Lord

carry me today.

side thought

"...I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours."
- John 17:9

I used to throw a blanket prayer around when I was little. I felt guilty that I only prayed selfish things, so I said: "God, I pray for the world and the people." Jesus didn't do that, huh? Funny.

back to business

It feels good to be busy again. It really takes my mind off a lot of thoughts. I think that I wasn't meant to be a contemplative hermit, alone in my room all the time. I was meant to be out there in the world, living and enjoying life.

I always used to tell people I love criticism and correction. I confess that's not true. It's very circumstantial. When peers or people I look down upon criticize me, I don't say anything out loud, but I'm thinking several things. I first think - who are you to tell me this? How spiritual do you think you are?

Then, it goes on to: Alright. I'm shutting down. I don't have to listen to this junk. I already know that.

I'm a proud child. If only I knew how to follow, I think I would learn how to lead.

Do you think God cares why we love Him? Does He care that I came to Him because I was enticed by the idea of righteousness? Does He care that we're in this whole thing because we wanted to go to heaven? Or are we simply screwed up in all of this... do we need to love God simply because He is God?

I don't think I can do that. At least, not now. I'm just too selfish.

salvation

A black-and-white outlook on life and salvation is no good, or... I've found that so far. The idea that if you have a certain piece of knowledge or have had a certain experience that you are set, and if you lack it, you are doomed, just leads to clawing away and worrying and cowering in fear of God, who doesn't want us to fear (i.e. be TERRIFIED of a wrathful, vindictive god) Him, rather, just fear (i.e. know that He is Lord) Him.

I think if Jesus wanted us to fear Him, He'd have said something other than "my yoke is easy, my burden is light." Maybe something more like, "I'm going to torture you from the inside out until you realize you are destined to burn in hell."

There are a few examples of things that have torn me apart from the inside out, because I thought they were indicators of God and/or salvation... only to find later on that only God is God and Jesus is the only way. Sometimes, I'd be on the brink of giving up everything because what I believed was true was no longer true.

1. Intellectual "I know God exists"-ness
This much is evident from 99.9% of the time I spend in life. I desperately want to be right. This is visible in every part of my life, and particularly my religious life. Growing up, whenever an atheist or agnostic friend would challenge me with something about God's existence, I would beat them over the head with "A Case for a Creator," or some cosmological argument that I was sure was foolproof and had me convinced. My desperation to be right in this aspect fuels a lot of my insecurity. I'm the stupid one who will read through all 40 pages of comments on Youtube pages - debates between Christians and atheists - all the while praying that the Christian prevails. By the time I get to the end of each, though, I find no conclusion. No one has ever proved the other wrong.

It doesn't depend on the strength of your logic or how many pieces of evidence you pull up. It all hinges on faith. Atheists carry a deep faith that God doesn't exist; others carry a deep faith that God exists. That is the premise on which their arguments lie.. and you can never prove or disprove those premises.

This much is clear. When people cry "reason" and say that "reason" is the only way, they're lying. People aren't exactly rational. Like smokers, for example. You know it causes lung cancer; you know it's going to kill you, but you do it anyway. It just doesn't make sense. Sometimes, things make complete sense and yet we still don't believe them because we don't want to. And I just read somewhere that the scary thing about people is that they can convince themselves to believe whatever they want to believe. That's pretty true.


This isn't to say that my heart doesn't shake every time I hear some debate between Christians and atheists. I feel like I still need intellectual affirmation of my faith... and every time doubt seeps in, it's usually in this aspect - intellectual understanding of God, whether the whole thing makes sense or not. It's just hard to shake. 

2. Church attendance/reputation
"Woe to you Pharisees, because you love the most important seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces." (Luke 11:43)

Yup. That's me.

This one's a relatively new development, because I've never been regularly to church until the past 2 or 3 years.

