75 Children or 30 Adults

About two weeks ago I got to have a nice long talk with my pastor over coffee about me seeing God leading me in a direction other than Fort Lewis College for right now. During the talk I shared with him parts of my testimony and how it fit into God's plan for me. After sharing this he replied by asking if I would share this on a Sunday in front of the church. Of course I said yes because I love being challenged and I was totally okay with speaking in front of tons of people. In the past I have always been great at speeches and whatnot so this didn't seem to task me much beyond the usual book report at school used to. As the days before my scheduled speech slowly counted down I started to fear failure. This is rare for me because usually I am great at speeches. In high school I got one of the highest grades in my speech class and I never prepared for the class once. I have this great ability to bull-crap my way through public speaking, but for once I was honestly nervous. This time it actually mattered.

What if I tell my story wrong? What if I get up there and just simply can't talk? What if? What if??.... These questions kept swirling in my mind like the USS Enterprise caught in a cosmic dust storm. The worst part was that I couldn't even pinpoint the source of these doubts. I had been fine at speeches before, so why now am I nervous as all heck? I eventually came to realize that the stakes were infinitely higher this time around and that is why I couldn't help but freak out a tiny bit. Who knows if my testimony could help change someone in the audience's life? Let's suffice it to say that this realization only messed with my mind more. However, eventually I came to the conclusion that the whole moral of my testimony was that God needs to be in complete control of my life. If I can truly accept this then this speech will be no problem. It is not me that is speaking about my life, but rather me following a calling to let God's power move me to share of all that he has done, is doing, and will do in my life.

So with renewed courage I decided to type out my testimony tonight so I can be prepared to not screw it up tomorrow. I will most likely post it on here as well but I will need to clean up the written copy a bit first as it currently looks like it was typed by a toddler. Oh and the title to this post is in reference to Sheldon Cooper's theory on how many people it takes to trample a public speaker to death. Two thumbs up if you got the reference without my explanation. 

Forgiveness Vs. Regression (Story of my life)

I have found myself dwelling way to much in my past over the last half year or so. I spend way too much time thinking of the endless possibilities of what could have been. The pain of past mistakes sometimes becomes so heavy I just break down and become decided to just move away where no one knows my name or face. I have even highly considered building a time machine so I can go back and just punch my past self very hard until all of my sins are undone. I end up in this depression for a while until I come to the inevitable conclusion: there is no way I can hide from the wrong I've done. This is an extremely depressing conclusion, but is sadly true. There is nothing I can do in my power that can undo the sins of my past. Thankfully this is not where the story ends.

Let's talk for a minute about love. God's love always continues to amaze me and I still will never be able to truly grasp its depth. Like I had mentioned in a previous post, the cornerstone of God's unfailing love is that we as humans always have a choice. When it comes to God's love there are only two options: to accept it, or reject it. There is no grey area between these distinctions, there is no middle ground, and there is no option to simply remain undecided. Once you truly make the choice to accept this love it will completely revolutionize everything about your life. It changes who you are, your entire identity. It changes who you will be in the future and all of your goals. Last, but certainly not least of all, it changes who you were. one might ask at this point, "how can this be?" The answer is simple: forgiveness. 

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old thing have passed away, and look, new things have come." - 2 Corinthians 5:17

The immense hope and joy that just this small verse can bring is incredible. Because of Christ's forgiveness I am literally a new man. My old self and all of my past mistakes are dead to the man that I can be in Christ. This gives way to so much hope for the future and freedom to share this joy and peace with others. This is one of those passages that is extremely hard to take seriously without wanting to cry. Everyone feels the weight of past mistakes. Everyone wishes they could simply have a redo button that could change the past. Not only does God's forgiveness give us reason to move on from what can't be changed, but it also gives us the opportunity to truly know it is forgotten in God's eyes.

Now to be honest I have had that verse memorized since I was about seven thanks to my church's AWANA program that teaches children to learn and memorize God's word. I have this verse and many others with similar meaning tattooed in the back of my mind, but somehow it is so easy to blow off the entire meaning of this immense message. So often I find myself dwelling on the past, but even worse, I sometimes find myself regressing to who I was back in the day. Truthfully I fail on a second to second basis, not just in forgetting my past, but also in avoiding repetition of past sins. No matter how hard I try I can never live up to this idealized "new creation" and it get overwhelming sometimes. I get so worn down by how much wrong I have done, am doing, or could do that I just end up depressed and start thinking about the past and the cycle starts all over again. 

