love my iPod

1,927 songs and I’m only about halfway through my CD collection… no videos yet!  Sheesh! 

on weird wordpress lack of indentation and being older

I turned 32 this month without much fanfare.

As a birthday present to myself, I saved up all my pennies and purchased a shiny new MacBook, an iPod classic (80 GB), and a new digital camera with which I might take and post more photos.

I have also made the promise to myself that I will become much more techno-savvy than I am now, which isn’t terribly much right now.  As you can probably see, something has gone cattywhumpus with the spacing between paragraphs (or lack of paragraphs), when really, AS I TYPE THIS, I am using appropriate paragraphing.  Sometime in the 2 seconds between saving/publishing my draft and the draft actually posting, all my nice neat paragraph divisions get smooshed together, as evidenced in the last couple of entries I have written.

I have no control over this, it seems.  32 suddenly feels like 60, like I am my parents trying to figure out how to email.  There must be a solution to this, some setting feature that I am overlooking.  I just don’t see it.  Why does WordPress hate me?

P.S. So then I published the above and it appeared beautifully posted, just as I had typed it.  GUHHH! 

paradox

Finally, I’m back and checking messages on here and thinking somewhat wearily (I am dog-tired, whatever dog-tired really is…) considering posting some kind of something about what I’ve been up to.  

I read this really enlightening comment that my friend Brian left that got my gears turning (dangeroous, as I’m on my lunch break and really do not to be thinking so hard at the moment).  I responded in the comments, but then decided to reproduce the whole thing here because the discussion is a good jumping-off point for the whole axle of Christian spirituality: this journey with Christ is wrought with paradox, from beginning to end, top to bottom.

Here is just one little morsel of that concept.

Brian (in response to my last entry):

I would be atheist myself. My walk toward atheism began by asking myself that very question.

I still have not arrived, but I admit my faith is a faith of hope rather than a living sense of certainty.The story of Christianity is a beautiful one and I like very much to think that its premise has some validity to it even though all worldly “evidence” lacks validity.

ray:

Hi all,

So sorry i have been slow to respond. Thanks for contributing your thoughts to my thoughts. I just reread what I wrote here and I am amazed that I even strung together a quasi-coherent thought out of the whole jumbled mess that made up my head-space on that particular day.

Brian, your honesty is raw and poignant. We will never completely “arrive” until we cross over to the “Sweet By and By,” like some old gospel hymn from my childhood talks about. I like to think that I take reverently agnostic view some of the time. Paradoxically, the New Testament tells us we can have assurance of those things that are hoped for through the finished work of Christ; that what he has accomplished secures our “life to the fullest” starting now and continuing indefinitely.I sometimes stop and think about that and it just. blows. my. mind. I can’t REALLY know absolutely with indesputable proof, but I can.

Head a’splode.

I have no idea what is going on with the fonts, etc.  Sorry!  I am perturbed by my sudden lack of control over my blog’s presentation. 

if i wasn’t a christian, what would i be?

Every once in a while, I read things or have conversations with people that make me think more than I do already (thanks for that, I say only slightly sarcastically), stuff that calls into question the things I believe and why I believe them so strongly (or perhaps not strongly enough).  To be more intentionally vague, I sometimes “try out” looking at things from the perspective of someone who is not a professing Christian and probably never will be.  When I do this little exercise, I can totally see where someone would be turned off from wanting to be a Christian, even if they thought Jesus was really great but couldn’t quite swallow the doctrines or dogma surrounding him.

Most recently, I stumbled upon a vlog by Mark Driscoll of Seattle’s Mars Hill Church, which was down the street from where I used to live.  It’s no secret that those who know me know that I find Mark Driscoll’s… ummm… discourse style while preaching and teaching to be more than a little obnoxious and more than a lot offensive, despite whatever other great personal characteristics he has.  Whatever, it’s a free country.  Anyway, I came across a vlog teaching he gave on the emerging church and what he feels are some of the pros and cons among the variants who subscribe to being a part of the “conversation.”  He gave an example of a pastor friend of his, whom he was careful to say he personally liked very well, that answered this question Driscoll posed to him: “Do you believe one can be a homosexual and a Christian”  This pastor replied, “I believe it’s okay.”  And of course Driscoll went on to say this pastor, among several others, is going against the handed-down and “clear teaching” of the church and the Bible through the centuries, etc etc.

It’s moments like these that I stop and reconsider, well, Driscoll says I can’t be  a Christian.  Fine.  I’ll go be something else.  But what?  These thoughts don’t mean I’ll actually go out and do them.  But it makes me think about my motives.  Is it because I would much rather be known as gay than be known as a Christian?  Is it because I’m being “flesh-y” and just really want to justify being able to sleep around with a lot of men (which I’m not doing, by the way)?  Do I believe that my sexual orientation is pretty much fixed and will not change?  If so, am I deceiving myself by claiming to be a part of a faith tradition that really does not want me or others like me no matter how I interpret my own experiences of Christ with my daily life and reflection on scripture?  I know this is the conclusion of many, many, MANY disenfranchised, disenchanted, and disillusioned men and women out there.  For all the churches that do put out the welcome mats (and even the rainbow flags), a few might come hesitantly back but most never will bother again.  If I ever found myself among them, what would I find to replace my understanding of faith in Christ as Savior?

My first thought would be Buddhism, but even Buddhism with all of its current fashionable popularity here in the West still has its points of contention (I find the idea of reincarnation and balancing out all that karma to be an exhausting thought and I just wouldn’t want to work that hard).  No other world religions have any real appeal to me so I would most likely be nothing at all, reducing myself to a quasi-pious agnostic.

And then I keep coming back to Jesus, what he taught, how he lived, how he died, and how his resurrection changes everything.  It turns everything on its head, it has the power to potentially change everything by drawing each human being alive into this grand drama of God’s reconnaissance to save, heal, and make new the entire universe.  When I see being a Christian as being a part of something bigger than myself, something that God has set in motion to make the world a better place and I’m being invited to join in making it better, I find this something I gladly give my heart and allegince to, with or without people like Driscoll’s permission.  Salvation is so much more than making sure “I” get into heaven and selling heaven to as many people as I can along the way; salvation is right here and now.  Donald Miller, the writer of a fabulous book called Blue Like Jazz, roughly says that repentance from sin (a necessary part of the process of salvation) is like the ultimate “act of social justice; it’s owning up to one’s own crap” by saying that this world is messed up and I am often times part of the problem, but now there’s a new sheriff in town.  If I wasn’t a Christian, what would I be?  Hopefully a better Jesus-follower than I am now.