Some Thoughts On Blasphemy Day

So today is September 30–happy Blasphemy Day. If you’ve done any poking around my site, it will be painfully obvious that I’m not an atheist or agnostic, but I do have hope for today. First, some background.

I’m ill-educated on the matter, but from what I understand, the purpose of B-day is to strike out against social norms and national laws which prohibit speaking negatively against religions. And to do so, the organizers encourage acts of sacrilege in public arenas.

I can’t help but think they’re trying to make change by offending their opposition. As a matter of fact, I read that that was the goal. I can’t see any other purpose for such acts, nor can I see how this is going to actually make change. I think it’s going to cause a lot of hurt for people on every side of the issue.

As a follower, however, I’m excited because it is an opportunity to choose to Love those who don’t love me back, rather than loving my pride. Pride is among my biggest weaknesses (if there are weaknesses that aren’t rooted in pride).

Frankly, if they want to hate on Christianity (while B-day isn’t explicitly anti-Christian in nature, that’s certainly the flavor it seems to have in many places in the US), I say let them. I’ll support the repeal of those laws (if there are any in the United States).

I read today some commentary about why we shouldn’t be offended. Mostly because Jesus was “despised and rejected among men” and we aren’t called to defend His honor, but to share in His scorn. It’s beautiful because it’s hard and it can’t be done apart from Love. This strategy benefits absolutely everyone and the only reason we seem to suffer is because we are prideful and this is a lesson in humility and Love.

The opportunities for cheek-turning and cloak-giving and two-mile-walks abound. Not to mention the many truly humble prayers and blessings for our “enemies”.

Have a great Blasphemy Day.

Sincerely, Craig

PS: Some other thoughts: this compels me to revisit the notion of laying down our rights because Christ lay down His for us. Central in our acceptance of Christ is the idea (read: fact) that all we have is a gift–we forsook our rights to demand rights at the foot of the cross–something my lovely friend Bethany reminded me of a week ago (in fewer, better words, of course).

Homosexuality

I’m sure I’ve wrote written about this somewhere, albeit probably in brevity (or in full, but only on Facebook?)… at any rate, I couldn’t find anything in detail on this blog (I was so sure I’d written about it that I searched my own small blog for several minutes).

Anyways, in spite of my write-as-I-go style which all-too-often leads me to the furthest tangents possible, I can already all-but-assure you this post won’t stop on homosexuality, but will instead spend a lot of time in the matter of what sin is and how very different it is from our subculture’s conception of it (one could say that Satan has done a good job of disguising his work so that our notion of what sin is looks only subtly different from what God says it is, on first glance at least).

Anyways, onto the subject at hand… From an objective standpoint, a person can make the statement that homosexuality is talked about negatively in most of the Bible (at least so far as we can understand the language and culture can interpret the Bible, which, mind you, isn’t far). This is about all we can say objectively about the Bible (objectively meaning “from what can be understood from the text alone, with no influence from other sources, including the Spirit”).

Unfortunately, our little subculture has a bad habit of making statements that “the Bible says ‘X’…” when the Bible doesn’t say ‘X’ (even though our subculture is oft preceded with the term “Christian” it is still a kind of worldliness, again in a “subtle” way). At best we can say “I believe the Bible says ‘X’…” or “The Bible appears to say ‘X’…”. Moreover, just because Biblical characters say or do something (even if the character isn’t necessarily reprimanded for it) doesn’t mean it is God-approved (for instance, David had multiple wives and God tolerated this, but our “Christian subculture” generally says that polygamy is wrong in God’s eyes–so there’s a logical disconnect somewhere).

Anyways, because the Bible seems to say that homosexuality is wrong, I roll with it, even though I can’t say I’ve been lead by the Spirit to really understand that it is wrong or destructive as I have with other sins. Additionally, I haven’t experienced homosexuality in my immediate life as none of my close friends are homosexual, to my knowledge.

