Who I am, by who Christ is

Go out there and do SOMETHING
I don't believe Jesus intended for us to sit and talk about what he said. Why am I left spending my time getting together, hearing His words, talking about them, and not doing them. I always have the feeling that if I ask one more person, then I'll get it, then I'll know what he meant when he said love your neighbour. I keep thinking to myself "I'm so sick of people who talk about wanting to love people; who say that we should be engaging people society has turned it's back on" but when I really sit down and think about it, the times where this message has been most clear and I have "gotten" it the most, is not when I've had a great conversation with someone (although I often feel great after this, I feel inspired to chase an ideology), but rather after I have sat and talk with someone I have ignored because they don't fit into my category of friends. So what I have come to is this: stop waiting to get every detail figured out, cause by not going out and meeting people, we're just chasing ideas, and are no better than the people I look down on for living to some other set of rules. I've heard the Bible described as God's love letter for us, but I think this is only partially true. I think it's more of a treasure map. In the Bible we can find the way God has loved us, and always will, but it's when we follow the teachings of Jesus, that we can meet God, and not only read about what He has done for all of us, but see and feel His love for each and every one of us.

A Different Life
As I have taken the time to really examine the way we live, I am daily seeing more and more that the way of life we (more importantly I, because it's so much easier to point the finger) live is so destructive to the earth, animals living on it, people living on it, and most importantly the souls of those people. At this point I see two outcomes to these realizations: plunging into despair and hopelessness at the state of the world, and a way of hope and transformation. Slowly, since I am fortunate enough to know some people who have been through similar thought processes, my eyes are being opened to a way that gives hope to a future where we, by the life giving grace of God, are able to transcend the ways of this world. I think I am just starting to understand "in this world, but not of this world". Without faith in the transformative power of the spirit of God working in people, there truly would be no hope. Without the example Jesus gave of a different life and a different love, there would be no clear path. This process of discovering the hope and path laid out for us is a slow one, but I've come to the realization that it really is the only option. To live, we have to die to the ways we have learned and chose not just to live better, but to really understand what it is to live creatively and different.

Safety
For the longest time I have been wrestling with the idea of danger. I had come to peace with the notion that, as I following Christs leading, I will have to put myself in situations and places that are not only uncomfortable but actually dangerous. The spot where I started to get stuck was when I realized that I will likely have to put other people, including people I love (potentially a future wife or kids), in danger as well. The realization I came to after a conversation with a friend was that my perceptions of danger were skewed. His argument, which I came to agree with was that the danger of physical harm is less than the danger of spiritual death. I would rather be in physical danger and be spiritually alive than in physical safety and be spiritually dead.

Looking Out and Seeing Inside
In the face of the oppressed I regonize my own face, and in the hands of the opressor I recognize my own hands. Their flesh is my flesh, their blood is my blood, their pain is my pain, their smile is my smile."
-Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands

Living in close quarters
Lately I have been thinking a lot about the idea of physically living in a place where I will be forced to be building relationships. I have thought of the number of times where I have actually lived with people, where I have woken up, eaten with, and gone to bed in the same room as, and this is the context where relationships are built most quickly. This year I have been living in a room in a house where I have little to no contact with my housemates. Last semester was one of the most depressing times of my life, where I sat in my room for hours a day alone. I came to the scary realization that this is a normal thing in our society. People live alone. They wake up to an empty house, the go to work, they come home and go to bed in an empty house. This is not how we are meant to live. We are designed to be living together, to be taking each day of life together. To be exciting each other, and going through hard times together. This has motivated me to speak to a friend about living together once I am done school, to live in a house where the doors are open to anyone who needs a place to eat, sleep, or just be around people. The second, scarier, thought I've had is to start to try to connect with my current house mates. We'll see how that plays out.

Thanksgiving
This weekend is thanksgiving weekend. A wonderful time to be with and celebrate family, as well as being thankful for the material blessings we recieve. I cannot, however, help feeling terribly uncomfortable with what this celebration has become. Understanding its roots in celebrating the harvest is one thing, but it seems to have become a bit of a mockery for me. Thanksiving seems to have turned into a chance for the well off to bathe ourselves in the comfort we feel every day. I never have to worry about there being enough food. I dont worry that i might wake up tomorrow and my family will be gone. Maybe, no i certainly do, need to be more thankful for these things. On the other hand, i cannot help thinking that this "holiday" is not not so much of a celebration for many people. In a world where people go hungry every day, where people are dying of preventable causes every minute, for me to participate in a day of extreme gluttony and then go back to day to day life seems downright dastardly. Perhaps this day can become a day where we not only celebrate our own blessings, but a day where we recognize the struggles for survival others go through on a daily basis. Perhaps it can become a way of remiding ourselves of the way the lifestyle we live affects people other than ourselves. And may it not only remind us of these things, but may it change us, change the way we abuse so many people and dont think twice about it. I'm know that in the society i live in, these are only dreams in terms of any large scale change, but i hope to change something myself and hopefully a few others.