I live and die by my reputation. Academic reputation, athletic reputation, social reputation, you name it, I want to preserve my image. I care all too much about what people think of me and how far up I am on an invisible social ladder that I've created. Though I thought I scorned the success of the material world, my "success" shows itself in different ways. Like in church. Probably the worst place to decide that you need to be better than everyone else.

The truth is that faith isn't a contest. God loves us all just the same, and I am saved because of Christ, not because of my reputation, how many times I've been to church, or where I stand on the Christian hierarchy of wisdom and greatness. Doing that would be comparable to making myself a Level 23 Upper Echelon Scientologist of Power. 

3. Being good
Christians and people who identify as Christians are sometimes the biggest roadblocks to getting closer to God. You see the way that the Westboro Baptist Church calls themselves Christians, and then you see what they do. And then you wonder if believing in Jesus is worth it if it makes you a bigot or a crusader.

I put a lot of weight on how "good" a person is. I mean I spent my entire life trying to be good, and being Christian is just a means to that end. I think I missed the point. One of the most common comments I see from atheists is, "You can be good without Jesus, so you don't need him!"

Well, it just so happens, that yes, you can be a wonderful person without knowing Jesus. But just the same, I've realized that making yourself feel good by being a wonderful person is stupid because at least for me, I'd have to put on one heck of a show to be a good person. I mean it's really stressful and tiring to project some sort of image of a person you're not. On top of that, this doesn't really help with anything other than PR, because if you have some hidden problem, like pedophilia or a closet addiction to pornography, as long as the world doesn't know about it, it means you're still good. Since you're good on the outside, it doesn't matter who you really are. (And scarily, you really can convince yourself you're a good person. I do it all the time.)

And part of knowing Christ is knowing exactly who you yourself are... a shameful wretch of a person who deserves nothing, and being okay with it. Being okay that you're broken and not "good," and you never will be "good enough" (because you can't be perfect), because Jesus makes up for the 99.5% of goodness that you could never be.

I learned what grace means through how messed up Christians are. When I see Christians baring their souls and sharing what makes them broken, what makes them feel ashamed, and when they say it openly because they know that they are only fooling themselves by pretending they are fine, I see what makes a Christian different. Not that Christians are better or worse than the average atheist, but because Christians have a hope and faith that in spite of their failures, the only One who matters loves them exactly for who they are. No pretending. No shame. 

4. Emotions
This one's a rough one. Some days, I just get into sad, and contemplative emo mode. And then I start questioning everything. Like God, Jesus, the Bible, the whole thing. I go to bed, the next morning I wake up and I'm fine.

I used to think that the presence of God meant that I would have to come out of the sanctuary every Sunday crying and all emotionally charged because of what I just experienced. Otherwise, the Holy Spirit cannot have been in attendance. But I realize that the emotional high is more like a side dish to the greater entree of the love of God. You get it some days, some days not, but in the grand scheme of things it doesn't really matter. It's a blessing. That's it.


It's like when I get pissed off at my parents and punch a hole in the wall, I am pissed off, but that doesn't change the fact that they love me. I may question their love, I may question their motives, but they just know better sometimes. And in my limited view, I think that they're holding something back from me on purpose because they hate me and want the world to fall on top of me, but that's just not true. Emotions lie. 

5. Correct theology/perfectionism
Simply put, if you've been a Christian since you were 23 but you didn't understand what the word "sin" truly meant until you were 40, does that mean you weren't a Christian when you were 23?

We're never gonna understand the whole thing. That's not to say we shouldn't strive to understand it. I think I get myself tied up in a knot because my perfectionism tells me, "If I can never be perfect, why try?"

But the truth is that we learn to be good because our Father loves us. We learn to live for Him and love Him back; we learn how to be His children. It's not the other way around - no matter how much we try, we can never earn His love; we can never make Him love us. When we do that, it just means we rejected free love in favor of our selfish and independent attempts. We miss the mark and spit on the love offered us.

It's because He loved us first that we learn to love in return.


