The Ghost Story of Hell

After a long absence of enjoying the ins and outs of life I have returned. In my absence from this blog I have become an assistant manager and watched my wife give birth to a beautiful girl. She is now two and half weeks old. But that’s not what this blog is about, as you can probably tell by the title. Without further ado, “The Ghost Story of Hell.”

“If what you’re saying is true does that mean I am going to hell?”

What a question? How does one answer that and yet not be offensive.

“Do you believe that Jesus is the Son of God? That He died on the cross and took our sins? That He rose from the dead and offers us new life?”

In numerous discussions I’ve heard people say that God is so loving that He can’t really stand to see so many people go to Hell. I mean God must have a really big ego to say that we have to worship Him specifically. What about all the other religions that are all saying the same thing right?

“Worship the Lord Your God and serve Him only.”

“I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

I’m pretty sure all the other religions are not saying the same things. The passage to Heaven is not through having a “good” heart and caring about those around you. It does not matter how much you strive to be a better person and do great things for the world around you. Scripture specifically says that the only way is through Jesus.

“That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.”

It does not take much, but this one thing that God asks of us is such a huge gulf in people’s minds that many will not cross. And because of that the Lord’s judgment awaits. It’s not because God is sadistic but because the world is governed by rules and one of those is “The wages of sin is death.”

It is up to us if we will accept the free gift of Christ and fall in love with Him or if we will forever be distant from Him.

I’m not God. I don’t sit in the judgment. But I know what Scripture says. Rather than lording it over all the “sinners” of the world, this should greatly impact my attitude for them. If I am going too say that someone is going to go to Hell and give them a cursory explanation do I really care about them. If I know that someone is going to suffer eternal damnation shouldn’t I be down on my knees begging God to give me the right words and the time to say them.

Hell is too fictional for many of us. It’s like telling the story of the boy who cried wolf to a kid to scare him into telling the truth. When I told my friend Kenta that a wolf was going to come eat him if he kept lying I knew it wasn’t true. Scare tactics worked for Jonathan Edwards as he spoke to the masses (see “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”), but I think he believed in Hell as more than a ghost story.

See, we don’t want to go there because when one starts picturing their friends in the most miserable torment a burden of responsibility comes crashing down on us. Do we love our friends enough to daily pray for them and take advantage of every moment we get to show them who God is and what He offers. Isn’t it better to risk a friendship and plant a seed than for us to quietly let our friend go to the grave?

My heart has been opened to all of this and I have been praying that God give me a truly loving heart. If I love someone then I should be willing to risk ridicule, embarrassment, and possibly the loss of a friendship to show them how much I care about them and don’t want to see them in Hell. From a guy’s perspective, I know we do crazy things to win a girl and we put our heart out on our sleeve even though societally we are to remain cagey. Shouldn’t we do the same thing in this case, especially since the stakes are higher?

Pray about it. What name does God put in your head? How can you be praying for that person and how can you make sure that you get to hang out with him or her forever?

New Stuff

Hello all. Just letting you know I'm still here. I'm working on an interesting blog about apathy and another on tumors of the groin so there is a lot to look forward to. Make sure you're checking up on me every now and then. Oh, and I have changed it so that you don't have to have a gmail account to comment on the blog so everyone who has been waiting to say all sorts of terrible things about me now has the opportunity.

Thanks to everyone who is praying for me and my family as we meet in Iowa this coming weekend. Continue to be in prayer for God's working in this whole situation. Love you, peeps.

Day 7 of New Life

Apathy is cancerous. It starts small with just a little thing. Maybe you didn't feel like wasting the gas to go to a church event or help your friend move. Maybe you didn't take the time to find out why that guy at work was in such a bad mood. Any disease left unchecked grows, often without you realizing it. It's like that when you put a lobster in a pot of water and you gradually heat it. By the time the crustacean realizes anything is wrong, it's too late.

What started as wanting to avoid an inconvenience can become a total lack of care for anything thing and everything. Friends, family, work, church, God. It might sound like an oxymoron but it becomes an active apathy. You seek out ways to avoid your life and hide away so you can do nothing and feel nothing. That's my experience anyway.

A lot has happened in my life that I look back on with regret. Regret was where the apathy began. I looked back at all the things I had done wrong and it made me want to shut down. I thought about how self-absorbed I often was. Did I really care about my friends in highs school and did I express that? Was I truly RA material or did I merely have the title? I could go on and on but as much as this is about me this posting is about something bigger.

In Decemmber something earth shattering happened. My world was sent into a death spin. I had a choice to get back on my feet or step off the world. I chose the latter. While maintaining the facade of okay-ness, internally I quit living.

I was unemployed for extended periods of time and I wanted to stay that way. I took a leadership position at church and then did nothing. I promised the youth leader I would help her and then I didn't. I quit reading my Bible and praying. I sat for hours staring into space with nothing on my mind. But, man could I talk the talk and make veryone think that life was peachy. God is good, right.