This endless cycle is the proverbial "thorn in my flesh" as Paul talks about in his letters to the early church. My biggest thorn is honestly not letting go of my will. You see, I have plans for my life and goals for my future, but God has very different plans goals for me. Yes, his goals are bigger and infinitely better but at the same time my goals are familiar and comfortable. He doesn't like to let me know the full plan up front; He only reveals parts as he see fit... I have a problem with this. I am not the unadventurous type by any means; I just like to know the destination of the train before I buy the ticket. So I usually end up buying a ticket for a different train that I know is going the opposite direction, but at least I know the destination. This ends up with me getting myself very hurt either emotionally, or spiritually. I end up jumping off of my train and crawling, all bloody and beaten, but to the train station. This whole process will eventually end when I just man-up and get on board with God's plan, but this is difficult. His plan involves me giving up things I really want and things I think I need. His plan involves me growing up as a christian, but I, pulling a Peter Pan, am refusing. 

Thankfully the story doesn't end there because I have made my choice. I actually made it many months ago, but this seemed easier to write from a "Me- several months ago" perspective than a "Me- present day". No longer am I trying to get on the train of my will. This is not to say that now I am on the right train I wont try to hop off from time to time. The beauty of these escape jumps I am bound to have is that the true nature of God's forgiveness understands my weaknesses and want desperately to help me through them. That right there is what true love is.

I realize this story had little relevance to much of anything, but I felt impassioned to share a little bit of my personal story with my blog as it is a part of who I am. Also I love both trains and cheesy metaphors so this post worked out perfect. My future is unclear at the moment, but I am confident that the Lord will take me great places as long as I let him lead. I just hope and pray that more and more Christians will truly let go of control, because as believes we can do all things through Christ's  love and power. The Church, as God's tool, has the power to change the world and further his cause and his kingdom if, and only if, the individual believer will allow Christ to use them.

The joy of writing.

Well it's been a while since my last post but that hasn't been for lack of effort on my part. I have written the equivalent of about twenty single-spaced pages split into three different posts over the last few weeks, but not one of them really captured the essence of what I have been feeling for the past year. Writing has always helped me break down my problems so I can analyze them. It is my biggest weakness; that I have to share my thoughts with paper for me to truly understand them. I end up writing more than almost anything else which is partially why I started a blog in the first place. All of my thoughts and stories are just too long for facebook. However, this has ended up being much less of a traditional blog about my life events and more just a way for me to sort out my thoughts about said events. The best part is that this saves me tons of trouble.

 In life you will always have others who claim to be your "friend" but have little to no attachment to you at all. You spend valuable time pouring out little bits of your soul to these so-called friends but in reality they could care less. Then there are also those who you wouldn't really consider yourself friends with at all but who could genuinely care about you, or at least much more than some who you would actually call friends. This whole process is in itself a way to weed out the non-friends from friends. You see any who would actually care to know how my life is both physically and spiritually could just read what I post here (or you know, just ask me). Inversely, those who could care less feel no obligation to read as they likely know nothing of this pages existence in the first place. I realize there are some rather large holes in this ideology but it seems perfectly reasonable for the time being. The best part is if it turns out there is not one person who will ever read this then that works out fine too because I will never know one way or another so my only obligation is to keep writing.

There was much more I was to add to this about my future life goals and where I am going in the future but I have decided to post this by itself as the other writing does not connect with this part at all. This was a rant all in its own that I felt needed saying.

God Vs. Evil

In the endless debate of the existence of a Deity one of the seemingly irrefutable points brought up by the atheist community is that an omnipotent, omnipresent, all loving being couldn't have created or even exist in a world with evil in it. Sadly some theists don't know God well enough to answer this question so it, at many times, remains unresolved. I, however, feel that it can be boldly stated by any theist worth his weight that this point is not valid. First one must examine the nature of God through evidences appearing in the world. Secondly with this evidential nature of God in mind, and the traditional Christian view of God in mind, then assume that both these “Gods” are in fact the very same being. With evidence from both what the Bible says, and what is observable of the nature of God and of man; one can clearly see that it is not that God allows evil, but man who chooses it. The existence of evil does not in any way disprove the traditional Christian view of an all-loving God.

When looking for the true nature of God it is imperative to keep in mind that God himself is not bound to the same limitations we as humans are. For simplicity God will be referred to as a He in this paper. He has always been and always will be. This is paramount for him to truly be God as anything that hasn't always been must have started existing at a definite point: the point of creation. God is not a created being, but rather the creator. If there is anything that can be considered definitely good in the world then God, as creator, must also be all-good. As an all-good being his love for us would be completely unconditional. As God is all-good, all-loving being, and creator of all that is, then God becomes the very definition of what is morally good. Anything not of God would be morally bad, or evil. Since God's time line functions above human cognitive processing ability, because it has no beginning and no end, then it must also be assumed that: God is all-present, he functions on a higher level of consciousness then we do, and because of that he can see situations in different light and perspective. It is also imperative that we understand that he never changes. All of these ever-present observable facts about the nature of God (if he were to exist) coincide with the traditional Biblical view of who God is. So lets proceed on the basis that everything the Bible says about God is true.

