grace.

Isn't it funny that we proportion the level of sin to the availability of forgiveness?

It kind of goes like this:

Stealing candy from Wal-Mart - Forgiven
Cheating on your boyfriend - Maybe
Murder - No way

It's so much harder to believe something than it is to read it. John 3:16-17 clearly state the purpose of...well, pretty much everything. It's funny how we, as a unified body of Christ, have transformed certain verses. Such as:

John 1:29 - "The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!"

In today's world, this reads: "Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the good and morally righteous who tithe and do not swear!"

In James Bryan Smith's book The Good and Beautiful God, he talks about the most famous Bible verse ever, and how its message has gotten twisted over time.

This passage has brought comfort to countless people, and is considered by many to be a summation of the entire Bible. Jesus is explaining the reason for his mission: God loved the world and wanted to save it. Many people believe that God is mad at them, but for some reason he has yet to punish them fully. Such people would be more comfortable had Jesus said, "For God was so mad at the world that he sent his Son to come down and tell them to shape up, that whosoever would shape up would have eternal life. Indeed, God did send his Son into the world to condemn it, in order that the world might be saved through good works."

Tell me that's not the dominant narrative in the world today.

And we're so quick to believe forgiveness happens to others. It's easy. You hear of a man on death row whose faith got him out of prison and now he's building orphanages in Africa. But when we sin against God...suddenly it's, oh, no, I can't be saved.

Why does this contradiction exist so rampantly in today's world? Why is our society force-feeding us images of performanced-based favor?

People need to see grace.
We need to show them.


But sometimes,

accepting grace,

is harder than giving it.


Oh,
no.

I can't be saved.

As my homebody Andy Stanley says, "Grace acknowledges the full implication of sin and yet does not condemn."

Quit whining - get a Job.

So they just referenced Job in Two and a Half Men.

Yeah, talk about irony.

But think about it. Are our lives so bad that we compare them to Job's? Let's take a look at his life's story, at a quick glance:

-Good dude, chilling out.
-Satan's like, "Yo God, Ima mess wit yo dude."
-Then God's like, "Aight, coo coo, he ain't gonna be lame."
-Satan: *proceedstomakeJob'slifealivinghell*
-Job = suck
-God = blesses Job's life

Job's life was a lot of suffering - with a lot of blessing. God's provisions are often proportional to the amount of pain inflicted upon the individual. With great power comes great responsibility, but great pain begets great blessing. So are our lives really like that? Do we truly regret the day we're born?

Or are we just overly dramatic?

The next time you think your life sucks because you don't have the iPad 2, consider that you probably have clean drinking water and clothes. Never forget the small blessings that are affections of God's grace - don't be blinded by materialism.

Hold Your Head Up - Look Towards God

How often do we forget Genesis 1:26-27?

"Then God said, 'Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.' So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." (NLT)

How often do we forget that we are intended to be "little Christs"? In a world of self depravity and self centered-ness, we often see little to no good in ourselves, when in reality we resemble the God Creator of the universe Himself.

How can this be?

How did we fall from being small saviors to hating our existences, our bodies, our thoughts, our being, our everything, coming directly from God Himself? How could we overlook such a gigantic detail?

Then again, how did we lose favor with God by eating fruit?

I digress. God created you to be like Him. He calls you to "be ye perfect" and live a life pleasing to Him. Are you? The following passage reveals a little insight into God's plan for us:

"All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he has purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding." (Ephesians 1:3-8, NLT)

The God who made you "so wonderfully complex" and whose "workmanship is marvelous" (selections from Psalm 139, NLT) designed you to be a partaker of His Life and a steward of everything on Earth. As your local news channel will report, we have screwed this up by flipping the bird at God at doing whatever we please, not what pleases Him. God wants you to have pleasure, He just happens to know in what context you should have it because He's God. This brings me to a secondary point: Don't get an inflated ego because you're a little Christ. Follow His example - he was shamed before humanity to save you. But back to my original thesis - God has designed you for eternal life and joy and glory. I'm pretty sure the Bible doesn't lie. Why don't you think of yourself like God does? Whatever happened to "confident humility"? Go read Sun Stand Still, pages 114 and 115.

Never let the fear of inadequacy eclipse your faith for Christ.

Faith to follow the light.

I just got done watching a segment on TV about animal rescue - in particular, about a small puppy being stranded in a water main pipe. These puppies are some of the cutest I've seen, and I already have a passion for animals, so you can understand why I watch these features with the same fixation as middle aged housewives with their soaps. When you devote yourself to a cause, you often become obsessed with it.

In any case, this little puppy had crawled into a water main pipe that ran under three or four houses, so it was quite lengthy. Firefighters and animal control were called in to help rescue the diminutive pup. I found it quite amazing that the entire cavalry was called in to rescue one small animal - similar to one man's blood supply being emptied so that others may live.

The guys had to use what they called a "snake camera", which was kind of a hose-like camera that could reach a couple hundred feet in whatever direction needed, and its gooseneck-y likeness was good for flexibility in reaching through the pipe. They looked for a while, and no luck. They approached the pipe from three different apertures before they found the puppy.

