Welcome to Nerdidom

FACTS:

1) My roommates and I have a house website.
2) We have remotes controls for our living room lights.
3) We can control the living room lights through the website.

CONCLUSTIONS:

1) This makes for lots of fun pranks.
2) I live with nerds.

That is all.

When I'm board with the crossword...

Counterfeit love is restless sleep,
Muckraking the pain buried underneath
Years of rusty ships with foul-mouthed sailors.
Tomorrows come and go and the wake darkens
Like sandpaper bandaging an open wound

Why do you ferret trash for roses,
To uncover rotten petals among decadent odors?
When camouflaged is a beauty
Under guise of a heart trodden black
Lusting for recognition
But barred by your premonition
That your white knight will heal your self inflicted scars
And tend to your wounds.
But inside is armor rusted and serrated;
His pale body beaten and integrity faded.
If not defeated, he will be soon
Like you're kissing the floor of a gas station bathroom

Wow

God is amazing. Everytime I think I know what's going on, he humbles me so that I have no choice but to worship Him. So today I realized something that could literaly change my life. Recently, I've been asking for God to show me his will. Okay. Cool. Aren't we supposed to do that? That's what I thought until this morning. Apparently I've been looking at this from the completely wrong perspective. First, the Bible is the word of God; it's His will. If anything I do contradicts what the Bible says, it's sin, and there's no way around it. But at the same time the Bible doesn't cover everything I'm going through - specifically, I mean. Should I go to China this summer, or back to VA? What about being a counselor for Impact? Was I supposed to apply? I thought the answer would come through prayer- asking about God's will. That's not bad, but sometimes we focus to much on the planning and not the doing. If I want to go to China, and God doesn't tell me not to go, and there's nothing against it in the Bible, then it's Okay for me to go. It is His will because he put a desire in my heart to go, and he hasn't told me not to. I've been caught up lately with "seeking his will" expecting a revelation about the future, so I know for sure what's going to happen, but I guess God doesn't work that way. For those of you who know me, I haven't decided to do the Camp China thing, I just used it as an example to show my point. I very well could be in Van Alstyne working at EZ-seal.
Another thing. I've been reading Romans and it's really opened my eyes to a lot of things. I find it funny that the bible and bathroom readers are the only books that we open up to a random point and start reading. The Bible was never meant to be like that; it's really hard to see the whole picture when starting at the middle. Try reading a book of the bible in one sitting, or at least enough to know what's going on. For school I'll sit down and read a textbook for an hour or two; after that I've got a pretty good understanding of what's going on. If I read a page everyday in a novel would I know what's going on after a week or two? Probably not. Or if I opened up my thermodynamics book to a random page and started reading, it'd be greek to me. I'm so guilty of doing that with my Bible, just letting the pages fall to Collosians 3:14 (random verse) and starting to read. It's so hard to get anything out of that when you don't know what's going on. I'd say that's it's better to read the bible one day a week for an hour and really understand it than for 10 minutes a day right before bed when everything that was just read slumbers in the back of your mind. So many times we put such a huge emphasis on reading the bible every day, because you've got to to be a good Christian. I'm not saying that's it's not important, but the reason for a daily bible study is to understand God more, and if that's not happening, something's wrong. God never meant for us to be bound by a quota. Freedom in Christ is being set free from the Law, so that you are not bound by silly rules and regulations that make you "better."
A note to the reader - most of these ramblings are complaints I have with myself, even though I'm writing as to give advise to a general audience. My hope is that you will learn through my struggles, so that you can glorify God more through your words and actions.

Hopefully I'll write more frequently now.

John 3:16 ruined Christianity?

It's not too hard to see that American Christianity is not at all what it should be. Every month or so headlines around the country tell of a new church scandal; embezzlement, suicide, or pedophile bishops. We can't get away from some big controversy that seems to be the same story with different characters. The pastor that gets too involved with his secretary, the Christian artist that turns to drugs and alcohol, the youth group leader that ends up pregnant from her beloved Christ-like boyfriend. We have all seen these situations, and probably know some of the characters. You don't have to look too far to find a Christian that stumbles and doesn't get back up. It happens all the time.

