Earlier today i wondered out of the blue "what did hitler look like in his baby pictures"
no baby is evil.
What happens along the way to make them that way?
Someone who will probably delete me from facebook when they wake up tomorrow posted the status "Don't let the gay people take over this country"
and i went off on him, no caps lock or anything, but seriously. Out of all of the cruelty and ugliness in our world, in our lives, why hate love?
^end of my rant
but yes, i like the idea of you having a blog
I will be sure to read it
People that say things like that are the people I was talking about that just don't get it. Gay people aren't going to take over the world. I've always thought that the government should step out of the picture and let homosexual people do what they want. It's not an issue for government. Marriage is under the jurisdiction of the church and should remain that way. The Bible says that homosexuality is wrong, but if a church decides to accept it, that's between them and God, if someone comes out of the closet, that's between them and God, if gay people want to get married, that's between them and God. It's not our right to judge because we have not the capability to do so justly.
Whether you believe it's wrong or not, it's not your place to judge or place condemnation.
Your job is still to love everyone
period
end of story
THANK YOU
I nodded after every sentence you just wrote
I've been reading a lot lately. I finished reading the Kiterunner a few days ago and now I'm reading a book called A Thousand Splendid Suns, and in the latter a girl is forced to marry a man who is 40 when she is 15, and there is no quarrel about the sanctity of that marriage. Like, I honestly don't get it
I know I'm not the best Christian, but I do try my best to love everyone, and I'm pretty successful. But, when others who are more involved in their faith choose to condemn instead of love I just get so confused
it's like when i used to run cross country. I sucked. BUT I never walked. Ever And when the girls who were awesome would sprint in front of me and then walk until I caught up with them, I was furious.
How can you claim to be a runner--but not run the whole race? How can anyone claim to be religious, but not love?
Thank you for agreeing. The Bible says "through loving kindness have I drawn thee" People will only accept something if they feel accepted and if you believe in what the Bible says about homosexuality and you believe that it's a sin then you can't thrust the Bible in people's faces screaming at them to repent. It's just going to turn them off. If you think they need to change, fire and brimstone is not the way to go. You have to love people. Just like anyone you feel is sinning , whether they're a kleptomaniac or a compulsive liar, you have to love them and let them decide for themselves. The only conviction people need is what's in the Bible and they have to choose to or not to believe it for themselves.
The rest is between them and God. Personally I side with the Bible on every matter, homosexuality included. I think if you pick and choose which parts of the Bible to believe and not believe you're opening it up to personal interpretation and that's never good, because if you can choose one part to ignore, then why can't someone else choose another part that they want to ignore? There are too many questions that arise out of personal interpretation and picking and choosing
Do you get what I'm saying?
yeah...I understand that. But all I know is that my God is an awesome God, and I can't imagine Him being cruel enough to deny love. But, to each his own.
I could argue and present another perspective to look at it, but I won't
Thank you. :)
I do appreciate that,
I don't want to overstep my boundaries and I'd like to preserve the integrity of our conversation. I can tell you feel strongly about it and I'm not going to challenge you on it. Just read it for yourself and come up with your own conclusions.
I will, I am glad that you care enough about our friendship to let our conversation not become a debate. And with the cloak of the internet, the tone of what we say might be different from our intent. 80% of communication is body language, after all
Yeah, I understand that fact very well which is why I choose what I say online very carefully. Not that I throw away caution when speaking face to face. But I know enough not to start a debate over the Bible. It says what it says, you choose to believe it or not. For me, I can't ignore any of it. I feel like it takes the significance out of the entire thing. It's like taking something out of context, if it's not whole you're missing something ya know.
I get that. You're very much like my mother :) She's very devoted to God and church. Sometimes I wish I was as strong in my faith that I actually wanted to go to church and be involved and read my Bible every day. But, she probably wasn't as devoted when she was my age. And I know that 'if it's right to be in church; it's wrong to be out', but idk, I'm content to just know that I should love everyone.
I always feel bad because I go to church in bursts. Like, I'll get into it and go for like 5 weeks straight. But when my Christian mother insults me or the pastor says something I don't agree with or I get nasty looks for when I've returned after a long period of time, I don't like it anymore and I stop.
I just really don't like when she swears at me and never apologizes. I don't like being a disappointment no matter how hard I try.
