ubuntu

My Long Lost Blog

2008-04-05T23:53:00.000-07:00

I haven't written a thing for quite a while now - and sadly it is almost 3 in the morning right now so I cannot write much.

I have two days left in my Spring Break, and so far I have accomplished nothing. My average time of waking has been around 3pm each day, and average time spent on homework per day comes down to about 4 minutes.

Good night, blogging world. I'll talk to you later.

heaven and the blip

2007-07-20T22:29:00.001-07:00

i've had a realization these past few weeks:

i dont care about heaven.

it is a nice thought, and im sure heaven, whatever is in store for us in the afterlife, will be grand, but it honestly doesnt matter to me at all while i live my day to day life.

a few weeks back i visited my brother in south carolina. he's in the navy. he recently joined a baptist church, a rather conservative baptist church it seems, and he himself has become rather conservative in his religious views. not that being conservative is a bad thing, but being a raging liberal myself, we dont tend to see eye to eye on alot of things. i attended sunday morning service at his church, i believe it was called old fort baptist church, and i was astounded. and not astounded in a good way. the pastor's sermon was about a line. a line has no beginning, and no end. he also illustrated a dot on this line, a tiny little blip. the blip was our life, here on earth. the line was eternity. his point was that we focus too much on here and now, when we should be focused on eternity. personally, i think he had it backwards.

tony campolo spoke here at my college the past two days. if your not familiar with tony campolo, i strongly recommend you seeking out some tapes or cd's of his lectures. he is brilliant. his focus, in these two lectures, had nothing to do with eternity. nothing to do with heaven, and certainly nothing to do with who we were before this blip. his focus was on what we do now. and his main focus was poverty.

campolo works with various groups, to help establish jobs in two-thirds world countries. he also works with inner city people here in america (the inner city is very similar to the two-thirds world). his organization was given an award by the president of the world bank, because according to their calculations, if what they did continued to grow on the scale it had been, they would have solved 10% of the poverty in the WORLD. now, that is doing something with your life.

as a kid, i heard many times the terrors of he.ll. it sure wasnt a place i wanted to go. and even more scary, as death wasnt the worst of my fears (we kids sure thought ourselves invincible), they told us that we might get....left behind! campolo mentioned these ideas as well, and said he sure wished more people got their eschatology from Jesus, and not time lahaye, and i fully agree with him. but the point is...all my life i have been kept in the church by scare tactics! i have attended regularly because i wanted to go to heaven! i would like somebody to show me how following the "rules" in order to do better myself (making it into heaven, instead of he.ll), coincided with any of Jesus' teachings?

instead of focusing on this eternal "line," instead of trying to guarantee a prime spot in heaven, why dont we focus on what we can do with this life? if life here on earth didnt matter, and it was all about the afterlife, why were we even born? why couldnt we just chill up in heaven for eternity, and have to deal with this lousy blip at all? forget the line! live the blip!

riches

2007-07-20T22:28:00.000-07:00

what is it about money?

i always complain i dont have enough of it. yet i can pay my rent. i can pay my electric bill. i havent missed a meal yet since i've been living in my apartment, and thats been over a month. i was able to pay the school most of what i owed them, so i could register.

God really blessed me this summer with money. i acquired quite a bit. but sadly, after i payed the main bills, i blew some of it on pointless stuff...granted, i really enjoy taking a girl out to dinner, but must i go to the most expensive restaurant i can find? so what if the steak is good!

not only do i have enough to pay the bills, but also to blow on pointless stuff. why do i complain that i dont have enough? why do i worry about it?

my brother came to visit me the other day. we went out mudding in his jeep. that was fun, i'd never done it before. we were on our way back, and stopped at a gas station for a soda. we were thirsty, and instead of driving 20 minutes and getting something to drink at home, we figured we had a couple bucks to blow. we go in, and the first thing we do is complain that the cups are made of styrofoam. we werent complaining that they were bad for the environment, but simply that styrofoam is annoying. then we noticed the price. $1.29. for a 44 ounce soda! my brother was outraged! his reaction made me think...why the hell does having to pay $1.29 for more soda than we should anyway bother us?

we shouldnt waste our money on a soda in the first place. but now, that we have decided to go ahead and waste our money, we, the richest country in the world, whines and moans about spending 20 cents more than usual for a soda.

we do the same about gas. have you seen gas prices overseas? stop complaining till you find out how much others pay.

i heard some numbers yesterday, that 92% of the worlds population doesnt own a carthats crazyand i am worried i dont have enough?

i dont like money any more. my continuous struggle for material posessions never ends! i just cant get enough. so if i am never going to get enough, why cant i just stop trying?

one of my professors once said that a church budget is a theological document. that in itself is enough to write pages about, but i will take that statement and revise it: any christian's budget is a theological document. where you spend your money is where your heart is.

if i review my budget, i see what i spend my money on, what i truly care about. i dont think i like what i see. i think i need to stop spending my money, and start giving my money.

them homersexuals...

2007-07-20T22:27:00.000-07:00

i've heard alot of crap lately about homosexuality. i wrote this on a message board today, in response to alot of people's "disdain" towards homosexuals.

___________________________________________________

i dont agree with homosexuality, but thats ok. im sure alot of people dont agree with me, and thats ok too.

i do, however, love homosexuals. just like i love everybody, even though that can be hard as krap sometimes, its something i have to work on every day.

i think one of the reasons there is so much animosity towards Christianity these days, is found within the church. when asked what is wrong with the world, you can point at all the "sin," the homosexuals, the drug users, the liars, the murderers, the adulterers, and whatever else you want to call people. i think the biggest problem, bigger than homosexuality, bigger than abortion, bigger than murder, bigger than genocide in uganda, is one that you and i participate in ever day - that of hypocricy.

the church echoes the teachings and life of Christ, summed up in these 2 commandments, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and might," and "Love your neighbor as yourself."

it is easy to say that we Love God. i'm sure alot of Christians do. but have we fed Him when he was hungry, or clothed him when he was naked, or given him shelter when he was cold and all alone? this doesnt apply just to the poor. this applies to anyone who needs help. including homosexuals, even if it does "support" their "cause."

so obviously, it is alot harder to claim that we follow the second of these commandments...unless all our neighbors are upper-middle class caucasian Christians sitting in the pew with us. (please realize, i'm not speaking about everyone, im sure many even in this chatboard are above this, but the majority of the american church is not!).

if a person wants to know if you follow the first of these commandments, they need only to look at how well you follow the second. the church preaches unconditional love to our neighbors...but the hypocricy is found when our orthopraxy does not match up with our orthodoxy.

the american church loves everyone unconditionally. as long as everyone doesnt include homosexuals, drug dealers, prostitutes, those who have had or even thought about abortions, or democrats.

oh wait, that doesnt sound like unconditional to me...those seem a bit like conditions, dont they?

you dont love a person by standing in the street screaming at them that they are going to hell. you dont love a person by handing them a tract and avoiding eye contact. you love a person through relationships.

i heard a quote recently, that "Christians dont tell lies...they go to Church and sing them." and that rings so true. words are empty and meaningless. we can say we love homosexuals all we want, but it doesnt mean krap.

love is an action, it is something you do.

it isnt something i can be positive on, but i am fairly sure that i know a couple of homosexuals that i will see when i get into the kingdom. they are just struggling with something in their lives right now, just like there are things that i am struggling with as well.

i dont agree with homosexuality, but thats ok. i still support them out of Love.