Never Take Friendship Personal

No friendship is permanent. Perhaps, friendship is in some ways futile. Friends never last forever. Remember the small child who insisted that another child was his/her's BEST FRIEND and that they would be BEST FRIENDS forever? You probably also remember...how that didn't happen. The friends of your youth grow up and leave. You loose contact. Your feelings get stomped on and you leave sometimes. You are rejected for the "cooler" people. You betray a friendship and are too ashamed to try to mend it. Tragedy happens. You move on.

No man (or woman) was meant to be alone, purposely alienating yourself is selfish--but no human relationship can fully satisfy you. There is always the clashing sparks of difference and the repetitiousness of personal annoyance; making it crucial to possess both the characteristic of being willing and open to investing a huge amount of time into all relationships and yet be able to realize that everything will come to an end. Solomon's seasons. It is but a vapor. "Forever friends" is a cruel ideology, impossible, and a joke so ironic its fame is completely unreasonable.

To be personable, friendly, compassionate, interested and yet be willing to say goodbye to every possible kindred spirit--for indeed, the Lord gives and takes away.

The Art of Being Offended

"The feeling of offendedness is invigorating. It might even be an effective way to bend a population toward a tyrant's will. But we must never settle for it. We must not confuse an accelerated pulse rate for the presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts. We must interrogate our offendedness, hold it open for question. Complaining about Harry Potter or getting worked up over The Golden Compass (Philip Pullman's literary response to the damage done to people's imaginations in the name of religion) or pitting ticket sales of the Narnia films against Brokeback Mountain is a much less complicated call than that whole business about loving neighbors, to say nothing about loving enemies. If we're more opposed, for instance, to what we take to be "bad language" and nude scenes and films about gay people than we are to people being blown up, starved to death, deprived of life-saving medicine, or tortured, our offendedness is out of whack. We have yet to understand the nature of real perversion. We aren't as deeply acquainted with our religion we might think.

To keep it all simple and safe, we often become selective fundamentalists. We know where to go to have our prejudices explained as just and sensible, our convictions strengthened, our group or political party reaffirmed. We process whatever already fits the grid that is hardwired (or re-hardwired) in our heads. It's difficult for anything else to get through. We're easily offended. Maybe we're looking to feel offended, which can make us feel better about ourselves. Feeling offended summons a sense of being in the right, a certain strength, a kind of power, an espresso shot of righteous indignation. And if the image of God hardwired into our nervous system is easily offended and put off by certain people and their offensive behavior, there's a feeling of being that much closer to the winning side, that much more likely to be numbered among the elect, the saved, the documented." - David Dark

The Bible does indeed tell us to "be in the world but not of it", it would be petty foolishness to act as if it is the sole duty of Christians to speak against the secular works. What gain is putting Harry Potter or anything else on the black list and branding those who do not agree with your judgments? Is it not the heart from which the choices come from? One cannot change the heart by making rules of what is and isn't allowed. The "rules" come from a changed heart.

What glory is there in being offended by perverted media? You being offended will not make it disappear. If anything you will gain your religious beliefs the title of a snob--and to what benefit is that? It can't be wrong to be offended for the sake of God--but can't He take care of His own offendedness? Does He not say that vengeance is His?

"Jesus' gospel is never at our command, under our copyright, or contained within an -ism, an ideology, or any well-intentioned human construct. The question is always whether Jesus' rare ethos has gotten hold of us in any discernible way. To answer the question we must stop defining ourselves by all the things we're against. We might also ask what, other than getting saved in the shallowest sense, we actually stand for." - David Dark (The Sacred Art of Questioning Everything)

a rant perhaps...

Everyone seems to be upset/angry about the amount of abortions performed in the Western world. They decry it from the pulpit and everywhere else they can think of. They act like its the world's biggest problem. They tisk tisk about it over the dinner table and insist that Planned Parenthood is an organization of Satan.

But why? If they truly thought it was wrong why don't they do something about it? Voting for abortion to become illegal isn't going to eliminate it (and if you ever could make it illegal it would be a miracle). Seriously, why do you try to change things through the government? It hardly ever works.

If you think abortion is wrong, help provide the women who don't want their babies with alternatives instead of making their lives worse by acting like jerks. Quit making a fuss over some politician's views on abortion and go in a get your hands dirty telling kids why pre-marital sex is not a smart idea.

Basic point. Don't condemn something as a problem until you are ready to help with a solution.

And please, take the bumper sticker that says "Abortion is Murder" off your ridiculous SUV.

blind faith vs. honest faith

"There is a big difference between blind faith and honest faith. I was raised in the church. I have had to wrestle with what it is I believe outside of my friends and family. An honest faith is one that wrestles with doubts and hard questions. As I was growing up, I was afraid to question what I had been taught. I feared the outcome if I were to really question the beliefs I had inherited. What I found was in the moments I expressed my doubts and searched out the truth, I actually drew closer to the faith. I realized it was deeper than religion."
- Chad Butler

is it weird

that i keep watching this video?

read at your own risk

so, i'm really bored right now, so i'm going to proceed in amusing myself by writing an utterly ridiculous post. completely nonsensical....*cough*

i just got writer's block.

i'm thinking about getting twitter just so i can have the pleasure of writing small little updates about absolutely nothing. peer pressure is really getting to me...'sides if i'm really lucky i could actually have some celebrity re-tweet to my post or whatever its called. seriously thinking, what's the difference between twitter and facebook status? there is only one slight difference--twitter is a stupid-er sounding name.

the desktop of my compy is like the bulletin board of a plagiarist.

just a few minutes ago i had a battle with the soap dispenser in my parents' bathroom--it kept making bubbles that resisted the flow of soap from where it was supposed to go unto the sides of the dispenser and all over my hands. i eventually won, i think i was aided by my 'scrappiness'. that word is the sweetest thing since father abraham.

after completely finishing my artbook project (all 8 of them) I realized that i should call them 'art books' not 'artbooks'. however, i wrote 'artbooks' on the title page for all 8. total fail.