This is my first entry in quite a while, so i have no idea if anyone will even check here for this. If you do come accross this, i plan on posting more regulary again, theres been lots ive been thinking through.

School
During the fall I had a lot going on. The things I had going on were all good things, and wouldn't undo them in a second. My school suffered a little because I was spending so much time on other things, but I was ok with that because, like I said, these were all good things.

The past couple of months I have become incredibly lazy. I pretty much stopped going to class. I told myself, and others, that I would get more done at home than elsewhere, but it never happened. My marks have continued to stay low, even dip lower. I am going into one exam with a failing mark in the class. The reason my marks are down is because I don't do any work, and thats just from not doing anything. I'm scared now that im going to fail classes, but even with that in mind I am having an incredibly difficult time studying for exams. I'm not sure how I got to this point, but it sucks. Theres so many times where I've known I had work to do, but ended up watching TV in stead.

I don't know what happened.

Less and less
I haven't written anything in a while, so I'm going to make an attempt at encapsulating some of the thoughts I’ve thought in my time of silence.

There was a time where nearly everything in this culture repulsed me, but day by day I’m feeling less and less. There was a time where God fascinated me, I might say I was in love, the kind of “in love” where all I wanted was to know Him more. I spent every minute digging deeper into the journey of discovering who He is. I wanted to show Him off, wanted to walk down the street with my arm around Him.

Slowly I've been become completely calloused to the world around me, but day by day I’m getting more and more comfortable in it. I’m settling for what the world is offering. I feel like my passionate love has become a casual friendship. I don’t think I think any less of Jesus, think of Him less.

What happened? Why don’t I care much about anything but me any more?

The Wrath of God
This morning, I heard the wrath of God described not as Him throwing lightning bolts, but rather by complete passivity. God doesn't inflict torture, He just lets us torture ourselves. Although Im not sure wrath is the word I like, this seems to fit the God I think I know. This leads back to questions I was working through some time ago, but with a different paradigm.
If God doesn't inflict punishment, but rather lets us punish ourselves, theres a couple of questions that come to me:
This sounds like what was going on with those Isrealites when they went into exile.
Was every one of the Isrealites in exile? Were the ones who were striving to know God lumped in with the others?
For a while now I've been struggling. I've been struggling with the realization that "Christians" (big blanket statement, I'm thinking more along the lines of the vast majority of them) don't fill the role that Jesus was laying out for them. I've struggled to see God in Christians and churches. I've struggled to see and hear God for myself. The struggle has been so big that many times I've wanted to walk away. But coming back to what I started with, I can come to no other conclusion than that the church, so far as I've see it, is in exile.
This is not a brand new idea to me. This past summer I listened to this explained, and went along because it made sense for the most part, but went along mostly because it was a new and cool idea. With the realization that a number of times I've felt like I don't wan to have anything to do with a church that doesnt follow what it teaches, I'm now forced to confront this head on and really find the implications. Can I just not get to know God because the society is in exile? Where do we go now?

If only
If only my life were a movie.

I would always know what to do.
I would always know what to say.
I could hurt people, but then I could do something to make up, and it would all be OKb.
I would get hurt, but I would learn a lesson every time and it would make me strong.
I would lose friends, but they would always be the kinds of people I wouldn't want to know anyway.
There would never be a boring moment.
The world would laugh with me.
The world would cry with me.

Unfortunatley my life isn't a movie, so these things don't happen.
I've been left wanting these things.
Television, movies, books, radio, music, they've all become my ruler.
They're the ruler I measure my life by.
Unfortunatley I always come up short.
Unfortunatley I always want to measure up to this.

Burdens
Mat 11:28 If you are tired from carrying heavy burdens, come to me and I will give you rest.
Mat 11:29 Take the yoke I give you. Put it on your shoulders and learn from me. I am gentle and humble, and you will find rest.
Mat 11:30 This yoke is easy to bear, and this burden is light.

I think most people I know ask God to take the load off their backs. We ask God to remove all suffering and all burdens in our lives. I'm a little at stop in my thinking as to how this plays out. On one hand I want this scripture to ring true. One side of me is saying this has to be true, following God will result in a light load.