Faith is really a relationship. There's nothing else to it. I don't hinge my relationship with my friends or family upon one thing or characteristic about them. That's why I shouldn't put my faith in anything other than Christ, because those things just melt under pressure.

theology

"I am making theology a window, rather than a wall."
- Having Right Theology Does Not Mean You Know God, Donald Miller

Wow. I hear myself crying "relationship, not religion," all the time, but if there's one thing I didn't want to relinquish my hold on, it's being right. Not to say it's bad to be right, but being right isn't the point. The point is that I know Jesus, not that I had it perfectly right. Not that I will ever have it perfectly right. Getting it right is part of the relationship. Take it slow.

yours to take

"So this is what it feels like to live life
So this is breathing air for the very first time
The Son of Man, He came here to give life
And in return He's asking for mine
I've been captured by grace
I'm not going away
I'm Yours to take..."
- Yours to Take, Jimmy Needham
 
Giving something up is hard. The problem is the logic. I can always convince yourself one way one day, and a different way the next. Depending on that is no good. I don't get anywhere.

The reason needs to be love. People addicted to smoking don't just one day step out of it and quit. You just can't do that. No matter how many lung cancer ads that those people may see, fear is an insufficient reason for healing. But if you look at someone you love and realize that you hurt them by what you do, there is a reason for change.

I've been scaring myself into sacrifice for too long. I need to learn to love. Apart from what is right and what is wrong, love is greater than fear. God, teach me how to love. I want to be at a place where I'm Yours to take.

surgery chronicles

I really prided myself in never having had surgery or breaking a bone. Whenever we play the game "Two Truths, One Lie," I used those two as my back-ups. Now I can't use the surgery one.

I was in the hospital for 3 or 4 days. I'm not sure how long, because when you're lying in a bed eating and watching TV, time just blurs into a blob.

The first thing I want to say is that I hate needles. Absolutely hate it. I think I started counting down the number of needles I would need - one for a blood test, the IV, and the anesthesia each. I got poked way more times than I expected. I don't even remember how many needles they stuck in me. Eleven.

I curled up in a ball so they could numb my legs, and I was terrified because I expected it to hurt. They wiped my back before they actually injected the anesthesia; I jerked because I was anticipating a needle instead of a wet wipe. After that, the nurse told me to sit still. Mr. Doctor held me down, and they injected away. It felt weird. And it hurt.

The funny thing is, when they knock your legs out like that, it feels like your legs are in the same position when they knocked you out. So it felt like my legs were straight, even when they were bent... And then I realized this is probably what it feels like to have your legs amputated (fear of my life realized).

Then they took me in the room, and I remember the doctor saying that 5 in 100 people experience side effects such as nausea because of the anesthesia. Of course, I'm one of those 5 people, so I threw up while on the operating table. Nasty. Probability never works well for me.

The procedure was supposed to be that they stick a needle and some kind of electrode in my thigh at two or three different places and burn the nidus (the nucleus of my osteoid osteoma). They started drilling in my leg, and when they hit the bone, they couldn't get any further because apparently I had "mature cortex." Whatever that means. Anyway, the doctor lady shoved (and it was weird, because I could kind of feel the pressure of her pushing down, but didn't feel any pain) and shoved, but the needle wasn't going anywhere. She called over Mr. Doctor, and he tried, but he wasn't getting anywhere. They pulled various needles out and tried different things, and they were definitely getting frustrated. I was getting terrified. I saw the doctors' blood stained hands and it looked nasty. I was thinking, "What if the anesthesia runs out?"

After 30 minutes or so, they finally got the needle in the right place, with a sigh of relief. Ms. Doctor told me that if I turned the other way that I could see the screen and where the needle was. I didn't look.

The second needle went much faster. They burned the tumor (I think). Then they put me in a recovery room so that they could make sure that my anesthesia was wearing off the right way. They kept on testing if I could feel cold on my stomach, and they asked me to give them a number out of 10.. So I gave them a different number every time and they thought something was wrong because I said 7 first and then it went down to 4. I realized that they wanted my feeling to come back, so I started giving them the right numbers. I like giving people what they want.

