Good stuff!

I read this article by Stephen Christian of Anberlin. http://www.relevantmagazine.com/community/blogs/YOUR-IRON-RUSTS.html
and this line stuck out to me,

"Do not tell me what you plan to do, tell me of what you have done.
Do not tell me what your hopes are, tell me what hope you have shared.
Do not tell me how hard you will try, but how exhausted you are from the fight and the victory that followed."

And it suddenly dawned on me that I've been looking at everything from the wrong angle. I look at things that need to be done, the person I want to become, the things I want to work on, ect. from the angle of "this is what I plan to do" but I miss the FACT that Jesus already accomplished everything on the cross. "It is finished" right? My pastor always tells me to look at things from a "top down" angle and not from a "bottom up" one, and I think I finally am starting to see it. I need to stop thinking about what I want to accomplish and start thinking about what Jesus has already accomplished in me and how He is getting rid of everything that doesn't reflect this change that has already occured. Planning things is good, it has its place, but we should not speak of plans, maybe those are things we keep to ourselves, we should only speak of the things that we are already doing. I'm done planning. Let's be doers of the word.

Random thoughts I just had.

I'm at work right now, and I just had a weird thought. There is this line from the new mewithoutYou album, from the song "Bullet to Binary (pt. 2) that captures a lot of what I've been thinking about lately.

"...You project on her your inward scene
she's a blank external movie screen..."

Is it possible that we don't see people for who they are, but rather, for who they are only in relation to ourselves? I mean, that we only see the aspects of people that we see or do not see coinciding with our own existance. Example: Everytime I see a girl if I immediately think about whether I could date her or not. Better example: I don't hang out with anybody that I don't get some kind of mutual pleasure from.

If we only try and see ourselves in other people we will never be able to love them the way God does. We need to find a way to love them as wholey seperate beings. There is no point in constantly comparing ourselves to others or vice versa. We are not God; other people were not made in our image, or we in theirs, but the image of God. We project ourselves onto Him too though, that makes things difficult.

Thoughts on Culture, Narcissism, and Perception

I've been reading about these books: The Culture of Narcissism,and The Society of the Spectacle. I find it interesting that one can draw conclusions from these books without having even read them.

Culture of Narcissism: We don't know who we are so we obsess over ourselves. (Displacement)
Society of the Spectacle: Things and shades of things have hidden the true reality of the world from us. (Displacement)

Now insert the intro from Blindside's "The Great Depression" -

We are the sons and daughters of a revolution
Revolutionaries walking us out of oppression and into a no-law promised land
Where there is no right or wrong
And this leaves us with a great sense of sadness growing inside our soul
No one can explain where it's coming from
Or where it's taking us
We just know that something is lost
That somehow we are lost
And this, my friend, is the great depression


There is an absolute that our culture hides from us. We look for it in the pursuit of ourselves, things, ideas, ect. but it is nowhere to be found. 2 conclusions can be drawn: Therefore there is no absolute (an absolute in itself), or there is an absolute that lies wholey outside of these things. The guy who wrote "The society of spectacle" says that a total revolution is needed in order to get out of the current state of things. This is false, because in todays society, all they have to do is start marketing the revolution and it is over. Example: Punk rock goes from anti-consumer, anti-market, to a marketable consumer item in how long...? No one wants to face the fact that the real problem lies within the idea of the self to begin with. It is the Self that draws us to the knumb and the comfortable. People want to blame all of this stuff on capitalism, or buisnesses, ect. but the truth is they only sell it because we want it. The opposite of this is true as well. The sooner everyone realizes that Man can only truly know himself when he realizes that he is only a reflection of God. This is not merely our function, it is our being. That is the ultimate truth behind things. God holds all goodness and purity within himself, meaning that everything outside of Himself is impure, unless He imparts His goodness upon it. We are only good when God declares us good. We are only pure when God declares us pure. When we take these things into our own hands they cease to be what they are and become mere shadows. Why? Because it's not reality. Everything outside of God is abscence unless he makes it good through his command and deed. Thank God for Jesus Christ our Holy mediatior who does this for us. Amen.

