Beyond Gratefulness

Holy Stinking Cool Batman!! So I've always heard in church and books and even in the bible something to the effect of "forgive other people because Jesus forgave you" or "love other people because Jesus loved you first" and that's totally true and I agree but God showed me it's so much deeper than that!!! There's more to this than simply "Jesus did it for me so I should do it for others."
While that is all good, it's makes me feel better to know that the purpose for this stuff is so much deeper than gratefulness. You see, Christ was rejected and suffered immensely and his disciples shared in the fruits of his passion. As disciples of Jesus, we are called to share in his sufferings. That doesn't so appealing at face value.
Christ bore the sins of all and it is clear that the only atonement is through the blood of JESUS only. But since he bore the sins of the entire world, as disciples we are called to share in bearing those sins, in experiencing the rejection that Jesus experienced and it's pretty safe to assume that any man would break down under such pressure unless he had the unfailing support of the one who took the wrap for humanity (that would be Jesus).
Paul writes in Galations "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ." Bonhoeffer says "The passion of Christ strengthens [the disciple] to overcome the sins of others by forgiving them." True, we are to help deal with their outward situations and gifts or lack thereof, but also their literal sin. Mad rad!!!
Hells yeah by following Jesus we are forgiven; we are free to bear the sins of others by the power of Christ (not by our own power mind you). As a true disciple of Jesus, we are free to be real with people, to draw alongside of them and bear the weight of their burden with them (WHETHER THEY KNOW JESUS OR NOT). What an amazing weapon against the world's sorrow we've been given! We don't forgive or love merely because Jesus did so to us first. We do so because Jesus has freed us and empowered his with His power to help lift the weak out of the pit in his name. We are his warriors, by serving Jesus we are serving to the fight the evils that plague our world. And how amazing is it that we can come alongside those who don't know Him in their time of need and in His power and name we can bear their weight. And if we can do so with God's children who choose not to acknowledge God, how much more so can we pull alongside a fellow disciple who may have lost his way as we all tend to do.
What a sicka rad job to have!!! Jesus's command to his disciples was to love others... but not just by sending them flowers or buying them dinner. We have the power to love by descending to their depths alongside them, and we are able to do so because we have Christ's power... we are his ambassadors to the broken. SO SWEEEEEET!

Faith's Concubine

So I always knew that Utah was a bubble. Living there I reminded myself of that all the time and tried to keep and outsiders perspective. But there's a huge difference between knowing that you live in a bubble and then moving out and experiencing that. Mt. Shasta is VERY different. I've run into so many different people with so many different beliefs... it's fruitcake out here but it's actually very refreshing. And something that I'm beginning to be more grateful for here is how many times my world view has been challenged. It's always tough when someone else exposes your ignorance, but that's how we grow isn't it? You learn not to take it too personally and welcome those attacks on your comfortable standpoint.
I've never really been much for politics. Not that I have anything against them, I realise that they pretty much run our lives, but my issue was that there's only 24 hrs in a day and I was more interested in other things so I didn't have time for politics... of course I've been challenged there again... and again... and again...
These last few months of my life have been interesting... For the first time since kindergarten, I have had NO school, at all. No homework, no projects, no tests... it is amazing! I can read what I want to read, study what I want to study, think about what I want to think about, play when I want to play and the best thing is that I can do all these things I want without the small nagging voice in the back of my head saying "you really should be doing homework right now."
Not only is there no school these last few months, but I've also been jobless... which means lots of free time. At first all my free time made me a little uncomfortable, I've never been in such a place before. But I learned that depending on how I used it, it was very much a blessing: giving me a much needed break and time to wrestle with my faith in deeper and more real ways than I had before.
It's kinda funny how you hear certain things all the time, but they don't mean much until they hit your gut, ya know? God has been smacking in the head these past few weeks hitting me with A LOT of hard truths about myself and my faith. So many it's hard to keep track. I think it all started when I finally married my faith with my politics.
I can't remember if I read it in a book or if someone had said to me something to effect of "our nation has moved from the freedom of religion to the freedom from relgion." Which seemed somewhat obscure at first, but makes a lot of sense. If my high school history serves me correctly, our country was big on freedom to practice whatever kind of faith we wanted. I don't believe it was intended to shield us from whatever faiths we felt threatened by. At any rate, not only is it impossible to completely divorce one's faith from their politics, but it's flatout wrong (at least in what Jesus calls us to).
I have been challenged and been learning about our government a lot over the past month and my findings, while not that surprising, are sad. I can basically say that it boils down to our country is run by the rich with the only agenda in mind is to make themselves richer. Greed rules our country, greed so strong it would perform at the expense of the people. There is so much that is amiss in our country, and I, like many others in my position, could rant and rave about our problems till the cows come home. But the overall downfall is it seems our government's purpose is to make a profit for those who control it rather than to serve the people of the country it rules. Of course any change would have to start with the people, but it seems the general mentality of our nation (myself included) is that "I need to get mine." And that's no wonder, look at the examples the leaders of our country set for us.
Jesus teaches his people to take care of each other. It seems simple enough, and it actually used to happen. The early church had exactly that. Of course their mentality was concern for others, not for their own wealth. If this country's gonna turn around it's gonna need a sicka huge paradigm shift. My desire is there, but I don't know if my heart is yet, that's something I pray for all the time. If we were to socialize health care, I would be ok with a couple hundred extra bucks in taxes if it meant helping someone else to live.
I don't know... it's so big, but I finally realized that my faith must drive my politics. Jesus doesn't want to be in every aspect of our lives except for the government, he wants it all. My faith has finally conquered my land of politics and has taken her as it's prize. This is the beginning I think. It breaks my heart to see the way this country operates, but I don't currently have an active answer. Jesus changed the world by reaching out to individuals while he was here, maybe that's where it needs to start.