And here is where I zoom out and the topic becomes an example of a larger lesson: because my stance on the issue of homosexuality comes from my human [read "fallible"] understanding of the Bible and not from the Spirit’s [read "perfect"] conviction, I’m not going to tell someone that their lifestyle is wrong in God’s sight, especially if that person has been lead to that conclusion by the Spirit (remember, the Spirit authored the Bible–or at least that’s the accepted belief of our dear subculture and me–and therefore has more authority on the matter than we do).

On that note, me taking that person’s word that homosexuality is right is no better than me taking our subculture’s word that it is wrong. Ultimately, I know nothing until the Spirit shows me. I can be unsure of that person’s ability to recognize the Spirit’s voice as much as I can of our subculture, so I must rest in the scary world of “I don’t know” where I can only trust that God is doing his job by telling people who need to know, what it is that they need to know.

And, to conclude on this larger-lesson, I think it’s worth pointing out that regardless of whether we know or not, the Bible seems to indicate that it is never okay to reject someone based on how well they meet our expectations of what a “good Christ-follower” should look like. Biblically speaking, Jesus never rejected anyone, and everyone fell short of his moral standard. Moreover, he actually knew for sure that people were behaving sinfully and had authority to judge and reject them (and us) if he saw fit. Additionally, Jesus oft reprimanded those who judged and rejected others in God’s name but without God’s authority to do so (they took His name in vain). Matthew 23:13 is one of roughly a bazillion verses in which Jesus deals with the Pharisees on this issue (I might be exaggerating a little).

Reflecting on Morality and Religious Pressure

Why do my fellow Christians fight me on the elements of my personality which Christ cultivated? Within me there are countless, large imperfections about which they could warn me, but they concentrate their efforts to destroy those parts in me which express Love to the poor and marginalized; the parts of me which seek to deny myself to lift up the powerless. It seems like they seek to make me the Pharisees against whom Jesus spoke throughout the Gospels–the hypocrites who appear to have cleansed themselves of external sins while taking great care to nurture and grow their internal ones. My soul cries out to my brothers, “get behind me Satan! I’m doing my Father’s work!” and it shouts this not out of anger but out of love. Are we so blind that we’ve tricked ourselves into thinking that our evil desires (though cloaked in religion and twisted to look like truth) are in fact pleasing to God? It didn’t work for the religious elite then, so what makes us think that God will favor the religious elite now?

The Spirit in me and the scriptures both testify that God will always, ALWAYS favor the poor and the broken and the powerless over those who appear to be “correct” and “powerful”. Even if my brain can’t find an adequate answer to their twisted logic, God’s truth appeals to my heart–telling me that I may not understand exactly why, but their ways are dark. So it is and will be: I follow God even when the people who’ve taken claim to his name take a different path. I will follow God into the dark places to rescue his precious people even if it means that many of the Christians call me a glutton and a drunk and kick me out of their churches. After all, Jesus endured that first.

On the subject of morality, it seems that there are people who see two kinds of people in the world: those who seek to uphold morality and those who are trying to “lower the moral bar” so to speak. The problem I see is that people with this viewpoint tend to define moral behavior as behavior exclusive of external sins, but the term doesn’t speak to the presence of internal sins. Internal sins (conditions of the heart: jealousy, self-righteousness, judgmentality, etc) get downplayed for the sake of lifting ourselves over those who suffer from external sins (sins identifiable by actions: sexual sins, drunkeness, etc). In this way, we trick ourselves into thinking that we are justified in denouncing the evils of liberalism and homosexuality and alcohol consumption and partying when we have darker sins clouding our vision. We seek to remove sawdust from our neighbor’s eye without first removing the boards from our own. We take great care to wash the outside of our cups, but the insides are filthy. We love to call people out on their mistakes, because it feeds the lie that we’re better than we are–that we do, in fact, deserve love (which stares right in the face of the Cross and the Gospel of Grace). This self-righteousness seems to plague the church, so if someone is truly concerned about upholding morality in our culture, perhaps we should look first at ourselves and then at everyone else. Furthermore, when we stop viewing the world this way, we realize that if our “morality” is only a product of social pressure, then it is empty and worthless. In this way, we are locked in a pointless battle of who’s definition of morality is correct, ours or theirs? When we are freed from this, we realize the only universal morality isn’t measured by actions, but by the motivations which drive our actions (namely the presence of Love or lackthereof). The issue isn’t where the moral bar should be set or whose moral bar should be used; the issue revolves directly around our own loving and hateful desires. The battle isn’t between us and them, the battle is within each of us, cliché though that may sound. We are our own enemies. We are the primary opposition to the cross–not the muslims or the liberals or the homosexuals. Let’s stop scapegoating and own up to our own failures. Let’s really die to ourselves.