There was definitely a time when I didn't want anything to do with church, but my dad is a pastor and I can't help but be there lol. I have to be there. I'd always kinda just accepted it because it was an inevitable part of my life. It wasn't until recently that I really have pursued it for myself. I know this works not because I've seen it but because I've tried it and I've never gotten satisfaction like I have out of striving for perfection through love and sharing that with others. I know that church people can be some of the most judgmental people on the planet too. But that's why we have to love. If we get angry and stop just because we meet adversity then we've stopped being a witness to those doing the persecuting and insulting. Jesus never did anything wrong and they killed him for it. The Bible promises us that we'll meet adversity if we choose to live for him. If we choose to strive. It's ok that you ramble lol. It helps sometimes. But like I said, we're promised trouble in the bible. Jesus suffered and we too must suffer but don't you see the pattern? When you try, you meet adversity. People give you dirty looks, people cut you down when you're trying. It's because you're trying that they're doing that and you're giving satan exactly what he wants when you quit trying. He's using their faults and shortcomings to get to you and beat you down until you don't want to go. You've got to go for yourself though. You go to church because you want to be better, because you want to be a good Christian. No one else should deter you from that. You have to make up your mind that you're going to do it because you know that it's right. If you saw a group of people beating me and you came to get them to stop, would you quit because they started beating you too or would you fight for what you knew to be right? It's the same thing here. If you know that you should go to church and you feel compelled enough to go, go. Let no one hinder you. They'll do what they do, pray for them that they'll settle things out for themselves and you keep pressing on. Don't let their shortcomings become your downfall. You can't quit when it gets hard. When it gets hard, that's when you know it's working.
So, you're going into Art instead of Pastoring...? That was really uplifting and motivational, like an actual sermon. And I enjoyed reading it! The only other time I ever liked sermons was when I watched Joel Osteen on early sunday mornings. All extremely valid points, things--I admit--I hadn't considered or recognized before. But it is exactly as you said, I've got to go for myself. Sometimes I go to make my mom happy. Sometimes I go for community service hours (when I attend I help out in the visual media department, last time I synched the broadcast and managed the powerpoints) Sometimes I guilt myself into going. But I want to want to go. Just wake up one morning and be excited to get there not for anything but the pleasure of being there and getting to know God and his Word a little bit better.
lol I'm a Pastor's Kid, being raised in the church goes a long way. My parents have given me a really good foundation to go off of and God's gifted me in certain ways just as he's gifted them. My art is part of my gifting and I'm going to school to get the training I need to use it to it's fullest potential. Writing and speaking are also a part of my gifting and I have to learn to use them as well. As Christians, we should all learn to use our voices to uplift and inspire, I just have a head start because of my upbringing and God given talent with words. Whether I become a pastor that's also an artist is a mystery. I'm not going to ponder it, I'm just going to go wherever God leads me to go. But I'm glad you enjoyed reading it. I like being able to help. I'm glad you see what I'm saying. You're good to talk to. You actually listen lol. Most people tend to ignore my advice I think. If you start going for yourself you'll get to the point where you're excited to go. I know I wasn't for a long time, but now it excites me so much to enter into the house of God and praise him with people that I know are there to do the same. The bigger the crowd the more excited I am. I love going and just being able to chase after God knowing that I'm not running alone. I love my alone time with God at home too. I try to read everyday. Sometimes I forget, but that's ok. You try harder and harder not to forget again, that's all. We stumble, we fall, we forget, we're human. The really exciting part about developing a relationship with God is the progressive realization of how much he really loves you. Knowing that I serve a God who has protected me when I knowingly endangered myself, who protected me when I had no clue I was in danger, who gave me the grace to do more than I could have imagined myself doing, who loved me past my pain and past the times when I rejected him, that I have a savior who died for me, who not only died for me but still cries for me when I fall, who sits at the right hand of God and prays for me, intercedes for me, who stands in the gap for me when I don't have the words to express myself, who would die for me all over again throughout the rest of eternity because he needs me. I'm a part of him and so are you. Without us he feels like he's missing a part of himself! To know that someone loves you so much that they do nothing but put as many blessings in your path as they can to help you realize that they exist knowing that you probably won't recognize most of them, it's like getting flowers every day and ceasing to have the ability to smell them because we forget they're there. It's awesome.
I really like what you just said; I really do.