Rom 5:3 But that's not all! We gladly suffer, because we know that suffering helps us to endure.
Rom 5:4 And endurance builds character, which gives us a hope
Rom 5:5 that will never disappoint us.

But then where does the character come from? If the burden is light, is character built. Are we to be helping others carry their burdens? Or do we ask God to remove theirs as well?

Update
So Christmas was a very strange time for me, involving a fair number of feelings of depression for this reason: I felt like I had completely failed to be everything I had been understanding my life to look like.
(I wish I wrote this right away, I had my full train of thought yesterday on my way home from school, but didnt have a computer at that point.)
As I mentioned in previous posts, I struggled with the notion that I had not really succeeded in building very strong relationships with people. I have met a lot of new people in the past few months, and spend a lot of time with old friends, but dont really know many of them much better. I dont feel like i have given them anything, shown them love. I also felt like a tool because over the break I completely wasted sooo much time. TV killed a huge amount of my time. Ive been learing patients, and that everything takes time, but also been learing that every moment is precious (for lack of a less...cheezy word) and I had wasted many precious moments. There was so much time I could have been using getting to know people better, or getting to know God better.
3 conclusions I came to:
1) With regards to my relationships, I have gotten to know new people. And I have been spending time with people I already knew. Although i hadnt made the best use of the time we had together, I had started to, and continued to be, a presence with each person. I ready this quote, and it was encouragement: "Your will fail" although I had failed to do things in the time i was hoping for, im still in a position where im in regular contact with many people i want to be getting to know better.
2) Wasting time watching TV doesnt just not use that half hour, it have bigger implications. By not using that hour to better my understanding of God, myself or someone else, i made myself less useful in some future situation.
3) In an attempt to love God through loving people, I have been failing to connect with him directly. I have always struggled with exactly what this looks like, as Im sure many poeple do, but this contributed hugely to my inablilitly to comprehend love. I had gone from a cultural separatist, and started to swing to far in the direction of a conformist (in the classification of Kary Oberbrunner). In my attemp to love people, i had neglected to love god. I dont like this wording, because i see huge overlap in loving people and loving God, but im starting to get what he was talking about.

What am I???
I think here's the problem, or at least part of it:
True love, or the apparent strongest love comes where the recipient doesnt feel it is deserved. I was looking for love, looking for places in my life where I had been love, with the mindset of deserving it. I think it comes back to the brokenness thing. I cant see how strong God's love is because im still working witht he premise that I deserve it. I think the place I get hung up is that I believe I am the beloved of God, created individually by God, but at the same time, somehow I am not worthy of Gods love. Theres a duality that I have trouble getting my head around. I am perfect, as I am created by God, whose every creation is perfect, but at the same time I am imperfect as a result of what I have percieved myself to be: something less than this.

So here's my next problem: I am a PERFECT creation, who is, alone, unworthy of God, thus, IMPERFECT

Be loved and love
This Christmas has been a very strange time for me. It was a mixture of joy and a sense of failure. I spent christmas morning with my mom and brother and the other volunteers making breakfast at the shelter in hamilton. This was an opportunity Im very glad i had.

I would have thought that I would have figured out by now that im not out to teach other people, but be taught by them. This realization has come time and time again, but im still out to save the world. I thought i was doing something pretty good, getting up early christmas morning to go make breakfast and all: thats a pretty noble thing to do. The weird part is i know a lot of the youth that were there this morning, so i should have know what to expect. I was hit with a hard blow when i got there and realized i didnt know what to offer them. We set up a nice meal, had some christmas presents for them, and there were some smiles when they got each of these things, but as i looked around the room and sat and talked with a few of the guys, i realized how much pain this morning caused. These guys and girls were here because they didnt have anywhere else to be on christmas morning. More than anything people want to be loved.

I knew this, but was particulary hit because i felt so helpless in this situation. I dont know how to give love. I go to school 5 days a week. I go to the shelter 1 day a week. I see my family 7 days a week. Theres many other people i see very often. Looking back, i realized this sense of helpless inability to show love. Its easy to feel like im showing love to some by setting them up with a nice christmas gift. I look back and find it difficult to see many places in my life where i had experienced genuine love. To love i need to know what love is, i need to see how i am being loved.

I feel hope. I feel hope because I know im dancing on the edge of something. Im standing at the side, afraid to get in. I know that there is love there. I know that i am beloved, that God loves me in a way i dont understand. But thats the problem i dont understand. What am i putting up thats stopping that love from shining through? How can i start to get a handle on what it looks like?