Seven months have gone by and in that time I have left a trail of lies, unfulfilled promises, and debt. I have last my passion for helping the disenfranchised and I have ultimately become one of the Pharisees as Jesus described them, "white-washed tombs." Any recovery from this seemed impossible especially since I didn't care.

And then something happened.

I'd like to say something earth-shattering happened like Saul's conversion on the way to Damascus but it was much simpler than that. I realized how much I hated what my life had become. I knew that my life's purpose was not to wallow in nothingness for the rest of my life.

So I changed everything and now I'm the pastor of a successful mega-church.

NOT!

I'm just making it one day at a time as Jeremy Camp says. Daily, no hourly, I have to remind myself of who God is and who I am in relation to Him. I hold onto verses lie "Do everything as working for the Lord and not for men" and "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls."

Each day I have to seek God and push everything else aside. I admit it is difficult because it has become a habit for me to avoid life and now I am stepping out of my shell and trying to live. As I think of this or that and how it should be different I also find people that I need to apologize to and make things right. But God truly is good and the only way that I am escaping from apathy into vibrance is by Him, carrying me.

Learn from this and don't hide when life falls apart. In the words of Dennis Quaid in "The Rookie," when life throws you a curve, don't duck."

Forgiveness

I have always thought it would be nice to write poetry. As much as I try though I cannot seem to produce anything worthwhile, except the poem below. I wrote it in the summer of 2006 when I ran away to Texas to escape everyone I knew including God. It was partially inspired by Psalm 32. It's kind of hard to escape God when you are reading the Bible.

Forgiveness

The words of our fathers reveal your planning,

Alone in the darkness, a light for understanding.

Though I’m often confused as to what it is You say,

And I must admit I don’t always obey,

I know that Your words are perfect and right,

The Songs of the angels as I sing through the night.

I ask for your answer but I’m still such a child.

My mind is in darkness, corrupt and defiled.

I ask for Your wisdom, Your love and protection.

And when it is given, I try to add my own correction.

I ask for forgiveness for all my sins.

Yet, I sit in sorrow, again and again.

I reach for Your kingdom but find myself short.

I’ve broken all the rules, how can I stand in Your courts?

If not for Your grace, then where would I be?

Alone in the darkness, I’d never be free.

Your love is a mystery. I can’t see why You care.

I am but a wretch, a soul you would spare.

I’m a leaf in the wind, wherever it blows.

I’ll never be perfect unless You make me so!

Being a Christian Nation

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For as long as I can remember conservative Christians have bemoaned the fact that we have fallen from our Christian roots. We had such great Christian Forefathers that created a Christian nation. I just kind of went along with this thinking that yes we are a Christian nation but I have learned a few things over the years.

In the Declaration of Independence the Founding Fathers cry out to "Nature's God." It goes on to say that we are granted certain unalienable rights by our Creator, such things as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. At the very end of the Declaration they state that they are relying on the protection of Divine Providence. Clearly, God is a part of the our Nation. But does this nessecarily mean God, the Father of the Trinity. It seems more to be a generic form of god. Depending on what your faith base is "the Creator" might be Allah, Yahweh, or God, the Father.

So are we a Christian nation?

To understand this better I thought I would look back on history and what some of the Founding Fathers had to say. Most of the quotes below are taken from American Gospel. It is an exhaustive study of what our nation was founded on and what has happened since then. I highly recommend it.
"In a treaty with the Muslim nation of Tripoli initiated by Washington, completed by John Adams and ratified by the Senate in 1797, the Founders declared that 'the government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion'"(p.19).

It seems that we have our answer straight from the mouth of those who were there. I do not contest the fact that we were founded on Christian morals but I do not think we are a Christian nation like Israel was considered to be once.

In one of Benjamin Franklin's last letters he professed his faith in God. You can read it here. He basically says that he believes in a Creator of the universe and that our greatest service can be to help others. Then he has this to say about Jesus: I think the System of Morals [devised by Jesus] and his Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw, or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting Changes. He states later on that he doubts the divinity of Christ. Does this make him a Christian? Jesus says in John 14:7, "I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

Franklin seems to voice the opinions of many people of that era. You look at the statements of faith from Adams, Washington, and numerous others and there seems to be a stress on doing good to others but questioning whether Jesus was God.

In a treatise entitled "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments" James Madison declared what the writers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were trying to create. "Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess and observe the religion which we believe to be of divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us."

Ben Franklin and many other people felt that there should be religious influence in a nation to serve as a moral compass. He stated that it was important to study history so that we could see this in action. Machiavelli stated in The Discourses that the Romans "turned to religion as the instrument necessary above all others for the maintenance of a civilized nation."