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.

Communal Living Remixed

I chose this title because I already made a post called Communal Living which will most likely get rewritten/deleted (or already has been, depending on when you’re reading this) when I have more time to sit down and write about it (and with a clearer, more orderly mind). Also, I chose this as a kind of salutation to Empire Remixed, the blog I just discovered and from which I’m going to copy/paste some stuff. The following ’stuff’ is an excerpt from an entry about intentional community. This is what immediately caught my attention, but I would say the rest is worth reading as well. Here is the link.

In the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross and God in His offering of love, we find a model to emulate in our communities. Intentional community is a choice to open your arms, heart, and life in love and allow the broken to reject you. Though we carry Christ, and in His image are holy and wholly unique, we do not always reflect His beauty.

In our brokenness we choose to hurt each other, we choose bitterness, and we choose a lifestyle that puts a way of having over a way of being. When we choose intentional community, we say to the real people within the community “I am broken. I will let you see my brokenness, and allow the possibility that you may not love me knowing all of this pain.”

Edit: As Tyler pointed out on my Facebook note (it’s a copy/paste of this, except for this edit which I’m making now), the rest of the article is tremendous. I do recommend you read it. Also, I found another authentic, intentional community that seems to seek to be the Kingdom. Link here.

Culture War

Barring about an hour during a movie last night, I haven’t slept since about this time (10AM) yesterday (Saturday). I attempted for several hours. I read chapter four from one of my favorite books, Blue Like Jazz, in an attempt to lull myself to sleep. Unfortunately that book is too entertaining or I was too restless–at any rate, I gave up and played Call of Duty 4 online for a few hours. Amazing game. I tend to camp with a silenced AK in inconspicuous corners throughout the map and irritate my opponents to death. But I digress.

After quitting that, I decided to come upstairs and start reading my newest book, Myth Of A Christian Nation, which I found out about here: part1, part2, and part3. The premise of the book, which is written by a pastor of what he calls a “conservative Christian” church (quotes because they’re his words and I try to be cautious about labels–especially shady ones like “conservative” and “Christian”). The central premise of this book is that the American Evangelical Church’s unhesitating alliance with the political Right is destroying the Church’s reputation and God’s by association. And I couldn’t agree more.

Disclaimer: the problem is not that people are associating themselves with conservative political ideas or moral values–the problem begins when people start saying that they’re values are “Christian” values and that anyone who disagrees with that individual is opposed to God. Most people don’t actually say that, but that threat seems to be in the air around many in our Christian subculture.

Anyways, the part that I found to be realy interesting was this:

For some evangelicals, the kingdom of God is largely about, if not centered on, “taking America back for God,” voting for the Christian candidate, outlawing abortion, outlawing gay marriage, winning the culture war, [etc]

The part that caught my attention is the culture war aspect. I guess I always knew it and was always aware of it, but we really are engaged in a culture war, us Christians. We want to make sure everyone understands that our ideas are right and we will stop at nothing to win. We want everyone to know that we’re right and they’re wrong.

If it isn’t obvious to you already, I’ll explain what is absolutely horrible about this frame of mind (and I’ve shared it as much as anyone at times).

First of all, seeking to control the beliefs of other people is not what God’s all about. He gave us free will. He never EVER forces himself on anyone. He doesn’t try to prove himself nor anything he says. He doesn’t operate in political or social power (he operates in weakness and foolishness). And most of all, he doesn’t set himself apart from anyone (save perhaps the religious elite).