I would just like to step aside from deity talk for a minute and talk about man. Man suffers; it is a clear fact that no one can deny. From child soldiers in Africa, to homelessness in intercity New York; it only takes seconds to think of the countless instances of suffering in the world. Most suffering can be linked to direct evil actions made by a human-related force. This is not to say that earthquakes and tsunamis are cause by instances of evil, but that a large bulk of suffering is. An all-loving God literally can't be in the presence of evil as it is completely contradictory to his nature. The bible refers to evil as “sin”. which is considered anything that separates man from God. In Matthew 27:46 while Jesus (God's own son), was dying he became the embodiment of everyone's sin and in that moment God was forced to look away from his own son while Jesus yells, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani”. This literally translates to, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me”. From this alone it is extremely evident that God cannot abide to be in the presence of evil to the point of having to turn away from his own son as he was dying. So how then can evil exist in a world God created?

The Bible claims that it is in fact because of God's unending love that evil exists. I fully understand that this seems very backwards and false but I would like bring back the general observation about God's nature: that he functions on a higher level on consciousness than we do because he is all-loving where as we are limited because of the Sin in our lives. In John 3:16 the Bible says, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life”. This tells us that an all-loving God is willing to give his son to die for us simply so we can live. The second part of that verse tells again of the limitless love without directly using the word. The second half talks about choice, “whoever believes in him”. So not only did an all powerful being love us enough to send his son to die but he went a light-year further by giving us the free will to either accept, or reject his love. Let's stop for a minute and talk about what the Bible says about love. In 1 Corinthians Paul writes about true Godly love by saying, “Love is patient, love is kind, love does not envy or boast, it is not conceited, it does not act improperly, it is not selfish, it is not provoked, it keeps no record of wrongs.” This seems truly impossible for any human to live that description out everyday, every week, and every year of one's entire life, but this is what God has done for us. The entire description of love involves an unconditional devotion that never changes. This fits with what we previously said was part of the nature of God; that his love was both unconditional and that he never changes. His unconditional love is love that, regardless of what we do as people, he loves us the same. Any love in which he only loves us when we love him back in measure would be considered conditional love. The difference between these two types of loves is freedom. For God to truly love us we must have the choice to reject his love. This leaves us as humans with only two choices in life: to reject God's love, or to accept it.

Does this apply to the God Vs. Evil debate? It completely does. This in a sense is the debate itself. If man has two choices then one is to follow God's love and direction, and the other is to reject it. Since God defines what inherent good is then choosing the path of rejection, in itself, creates evil. At this point the atheist would stand up and say, “if God is all powerful the he could achieve the outcome of people choosing God over evil without cases of suffering”. This is all well and good if you define evil as something God created. God didn't create evil as it is against his nature. God created all that is good (Genesis chapter 1), and by creating us, we define evil as anything against his nature. Since any God, Christian deity or not, must unconditionally love his creation, his creation must have the choice to a condition itself.

Once again the atheist will stand up and proclaim that there are cases of suffering in which God could have prevented it without loosing a greater, and because of this this can't be an all-good God. To this I again return to the Bible where it says in Romans chapter 3, “ there is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks after God. All have turned away; all alike have become useless. There is no one who does what is good, not even one”. This boils down to saying that everyone is evil, and that no matter how hard anyone tries they cannot reach God's level of perfection. There are no “good people” because the very definition of good is God and we can never attain his level of perfection. “Sin entered the world through man, and death through sin” (Romans 5:12). “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life” (Romans 6:23). It is very clear that because of sin everyone deserves death. Let me remind quickly that sin itself is by man's choice, not God's creation. So I ask now does this argument hold up? Are there cases of suffering that serve no purpose or have no cause related to sin? The fact is according to the Bible there is not. As a result of our separation from God, by our own choice, we allowed sin to conquer our world. To some this may seem way too harsh of a conclusion to come from an all loving God, but the only person that can honestly make that claim without being a hypocrite would have to be completely blameless and it is very apparent that no human alive can honestly claim that. According to the Bible the only man who can claim blamelessness is Jesus, and he himself was fully God.

At this point it is clear that a Biblical worldview can cover any of the common objections against the existence of God due to the presence of evil. The biblical picture of God follows all natural observations of what the nature of God must be. Apart for an all-loving, all-good God we see a world filled with suffering. The biblical God loves man unconditionally which means that man must have a condition (choice) that is other than God. Any choice other than God would be the opposite of his nature which we call sin. Because man is inherently unrighteous in his choice of sin over God's love, there are not any cases of suffering that serve no purpose. Because of God's forgiveness we have the choice to have our slate wiped clean and begin anew. According to this traditional Biblical view, God's existence does not conflict with Evil's existence because God loves man unconditionally, and because of this choice we, as humans, choose evil.