This puppy was up to its paws in water, underground, in a pipe barely large enough to accommodate it. I don't need the debate on if animals have feelings or not, but this little guy (even though he is a she) looked scared. She was lost. Away from her mother and siblings and human caretakers, she didn't know where she was going or what to do. She was utterly lost.

The snake camera the firefighters had used to locate the puppy had a headlight attached to it, and as it was withdrawn, it was noted that the puppy followed the light. She moved forward with weak paws and a scared stance, simply trying to keep some light with her. With fear and trembling trepidation in her eyes, it was all she could do to follow the light - with complete trust.

When she got out, she was hosed down and warmed up and quickly returned to her family. Everyone was overjoyed - the mother dog, the pup's siblings, her human family, and the crew of firefighters and animal control that came out to help. At the end of the day - or, night, rather - she was saved and loved.

In a book I quite enjoy called Crazy Love by Francis Chan, he poses the question,

"How many of us would really leave our families, our jobs, our education, our friends, our connections, our familiar surroundings and our homes if Jesus asked us to? If He just showed up and said 'Follow me'? No explanation. No directions.

You could follow Him straight up a hill to be crucified. Maybe He would lead you to another country, and you would never see your family again. Or maybe you would stay put, but He would ask you to spend your time helping people who will never love you back and never show you gratitude for what you gave up.

Consider this carefully-have you ever done so? Or was your decision to follow Christ flippant, based solely on feelings and emotion, made without counting the cost?"

(Crazy Love by Francis Chan, pg. 95-96, David C. Cook)

Wow. What a powerful series of statements right there.

Imagine Jesus having you crucified.

How much faith do you have? What are you willing to do for God? Often I feel that we interject our scenarios into Christian living - not enough time, resources, etc. - and don't take into account that all we must have is faith. Christ told us not to worry - just as the lilies of the field and the birds of the air do not, and have everything they need. I think that, often, we need to be more like that little puppy stranded in a water main pipe - lost, confused, scared... - and just have courage and trust in something bigger than ourselves. We tell ourselves we need proof, but all we really need is faith to follow the Light.

Bipolar Christianity

It seems like, in Christianity, there is truly only one path to take. My blog obviously is named appropriately, but I haven't thought about it seriously until recently. It has come to my attention that there is no buffet style faith. What I mean by that is exactly what you think. many Christians today pick and choose the aspects of Christianity that appeal most to them or are most convenient for them. The bad parts of Christianity we set aside and don't think about. This has created a positives only view of the faith, which is a very dangerous road to take.

Conversely, there is the fire-and-brimstone, "we're all damned and doomed to hell" view. This is an equally dangerous focal point, because when we exempt the good in a situation, we don't leave that option open for ourselves. So suffice it to say that focusing on one extreme viewpoint is not a good thing. C.S. Lewis notes:

"The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There's not one of them which won't make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide."

What's interesting is that you have to view both ends of the spectrum, and yet follow one single path. You cannot completely omit the good or completely omit the bad and retain a holistic view of the faith, yet there is only one set of rules you need concern yourself with. This is an interesting paradox that remains absolute in Christianity. Jesus says, "I am the Way, the Truth and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me." So you have to concern yourself with the Holy Trinity - the God of creation, the Christ of salvation, and the Spirit that moves in life - yet focus on the single path, the narrow one. As Frost would say, "I took the one (road) less traveled by, and that has made all the difference."

People's interests are greatly divided in today's world. We can see a perfect example of this in the typical day-to-day schedule; work at 7 AM, lunch at 1:30, pick up the kids at 3:00, take Billy to soccer at 4:15, dinner at Starbucks at 5 - there's not a single moment of serenity, much less any allotted section for time with God. This seems like an uneasy way to live - and our constancy proves this to be true. We need to step back and realize that while we should never stop moving to forward His Kingdom, we should take a breath once in a while - in fact, as often as possible - and ask the Dude Himself for help and guidance.

Part of the problem is that we are bombarded with options. In the modern world, we can literally choose whatever we want. Phone plans, buffets, relationships - anything that doesn't work for us, we can let it go and just have it remain in the back of our minds, in a sector of forgotten guilt. We cannot be focused on a sinful world and be mindful of Heaven simultaneously. C.S. Lewis writes, once again, a great quote on this, speaking of Heaven and Earth:

"Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither."

This is a wonderful representation of the situation, as he also says one cannot take "the smallest souvenir" of Hell into Heaven. However, this does not mean we can ignore a hellbound world. We are meant to capture it into faith, not save it from salvation. This is often mistaken in a world where Christians rarely provide true, unadulterated, Christ-driven service to the truly needy. Sorry, guys, but giving 5 grand to a megachurch to buy new animal crackers isn't better than giving two cents to go towards a growing third world nation. Like Jesus explains in the parable of the woman with the two coins, who gave everything she had, even though it was less than the rich guys' cash-cade.