All in all, what an experience. I realized how much fear I actually have. I'm scared of a lot of things. It's easy to say I trust and have faith when I'm in a bubble of a college campus, shielded from much of life, but wow. Harder in a hospital, that's for sure.

love

I read 1 Corinthians 13 again. Gosh. Much much easier said than done. I envy, I boast. I'm not patient, I'm not kind... I'll change someday.

My natural reaction to some news article of some terrible thing going on in some other country is to do the "tsk tsk" and shake my head and be glad that I live in a place where I'm safe from all of those problems. Never did it cross my mind to care, never did it cross my mind to pray. Until today. It kinda crossed my mind.

As School Knifings Continue, China Does Some Soul Searching

I hate comment threads

Jennifer Knapp Comes Clean

Not that I even knew who Jennifer Knapp was or listened to her music, but this one makes me think, too. And the 26 pages of comments reveal a lot about how hard it is to have a theologically sound faith.

I know that I've been drenched in grace, and as I accept that grace, how does that change me? I believe that Christ sanctifies me, that God gives me no temptation greater than that I can face (1 Corinthians 10:13). And if this is true, how am I to face the temptations that come my way?

The thing that tears me apart the most is premeditated sin. The sins where I spend a few minutes or hours or days rationalizing as to whether I should or not (completely ignoring what God wants of me), and then end up giving in. And I feel like I'm beyond forgiveness. But have I somehow thwarted the cross and out-sinned God's grace, or have I intentionally turned my back on my Father? How then, can I get back, if not for His grace?

"Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."
- Luke 9:23

By the way, one comment in particular mentioned about how we turn a blind eye to sins like greed and gossip while we make such a ruckus about homosexuality. I agree. I pray God opens our eyes and frees us from these, too.

P.S. I'm very self-absorbed/proud. Someone remind me, because if I become someone famous I think that might be the downfall of me.

cartoon

Jesus Christ cartoon in development at Comedy Central

My first reaction is to get all angry and defensive. I wonder why.

I don't think it's particularly because of anything except the fact that my pride is wounded. I take pride in identifying with Jesus, and mocking Jesus knocks down my pride. I feel like my main motivation is really the fact that I want so desperately to be right about faith that any challenge that comes up against that, including satire, is something that needs to be shot down.

I react the same way when someone takes a jab at Christians or church or makes a comment about how God doesn't exist. I would rather be right than love someone.

Being the person that I am, I scrolled down and read a bunch of the comments... I have a love-hate relationship with reading religiously-charged comment threads. But anyway, reading through it I wonder whether I'm supposed to defend or fight against offensive media. I still don't know.

Being angry or defensive never got anyone anywhere though.

presence

I'm home for a few weeks in Korea, and something just struck me here in the living room.

People aren't kidding when they say that it changes things just to be in someone's presence. I was never aware of it, but I enjoy being home. Even when I'm not really interacting with my parents, I just like to sit here and bask in a distinct comfort, not unlike the comfort of knowing that Michigan football is safely up by three touchdowns in the 4th. I'm comfortable.

And I could make the obvious tie-back to the moral of this lesson, but that would be stupid.

I sympathize

"Prior to meeting Mrs. Nolan, I'd never been disliked by anyone before, especially an older woman. Old women fell head over heels for me. I didn't even have to try--it just happened. I thought I had a gift. As soon as I walked into church, women over the age of thirty-four threw candy at my feet like I was Mick Jagger and the Tootsie Rolls were underwear. But Mrs. Nolan was indifferent to the charm other women saw in me. She wasn't impressed with me.

I really needed her to be impressed.

At my church and school, perception was everything. How people viewed you was much more important than how you actually were. The truth didn't matter. What people believed to be the truth mattered. I learned early on that if everybody believed I was the well-behaved, good-natured boy without a sin in the world, it didn't matter what the truth was. The truth was secondary to a person's opinion or perception of the truth. It was all about good PR, and prior to having Mrs. Nolan as a teacher, nobody stared at me too closely."