**Edit** I re-read this just now, and I think I failed to mention how the spectacle and the narcissism interact. Basically, I think A- either people try and "find themselves" in the spectacle, whatever that might be, or B- I don't think it would be too far fetched to say that some people see themselves as the spectacle. How many people have visited my blog/website lately? How many friends do I have on facebook? ect...

reformed theology and Christian mysticism

I've been doing research on these two topics all day, I am absolutley fascinated by both of them. This is interesting because from what I have gathered most people seem to find them incompatible. I don't think they are though, people just don't understand what is meant by "mysticism" they get scared because its not concrete or analytical. It sounds way too much like this post-modern thing. Once again, I think we are just misunderstanding the mystic's way of describing things. Unity with God is a big thing for them. I think that is a goal of reformed theology as well, we just go about it a different way, or call it different things. What's the difference between "disciplining myself in order to be more Christ like" or "taking off the new flesh and putting on Christ" they mean the same thing don't they? I just think that reformed theology gets too caught up in the definitions sometimes to see the interconnectedness of everything, which perhaps is what the mystic focuses too much on. Anyway, these are just primary thoughts right now. I'm reading the Theologia Germanica that I found for free on the internet right now. I don't see anything heretical in it. I don't see anything wrong in promoting humility and complete subjegation to Christ. Mysticism and Bonhoeffer have a lot in common too. how much more mystical can you get than "only the crucified man is at peace with God"? he certainly doesn't mean that we must be literally crucifed, but at the same time he does mean that for Jesus. The cross is where every paradox you can think of meets. The wrath of God and the peace of God meet at the cross. God can't be ununified (peace) and yet Jesus was seperated (wrath). crazy stuff. He says "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" while at the very same time being God. Paradox. Mystery. Mystic.

A poem

I haven't shared anything in a while, so I thought I would share a poem I wrote sometime this semester, I don't remember exactly when.

I am the upper hand.
I am the conquerer.
with a deftness only the bloodied man
can know, I purge you from the land of
the broken.New creation, arise and
don't look back. You will not wither
for I sustain you.You will not be cut down
for I have stayed the executioners hand.
No, don't look back
to that winter. Spring
brings with it the
taste of all things new.
Go out and live as was intended.
Naked, void of pretense;
free to live in obedience in the reality
of My love for you.
This is not possible, it only ever is.
"I am who I am"
now go be who you must be in light of this.

On forgiveness...

"we all well know,
we're gonna reap what we sow
but Grace, we all know,
can take the place of all we owe
so why not let's Forgive
everyone
everywhere
everything
all the time?"

I am a fan. Marissa and I talked today (sort of) and had a chance to apologize for everything. It was nice. I still don't think I can be friends. I don't trust myself not to do something stupid, but I'm glad neither of us seems to be worse off for all of it. God is good and His grace can redeem our selfishness in ways we could never dream of. I know it doesn't always work out like this. I know someday there will be a rift with someone because of sin, or maybe even just circumstances, that won't be able to be redeemed for one reason or another, and I know that will hurt a lot. But for now, I rejoice in the reconciling of His grace and all that has come of this, both the good and the bad (in the end, it seems like they are both really the same thing). Anyway, I was really excited about God randomly doing this, so I thought I would share about it.

"It's all crazy! It's all false! It's all a dream! It's alright" review

This is a review in progress. I've only listened to the album 5 times so far, so don't expect too much.

First impressions:
The new mewithoutYou album is epic. I know it is epic because I don't like everything on it from the first listen. It's not sensuous ear candy. Catch for us the Foxes took me 6 months to get into, but when it clicked I listened to it everyday for almost 2 years (no joke). Brother, Sister took me a while to get into as well, but it is still in regular rotation. mewithoutYou records are not about instant satisfaction, they are about longevity. These are the type of albums you lock yourself in your room to listen to and just pour over the lyrics while you listen to the album over and over again and don't you dare even think about skipping any tracks, because that will ruin the experience. I'm thinking I'd like to do a song by song analysis going over the various themes contained within each song because you miss stuff if you don't, and I don't want to miss anything. The lyrics are always center stage with mewithoutYou, you can count on that. Even songs like "Yellow Spider" have huge spiritual themes that need to be chewed on for a long time before being swallowed. That's the problem with most music now days is that you can swallow it whole without much contemplation. Tsk Tsk. Anyway, I'll add to this in about a week or so when I've listened to the album some more. Idealy I'd like to start with the first song and then just go straight through the whole album.