Is this just status quo, then? Did Christ intend for so many people to misunderstand His will for their lives, and end up turning away to a life with no convictions? When I look at the early church, in the first few chapters of Acts, these problems are almost nonexistent. Granted, as the New Testament progresses more perversion comes about, but in the first 10 or so years true Christians were disciples, not mere believers. And now, in America, most people see Jesus as an action-figure, a swear word, or their homeboy. So what could have brought on such a dramatic change in the church? Don’t get too upset, but I think it was John 3:16.

Before a mob forms screaming “heresy” with lit torches and pitchforks, let me explain my point. To do so, I’ll go back to a fundamental question, why did Jesus decide to die on the cross? Even though this is a very simple and elementary concept of Christianity, it is amazing how many people just don’t get it. There are many ways to answer this question, because Christ died and rose again for many reasons. Atonement for sin, to show God’s power, to take away livestock sacrifices, to save the world, and I’m sure that there are more that we won’t know until after we die. But until then, the Bible gives us a clear reason for Jesus’ death that all the other answers stem from. Jesus died so that God could be worshiped. That’s it. He didn’t die so that we could get into heaven and have eternal life. He wasn’t thinking of the joy we would have in worshiping Him, or our fulfillment from serving God. In fact, He wasn’t thinking of us at all. When Adam and Eve first sinned, God was not their Lord anymore. They had relied on their own intuition and lusts to make their decisions, making themselves rulers. God can not be worshiped by beings that do not acknowledge His Lordship, so Jesus had to come and take our sins so that we can worship God as he is supposed to be worshiped. God’s perfect plan for the world is to further His glory, and not to make us feel tingly and all mushy inside. All too often, though, as self-centered creatures we take Jesus’ death and put the focus on ourselves, which takes away the real purpose.

Being self-centered, we tend to focus on self-centered things. So many people decide to get saved on the premise of getting into heaven, and I am one of them. Thankfully, I found that that was not a good reason to give Jesus reign over my life, because I wanted to get into heaven, I wanted to live for eternity, it was my desire that motivated my conversion, not God’s love for me.

But being allowed a place in heaven makes me feel good, as it should. It gives a security for the rest of my life to know that if I died at this instant, it wouldn’t be the end. I’d be in heaven worshiping my God, my soul’s thirst quenched. And what a great way to convert others to Christianity! Everyone is unsure of the future after death, so why not appeal to that? That would be the easiest way.

This is where John 3:16 comes into play. I’m sure you know it. It was probably the first verse you completely memorized, and can recite backwards and forwards, maybe even in Spanish. But for those of you that might not have been raised in church, here it is:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him will not perish, but have everlasting life.”

So what could possibly be wrong with this verse? In this case, it’s not what’s in the verse, but what it doesn’t include that counts. John 3:16 is just a part of a whole. When just reading this verse, it seems that the reason God sent his Son to die was because he loved us. But this is not the case at all. As it was discussed earlier, Jesus came to give God glory, not us. So when this verse is taken out of context, it totally contradicts what Jesus actually did.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a great verse, and I love the true meaning behind it. Can you imagine the creator of the universe sacrificing His Son for us? It’s a beautiful picture of God’s love for us, but at the same time, and more importantly, it’s a beautiful picture of God’s love for His glory. It seems to be saying that, “God loved us and therefore His Son died so that we can go to heaven,” but really the point behind it is that, ”God loved his glory so much that he loved us and sent his Son to die, so that we can go to heaven.” So it is not a bad verse. In fact, it is perfectly aligned with the rest of the Bible. Only when taken out of context and presented alone is it a problem.

As self-serving people, it is much easier to focus on someone’s love for yourself than that person’s desire for your love. Christians have made John 3:16 into the anthem of Christianity, supposedly summing up the gospel in a few sentences. And because of this we have overlooked an integral part of the story, that eternal life is a byproduct of God’s perfect desire for worship, not the main point. This is where some of the problems in religion come from. As Christians, it is our duty to worship God for who He is, and not because it feels good.

John 3:16 is not the root of the problem; it’s just a symbol of it. American Christianity needs a lot of work, and in some cases it seems detrimental to Jesus’ goals as a whole. We need to pray that God will awaken us, and bring us back to true worship.