That last point means he doesn’t try to make it known that he’s right and we’re wrong. He invites us to reason it out with him and doesn’t force us to agree. If we choose to be ignorant and closed-minded, he lets us. He’s not interested in winning anything because he doesn’t oppose anyone. He doesn’t really establish a group of people as his opposition because their views are wrong (if he did, Jesus would have been much lonlier than he was, considering no one was 100% right except for him).

This is what’s wrong with us trying to win a culture war. If you’re objective is winning, you’ve removed all capacity for love and growth to take place for you or your opponent (lest your opponent decide to take the higher road–then he or she might be apt to improve, but even that is in spite of your efforts and not because of them). Jesus didn’t care to win an intellectual argument. He was interested in showing a broken people that they’re loved by God.

Jesus alone could accomplish that. And he didn’t do it by political power (he denied that one in the desert specifically) or social/religious pressure (he CONSTANTLY opposed this throughout the Gospels). Instead, God showed his love for us by being born in a barn, wandering around homeless, and dying on a Roman cross like a criminal, all so that we can come to know about God’s intense, perfect, renewing Love for us.

Hopefully this leaves you a little more enlightened–especially if you’re as confused about this issue as I used to be.

NOTE: I forgot to add this in, but Megan pointed this out to me last night after reading Velvet Elvis: The Bible is an Open Ended book. God doesn’t try to prove his Word. Furthermore, it really doesn’t assign absolute rights and wrongs but serves as a guide to point to the one true morality: Love. It’s not a rule book. As my college pastor once said, the Bible isn’t a proof text. It’s the living Word of God, open wholly to interpretation. God invites us to read it and reason through it with Him so as to arrive at the one absolute truth. So perhaps we can think twice before we tell other people what God stands for.

Guilt By Association

Hopefully I spelled that right. I think maybe there are 3 “c”s in association? Anyways… Here’s number 3235342564236 on the things that frustrate me about politics, or at least about Christian people in politics who do this (people who don’t claim to be Christian are exempt from my wrath because they aren’t necessarily being hypocritical in this instance; actually all people are exempt because I’m often hypocritical… and it would be hypocritical to have wrath for hypocrites. But I’ll vent anyways).

“Christian” candidates who try to say that other people are bad people based on who they associate with. Duh. Obviously this encompasses anyone who says “don’t vote for candidate X because they hang out with person Y who is known to do action Z”. This is stupid because Jesus hung out with all sorts of sketchy people. Jesus was known as a drunkard and a glutton (Luke 7:34) for the company he kept–and you can be certain that he not only associated with the guilty but loved them passionately.

If we are really serious about electing a “Christian” candidate (in the sense of a Christ-following candidate), maybe we should start looking into a candidate who spends more time around guilty, broken people? Personally, because of the nature of God’s power-system (weakness = strength and first < last) I think the more a person follows Christ, the less likely they will be to seek power, even/especially in the form of public office, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Obviously, take the preceding with a grain of salt–I’m not saying that every person who hangs out with guilty people is innocent, just that the most innocent person in the world hung out exclusively with the guilty. He sought out the broken. So practice some common sense and make sure who you’re accusing is actually guilty–not just because they know or hang out with a “bad” person.

And finally, we all fail. Jesus is all-including. That means letting me and you call ourselves His followers is a stain to His name. If everyone could see you by your worst sins, do you think Obama or McCain would publicly proclaim you to be his supporter?

Some interesting thoughts on the Wallstreet Bailout

So sometimes I’m not entirely productive when I should be. I spent a good chunk of this afternoon browsing the interwebz to see if there are people out there who agree with my crazy-sounding ideas or if I’m alone in my absurdity. It turns out that this wacko also believes in a Jesus who says what he means.

And before you go off on me for proposing spending $700,000,000,000 on foreigners or whatever, please note that the big point isn’t what we do with this money, but what we do with our money in general. If we can come up with $700 billion to protect our comforts then why have we not been able to spare any more to protect LIVES? There are a lot of statistics in the following article which make that question all the more convicting.

Read Here

Also, I would recommend browsing through some of his other articles because this guy seems to have a pretty concrete understanding of God’s simple commands–especially the ones that we complicate by over-Religitizing everything.

In Need: Can government help its helpless citizens?

