Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Quotable quote, linkeded
Oh, and...
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
A big difference
I need a good hour or so to restructure my links and write out one of the blog posts I've been planning. Since I don't have that right now, I'll just leave you with this:
On Saturday a girl in work randomnly asked me if I believed in life after death. While not having much time to talk, I answered briefly and gave her room to ask whatever was on her mind. One point in the conversation really portrayed the big difference between this world and mine,
I believe it's a total waste of time to put your time and effort and thoughts into something that isn't real. It really has to be the epitome of pointlessness. If atheism, or whatever else is contrary to Christianity, is true then all my past experience and present mysticism is me just not being right in the head, when I pray I'm just talking to myself, and the whole thing is completely futile. But if it's the other way around, then the battle's already won and I've gained something I won't ever lose... and atheists, etc. are in deep shit.
I think so long as someone stands for something, and cares about its truthfulness, there's a chance that they can find the Truth... or rather, that the Truth can find them. (Yet if God in His mercy, sends a few major life crises to those still sunk in subjective spinelessness, there's a chance that they may start caring about what's real and true.). I was a passionate believer in something before I became a Christian... but God proved me wrong, (and actually, He's also proved me wrong on many assumptions I went into Christianity with) and here I am today. Sure, I have experiences as a Christian that I could not have if I was still firewood. As C.S. Lewis once wrote, it's like you've been a statue all your life, and now you're real; or that you've been a 2 dimensional painting, and now you're living and moving in 3 dimensions... but you can't really see or even imagine what that's like from the outside. Yet the conviction of faith goes beyond touchy-feeliness, beyond "well, it works for me", and beyond reasoning -though I am not a Christian without my reasons.
On Saturday a girl in work randomnly asked me if I believed in life after death. While not having much time to talk, I answered briefly and gave her room to ask whatever was on her mind. One point in the conversation really portrayed the big difference between this world and mine,
"Do you think it's good to believe something?"
-"Well... it depends on if that something is right."
I believe it's a total waste of time to put your time and effort and thoughts into something that isn't real. It really has to be the epitome of pointlessness. If atheism, or whatever else is contrary to Christianity, is true then all my past experience and present mysticism is me just not being right in the head, when I pray I'm just talking to myself, and the whole thing is completely futile. But if it's the other way around, then the battle's already won and I've gained something I won't ever lose... and atheists, etc. are in deep shit.
I think so long as someone stands for something, and cares about its truthfulness, there's a chance that they can find the Truth... or rather, that the Truth can find them. (Yet if God in His mercy, sends a few major life crises to those still sunk in subjective spinelessness, there's a chance that they may start caring about what's real and true.). I was a passionate believer in something before I became a Christian... but God proved me wrong, (and actually, He's also proved me wrong on many assumptions I went into Christianity with) and here I am today. Sure, I have experiences as a Christian that I could not have if I was still firewood. As C.S. Lewis once wrote, it's like you've been a statue all your life, and now you're real; or that you've been a 2 dimensional painting, and now you're living and moving in 3 dimensions... but you can't really see or even imagine what that's like from the outside. Yet the conviction of faith goes beyond touchy-feeliness, beyond "well, it works for me", and beyond reasoning -though I am not a Christian without my reasons.
I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him; but the Holy Spirit has called me by the Gospel, enlightened me with His gifts, sanctified and kept me in the true faith. In the same way He calls, gathers, enlightens, and sanctifies the whole Christian church on earth, and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In this Christian church He daily and richly forgives all my sins and the sins of all believers. On the Last Day He will raise me and all the dead, and give eternal life to me and all believers in Christ. This is most certainly true.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Good posts on their way...