Fat Jokes About the Bible Aren't So Easy... At Least For Me

So I've had a lot of time to myself... to think... about a lot things... and I feel compelled to share. Not that this any new groundbreaking thinking, but God commands us to talk about his words "when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up..." and when you're killing time on facebook. God said so. And it feels good to get stuff off your chest, ya know?

At any rate I was thinking about life, as all great thinkers and wannabes do, and what it means for us. Actually, I don't think I was really thinking about life, I'm not that advanced yet, but I was reading the good book (that's the Bible NOT the Authoritative Encyclopedia of Crystals and Geodes as the convention is here) and for some reason the Bible seems to relate to life a lot, some kind of theme written into it, and that got me thinking about life.

I like the way God puts it: He's talking to His people and lays it out life as a choice he's given them, "I'm setting before you today a blessing and a curse." The curse, although sounding harsh, is sufficiently described as not obeying God's laws and following other Gods who they don't know. The blessing, living life the way that God originally intended (I heard somebody once say "Man, if it weren't for Eve, we'd all be playing naked volleyball in Eden right now." But that's a different discussion).

From an outside perspective, it seems like a pretty simple choice yeah? Who wants to be cursed? Personally I know from TV that cursings generally involve turning into a reptile or amphibian or coming down with a bad case of pimples... and having endured said curses in my more formidable years of puberty doesn't make me so eager to sign up for that again. Yeah I'd chose God's life! Great! Sign me up! Oh yeah except the friggin rule book is soooo fat...here it comes.... that if you put it on a scale it would say "to be continued." (that was the best I could do on short notice)

Well, unfortunately God's pretty clear on what it takes to live right: to live a blessing is to follow the rules, and hot damn! there's a lot of em! Which is a pretty bum deal cause following a lot of rules is hard, and no fun. What kind of promised life is that? However it's hard to argue that it's not a good way to live. God put the law inside some flesh and bone and lived it out for us (in a very small part becuase we just didn't get it I think) and people saw just how blessed Jesus's life was. But Jesus was about so much more than showing us what a "right life" looked like right? Pshaw!! It sure stinkin was. It was a revolution folks, with HUGE implications.

And looking around today, it seems like a lot of people missed it. Either missed it or forgot about it. Cause now a "right life" isn't about the rule book. It's about being able to grab hold of God's amazingly awesomely spectaularly unbelievalbly unfair grace. yah? And people both inside and outside of the church either missed or forgot that part. Don't get me wrong, the rule book was definitely good for the folks back then, because God said so, but things flipped and now people skip the best part of the story.

And not only do we skip that part but it seems that several people (myself included at times) for some reason or another believe that God has appointed them to keep order here and discount people who don't follow the "code" so to speak. When you step back and think about it, judging people's eternities is hard dirty work and luckily God didn't leave that part for us. We get the lovey dovey job, the grace end of the stick, and we get to show the same to others! That's a pretty good job. At least it beats making sandwiches...

Churches and Christians (and again myself at time) have made it about the rule book. And it hurts because the rule book is all that a lot of non-believers know of Jesus. And they hear it preached on the corners and on the news by radical preachers and judgement rains on them. Yeah I can see how if that's the Jesus presented to me I wouldn't want anythig to do with it. So your average non-Christian would say "Why would I want to go to church, it's full of hypocrites." Hell Yeah it is. The church is chalk full of bad people, we're all hypocrites folks. BUT we can live rightly in spite of it because of God's grace which, unfortunately is a picture seldom offered to the non-Christian.

We can't follow all the rules, they are still good for us (it's not good for one to drink themselves into a stupor, or to sleep with enough people to get an STD named after you), but they aren't the starting point. And even in light of the rules, there only seems to be two that really ticked God off. I don't recall the bible mentioning God's wrath raining down when someone disobeyed "Don't plant your field with two kinds of seed" or "Don't wear garments woven from two different fabrics." We see God PO'd when people either were jerks to each other or participated in some form of turning their backs to Him.

SO? Love God, Love others.... I think I've heard that before somewhere...

I'm no less guilty than anyone I criticize and in need of grace just as much. But that's my thought process and in obedience I'm talking to others. If you made it all the way through this... thanks, that's commitment.