Monthly Archives: February 2005

A Personal Request

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I don’t typically make requests of people. I usually like to accomplish things on my own merit. I’m making an exception to my own rule just this once. Actually, it’s less of a request and more of a global giving of permission. I enjoy discussion and dialogue with other people. It shapes me in ways I usually don’t expect. As such, if you enjoy reading my thoughts here and, for those of you who have already signed up, if you enjoy Open Dialogue
and find it a valuable resource, please feel free to advertise both to others. In this case, the more participants, the better the discussion!

Yeah, He’s That Kind of God

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I posted this earlier today as a comment on Joel’s blog and I think that it bears repeating here.

So, in the beginning, God created Man in a state of perfection. He did not want mindless servitude. Instead, he opted to give his new creation the ability to choose relationship and fellowship over disassociation and unfamiliarity. God desired relationship, not out of some need, for he certainly had all that he needed and was not lonely nor needed anything to give him glory. He simply desired to create, and so he did, and Man was born into God’s image. Yet, relationship means little if it is not established freely, and so God had to give Man the ability and option to choose. And being all-knowing, God of course knew that Man would fail, would be
deceived. Still, this does not detract from God’s glory for all things always yet give God the glory for he is able ever to work things out for the greater good. He is the Father, and we are the children, and as such he demands no less than our love and loyalty. Yet his demand is gracious, compassionate, and patient, and his wrath is experienced only as a last resort, as the last option to soften a heart that has been hardened. God could have made things differently, surely, and yet he chose to create the world in this way. He could have made another completely like unto himself, and yet he would still be the Creator and the new would still
be the created.

Christ is yet the firstborn over all for he is the first to create, the first to sanctify, the first to defeat death, and the first, and only, to establish a direct line of everlasting relationship to the Father.

Sleep Is A Complete Waste of Time

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I feel like sleep wastes so much of my time, time that I would much rather spend catching up on my reading, writing down all those thoughts I never quite seem to get to, doing all those things on my to-do list that either need doing or that I want to work on. Do you realize
that you spend about a third of your life catching Zs?

Another thought, another question. I stumbled across another brother’s Xanga this afternoon, someone I’ve not met and yet feel something of a kinship with. How is that we as Christians seem to neglect our duty to keep up with each other’s lives, fail to keep each other accountible, somehow ‘forget’ to ask each other, Hey, how are you doing with _________? And why do we find it so difficult to seek each other out and share our burdens with another? Part of it, I’m sure, is guilt and shame and embarrassment. Part of it, I fear, is a condemnation to the Body of Christ — we are simply afraid of the judgment of our fellow believers. I know I’m guilty of this, on both sides, both in not seeking others out for help and in not seeking others out to help.

So, I guess the question is, what am I going to do about it?

So, Why Do You Blog?

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I admit it. I periodically suffer from bouts of despondency. Truth be known, I’m actually very moody and wrestle with depression on a fairly regular basis. (And the fact that my wife can put up with me day after day makes me love her all that much more.)

One thing that consistently plagues me when I hit these low points is to wonder why I bother to write, why I join in on different discussions, both over on my new forum and here on Xanga. I find myself wondering if, in the long-run, it even matters, does it make a difference, is this deep passion of mine to think deeply on the things that seem to matter and then to share that with others just so much wasted effort and energy. I guess I often grow discouraged at the
seeming lack of interest, especially in our generation, in the things that matter most, in learning what it means to live this life in a way that pleases God and draws others to Him. Admittedly, I struggle along from day to day, and more often than not find myself doing exactly the opposite of what I know I should be doing, and yet I feel this deep, burning desire to still try to get it right.

All of what I do here on Xanga and at Open Dialogue is with the intent of getting it right and seeing others get it right, too. I read what some folks write and wonder what it is they live for, what drives them, what motivates them. And for others, it is very clear what it is they live for, and it either causes me to rejoice or to feel great sadness.

I write here to teach myself and to share with others what I am learning, with hopes that we can work on each other to become more like Christ. I love the discussions here and at Open Dialogue and with the people I talk to. But I am also discouraged at how few of us seem to actually have this desire to reflect Christ.

I will continue to try to meet people where they are, to take part in their thoughts and discussions, to help them see Christ just a little better. In the meantime, I will also continue my own journey, writing here and at Open Dialogue, and hope that others find it worth their time to join me.

Why do you write? What do you hope to accomplish? How have you already been changed?

My Head Is Decidely Full

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So many good topics of discussion going on in so many places
right now.� I wish I had the time to run each one down thoroughly
and hash it out with people whose thoughts and opinions I so
respect.� For now I have to simply content myself with thoughtful
and quiet contemplation.� Just a few topics waging war inside my
skull:

-Intellectual reasons for rejecting God
-Knowing when to speak up for what’s right and dealing with those who don’t want to hear it
-Existentialism, modernism, postmodernism, and other philosophical worldviews
-The hardcore 1611 KJV crowd and their affect on the collective testimonies of the Body of Christ

Like I said, a lot going on up in the ol’ noggin.� I’ll be lucky to fall asleep before midnight…

Skepticism, cynicism, and disillusionment

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I’ve been picking up a vibe lately. Well, it’s actually been a lot longer than just lately, but I’ve really been thinking about it a lot lately. Is it ever alright to be skeptical? Cynical? And just to further add fuel to the fire, what happens when a person becomes jaded? Disillusioned? Disenchanted? More specifically, what happens when any of these states of mind creep into our Christian life and walk, into our churches, into our testimonies? What causes them? Are they good or bad? If they are good, how do we take full advantage of them? If they are bad, how do we correct them?

