COFFEE! Biblical Counseling! MatSoD!

Alrighty, here is a brief run down of todays events:

Body:
I had a shake an energy drink for breakfast, and Chinese food for lunch/dinner.
I went to my yoga class for today's work out.
Overall I think I could have done without the Chinese food, tomorrow will be better!

Mind: I didn't do too much reading today. No interesting blogs to report or anything really. We are discussing Heidegger in my Roots of Existentialism Class. His thoughts are pretty interesting...his Nazism, not so much. Basically today we talked about the struggle between inauthenticity and authenticity. The closer one gets to becoming authentic the more anxious one becomes, and the more difficult it is not to slip back into the inauthentic. The Professor drew a diagram on the board showing that we can never really reach true authenticity, but that we can become approximate. In my copy of the chart I wrote God underneath the term authenticity because God is really the only authentic being (in the sense that he knows himself and is not capable of losing this knowledge, or being anything except himself).

I also had a healthy discussion about the place of politics (or lack thereof) in a Christian's life. What are your thoughts on this? I'm of the opinion that politics don't really matter too much.

Listened to III by Maylene and the Sons of Disaster today while I was at work.

"Mama said I was a no good son
I think it's time for me to make my mark
Headlines and police cars...
A tragedy from the start"

Soul: I finished reading Ezra today. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by the depth of this short book. My favorite part is when it was talking about the old men weeping over the old temple while the young men praised the foundation of the new temple. It's a very powerful image and I think there is a lot of depth to that passage that I need to unearth and explore. Thank God that Jesus is our temple that shall never be destroyed!

I had a lot of interesting conversations today. I talked with Lisa, my fiancee, about the vision we have for our future family and different sins or issues that might prevent that from coming to fruition. I had a talk with Miles and Doug about things that are going on in their lives. That was a lot of fun. God gives us a lot of tough decisions to make, but he gives us the wisdom to make them too. I had some great discussion about Biblical Counseling too. I think it's really clarifying to talk with people you might not necessarily see eye to eye with. Doug made an interesting point about how Christian Counselors should approach the unsaved that I think I need to chew on for a while.

Repurposing of the blog...

"The Cure for Pain is in the Pain
and it's there that you'll find me
till again, I forget and again
you remind me..."

and again,

"Shame is the anchor tied around my ankle
Shame keeps me low and close to the bottom
Where I am the least..."


I feel like this is the level I see at. Everything, and everyone is coated in the unspeakable shame of existence. A shame of living that doesn't know how to live. A living that is death. These are where my thoughts dwell and I can make sense of the world. People tell me about this thing called "joy in the Lord" and in truth, I'm not sure I quite understand what that means. Is that something I hav experienced but just don't remember. All I recall is the quite ache of melancholy existance. Not unstatisfied, but never fully quenched. And so in my honest moments, this is where I find myself. I think it all stems from living my life inside of myself too much. I was telling my fiancee today that I value ideas more than i do people. I think that is a bad place to be. So, I'm trying to be more practicle. More present, so to speak, in the sense that I want my thoughts to be more than thoughts. I want to Try to find what it means to turn my living into dying in the Christian sense where it has meaning and is based on something, rather than the earthly sense where it is something we are simply thrown into.

I say all that to tell you that as of tomorrow, I'm going to repurpose this blog to be more fully rounded. Before I was just focusing on my thoughts, but that is not what we as Christians are to be soley about. So I want to focus on the body, the soul, and the mind.

The Body:
I want to monitor my diet better, so I'm going to be letting you all know about my failings/victories in that area of life.
I want to do the same with exercise as well.
I want to do this in order to become a more disciplined person who is in control of his body.

The Mind:
I want to talk about things that are discussed in my classes. This won't be an everyday thing, more like an 'if it's interesting' type thing.
I'm also going to try and post a book review every few weeks or so.
I still want to keep posting thoughts on different subjects and things, because I don't think I could ever really stop doing that. It just can't be the main focus anymore. Life is multilayered.
I'll be posting blogs of interest. Assorted things that are interesting around the interwebs.
I also want to keep you all informed with my different musical listenings, so I'll be trying to post what I've been listening to lately.

