Jesus nor are representative of his feelings towards humanity in general. We’ve taken His name in vain and dragged it through the mud with us and the result is that the people who are aware of their need for a savior won’t know that that person is Jesus because we’ve made Jesus look like the Devil.

Finally, and this is one that I (as an insecure person) struggle with the most; I wish that we who call ourselves followers of Christ would truly meet people where they’re at rather than lead them to believe that they need to be “good enough” to earn our and/or God’s Love. Especially God’s Love. I think we non-verbally tell people that they need to fit in and look the part before we will accept them. They need to cover up their tattoos, change the way they dress, and stop associating with their non Christian friends unless they are getting [read "pressuring"] them to come to Church.

Just so we’re all clear on this, I believe this next statement so strongly that if this isn’t true, I’m converting to Atheism straight up: God’s love for us is not affected by our performance, and if it were, we’d all be effed. There is no reason for God to Love us–we can’t earn it, it’s freely given. We can’t trick God into Loving us, he already does–we just need to accept it. God’s people aren’t shiny and plastic; God chose a people who are real and broken and scandalous and perfect only in our inability to earn His love. He knows this about each of us and this fact is deeply rooted in His passionate, reckless, scandalous, foolish, intoxicated Love for each of us.

Anyways, it’s 6:53 now and the sun is coming up and that’s an event I haven’t witnessed in roughly a decade so I don’t want to ruin such a good track record. I’m going back to bed. Good night. Or good morning. Whatever.

So it’s currently 6:08 AM and I’ve been up for the last forty-five minutes. Last night we went to the Rock and Worship Tour concert at the US Cell Center in CR [Cedar Rapids] and now we’re staying at Kristen’s parents’ house in Mount Vernon. And I can’t sleep–I think I’m catching a cold slash my lips are burning. And not burning with the desire to share the Word of God or to sing some incredibly artsy creative song, no, I have two canker sores (sp?) on the inside of my mouth and they feel extra awesome [sarcasm] in the wee hours of the morning.

At any rate, I stole one of Kristen’s guitars and snuck away to their computer room for a little late night acousticness (I’m in denial that it is, in fact early morning. Side note: I’m looking out the window and it’s getting light outside… eew). I kind of feel bad about using their computer without asking. :S

Anyways, the concert was amazing… I tend to go into Christian events with thick skepticism, because I know a lot of people put on Christian events because it’s “what good Christians do” or because “kids who are involved in Christian activities don’t sin” etc.; however, I was comforted by the brief ‘tween-acts blurbs by the lead singers of Tenth Ave North, Mercy Me, and Sanctus Real. I don’t worship well if I don’t believe that those who are leading worship have their hearts in a good place. I don’t want to feel like I’m being conned into some manufactured emotion. If my faith is fake, I’ll happily be an honest Atheist rather than a lying Christian.

The first thing the T.A.N. guy said was how he was still working through the complications of growing up in a “Christian” community and attending a “Christian” school (by the way, I use quotes around that word, because it means a lot of different things to different people and the way I’m using it isn’t really how I think it should be used), and he touched on how we “Christians” approach our relationships with people and with God with a lot more arrogance and false-humility than we should… He said the hardest three words for Christians to say are “I don’t know”, which was said in jest but bears a lot of truth. Anyways, the overall theme of the evening was that we’re all broken people desperately in need of a God who loves us. None of us are better than anyone else. Basically, as Bethany and Derek and I phrase it, we’re all epic failures and the only way we succeed is because Jesus loves us enough to succeed for us. And that to me, far more than trendy “Christian” music and Alt-Christian clothes and even being in the presence of “Christian” music superstars, was cool.

So with that I sit here with a lot of thoughts swirling around in my tiny human brain… First of all, I wish that more Christians really believed that we [read "all humanity"] are all the same in terms of worthiness of Grace (in that we are all equally unworthy of His Grace).

Secondly, I wish people who don’t know Jesus wouldn’t associate Him with us Christians. I’ll elaborate on that one a little: Christians can be prideful and arrogant and falsely-humble and hurtful and a variety of other negatively-inclined adjectives that are in no way characteristics of Jesus nor are representative of his feelings towards humanity in general. We’ve taken His name in vain and dragged it through the mud with us and the result is that the people who are aware of their need for a savior won’t know that that person is Jesus because we’ve made Jesus look like the Devil.

Finally, and this is one that I (as an insecure person) struggle with the most; I wish that we who call ourselves followers of Christ would truly meet people where they’re at rather than lead them to believe that they need to be “good enough” to earn our and/or God’s Love. Especially God’s Love. I think we non-verbally tell people that they need to fit in and look the part before we will accept them. They need to cover up their tattoos, change the way they dress, and stop associating with their non Christian friends unless they are getting [read "pressuring"] them to come to Church.

Just so we’re all clear on this, I believe this next statement so strongly that if this isn’t true, I’m converting to Atheism straight up: God’s love for us is not affected by our performance, and if it were, we’d all be effed. There is no reason for God to Love us–we can’t earn it, it’s freely given. We can’t trick God into Loving us, he already does–we just need to accept it. God’s people aren’t shiny and plastic; God chose a people who are real and broken and scandalous and perfect only in our inability to earn His love. He knows this about each of us and this fact is deeply rooted in His passionate, reckless, scandalous, foolish, intoxicated Love for each of us.

Anyways, it’s 6:53 now and the sun is coming up and that’s an event I haven’t witnessed in roughly a decade so I don’t want to ruin such a good track record. I’m going back to bed. Good night. Or good morning. Whatever.