Jon Meacham expresses his opinion on all of this by saying, "The great good news about America is that religion shapes the life of the nation without strangling it. Belief in God is central to the country's experience, yet for the brood center, faith is a matter of choice, not coercion. Driven by a sense of providence and an acute appreciation of the fallibility of humankind, they created a nation in which religion shold not be singled out for special help or particular harm."

So what do you think?

I think that we can't really complain about falling away from being a Christian nation. Maybe we can cry out that we are falling away from the morals that the nation was originally founded on but what good does that do. Soap boxes are never a good place to try to change things or get peoples attention. More than anything it can turn people off.

Recently I read the transcript of an interview of Jerry Falwell by Pat Robertson shortly after 9/11 and I was horrified. He blames "pagans, abortionists, feminists, and homosexuals" as the reason that such an atrocity happened. It was a punishment from God since we are no longer a Christian nation.

Shouldn't our approach be to be grateful for the freedom that we have and to live out our lives as we see fit. As Christians, we are to follow the mandates of the Bible. If we whole-heartedly pursue Christ then our individual lives will become the change agents for those around us. I do not believe that the United States will ever be a Christian nation but that does not mean that we stop living our faith. Sure, things may seem bad now but just remember this:

"We are not of this world!"

Look at the world around you as a field of opportunity to let people know of the love you have received from the Creator and Savior of the World.

"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."--Matthew 9:37-38

Stop complaining about the state of our country and GO!

David Crowder and I

So there was this cool program on my computer for a while that is no more. You just

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took a song and then pictures or video and it would splice them together. Then you could go through chunk by chunk and decide whether you liked what it did or not. There were a number of styles you could pick from like music video, romantic, comic book and a bunch of others. It was called muvee. Sadly it no longer works. I think it was one of those free trial things. Much of the thrashing around in the car was done on the way to Iowa one time. My way of staying awake when I drive is to just not pay attention to the road. It works amazingly well. I have been known to read, sing, take pictures of myself, take my clothes off and just about anything else you can think of. I should have ended that list with something else so that the whole taking the clothes off thing wasn't the last thing on the list. There was this one time where Steven and I were driving home...Well never mind. The pictures of a little girl going crazy are from Texas. She was actually doing Kung Fu with a peacock feather. The sword fighting is in Texas too. I was an evil Sith master and Jonathan was the Jedi. I beat him but I was sad about it because I found out he was my son. Confused yet. Enjoy the video.

By the way, doesn't that picture just make you feel welcomed. I can already here the call of pigs and corn. I should stop now.

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Heroes

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I have decided to break my trend of my posts having "B" titles. I confess there is much I want to talk about that starts with a "B" like Brotherhood and and Book Reviews and Billy Goats but I'll save that all for another time.

Lately, I have been watching the TV series "Heroes." Every episode fills me with trepidation because I'm sure that it is like "Lost" and they will kill off main people. So far, nobody has died that I liked. Anyway, I have been doing a lot of thinking about this show and what it all means. That's just the way I am. I have to analyze everything and find out what it means for me. So here is my deep theological reflections on "Heroes."

"Heroes" is about people with unusual talents. For example: Super fast healing, the ability to move through time and space, invisibility, and telekinesis. For many of these people their gifts are just starting to appear and they are trying to figure out how to use them. Most of them feel like they are alone. Fear of being an outsider keeps them from telling others about their gifts. There is a sense of shame like they are some sort of freak. One reason to stay quiet is that there seems to be a secret agency hunting down the "special" people. It is unclear what their motives are.

Hiro Nakamura is a Japanese office worker that discovers he can move through time and space. After seeing a great tragedy in the futures he realizes that he must do something to stop this event from happening. No matter what happens he recklessly pursues his destiny. He makes mistakes along the way, so much so that he has moments of doubt about his mission. He struggles with whether he is on the right path. But something always comes along to pick his spirits up and get him back in the game.

Everyone of us on earth is gifted in some way. Somebody might be a master chef while another person is good at listening and counseling. As Christian we have an added gift, well two I guess. First we have grace. Ephesians 2:8-9 specifically tells us this. Grace has been given to us as gift. Because of that gift we understand love to a greater degree and we can speak that love into other peoples lives.

Our other gift is a spiritual gift. This part is a little more difficult to figure out. Acts 1:8 says that we will be given power when the Holy Spirit comes on us. John 14:12 says that we will do even greater works than Christ, who is the ultimate superhero. Many people struggle with the idea of spiritual gifts and what their individual gift is.

I said above that the people in "Heroes" feel like freaks. Don't we sometimes feel that way as Christians. We feel alone, like we are are the only ones like that. It is easy to get discouraged and hang up the towel. but just like Hiro we each have a part to play. Whether we realize it or not we do have a part to play. Jeremiah says "for I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and future."