I stand here wanting to be able to love. I stand here wanting to be loved.
I think I've come to the conclusion that I have to be loved in order to love others.
I think I've come to the conclusion that I have to love others in order to be loved.
Where do I start? If loving others and being loved have to precede each other...

"And they tie up heavy loads, and lay them on men's shoulders; but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger... Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier provisions of the law: justice and mercy and forgiveness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others."
-Matthew 23:4,23

Just really thought this was powerful. It speaks to the way people remove the freedom Christ brings, and replace it with heavy loads, the very opposite of that freedom.

Humility
"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves." Phillipians 2:3

As I read and live I think that I figure out more of what my role is. I figure out more of who God is, and who He wants to be to us. I've been learning things that often don't jive with certain things that I have been taugh, am being taugh, and the thoughts of people I talk to.
The problem comes when I feel that my personal understanding of some specific issue makes more sense than what someone else thinks. I've been continually been bothered by this passage because as, it says: consider others better than yourselves." I got hung up thinking that I shouldn't be attempting to share my thoughts with that person. I've been thinking "If I'm to think that they're better, then I should just listen to what they have to say. But this had problems.
I think my loophole was in my definition of "consider others better." I can think of someone better without nessecarily agreeing on everything. I can, in fact, know things that they dont and still consider them better.
I've been realizing that I need to be separating, not completely, the person from their thoughts and opinions. Theres one person I've been talking with on a few topics regarding the church, and was very taken aback by the feeling that discussion became an attack on me. "How can you do that?" and "So you're just going to..." that sort of thing. I felt that I was being looked at as wrong, not my ideas.
So I'm trying not to define a person by what they think, know, or do. What do we define them by then? As and individual created by God. As the beloved of christ. In that way, no one is better than me, no matter how messed up I percieve their thinking to be, or how many dastardly things they've done.

Broken
She was fighting back tears as she told me that as she looks back on her life, she sees nothing good. She continues to fight the tears as she tells me that shes given so much to help her friends; shes given to show love. She fights back the tears as she tells me she sits in her room every night and wonders if its worth while.

I can't think of a better word than broken. The world has broken her spirit.

What is it about this that I'm striving for????

Emotion/Feeling
What does it mean to search for brokenness? To quote 'Holiness', the popular worship song, "Brokenness, brokenness is what I long for / Brokenness is what I need / Brokenness is what you want from me." This is apparently something to aspire to, and I feel like I have been chasing it for some time withought knowing what it means. I haven't known what it is.

One conclusion, however, that I have come to is that it goes beyond a feeling. I've been chasing some feeling of brokenness, some emotional state. But this is only part of it...it goes much deeper than an emotional state, or feeling.

What exactly it means, however, I will discover as I achieve it.

broken with the broken
I want to be with those who are broken. I want to show them love, I want them to know that I see worth in them.

What about me??? I am broken. I want to be shown love, I want to see that someone sees worth in me. How can I offer hope when I feel so alone? I'm tired.

What happens when I have trouble seeing the hope Christ brings? Christ is going to come and make things new, so where does that leave me now???

The Law
I always asked the question: why would God create the law? Why would he create something that, as humans, we could never really fulfill? Why would he set up a situation where His intervention would be required to be broken free from the law?

With these questions in mind, I was pushed a step back, I had to ask what the law is before I could answer why God created it.

Over the last...pretty long while...I came to the conclusion that God created the law not with the intent of creating something stricktly to be followed, but something that had reason. As I looked into different specific laws and commandments they made sence as to why they existed. I was fairly content with this, that the law was created not to distance people from God, but as a guidline of how to live. Each part of the law would either benefit my relationship with other people or with God. I still wasnt exactly sure why God would create the law, knowing perfectly well that we couldnt keep it, and then need to take drastic action to reconcile us to himself.

I was discussing the idea of the law today, and it was either explained to me explicitly this way, or I came to this conclusion based on the direction of the conversation, but I think Im working toward a new understanding:
God did not create the law. The law exists because God exists. The law puts guidlines on actions that break relationship, be it with God or with people. God, being perfect, fulfills the law, and fulfills relationship. Now as we(people) broke relationship with each other and with God, God had to do something about it because he fulfills relationship completely. THere is no way God could let relationship with us be destroyed, even if it was by our doing, and not his. THats where the radical action comes in. Jesus is Gods fulfillment of the law, the fulfilment of relationship.

Advertisement