:) I've honestly never heard anyone speak as beautifully about His love as you just did. It's just hard. I know I'm full of excuses, but I don't want to go to church/read the Bible just because it would make Him sad if I didn't. Or do it for the glory I know that I would enjoy just because I'm an involved Christian. I want to show that I love Him, just because I do, with no tangible or intangible reward. And, I have a feeling that if I do that, I'll receive so much peace and love and happiness that I wouldn't have experienced otherwise. You know how all romantic movies have that "Love at first sight" motif? I want that with God, I want to just wake up and know, you know? What you wrote reminds me of how when I took Challenge Education last year we had to keep journals and I had written how I could feel God's presence in my life, and I remember being happy. But obviously, that burst came and went. I want it back. There's a church near ISU, right? I think I might go.
I'm pretty sure there are several churches around campus that you could go to. and I know what you mean when you say you want to do it just because you love him. When you realize how much he loves you, you want to spend more time with him, learning his character and what he wants, the more time you spend with him, the more you become like him. It's like adults always warn you, the people you hang around influence you in ways you don't realize and the character of the friends you choose becomes your character. It's the same thing with God. The more time you spend with him, the more you become like him. His character can't help but rub off on you. I know for myself that I've changed. I've changed sooo much, even just in the last year! In the last 6 months! I'm a completely different person. The more I realize how much God loves me, the greater my capacity to love is. The more time I spend with God, the more time I spend reading, praying, meditating on his word and things that he would want, thinking about what God would think about the less room there is for me to think about anything that would cause me to be anything but joyful. I can't help but have peace because I know more and more each day that God's got it, that he'll never give me more than I can bare and that nothing happens without his sayso. Sometimes it's hard to rationalize because we look at all the bad in the world, but much of the bad in the world is caused due to free will. We choose to wage war, we choose to perpetuate a dog eat dog society, we choose to stay stressed, we choose to smoke, we choose to drink, we choose do all these things that are detrimental to our minds, bodies and souls without realizing the consequences. Then we have the nerve to blame God for bad things that happen to us when most of it is our fault. Stress alone can cause so many problems that it can kill you yet people blame God when people die of heart attack or stroke. We blame God when our kidneys, lungs or liver failed because we abused our bodies. Granted some things we can't help, like cancer, but the Bible said that we'd suffer. We were doomed to do so since the fall of man. It's a small price to pay compared to the cost our sin demands. But God always gives us the grace to overcome it, he always provides a way of escape a way to have peace and joy and patience and all of God's characteristics despite of everything. Knowing all of that, you can't help but want to love him. You can't help but want to praise and worship him just because you want to give him something back. You feel like you could praise and worship for the rest of your life, for the rest of eternity for that matter, and it wouldn't be enough because you just want to bless God. That's what life is though. As Christians we choose to live our lives acquiring progressively more and more of his character, forsaking sin and spending as much time as possible blessing him back with praise and worship and witnessing to other people and blessing others with what God's already given us. How we live our life is worship. Everything we do, think, or say that gives honor and glory to God is worship and we do it to bless him back. Not for gain but because we just want to bless him back. We want to love him back. That's the point. That's the big picture. We love God and we love others because they're a part of him just as we are and the more love we show to others the more love we're showing to God himself. That's the entire point! The point of it all.
:) I'm glad that I stayed up so late tonight. I have gained so much from our chat, and for that I thank you. We should talk tomorrow, I am in need of advice and I feel like you wouldn't judge me and you would let me know what the right thing to do is. I would ask God, but we're not close enough yet that he would answer back to me in a way I would understand. I know that the more time I spend with him, the clearer that connection becomes, but as of now things are a little lost in translation. Anyway, it is 5:35 and I am fighting sleep so hard right now. I have to sleep. But, thanks again. It is always a pleasure and an honor to talk with you. I would say goodnight, but it's definitely morning right now. Sleep well, my friend. :)
Sleep well. I'm glad you stayed up too. I'd be happy to talk again tomorrow. I know how you feel about the closeness thing with God lol. I'm still working on that one myself. The pleasure is and always will be mine. You don't have to thank me. I'm doing my job as your friend and brother in Christ. Thank God for allowing us to have the opportunity to talk like we have. He set this up, he wanted us to have this conversation and we did. I look forward to our future conversations. Good morning :)
:) Good morning.
note: I think some part (mostly your part) of this conversation should end up on your blog.