Just for kicks, I actually went out and looked these words up. Here ya’ go:

skepticism:
1. A doubting or questioning attitude or state of mind; dubiety. See Synonyms at uncertainty.
2. Philosophy.
A. The ancient school of Pyrrho of Elis that stressed the uncertainty of our beliefs in order to oppose dogmatism.
B. The doctrine that absolute knowledge is impossible, either in a particular domain or in general.
C. A methodology based on an assumption of doubt with the aim of acquiring approximate or relative certainty
3. Doubt or disbelief of religious tenets.

cynicism:
1. An attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general
distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others: the public
cynicism aroused by governmental scandals.

2. A scornfully or jadedly negative comment or act: “She arrived at a
philosophy of her own, all made up of her private notations and
cynicisms” (Henry James).

Since the word ‘jaded’ was referenced in this last definition, I had to look it up.

jaded:

1. Worn out; wearied: “My father’s words had left me jaded and depressed” (William Styron).

2. Dulled by surfeit; sated: “the sickeningly sweet life of the amoral, jaded, bored upper classes” (John Simon).

3. Cynically or pretentiously callous.

And since I’ve been seeing a lot of disillusioned Christians, I felt obligated to look this one up as well.

disillusioned:
1. The act of disenchanting.

2. The condition or fact of being disenchanted.

Don’t you just love when a definition doesn’t really define the word? Try this. I think you might be surprised:

disenchanted:
To free from illusion or false belief; undeceive.

I don’t think most of us actually use the word ‘disenchanted’ to mean this, so I was surprised when I actually looked it up. Sadly, I fear that there are many Christians who believe there is a need to be ‘freed’ from Christian beliefs.

As always this post is mirrored over on my forum, so please feel free to mirror any comments there, as well.

Look Before You Leap (or, Make Sure You Know What You’re Talking About Before You Speak)

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I love irony. Right up until the point where it teaches me something about myself that I’d really rather not know.

I was laid low this morning by a singular realization. I love the written word. I love the way it can express a thought with an array of color, a depth of emotion, and a transcendance of thought. I love the way the written word gives me time and opportunity to fully articulate a thought, to express it the way I really mean to. The irony is this — in writing a response to a thought or an idea, I don’t always take the time to make sure I understand the original point. I sometimes find myself simply reacting rather than addressing the intended point, and in the process I end up missing the point altogether. I forget to ask the question, What is he/she saying here? Instead, I end up simply asking, albeit unconsciously, How can I react to this? What thoughts are spurred by what this individual is saying? I really need to learn to pay more attention, to ask the right questions, and to answer in kind. I need to be more thoughtful in my responses, in my interactions with others, because failure to do so can potentially cause great harm, embarrassment, and shame.

I need to learn wisdom.

Defining Our Terms: Are We Talking About the Same Thing?

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Having read a couple of different discussions lately (here and here), I’ve had to wonder if we end up talking about the same thing. It seems like so much of the discussion would go more smoothly if we would first define our terms. Most words in the English language carry the same general meanings for everybody, but those same words can often be nuanced slightly differently for different people, depending on personal experiences. So,if a particular word is key to a discussion, it would make sense to clearly spell out how that word is defined initially before proceeding to make a point using that word. Otherwise, you end up running the risk of talking about two (or more) different things until someone finally figures it out and attempts to bring everyone to the same playing field.

Some words that have cropped up in recent discussions that seem to carry slightly different meanings for different people:

  • Certainty
  • Confidence
  • Faith
  • Trust
  • Belief
  • Reason

How I define such words may not be the way you define them, even though both our personal definitions are probably very similar. So, it may be advantageous to mutually define certain words (if possible) before proceeding with the dialogue.

Open Dialogue and Subdomains

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For anyone who might be trying to access my site (http://www.open-dialogue.com/forum/index.php) without success right now, try this one: http://open-dialogue.com/forum/index.php. It’s the same, just without the www. prefix. For some reason the www. isn’t working, and I’ve emailed tech support to find out why. I’ll let you know when you can go back to using the www. prefix (if you want to).

[Edit] Huh…. it seems as though the problem may be an issue inside Mozilla Firefox because I just tapped the whole address into IE and it loaded with no problems. I’m still waiting to hear back from tech support, but dang if I’m not stupefied by that one.

[Edit-2] Yup, I heard back from tech support. Ironically enough, I was the only one having trouble accessing my own forum this afternoon, and it had nothing to do with the servers. As much as I love Mozilla Firefox, sometimes it can get real cranky. Turns out, all I had to do was close the browser and reopen it to clear up the problem. I still don’t know why it didn’t like the www. prefix. Either way, the forum is running smoothly, so c’mon over for a chat!