The Spirit:
I'll be posting different notes I take while studying the bible. Mostly, I'm just doing this so I can start learning how to share things I think with people.
I'll be posting notes on different books I'm reading (for pleasure) for the above mentioned reasons as well.
Life lessons- thats pretty self explanitory
bible memorization (weekly)
and I want to post one of Jonathan Edwards Resolutions that I would like to work on every week.

Muddled Watery Language

I was reading this article, http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/analysis.aspx?id=23113 about the recent Supreme Court decision in Christian Legal Society V. Martinez. I already figured how it would turn out as a College has the right to set its own policies and any student organization needs to follow those if they wish to get funds from that university, but the following quote I found to be quite troubling.

"... this language demonstrated that “the Supreme Court definitively held that sexual orientation is not merely behavioral, but rather, that gay and lesbian individuals are an identifiable class.” As a class, gays would more easily qualify for protection under anti-discrimination laws."

Since when are people who share in a common activity a class? We don't do this with anything else, so why sex? Why can people be defined by sexual behavior and not fishing for example? If a group of people enjoy fishing and are a community of fishermen, are they a fishing class? Are gaming licenses discriminatory against the fishing class? Maybe those need to be abolished. If we can start calling people who participate in an activity and group together around said activity and lifestyle a class, then who isn't a class? And then there is the matter of the word "discrimination" which has been throne around far too much and is soaked in a negative connotation. All groups are discriminatory by definition. If you have a group that means there are people who are not in the group; that there are certain qualifications to be in the group. Example: National Honors Society. Example: Football Teams. I mean those groups meet the criteria for discrimination too don't they? It is discriminatory to ask someone who wants to join an organization to not participate in homosexual activity even if it a prohibition equally levied against all those who wish to join because it excludes those don't wish to do that. The mistake people make is thinking that is wrong. It is not singling any one person out. It's not saying change the color of your skin or your ethnic background and homosexual activity does not fit into those categories anyway. Even if it turns out to be a genetic thing it IS something the individual has the choice to activly participate in, or not. With that particular group, if someone wished to continue to participate in that action it would be obvious that they were not willing to meet the criteria for participating in that group. Isn't college itself an example of this? You have to meet certain criteria to get in. It is discriminatory against those who cannot pay, those whose grades were low, and those whose test scores were low. It's about compliance to the groups standards and every group has them. As for associating with that school, that is an entirely different issue, as the school can make it's own policies to which student organizations must conform if they want funding ect. That's a seperate issue. However; I think they will run into the problem of how to distinguish groups at all if they really take what they say seriously. I'm thorougly disturbed by this language though, and I think it has some bad implications for the future.

the truth belongs to God; The mistakes were mine.

The older I get, the more I perceive the worlds thorns. I see how people drift and float in waves of meaninglessness. I hate it. It's hard to watch. But whats to keep any of us from drifting? Whats to keep a man from leaving his wife for sex with another woman? what's to keep any of us from falling into sins like these? I hate that what I see so clearly in others I can also see in myself. The desire to do evil things. Whats to keep me from forgetting this whole 'christian' thing and going my own "I know whats best for me" way?

Isn't it only the cross of Christ? It's the ONLY hope in the whole entire world. Don't look elsewhere. and if your self tries to take you down another road remind yourself of the covenant God made with you for the forgiveness of your sins.Remind yourself that He took you up within Himself and made you whole before you could even ask Him. You are His vassal. He may do with you whatever He pleases. and what pleases Him will surely not be the fleeting pleasures of the flesh (this is to be differentiated from pleasure or joy in its proper place in Kingdom living). I wish that those wanderers, those vagabonds and ragamuffins, should know the Lord and true Hope that only comes from living in subjugation to the authority of God through Christ Jesus our Lord. I want to shake them and wake them up! but how can I do that if I look the same and live like I'm dead though I am alive? We war against the thorns, the want for sin, that prods us on everyside and cling to the cross with everything we are and push through.

