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

Image via Wikipedia

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!