I consider myself politically neutral these days, despite having been both liberal and conservative in the past. Something that always attracted me to the Democratic camp is how they seem to genuinely feel for the poor among us–something that seems to be a very Christian idea. Unfortunately, I soon realized that a big portion of their solution to the problem seems to be throwing money at the less-fortunate.

First of all, I don’t believe that’s a viable solution because I don’t believe money improves anyone’s lives. I really think we need other people who believe in us and who can encourage us genuinely–something I don’t believe a government is capable of providing (because a government can’t tell people to go love people in need of love). No amount of money can do that. This goes to show just how powerless a government can be when it comes to actually making a positive difference in the world.

Secondly, the Republican solution seems to rely on giving tax breaks to the rich and relying on complicated economic trickle-down effects to get money and resources to the poor (which, again, I don’t believe solves the problem). It honestly appears as if many in this camp are using this solution as an excuse to be greedy and cling to their moneys (which is interesting because that makes it seem that Jesus would side with the “godless liberals” over the Religious Right–although Jesus never seemed to fit in well with the religious folks). However, I do agree with the conservatives in that [I believe] it isn’t the government’s job to take care of the needy–it’s the Church’s.

So I love the passion for humanitarianism (a very Christ-like quality that doesn’t seem to occur too often in the Religious Right) but I also feel like their methodology is wrong. But to their credit, (and realize I’m not saying this is true of all liberals) if I didn’t believe in God, I wouldn’t trust the Chruch for much anyways–the next viable option would appear to be the government.

On the flip side, I believe the conservative side has the right intellectual idea, but they seem to lack the compassion to actually care about the needy in the ways that their God does (so it’s kind of funny to me the godless liberals seem to follow God better than the Religious Right–which leads me to believe that perhaps the “godless liberals” have a confused idea about God because of how us “Christians” represent Him).

So to awkwardly tie-together this loose, airy post… Basically I don’t believe it is the government’s responsibility, I admire the liberals’ passion, I am disappointed in the conservative camp for not feeling more emphatically on the issue (especially those who believe God would only ever vote Republican), and I think it would be ephing sweet if we all would stop arguing and handle this without going through the ever-complicated middle-management that is our government. That is to say, if the religious and non-religious, liberal and conservative, etc would take care of the problem through private organizations (who would be focused on the actual problem) and unaffiliated with any church or political movement or some other means. The end.

So I’m writing this on 10/08/08: It seems to me lately that the welfare system may only be 10% effective and the rest may be “wasteful”, but if you think about it, that 10% is still getting used and it’s not like the rest of us need that additional money anyways. I mean, if you have a car you’re among 8% of the world’s most elite population anyways. Moreover, if we were really interested in efficiency, we could always take a little more time and ensure that that money gets used effectively by buying necessities for the needy. So I guess I’m now okay with the Democrats’ passion and their methodology on this issue.

Charity

So I’m preparing to enter into this world of service. I’m trying to prepare my heart for selflessness and such so as to not view it as something to “appease God” or “lessen my debt to Him” and such (rather, I want to view it as something I can do for Him and for His people out of gratitude for all he did for me). On the whole, it’s going really well. I genuinely want to help people. I want to make a difference.

However, another part of me is affraid that I won’t be able to overcome this disease of Self. That I’ll fall back into my rutt and view people whom I’m helping as less than me… As undeserving of my charity. I don’t want to feel like I’m being gracious or whatever towards them. In fact, I want that to be the difference I make in their lives–I want to show them that even though everyone else might find me more valuable (because of my race, economic status, etc), that’s all a lie. I want to believe that. And obviously I do, intellectually, but I want that sentiment to shake the core of who I am. I want to die to myself and live for God and others.

My other big fear regarding service is that I’m afraid I’ll close myself off to those whom I’m serving because I think they’ll judge me for one reason or another. I don’t want to be insecure and defensive and closed off…

So today, my prayer is for humility. And the security and courage to Love without fear. I sincerely want to be compassionate towards those people who don’t know about God’s love. I want to see them through Jesus’ eyes.

May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. – Galatians 6:14