Notes from Underground- initial thoughts

I just finished reading Dostoevsky's "Notes from Underground" and found it to be a wonderfully vulgar piece of literature. It did not take me to long into the reading to realize that I myself am an Underground Man not unlike the narrator. I'm not much for reader-response criticism, but this book certainly calls for it. The narrator's self-centric anguish is my self-centric anguish, and his living out of books is certainly similar to my own (of course now days we have infinitely more things to distract us/inhance our fantasies). He is ultimately a man who has not learned self-control in any respect because that is something that is learned through social interaction. He doesn't know how to control his thoughts which are led by his emotions and they ruin him. It is raw uncontrolled anguish centered around the self and his lack of ability to control the circumstances around him to fit with his fantasy. He wants "the beautiful and lofty" and fails to realize that the novels he reads do not reflect the truth of the world but escape to a fascade of idealistic fantasy. and he places himself over others in order to criticize them from his idealistic high rise. You cannot criticize on the same footing.

Is the fate of all cynics? The fact that we have an overly developed sense of self and inflated ideology that has no room for reality to participate or influence it? Perhaps what is "high and lofty" must be made "low and meager". Perhaps we must find a way to live outside of ourselves instead of constantly criticizing from the inside.

Acts of (re)Creation and Destruction

Oh! Athenasius, you give me so many good things to dwell on!!

"the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning. There is thus no inconsistency between creation and salvation for the One Father has employed the same Agent for both works, effecting the salvation of the world through the same Word Who made it in the beginning."

Salvation, rebirth, comes about through the same person, and esentially does not salvation come about Ex Nihilo much the same as creation?

"The presence and love of the Word had called them into being; inevitably, therefore when they lost the knowledge of God, they lost existence with it; for it is God alone Who exists, evil is non-being, the negation and antithesis of good."

Athenasius says a few paragraphs later that loss of our analogous relationship to God results inevitably in decay and entropy. A slipping back into nothingness. The antithesis of the work of creation that God has done/ is doing.

I find this all completely facinatiing in that these are the things I have been thinking about lately. Those who are at peace with God and as Bonhoeffer correctly asserts, "only the crucified man is at peace with God" are set about joining God, the creator and sustainer of all things, in his acts of (re)Creation. The opposite holds true as well, those who are at war with God are at odds with the creator and sustainer of all things, and thus cultivate nothingness and entropy.

If that sounds confusing let me know, this hasn't been in the oven very long and might not be fully baked, but ultimately it seems to me that all of mans actions are bound in either acts of creation or destruction. Creative acts are totally and completely the domain of God and we can only join Him in the venture by accepting the Word that creates and recreates and by repenting of our acts of destruction.

I think this is a line of thought that might be worth traveling down as half baked as it at the moment.

books books books

I recently went through all the books I have in my closet and was surprised at how many of them I had not actually read yet, or read all the way through. I guess this is the unfortunate price of buying more than one at a time. Anyway, I recently found my copy of "Radical Reformission" by Mark Driscoll and have been finding it extremely relavent to discussions I have been having lately. I just finished reading this part where he was talking about how some churches value tradition over innovation and that this can impede the gospel from going out. The example that imediately popped into my head (showing how ecclectic my head is, most likely) was that of translating the bible. If we didn't translate the bible from the greek and hebrew, who would be able to read it? We need to translate the gospel into modern day vinacular in much the same way. He also mentions the opposite error of valuing innovation over tradition. When this happens it is inevitable that the gospel will be innovated into oblivion. The gospel MUST nessasarily cause offence to sinful humanity with which it is at odds. So we must stay true to orthodox, traditional christian belief while being inovative in our gospel presentation. On the cover of "radical reformission" it says "reaching out without selling out" and that is exactly the right way to phrase it I think.

"Yesterday, I realized that a lot my opinions about things get in the way of my loving other people. I think certain things are right, and that there is a certain way to do them, and I've been very critical of people who don't see it that way. I think in sense I've been putting the cart before the horse. I have a lot of strong opinions about how I think the gospel and the church should interact with culture but not a lot of interaction. In the very essense of the word I've been a hypocrite."

I posted that way back in Nov. and yesterday realized that I am still in this position. I spent a lot of time this morning praying and repenting of my shallow dialogue disquised as elegant prose. Words without action are usless dribble.

"Oh, but clever words on pages turn to fragments, circles, points and lines,
And they cover them like carpets with graceful, meaningless, ornamental designs."