So many times I have questioned what the point of all my struggling is. What does my life amount to? Do I really have a purpose? Am I carrying out the Great Commission? Right now I am unemployed and I have been this way for a while and over and over I have been trying to figure out what the purpose of all of this is. Why is it that the jobs that I think should be simple to get I can get? How am I going to provide for my family? But then I remember that Jeremiah verse and all of the other promises that the Bible is full of and I know that God is in control. I am just a player in the game. I don't see the big picture where he does. None of us can see the big picture. What we must simply do is live our lives using the talents and abilities that God has given us.

In the words of Jesus Christ we must pray "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." I need to take my focus off of me and put it on Christ. Everything else will follow from that.

I pray that this blog serve as an encouragement to you just as Ando encourages Hiro. Go forth, and live life. Dare to dream and pursue those dreams with reckless abandon. Live dangerously for Christ.

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Blog ads

So I am learning all sorts of stuff of about blogging. You will notice on the top and bottom of the page there is a Google search thing. Also on the left there are ads that Google thinks fit with my blog from AdSense. We'll see how long that one sticks around. I am curious to see what sort of things it thinks people that come to this site will want. So far there is online businesses and dating sites.

It's funny to me how many dating sites there are. A couple of people I know have used these and had little result. For those of you that went to Central Christian College and remember Justin Gillette he was very proud of the fact that he used eHarmony. He said he had a lot of good conversations with girls from it. Of course, that is not how he met his wife but whatever.

Did you know that an alligator can run as fast as a horse? I love Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
Okay, I'm done now. Pay no attention to this entry. It is entirely silly.

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Brokenness

A while back my pastor gave a very stirring sermon in which he ended it by asking if anyone was ready to be broken. The congregation responded whole-heartedly. I started puzzling over the whole concept of brokenness and what it all means.

So what is brokenness? It is being hurt, not whole. When you break a plate it is no longer usable. It is in pieces. It's purpose is now gone. When a relationship has a break up it is no more. There is pain. When a car breaks down it can no longer move. It is useless until it is fixed.

When we ask for brokenness what are we asking for? It seems like we are asking to be hurt, to be torn apart so that we are no longer useful. We are asking to be without purpose.
But isn't purpose the very thing that we all seek. We want to know what the point of our life is and we sure don't want to be hurt. We don't want to be useless.

When we seek brokenness we are not pursuing that as an end in itself. If that were the case, we would have a church full of people in terrible pain wasting their lives away and doing nothing about it. Brokenness is the beginning! It is the concept of something being destroyed so that it can be rebuilt. But why fix what isn't broken.

Aha!
It is broken. See, a long time ago a certain couple hanging out in the garden disobeyed God. This error forever changed man's relationship with God. Romans talks about how sin entered the world through one man. When that sin came upon mankind a distance was put between us and our Creator. Adam and Eve lost a piece of themselves and everyone since then has been born without that piece.

When we look at the Genesis account the first thing that Adam and Eve notice was their nakedness. This was because in that moment the source of their value and meaning was stripped from them. Before, their appearance didn't matter because God poured His love into them and they knew that everything they were was God's. I think that when Adam and Eve chose to disobey God they became separate individuals and therefore, they felt that their meaning came from them personally. You can read more about this theory in Donald Miller's book Searching for God Knows What.

So we were broken. Because of that sin we are not whole. Unfortunately, we continue to sin which makes the break worse. It's kind of like we got a bad cut on our arm and instead of cleaning it we throw filth into the wound. This festers so much that disease spreads through the arm and can eventually kill a person. The only way to stop this disease is to cut off the arm. We must break the broken to be free.

When we pray to God for brokenness we are asking Him to get rid of all the filth that has built up over time. Before we ask for God's cleansing we often don't even realize just how screwed up we are. We have lived in disease for so long that everything has to be stripped down and started over. That is why Scripture says that they old is gone and the new has come. Ephesians 4:23 speaks of being "made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self."

I think like with any break, asking God for brokenness will hurt. Parts of you will be exposed that you never knew about. But I think that ultimately the reward is worth it. If we allow ourselves to be broken, to have who we think we are completely stripped away, then we will emerge a new and better person. It is the same way with a broken arm. Sometimes it has to be re-broken for it to heal properly.

Are you ready to be broken? Am I ready to be broken?

Beginnings

This blog is an exploration. An exploration of our lives and what true freedom is. And I mean freedom of any kind: freedom of choice, life, death, politics, religion, and so on. What does freedom really look like and how do we attain it? That is not to say that we are not already free in one since or another. But are we completely free? How do our choices impact those around us? Maybe this rambling makes no sense. If that is the case then please join the discussion to make sense of it.

This blog is open to comments from anyone that is willing to be open-minded and thoughtful of others. Maybe it is silly to say this but I don't want to see any name calling, swearing, crude or racial slurs. In essence. Be nice.

Let the journey begin.