Do not think me gentle because I speak in praise of gentleness, or elegant because I honour the grace that keeps this world. I am a [wo]man crude as any, gross of speech, intolerant, stubborn, angry, full of fits and furies. That I may have spoken well at times, is not natural. A wonder is what it is. (Wendell Berry)

Sunday, October 29, 2006

today

im frustrated. i have so much work to do and absolutely no motivation. its just one of those days i wish i could start over.

Monday, October 23, 2006

What happens when I get tired and start thinking about deep issues.

Every so often I'll get a song stuck in my head for a couple of days. This weekend it was this song by John Reuben.

Taught young
The world's wisdom:
I was told life's a game, the earth will be your stadium.
Be alert, pay attention,
One day even your friends will become the competition.
Trust no one.
But do remember this:
Never burn any potential bridges.
Know who's who,
and what they can do for you,
and dont feel bad cuz in the end they're gonna do it to you too,
remember life's not fair.
In order to maintain
you're gonna have to let your sensitivities be trained-
a machine,
more than a human being,
what you say doesn't always have to be what you mean.
Tell them what they want to hear, if it's to your benefit,
and words behind closed doors are insignificant.
Push yourself.
Never be satisfied-
Even if you don't get it, at least you died knowing you tried.


I've been thinking. What if I actually lived according to the value God places on me instead of the value people place on me? What if people put more value on God's opinion of things? What if pretty really didn't matter? I feel like I pick and choose which "Christiany" things I do and don't want to do. Do I really need to watch tv? Do I really even need to be in college? Do I need to decorate my room/ download more music/ buy myself dumb souvineirs/ go to the movies? Is having a purposeless conversation wrong? Why do I have a mirror in my room? Are these things products of the fall? Are they things we ignore? Have I gone overboard? Should we all go overboard? What is the cost of purposelessness?

I don't know.

Tuesday, October 17, 2006

My Ruminations on Comfort

I think the thing towards which everyone in the world strives is comfort. I think this is why people think they exist. Especially in America right now, people strive towards well being with no goal beyond itself. When people are comfortable, they are happy. When people are not comfortable, they are not happy. If anyone can think of an exception to this rule, please inform me immediately, because my whole theory on life will have been smashed to pieces.
My theory on comfort, we'll call it my Comfort Hypothesis, has some corollaries.
Corollary #1:
Uncomfort was a product of the fall. Not only was it a product of the fall, but it was the first and primary feeling felt after it. Adam and Eve felt naked, and therefore tried to clothe themselves. You don't sew fig leaves together because you have nothing else to do... you sew fig leaves together because you think "I didn't feel naked and uncomfortable before, I'm going to try to fix my uncomfort." I mean, in real life, they were probably thinking "oh crap" but I'm expounding on the meaning of crap. okay? okay.
Corollary #2:
Since uncomfort was a natural product of the fall, it will not leave until we are not on earth. Uncomfort wasn't like sin, where it can be removed by Christ. Uncomfort was like disease- just because Christ died for our sins, we will not cease to get sick. Uncomfort was not "conquered" like sin and death were. Feeling uncomfort is not bad like committing acts against God's nature or will are. Feeling uncomfort is normal and acceptable and sometimes demanded by God (see c#3). Our goal as Christians is not to rid the world of uncomfort and ooky feelings.
Corollary #3:
If uncomfort was caused by the fall (#1) and not something we are trying to defeat (#2), then God will naturally use uncomfort for good, for His Glory and His Purpose. This is the nature of God. God is redeeming the world by using the natural products of sin and the fall for his benefit, or else he would've destroyed the world "in the beginning" and not made the effort of undoing sin.

My point:
We do not exist to make ourselves comfortable. We do not exist to make money, we do not exist to soley procreate and we do not exist to make other people like us.
We exist for God.
The price we must pay to follow God is the price of comfort. It's difficult to wait for support to role in. It's difficult to wonder where your next paycheck is going to come from. It's difficult to be surrounded by people who don't like you even if it's their problem and not yours. It is really difficult to go for a year without seeing your family because you are called to a country thousands of miles away.
God uses this uncomfort to make us more like him. He uses uncomfort to mold us into people who follow his rules and His Spirit's leading instead of our own stomachs. Until we forfeit comfort for the sake of Christ, we will never be effective. We cannot be both comfortable on the verge of breakthrough. We cannot be both comfortable and revolutionary. We cannot be both comfortable and in complete reliance.

Now, here inlies the rub. When we are in complete reliance on God, when we are alone in our revolution, when we are starving, injured, in jail, and lonely, guess who is there with us? Praise God, the Comforter! All of a sudden, we experience a new kind of comfort! It is not a comfort of which the world knows, nor one it would even recognize as comfort- it is a comfort that transcends worldly comfort. All of a sudden, God's comfort makes the world's comfort irrelevent. It shouldn't even be the same word. Amen.

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Why it takes so long for me to post.

I'm writing my life story. Stay tuned.