I've been reading this book called Holy Subversion by Trevin Wax and I like the idea that we are supposed to subvert the idols of our culture. Learning to live in a subversive way is quite another issue though. Its something only the Holy Spirit in me can do for the right reasons. If I were to stop watching movies with any sexual content in them for any other reason than the glory and exaltation of our Heavenly Father then I am being religious and blind. It is like this with every human action, thought, word. It is impossible without God. More on this next time...

A decade of music!

I don't get to do this very often, but this is the perfect excuse to share my favorite albums this year and for the decade!

for 2009:

1. As Cities Burn - Hell or High Water
Oh As Cities Burn, why did you have to leave us? This album came out at the beginning of the year and is still in heavy rotation. There is not a bad song on here. It's kind of a laid back album, minimalistic almost. good stuff though.


2. mewithoutYou- It's all Crazy, It's all False, It's all A Dream, It's all Right
Despite the fact that they change their sound heavily and remove pretty much everything that made them mewithoutYou, this album is really good when you don't compare it with their other albums.


3. Neon Horse - Haunted Horse: Songs of love, defiance, and delusion
This is just fun. Especially Chain Gang, Bang Bang


4. Dagon - Terraphobic
Straight up thrash metal goodness with some insane vocal exchanges between the drummer and the bass player.


5. Gasoline Heart - Nostalgia Ain't What it Used to Be
This is just a great rock record, although I think it's a little over produced. The singer, live, had a bit of a gruffer voice than what is on the record and I liked it a ton better when he sang like that it made the music so much more interesting.




Now, Zack's list of best albums of the decade:
1- mewithoutYou - Catch for Us the Foxes

Hands down, the most listened to album I own since it came out in 2004. I don't even know how many times I've listened to it without skipping a single track. A Masterpiece of music and art. The lyrics are brutally honest about the singer's search for God and he's not afraid to admit that he's a little confused about things and doesn't have all the answers. The music fits so well with what he says too. (only putting one mewithoutYou album on the list to be fair, but you might as well add the other ones here too)

2- As Cities Burn - Son, I loved You at Your Darkest

I know it will surprise a lot of you that this is my #2, but over the years this album has stuck with me and proved itself over and over again. The lyrics are very raw and honest, and the music towers over all the other mediocre metal out there. If you want a record that speaks to your heart as well as some music that is delicious for your ears this is it. I know some people have said that all the songs kind of sound the same, and I'll agree with that to an extent, but with nothing else out there sounding like this I don't see that being a problem.

3- Living Sacrifice - The Hammering Process

Dark gloomy atmospheres and staccato guitar playing. Fantastic. This is my FAVORITE Living Sacrifice album. All of the songs kind of this groove to them that I like a lot. It's not all about how fast they can play or how many notes they can hit. I love it. There is no way to describe this album that would do justice.

4- Zao - The Funeral of God

Good story. Great music. Dan's throat destroying growls sound great. I kind of wish that Steve Albini had produced this album instead of The Fear is What Keeps Us Here though. It would have been cool to hear it with that kind of raw production. Anyway, not a bad song on the album, its straight up unapologetic metalcore that will kick you in the face and leave you in the street. No time for friends.

5- Norma Jean - Bless the Martyr and Kiss the Child

I don't even know how to describe the awesomeness contained here in. I could listen to every song on here all day and not be sick of it. It sticks out from everything else Norma Jean has done.


I know there are a lot missing on here, but I'm at work right now and that's all I can think of off the top of my head. Love you all!

Thought this was interesting...

"What is interesting is that as we grow up our hearts don’t simply mature away from depravity, they simply become more clever at masking and disguising it. Our hearts are filled with envy, comparison, competition about anything and everything."