At times, it seems that God has a split personality. There's the angry God who damns us all to hell and the loving Jesus that died for our sins. One of the best ways to explain this is that "God IS love, but God has anger." I'll leave it at that for now, but this is possibly one of the most complete and comprehensive explanations of the anger vs. love of God dilemma.

I suppose in my life, I don't consciously attempt to devote 100 percent of myself to God - although I should. We all should. Instead, we split our minds into two halves - potentially even less than half on God's side - one section for the world and one for God. God comes in when it is most convenient for us, when he "fits in" to our schedule. The truth is, He IS our schedule, or at least should be. We should revolve our lives around Him, not squeeze him in when we see fit. He should be the center of our lives, definitely not an afterthought.

The hard truth is, we cannot be half-Christians. We must either stay dirty sinners or complete the transformation. ...Okay, that might have been a bit of an overstatement, but you get the point. We must completely give ourselves over to God, completely die to ourselves, completely live a God-centered life. This isn't easy to swallow, but it sure is right. The right thing is almost never easy.

"One Man, One Path" describes the outset objective of this blog. It is to live a radical, controversial lifestyle as it aligns with God's Word. This isn't to say I want you to burn down houses of pagan worship or snipe atheists. I want you - and probably more so, me - to live a loved, God-centered life as we spread His Good News. Otherwise, what else is there?

Why Chains Shouldn't Excite You

The famous philosopher and all around awesome dude Plato had a vicious little story that's known as the allegory of the cave. It's commonly used to describe the possibility of an unknown metaphysical realm. This may sound like babble, but read on. The story kinda goes like this -

imagine you've lived in a cave your whole life. Chained to the wall, immobile, since childhood, with other prisoners. Rough story, right? It gets better. Behind these prisoners is a fire, and between the prisoners and fire is a walkway, raised off the ground, where people carry things and go about their business. So you see the shadows that are cast by them, and hear accompanying noise, and you perceive the shadows to be real, tangible people - not just their shape being reflected onto the wall.

It's hard to change perspective.

Now suppose, you are permitted to stand up. Wouldn't that be an amazing experience in itself? Foreign...and scary. You would turn around and see the people on the walkway, but not be able to recognize them or make sense of them. You'd think the shadows on the wall were more real than the legitimate things that cast them. And what about the fire? Wouldn't you take one look at it and avert your eyes? Wouldn't you want to retreat back into the darkness you know to be real to you?

Now, what if someone dragged you out of the cave? At the time, it seems they're forcing you against your will, but we all know that a man who spends his life inside a cave is missing out on soooooo much! And once you saw sunlight - you would be distraught and blinded and very, very scared. But scared of what? An entire world of promise and happiness. What if this cave was on top of a mountain? Across from a waterfall? We all know what wonders the world holds, but this prisoner would be frightened to death and want to retreat back to the cave - the safe, real cave.

It's hard to change perspective.

I think this describes, in a very real sense, our relationship with God. Somewhere along the line, we've lost what promise and joy God wants for our lives - I doubt this even as I type it - and have replaced it with more of an action movie villain. God's the punisher, the dude who comes out and splits the skies in half with a sword of light and causes random explosions of cities and goes boom and fire and AHHH!!!

We're just the prisoners inside the cave, and God is the guy who wants to drag you out. It's not fun, it's not easy, but wouldn't you want a world more than a cave?

I mean, sure, a loving and caring God is way easier to imagine than a "swift and hard justice" type God who kills people left and right with double-edged lightsabers. We want to believe it's all gonna be okay and that God's cool with us. John 3:16 is the most well-known verse for two very important reasons (at least, only two off the top of my head that relates to this post - if I missed something, anything, ever, let me know). One, it sums up the Gospel in one sentence. And two, it shows God's love. It doesn't say, "For God wanted to judge the world so much that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever is scared to death of Him shall maybe get into Heaven." It professes his love for us. For us!

The Bible doesn't say, "Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is fear." Or judgment. Or doom. And in his letter to the Romans, Paul writes, "Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?"

Once you left the cave, why would you ever go back?

The text of the allegory poses this important question on the man who returns to the cave:

"Wouldn't he remember his first home, what passed for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider himself happy and them pitiable? And wouldn't he disdain whatever honors, praises, and prizes were awarded there to the ones who guessed best which shadows followed which? Moreover, were he to return there, wouldn't he be rather bad at their game, no longer being accustomed to the darkness? Wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and came back with his eyes corrupted, and that it's not even worth trying to go up? And if they were somehow able to get their hands on and kill the man who attempts to release and lead up, wouldn't they kill him?"

This isn't news to Christians. It's happened before. Someone came down from up there and told us the real deal - we answered by shooting the messenger, Jesus.

Once you left the cave, why would you ever go back?

I hope this to be a spiritual journey for you, as well as myself. I don't profess to be a Christian know-it-all, or say that I have office to speak about every subject there ever is and was and will be. I'm just kind of thinking out loud. As Rob Bell says, "God has spoken, and the rest is commentary, right?"

Thanks for reading.

Note to self: Continue on the thoughts of being "Dead to the World". More of Paul.

Thanks to Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave