Defunct

That word has always intrigued me: defunct. Obviously coming from the same root as "function," but with the negative "de" attached, therefore making it essentially mean "not working." This is what goes on in my brain. I guess that's part of why I am an English major.

There was a point last week where I was seriously questioning my creativity. So I asked you to ask me questions. And because of one of those questions, and an excellent video posted on Stuff Christian Like, I have delved further into this idea.

I've come to realize that I am overly self-absorbed in, well, myself. I mean, T.J.'s a pretty cool guy and all, but he's nothing too special. I should know. I am he. (and yes, that is proper grammar). Basically, I am intensely concerned with how well I do things, and if I will fail.

Failure is one of my biggest fears. Not in all things, but in things I care about--and rarely will I verbally tell you what those things are. If you are carefully observant, however, you will be able to tell. If I get pissed when I don't do well in it, I probably care. If I get horribly despondent and morbidly introspective when it isn't going as planned, I probably care.

The problem is, all of this caring how things turn out comes from a place of pride, where I think one of two things: A) That I can do something, anything, whatever-the-task-at-hand-thing better than whoever I am competing against, or the personal standard I set for myself. B) That I can do anything good and pure and right without God. Both of these assumptions are wrong, and feed off the inherently competitive nature of pride (something that was brought to my attention by C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, which I will probably discuss further in the future).

So when I fail to live up to my standard or God's standard (which, I dunno, always), I feel the pressure of the entire universe falling on me as I attempt an Alas-esque feat, trying to maintain my whole world.

I have my thoughts on why this is wrong and how to fix it, but I'm interested to hear what you think?

I, Love, and You

Each of these are passages from the new Avett Brothers Album, which I very much like.

The following are resonating because of recent events and sentiments. I'm pretty much hinging on the fact that most people will not read all of this:

Three words that became hard to say
I and Love and You
What you were then I am today
Look at the things I do
...
I miss that feeling of feeling,
The feeling of feeling...
The wind above my face
And caring what it bring my way,
The minutes pass away
And caring what I do with them, oh--
Maybe bring me love or something else
...
I wanna have friends that I can trust,
that love me for the man I've become not the man I was.
I wanna have friends that will let me be
all alone when being alone is all that I need.
I wanna have pride like my mother has,
And not like the kind in the bible that turns you bad.
...
Close the laundry door,
tiptoe across the floor
Keep your clothes on,
I've got all that I can take.
Teach me how to use,
the love that people say you made.
Break this tired old routine,
and this time dont make me leave
...
Violent is the motion in my heart and in my body and mind
And silent is the feeling that I lost but I'm determined to find
And love is but an ocean, unrealistic notion
But I cling to her devotion and I let it pull me down to the floor
...
Temporary is my time,
Ain't nothing in this world that's mine
Except the will I found to carry on
Free is not your right to chose
It's answering what's asked of you
To give the love you find until it's gone
...
I haven’t finished a thing since I started my life,
I don’t feel much like starting now.
Walking now lonely has worked like a charm
I’m the only one I have to let down.
But watching you makes me think that that is wrong.
I can go on with my insecure nature
I can keep living off sympathy.
I can tell all the people that all that sucks
Has a direct reflection on me.
It's up to you, my father, call on me.

Rooting For A Serial Killer

To tell the truth, I had never even heard of the TV show Dexter before I moved into the Testosterhome and several of my roommates had started watching it. Maybe that was because I had never had the luxury of Showtime as a channel option.

Since that first contact, I have definitely become engrossed. Granted, I have only seen probably 70% of the first two seasons, but I am trying to get around to more. Maybe I'll even catch up with where the show is now?

When I started to get involved in the show, I had to ask myself "Why are you rooting for a serial killer?" It would be easy to play the "he only kills bad people" card, but that's not his goal. Dexter doesn't kill because he wants bad people gone, he kills because he is screwed up and needs to satiate his desire for killing in some semi-socially-acceptable manner.

I have been thinking about this for a while, and a recent Paste article essentially coalesced my thoughts. I like Dexter because he's jacked up in the head. In one sense, I like him because he's more obviously jacked up than I am, but we are both really screwed up and really fallen.

Sure, my brokenness isn't manifested in a life-long systematic murder rampage, but what about a life-long systematic lust binge? Or my repeated instances of pride and anger. Or my ignorance of those in need around me?

I like Dexter (the show) because while it places a semi-psychotic serial killer in the position of protagonist and therefore the position of favor, the show never attempts to glorify, deify or in any way support his killing habits. Dexter himself wonders if he is a monster, if he should bring an end to it, if he can bring an end to it.

I like Dexter, the man, because he shows me a lot of myself. What does an seemingly insurmountable urge inherent in a man's psyche do when it is given full control?

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil is right there. I enjoy what God has decreed as right (his law) in my heart and soul, but I see in my flesh another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that lives in my flesh.

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. Sound familiar?

Filthy Roman Sponge

Have you ever been confused or unsure about that passage where Jesus is on the cross and is given something to drink from a sponge? [Matthew 27:45-50]



My stomach turned when I heard that, just the putridity of it. And how often do I still stick that sponge in Jesus' mouth?

[via The Resurgence]

Jesus Wants Sinners

Another video, this time from the Desiring God Blog. Very powerful...this one pissed me off as much as the guy said he was.

How many times do I do the same thing though? Placing a judgment and declaring through my actions or words that Jesus does not want something broken?

Content Slaves

How often are we as people content in our slavery? Sin is enslaves. Anyone who disagrees is fooling himself.

One would think that we would rebel against the rule of something over us, as we often do against God. But yet, we remain under the much more malicious influence and directive of sin.

Very often we are as Jonathan Edwards points out:

"The corrupt hearts of men naturally incline to stupidity and senselessness before God comes with the awakening influences of his Spirit. They are quiet and secure. They have no true comfort and hope, and yet they are quiet; they are at ease. They are in miserable slavery, and yet seek not a remedy. They say, as the children of Israel did in Egypt to Moses, "Let us alone, that we may serve the Egyptians."

This verse comes from Exodus 14, as the Egyptians were bearing down upon Israel, with their backs against the sea, they turned accusingly at Moses with the words "Didn't we say to you in Egypt, 'Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians'? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!" [Ex. 14:12]

So often we, or at least I, am like this. As soon as the going gets tough spiritually, as soon as it's not all pie and ice cream pursuing God, I'm tempted to imitate the Israelites' inclination. To think [and genuinely believe, as our actions indicate] that a deliverance from evil tyranny would be as simply as dessert is at best, foolish.

So then, the struggle is not to have victory or deliverance from sin; Christ has provided that: "Who will deliver me!? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!" [Rom. 7:21-25] The struggle becomes to continue to rest in the redemption and deliverance he has graciously provided.

In conclusion, it's a choice between two masters: do you want to be a slave to sin, a malicious, unforgiving and eternally destructive master, or does God, the benevolent, gracious and eternally constructive master sound more appealing?

Holy Ain't Easy

"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us"
—Hebrews 12:1

Being raised in the church, and attending numerous conferences and camps, I've heard this verse so many times. When I read it the other day though, it struck me in a much deeper way.

I think a lot of time we (very often me) say that the spiritual walk and spiritual discipline is so difficult (insert whiny teenage voice there). But I think that's the point. It is difficult.

Jesus had to walk uphill to get to the Cross. There's no escalator to heaven. It is indeed a stairway, or perhaps more accurately a 45% grade mountain trail.

In the other versions of Hebrews 21:1 that I looked up, instead of endurance I saw perseverance, persistence, without giving up, and even with patience. In fact, the Amplified Bible says it like this: "with patient endurance and steady and active persistence."

And then there's the sin: when you are running uphill, do you think you'd be inclined to hold on to a couple of 50 lb. weights, just for kicks? Or tie some ropes to you legs? There is no logical excuse for holding on to something that can and will hold you up, trip you up and cause you to give up.

I think this quote by Jonathan Edwards really nails it:

"We should travel on in the way of obedience to all God’s commands, even the difficult as well as the easy; denying all our sinful inclinations and interests. The way to heaven is ascending; we must be content to travel up hill, though it be hard and tiresome, and contrary to the natural bias of our flesh."

Wait Upon The Lord

Many Christians, including myself, have said that they just don't have the strength to overcome whatever sin we're dealing with, or don't have the strength to do what is right, to love people or whatever the chosen 'right thing' we need to do is.

Chris Tomlin's song "Everlasting God" (written by Benton Brown) contains the following lyrics:

Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord
We will wait upon the Lord

These lyrics are based on a verse from Isaiah 40: "they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength."

Here's where we fail, we say "But I have been waiting on God to be my strength, I waited for so long!?!" No, you didn't.

In the event of temptation, as an example, let's say you wait for God to be your strength, but after minutes, hours, even days of waiting, you give in. And then you'll say "God didn't come." Well, we didn't. wait.

If you gave in to temptation, you didn't wait for God. Sure, you waited. But we didn't wait for God, we waited for God until we figured he just wasn't going to show up.

It's like the cliché story of a long lost lover who comes back only to find his beloved has married another. She didn't wait for him. She waited until she "couldn't" any more, or until it became more inconvenient to wait than to give in. [Count of Monte Cristo, anyone?]

While the movies will say that she never stopped loving her lost lover, I will say she did. If only for an instant. So are we with God.

I'm not saying we totally abandon our love for God, but we do stop loving him for at least a moment, the moment where we loved whatever sin, whatever lust, whatever idol, or even ourselves more than the Everlasting God who created us, the Strong Deliverer who has and continually will deliver us.

Life and Death Situations

Tonight at youth group we started a new series with the middle school kids, titled "Mirage." It's all about how a lot of times in the world, things are often deceptive, especially in the area of sin. There's four messages, and tonight's was "Sometimes Death Looks Like Life."

While I think that poetically (and artistically) speaking, the ideas of death and life are used incredibly often, and rightly so, because they are two major components of human existence. However, to sound out in the din of the messages about death and life, you must say something either bound in truth, or discordant with the rest of the messages.

Christianity is one place where the message given about life and death is both discordant with the world and bound poignantly in truth.

Now, I would like to remark upon the frequency that, in this world, death very often does look like life. Satan's name of 'deceiver' is no misnomer. He has effectively masqueraded many death-causing circumstances, occurrences, activities, etc., to look as if they are actually the path to life. (Just to note, when I speak of 'death,' the concept I am referring to is not only the literal death or end of life, but also the participation in sin in this world, which, in effect, 'kills' a believer's soul)

If you are unsure that such a concept is true, let me enlist an example:

Lust, specifically sexual lust, has as its goal the temporary satisfaction in a person, something that can be thought to bring life. The bestowing/reception of affection from someone is 'life-awakening,' as is the simple satisfaction in them. One could even make the point that if a child was to come of it, life was born of the original desire.

However, outside of marriage, this lustful desire for someone leads only to death. How many relationships and even marriages have been destroyed when people give themselves over to their desires, lured into the promise of life that the lust gives?

And so I urge you, and hope that you will urge me to not fall into the trap that has been set. I am one of the chiefest offenders in this area, too many times have I followed my flesh into a fallen promise. Do not so follow!

I hope to delve into this idea more fully in the future, and with the ongoing series at youth group, I'll hopefully remember to. For now, I'll leave you with a quote from Jonathan Edwards:

"So there is nothing here below by which we can attain to happiness, though there be many of the high and great things of the world that seem to others that don't enjoy them as though a happiness was to be reached by them. Yet those that have experience find happiness as far from them as from those that are in a lower state of life."
[From Images of Divine Things]

Idolatry, A Practiced Art

A lot of my life of late has been spent dealing with a relative "spiritual depression" that I had been experiencing for a while. To a certain extent, I am still dealing with it, but I can see the proverbial light at the proverbial end of the proverbial tunnel, to be proverbial. Recent events, dealings, readings and other sundry circumstances have assisted me in this emergence from the darkness.

After a long period of surmising, contemplating and failing, I realized that a great deal of my depression and lack of sentiment for the Lord was my consistent and repeated idolatry. I know that we've heard many a time that "Idols are not just those statues they worshiped back in the day in Canaan, you know!" but I do not think that we have truly comprehended this, or attempted to examine are lives with this in mine. At least, I had not for a long period of time.

Well, I am sad to admit that my heart is, as John Calvin stated, “a factory of idols…everyone of us is, from his mother’s womb, is an expert in inventing idols.” Well in my heart's factory, our specialty idol to is godly young women.

That's right, I said godly. I have the unfortunate ability to turn nearly every sister in Christ into a dating option. A select few have gone beyond this, to the point where I looked to them for my satisfaction instead of God.

It took me a while to realize that this idolatry has pretty much characterized the past year of my life. I have repeatedly pursued several different females, or at least "had feelings" for them, which was in fact my form of worship of them. My campus minster gave a great message on idolatry based out of Hosea, I'd encourage you to check it out, it basically expounds on what I'm trying to get across here.

Well, it has been a difficult process to tear down these idols. It has been a slow process, a tiring one, a frustrating one, for sure. Just about every time I think I've torn down one of these females as an idol, my heart begins to entertain the thought and affections of another.

Sometimes I want to literally slap myself in the face when my thoughts incline to a new girl, and I wish I could just blot out the entirety of the female gender as options for relationships. I have really had to seek God in this to figure out how to fix this aspect of my walk.

To conclude, I have had some recent epiphanies and discoveries in this area, and I will be sharing them in this venue, instead of the previously preferable Facebook. I'd love to hear feedback on them.