A truth taken from this article:

http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/blog/hvpastor/?p=353

There's a lot to think about there. I think what this guy says is 100% accurate. A heart ruled by circumstances is never satisfied.

laying it down

Yesterday I realized that a lot my opinions about things get in the way of my loving other people. I think certain things are right, and that there is a certain way to do them, and I've been very critical of people who don't see it that way. I think in sense I've been putting the cart before the horse. I have a lot of strong opinions about how I think the gospel and the church should interact with culture but not a lot of interaction. In the very essense of the word I've been a hypocrite. I've cared more about cultivating my opinions and my stance on things than I have about cultivating my brothers and sisters, investing in them and trying to help them grow. I thank God for bringing me to a place where I feel like I can lay those opinions down for a while, (easier said than done though) and just focus on learning how to love people whether I agree with exactly what they are saying or not. God's already taught me a lot about keeping my mouth shut with things, I guess now it's just time to learn to open it again but only with productive things. I know all of this sounds really vague, but honestly I think it's best that way for now until I can learn not to be so judgemental with things. So, really, that's all I have to say about that for the moment. Prayer would be appreciated. :-D

Praxis

So, I can't really say why I haven't been writing on here as much as I was before. maybe I just need to get back into the habit of it. I think tomorrow I'll write some of the stuff I have been thinking about from my notebooks. This past week I read "The call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft, and I fell in love with it. It's dark, depressing,ominous, and hopeless. Just like reality is supposed to be apart from an all loving benevolent God. You either have chaos or you have control, there is no inbetween,middle, or neutral ground. A lot of people say they don't believe in God, but they still live like there is one; call it the residue of Christendom or whatever you want, its still there; alive and well. No one wants to ruthlessly examine their own beliefs or the underground presupositions that hold up their beliefs. Then I read Lovecraft and I see that he understands what his choice means. I like that he doesn't run away from it. I think if a lot of Christians sat down and examined themselves in this way they would find a significant amount of what they say does not match up with what they do. So many wonderful concepts and doctrines within Christianity have become just words to us. What does grace mean? What does it look like like? How do I model it?

"The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates

In over my head again.

I've been thinking about so many things lately that I feel its all been jumbled together. Do you know what that means? Time to write something out. But where do I even begin?

How Great the Father's Love for Us!

This is probably one of the most important sermons I've heard lately. True repentance is hard to maintain because we all want to try and seek some kind of justification for ourselves but God always demands the exact opposite of us. Repentance can never be mere behavior modification. That view just shows our own cowardess in not wanting to confront what is truly in our hearts.

http://hv.thevillagechurch.net/resource_files/audio/200909200900HWC21ASAAA_MattChandler_ThePathPt02-AContinuingEthic.mp3

" Walking in the light means staying in tune with whats going on in your heart; it will always be uglier than you think, and that's good news because the more wicked we see our hearts the more electric and glorious we see His grace. The more electric and glorious we see His grace, the more prone we are to not walk in self-denial and hide."

The Crucified Man

"What befell Christ befalls every man in Him. It is only as one who is sentenced by God that man can live before God. Only the crucified man is at peace with God. It is in the figure of the Crucified that man recognizes and discovers himself. To be taken up by God, to be executed on the cross and reconciled, that is the reality of manhood." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer (emphasis added)

I've been thinking about this all morning. Well,... I've been thinking about it longer than that, but this morning it seemed even more pertinant to know that my life is not my own and that it has been offered up. Sometimes I get discouraged...actually a lot of the time I get discouraged, and I think its because I forget that only the crucified man is at peace. He is at peace because he has disregarded himself; he is the man who rests on the promises of God and goes wherever that takes him; he sacrifices himself in order to give Glory to God and to lift up other men; and I think most of all he submits his own will and his own desire for the God he loves. It's about sacrifice. "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." That's exactly what Jesus has done for us. Thats what we do for eachother. I forget that. I get selfish. I forget that sacrificial living is what manhood is all about.

PROBLEM:

"Thus from my lips, by yours my sin is purged"
As Cities Burn
well, I've got a will but I want yours
I've got a growing heap of crosses and burdens
I've simply lost heart to shoulder
simply no strength to lift
I've always been a man in need
'cause I keep stepping in and out of the shadow

caught by the drift and pitch of whatever it is
that keeps me coming back
I want out
'cause I'm getting sick
sick from all this swerving
driver, sick from turning on you

someone show me a hole in this cycle
show me the way away and i'm coming back
the way I came
no! I've seen this place before
surely this is no place for the light of this world

oh how sweet the sound
I know it saved but is it changing a wretch like me
oh my God how sweet is the sound
I once was blind but now I just look away

my bride, I don't want to know what I'd be without
forgiveness brushing these adulterous lips