- "Churched," Matthew Paul Turner

This book is turning out to be a biography of my life. Hahahahaha.

lost sheep

"Now the tax collectors and 'sinners' were all gathering around to hear him. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, 'This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.'

Then Jesus told them this parable: 'Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, "Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep." I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.'"
- Luke 15:1-7

Life is like being a sheep with ADD. Do you wonder how this sheep got lost? Probably because he forgot that the day before, Mr. Shepherd fed him, led him to greener pastures, and protected him from Mr. Big Bad Wolf.

A friend wrote in my journal at one point (paraphrased): "Chris, you are wretched. But what does it mean to be irreplaceable in spite of that wretchedness?"

When that was inscribed into my journal, I was depressed and I didn't really get the meaning of the statement, and perhaps I still don't. But it makes sense in light of this sheep parable. That one sheep is irreplaceable. None of the other 99 sheep, regardless of how similar they look, act, or what quality wool they provide, is exactly that lost sheep. That lost sheep is special. The shepherd will go out of his way to find that sheep, and rejoice when it is found. (I imagine that he has kind of the same pleasure I get when I'm looking for like... my favorite book and I can't find it for hours until my mom gets fed up with me peering under every piece of furniture that she goes and finds my book for me.)

And when I am carried back by my shepherd, I follow. But then I get distracted by the world and its crown jewels, by the dazzling freedom that the open range seems to provide. A few days, weeks, or months later, I find myself in a ditch. In a mudslide. In a rut. And I gotta be carried back again.

Such is the fate of the ADD sheep.

I've done this before

"I knew I was incapable of moving mountains with my faith. I had tried that summer when my mother and father took me on my first camping trip to the Appalachian Mountains in Virginia. As soon as the mountains popped up over the horizon on Highway 66, I began testing the abilities of my faith by commanding mountain after mountain to move.

'I have faith, I have faith, I have faith,' I repeated over and over again, something I'd seen a black preacher do on television. He hadn't moved a mountain, but he did make a woman's diabetes disappear. Since it worked for him, I figured it might work for me. When I was really certain that I possessed the necessary faith, I pointed my finger at the mountain of choice and yelled, 'MOVE, MOUNTAIN, MOVE!' I did this about thirty times. On one occasion I thought I'd made one of the mountains disappear, which got me very excited, since I thought that might be even better than making one move. But after bragging about it to my father, it reappeared a mile later."

- "Churched", Matthew Paul Turner

sermon notes

I was packing up today and ran across my journals from last year. Here's a sermon from last March that I think is applicable at the moment.

3/15/2009
Image: Part 2, Popularity
Genesis 4:1-16

There are three important types of relationships:
1) with God, 2) with ourselves, 3) with others
Anthony Hoekema, "...Man cannot be truly human apart from others."

I. The Distortion of Relationships

• Cain was despondent about his acceptance (v. 1-5)
• Abel gave a better sacrifice, by faith (Hebrews 11:4)
• Cain took relationships into his own hands - he didn't see Abel as a reflection of God's image
• Cain is left isolated from the Lord and other people
• Principles:
• We struggle with our acceptance before God and others
• We take relationships into our own hands
• We need to acknowledge our deceitfulness and insecurity
• God intended much more in relationships

II. The Redemption of Relationships

• God reaches out to us by asking questions.
• He helps us realize our potential to sin.
• He gives us opportunity to repent.
• Hebrews 12:23-24
• We are accepted by God only through the mediation of Jesus Christ.
• We are accepted by faith in Jesus Christ.
• Don't remain in this cycle of struggles, self-reliance, and isolation.
• Live in the light of redeemed relationships.

The One Thing
Knowing how God relates to us enables us to fully relate to others.

I don't think I ever expected to read this again. But God does bring things up, I guess.