*at this point in the broadcast, sarah has gotten distracted with watching twloha vidoes on youtube*

*sarah continues to be distracted because she is now talking to a friend on instant message*

*sarah contines to be distracted for the next hour watching videos of U2's stage giant for the 360 tour and giving online drawing lessons*

*sarah now exits youtube*

where was i?

oh yeah! i realized earlier today that my family has free long distance for a year which seriously means that i should call some of my boardie friends who live on the east coast and whatnot. cuz it would be fun! speaking of which....i need to get busy writing that letter to send lee.

oh yes. album alert!!!!! Anchor & Braille's 'Felt' is coming out August 4th.

*starts humming "Like Steps In A Dance"*

if you just read all the way through this post, good for you, you just wasted ten seconds of your life.

"the higher law"

In my few encounters with people who do not profess the Christian faith, I have encountered an attitude that I find rather alarming. They assume that I, professing to be a Christian, want to tell them about all the things that they are doing wrong--basically, they expect me to spend all my time condemning their immorality. I could be wrong, but I highly doubt it, when I believe that this tendency of condemnation is the first characteristic of Christianity that secular individuals think of. If I classify myself as a Christian, people assume that I want to impose my morality on them.

With the present 'immorality' of the United States, many conservative Christians are freaking out because they know they could possibly loose their rights to upholding their own values. So the startling reaction would be to marshal up as many conservative Christians as possible and mold them into politicians so that the Republicans can out number the Democrats and we can succeed in keeping our values. There have been many who have proclaimed that the way to a more moral nation is to change a lot of legislation. Basically, make all these immoral behaviors illegal--and to enforce those laws. Forget mercy and enforce morality. I am convinced this is one of the worst things any group of Christians could do. By imposing morality without a foundation, without a source of desire, will only create more immorality--only of a different kind.

The very point of morality is not to keep a man made law, it is not to achieve the religious right's standards of respectability, it is solely to obey God out of love. God forces no one to obey Him, if we obey Him it is because we believe that the reward is worth the cost--and so how can we as God's children seek to make other people who have no relationship with God follow our rules?

Nation wide morality cannot be imposed on unwilling individuals because of the very nature of morality. It is not a behavior that can be donned, it is something that sprouts from loving God. So how can we attempt to force morality into someone who does not share the foundation from which morality comes from? Also, by imposing these rules of respectable conduct, are we not converting them to the different kind of immorality called hypocrisy--as Jesus described, washing the outside and neglecting to remember the inside-- if they do not possess the foundation?

In order to succeed in a moral society, everyone in that society would have to be of one faith, mind, and purpose. Basically, a utopia. However, because we cannot force anyone to accept Jesus as Christ or even the existence of God no matter how convincing our arguments may be to try to do so would be yet another imposement that would result to turmoil and immorality. Good intentions that backfire terribly.

Because we have no right to force morality or belief unto an unbelieving group, condemning their actions with expressions of hatred are not beneficial to the furthering of God's children. In his book What's So Amazing About Grace? Philip Yancey recalls an account of a friend that illustrates this point clearly:

"A prostitute came to me in wretched straits, homeless, sick, unable to buy food for her two-year-old daughter. Through sobs and tears, she told me she had been renting out her daughter--two years old!--to men interested in kinky sex. She made more renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habit. . . . I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naive shock that crossed her face, "Church!" she cried. "Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They'd just make me feel worse."

He then goes on to tell the account of a good friend who came out of the closet and then participated in gay rights marches in Washington D.C. Yancey himself went along for the sole purpose of observance; he witnessed the gay rights marchers and also the church groups protesting the march. The gay rights activists did their thing, while the protesters waved hateful signs and called the marchers crude names. Is it any wonder that hate is the face of American Christianity?

The apostle Paul wrote the passage of 1 Corinthians 13 to insist that any righteous action done without love is worthless, Bono sang that love is "the higher law", Jon Foreman wrote that love was "the movement", "the revolution," and "redemption", Kevin Max proclaimed that "if people would love more of us would be alive". How can we miss the point?

Is it because we are uncomfortable around people who tell us in their defense that they have been attracted to their own sex since they can remember? Is it because it is so much easier to condemn and exhibit actions of hatred than to get our hands and knees dirty pleading that God will give us the right thing to say? Perhaps it is easier to love the ones that look, act, talk, and dress just like us, and yet Jesus said that even the sinners do that and we are to be different.

We must realize that exhibiting true unconditional love does not mean we agree with their beliefs and behavior.