SOLUTION:
Excerpt from "Goodbye, I"
mewithoutYou
"Come, Tortoise, standing still -- go, Hummingbird, my will
Come, Tortoise, stumbling blind -- go, Hummingbird, my eyes
Come Tortoise, empty hands -- go, Hummingbird, my plan
Come Tortoise undefined -- go, Hummingbird, my mind
Come, Tortoise, letting go -- go, Hummingbird, 'I know'
Come, Tortoise, come and die -- go, Hummingbird, my I
Oh... goodbye, I! Goodbye, I! Bye, bye, bye"

The tortoise represents being in a state where we are only moved by the will of God, While the humming bird tries to do it all on its own.

Christian sub-culture

I'll be honest. This is one of my favorite things to rant about, but I'm going to try and reel it in a little bit because my ranting is probably not going to be very productive. I don't really know how we, as the church, got to this place. I think it might be so close to where we are right now that not too many people have looked back to see exactly how we ended up here. Where is here? The place where somehow it became okay for Christians to separate themselves from the world. Now, let me explain what I mean by this before I send anyone wrong signals. I believe that we as a people are to be "in" the world but not "of" the world. I think in recent decades this has been misinterpreted though. Somehow it has come to mean that we should let the culture of the world decay into even more depravity while we create our own sub-culture (a mere shadow of the regular culture)and disappear into it. The reason that this is a misinterpretation is that it is trying to make this saying a physical reality instead of a state of mind, or a description of us as a people. Somehow it has come to mean that we have christian coffee shops as opposed to secular coffee shops, christian music as opposed to secular music, christian mints (yes there are such things), ect. The list could go on. What it boils down to is "christian" being used as an adjective instead of a noun. In some cases this might not be bad, but in the context of this blog I think it is. If in order for someONE to be a Christian they must profess Christ as their Savior and follow Him accordingly (nutshell), how can someTHING be Christian? Things are not capable of making these decisions. The fact is it is about MARKETING! If you label something as Christian it is guaranteed that someone will buy it because of this sub-culture that we have set up. It is destructive to creativity as well as destructive to our witness to the world. The fact is that perhaps twenty years ago, we needed Christian book publishers or other things like that in order to get things published that other publishers were not willing to publish, but in all honesty such things are not needed in today's society with the internet around. Christian bookstores for example are rotting from the inside out. It really has become about marketing, not content. Most of these things have little to no christian content outside of the name, and the tendency is to sell what makes people happy because it means more money, or trinkets and things that don't really serve any purpose or anybody.

Anyway, I think I started rambling a little bit. Here is the point: We need to stop thinking that our own culture will ever trump the culture around us. There is a saying that Christian culture is always 20 years behind, and this is one of the cases where it is true. The church can never trump the culture around us because we are a part of that culture. Trying to separate ourselves from it is ridiculous. We just end up looking silly because we start trying to Christianize something while the world has moved on. The fact is culture and all of its trimmings don't matter. Spreading the word of Christ and living lives obedient submission to Him is what changes people, and the more people that the Holy Spirit grabs, the more culture changes. This is a fact. Culture can't be changed by giving alternatives to it, culture changes when people come to have a saving faith in Jesus Christ. Take Rome for example, I don't think the Christians of that time were interested in having a culture war. I think they cared about people and were trying to share the gospel with them and so many people got saved that subsequently the culture started to shift (for better or worse). So I think we need to stop the sillyness. Stop dressing things up as Christian that are not. There is no such thing as a "Christian" bookstore, there is only a bookstore, a business, that sells books that express ideas influenced by Christian faith. There is no such thing as a "Christian" band there are only musicians who have come to saving faith in Jesus Christ and express the change in song. And finally, there is no "Christian" sub-culture. There are only Christians who have replaced fear of God with the fear of man. Yep, it's true. I think christian sub-culture comes from a fear of man and a lack of trust in the God of the universe. We get scared of how much culture influences us, but we should be scared of how much God does not influence us sometimes.