So I have at least three good blogpost ideas in my head, but I just haven't had the time to write them lately. I've been too busy running the Cardiff half-marathon (1:52:48 was my time. Yay.), recovering from injuries incurred by attempting to sprint the last mile, and looking into and applying for real, actual career jobs, as well as finding something less stressful than what I do now. But they're on their way. Sometime.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Some thoughts on humility
A few weeks ago, I was told that I "don't believe in the Holy Spirit", which is tantamount to telling me I'm not really a Christian, by a Pentecostal girl I went out with on one date, because I rejected the over-the-top miracle-a-minute claims of Pentecostalism. (Though as many of you know, I did used to be into that once upon a time, til I grew up in my faith and found an undistorted, biblical and balanced version of it). Disagreements, I can live with; Groundless accusations, insults, misrepresentation, and avoidance of discussion, I can't. She's only been a Christian for 18 months though, so she's got a lot of growing up to do. She'll learn, in time, whether it takes months or decades. The same God that brought me safe thus far is bringing her too.
Anyways, the last thing I told her, which was by text message, since she certainly wasn't talking to me on the phone or online, was that the acts and nature of God may not be what she assumes them to be. And I pointed her to Matthew 21:5, part of the narrative of Jesus entering Jerusalem:
Note, the King entered His city, not on a royal warhorse with an army accompanying him, but alone, personally, on a lowly, ordinary donkey.
I think a major problem in the Church today, and... actually... probably since it's beginning, is the assimilation of the world's definitions of and assumptions about God, holiness, love, etc. The world expects God to drop miracles here, there, and everywhere in order to prove Himself, and while He can and does do miracles, He doesn't do them to order, and never to the world's expectations. The God Whom the Universe cannot contain became a human fetus, was born in a stable, grew up, felt pain, torture, abandonment, and death. He became a human to save humans. For sinners like us, an open and unhidden encounter with a perfectly holy God is a consuming fire (Exodus 24:17, Deuteronomy 4:24, Hebrews 12:29). Instead, God comes to meet us weak, ordinary people, in (apparently) weak, ordinary ways. Perfect forgiveness from God is spoken through the lips of an ordinary pastor; a few handfuls of water in Baptism breaks God's eternal plan for our salvation into our temporal life; under bread and wine in Communion, we eat and drink the very body and blood of God Incarnate - receiving and being united with Him who became what we are, so that we might become what He is. -We are what we eat, after all.
God acts in ways very much unimpressive to the world. When He does reveal Himself in some degree of His splendor, it's almost always only to those who have been won over through His humility.
There's a time for glory, and it really will be seen by all, and it will last forever. Til then, the depth of the Christian experience remains hidden to the world, a life of glory, immense but unseen. A life, ordinary to the world, but extraordinary to the individual.
Anyways, the last thing I told her, which was by text message, since she certainly wasn't talking to me on the phone or online, was that the acts and nature of God may not be what she assumes them to be. And I pointed her to Matthew 21:5, part of the narrative of Jesus entering Jerusalem:
Tell the daughter of Zion,
Look, your King is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’
Note, the King entered His city, not on a royal warhorse with an army accompanying him, but alone, personally, on a lowly, ordinary donkey.
I think a major problem in the Church today, and... actually... probably since it's beginning, is the assimilation of the world's definitions of and assumptions about God, holiness, love, etc. The world expects God to drop miracles here, there, and everywhere in order to prove Himself, and while He can and does do miracles, He doesn't do them to order, and never to the world's expectations. The God Whom the Universe cannot contain became a human fetus, was born in a stable, grew up, felt pain, torture, abandonment, and death. He became a human to save humans. For sinners like us, an open and unhidden encounter with a perfectly holy God is a consuming fire (Exodus 24:17, Deuteronomy 4:24, Hebrews 12:29). Instead, God comes to meet us weak, ordinary people, in (apparently) weak, ordinary ways. Perfect forgiveness from God is spoken through the lips of an ordinary pastor; a few handfuls of water in Baptism breaks God's eternal plan for our salvation into our temporal life; under bread and wine in Communion, we eat and drink the very body and blood of God Incarnate - receiving and being united with Him who became what we are, so that we might become what He is. -We are what we eat, after all.
God acts in ways very much unimpressive to the world. When He does reveal Himself in some degree of His splendor, it's almost always only to those who have been won over through His humility.
There's a time for glory, and it really will be seen by all, and it will last forever. Til then, the depth of the Christian experience remains hidden to the world, a life of glory, immense but unseen. A life, ordinary to the world, but extraordinary to the individual.