*Note: I'm speaking in general terms here. There are places where a sub-culture needs to form. Christian theology for example needs to stay rooted in the bible and things that make us different will form a unique culture. The point is that these things are naturally occurring and are not forced, they come from following in obedience.

social interaction online as compared to interaction in physical reality

A while ago I was thinking alot about social networking. Facebook, myspace, ect. in regard to how it affects the way we communicate in real life. Today I randomly started thinking about it again, and I've been thinking that it might have more negative effects than we realize. I'm not talking about issues of saftey as in do you really know who you are talking too, I think all of us are fairly aware of that. I'm talking more about how we interact with eachother. I think it is changing for the worse because of social networking. Why is it easier to text or chat with someone online than it is to talk to that person face to face? Why can we say something to someone online that we would never say to them in person? I think a lot of it has to do with the loss of the physical connection. Online, there is no phyiscal connection, even if you know the person and see them everyday. Body language is a key element of human interaction that cannot by mimicked in cyber space. I think excessive amounts of chatting with people online makes us forget how we are supposed to interact with people in real life. I mean in casual relationships it won't matter so much, but I think if we start spilling our guts online to other people and exposing the deep layers of our hearts with the pseudo-anonymity of the internet, we become less capable of doing so one-on-one in person. There are different rules in physical interaction than there are on the internet. This is hard to explain, but a while back I was reading about mediums, not people who talk to the dead, but the ways in which we express our ideas to other people, anyway, I forget what I was reading but the guy was talking about how there are different mediums for different ideas we are trying to express to others, for example you can't smell something through a television (the most basic level). Different levels of human interaction are needed to express different levels of ideas. I think that we are trying to shove interactions between humans that need to take place in person onto the internet.

Example: On the internet I can express an idea but I cannot act the idea out. I can tell a girl that I like her and am interested in her, but this is the only way I can show my interest in her online. While, in the real world I can actually do things with this girl and try to get to know her while keeping the "im interestedness" of it inside, perhaps where it needs to be in order to cultivate a base for the relationship.

This gets even more complicated in social interaction where there is both online interaction and physical interaction. Where do you draw the line. In my opinion I think matters of the heart MUST be confined to physical interaction in order to be regarded as sacred (not in a religious sense but in a sense where we know that it is not something cheap or free.) We talk online to plan for things where we physically interact with eachother, we have to realize that online interaction has limitations and rules just like physical interaction.

Anyway, these are just raw unprocessed thoughts. What do you think? lets have a discussion.

#2- Bible Study

Honestly, Prayer and Study of Scripture should both be @ 1, but I wanted to address them both seperately. In regard to bible study it is a lot like prayer where it should both be done individually and corporately. The scripture tells us what is required of us in regard to being a light in our community. We are to be a pure people that is "in" but not "of" and the bible presents many good examples of people who have invested in the kingdom. I think it would be beneficial to have a bible study to see examples of how men and women in the bible changed the community around them through faith in Jesus Christ. Also, examples of unfaithful people should be looked at too to see how that changed community.

#1- Prayer

I think the best way to start pursuing living out the gospel in our community is prayer. I want to start getting a group of people together every week to pray for the school, the community, our church, and that we will be faithful in our walks with God. Last year Simeon and I did this for a while and I felt like it was a good thing to do, and honestly I have no idea where to start with this action thing I've been ranting about lol. Also, Jonathan mentioned the great commission in relation to my other post and I thought that was a GREAT place to start too. So I think that should be the main theme of these prayer meetings, how to fulfill that commission best in the EMPOR!

All you do is talk.

"Help yourself don't say a thing
Your love won't show in anything at all
If all you do is talk"

Can't say anthing new.
I'm stuck on this because it's important.
Words don't mean anything apart from action.
This is the key word for the new year: do.
Let's not worry so much about getting it wrong or right: do.
I'm not talking about the "out there" type of doing either.
You know what I mean, Christian camp, isolation movements.
It needs to be done here. It needs to be lived in the moments
where it is impossible to live it.
The more we see Christ "out there" the harder it is to see Him here.
I read this great article the other day about anxiety and how we need
to give it up in order to be humble. We have to stop thinking so much
about what people think of us or how they will respond. It doesn't
matter. Nothing matters except the gospel of Christ.
But you've all heard it before, I've heard it before.
I'm tired of hearing it. Let's think of practical ways
to do and then do them. No more discussion. Only action
allowed. If you are into that idea let me know, and
lets get started.