What are you doing with your life?

I got one of those emails today that are meant to make you think about what you're doing with your life. You know, the typical questions:

- What are you doing now that will last for eternity? (Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. Matt 6v19)
- Where is your life heading? (For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matt 6v21)

A bit desensitized to the impact of these, I was about to delete it, and then saw the following point:

How much of your life is spent doing things because others expect you to? (Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not men, ... Eph 6v7)

And this one hit home particularly.

1) Cause I can be a bit of a people pleaser, doing things because I should, and because it is expected of me, and

2) as my previous post(s) shows, I'm struggling with idols at the moment.

So this was a really good reminder, to put God at the centre of my life, NOT people, NOT my temporary future here on earth.

Let's go spend today wisely.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. (Jim Elliott, methinks.)

PS yeah yeah, I know I said in my previous post I'd come back and try again at thinking of a suitable metaphor, but I'm experiencing a couple of brain farts in this regard...

Soul idols

Idolizing is like having a bothersome foot-arch-muscle-injury.. 'cause after a while, other muscles start twinging and hurting, as the rest of your body starts compensating for the major point of injury.

Okay, so that analogy doesn't really work. But it did make sense in my head last night as I was lying awake counting the little nerve centers of pain in my leg area. Not cool. Kinda painful in fact. I should get to the foot doctor again soon.

BUT that's beside the point. This made me think about the way that everything is connected. Like that childhood song: "The hip bone's connected to the knee bone.. the knee bone's connected to the" etcetc. [Don't worry about it if you have no idea what I'm singing. For one, I'm not singing out loud. For another, I can't remember the correct words, so I made those up. But the song definitely has something to do with anatomy. And bones.]

And the reason I'm talking about interconnectedness, is 'cause I've realized that losing sight of God, and turning to another idol, has resulted in that all my systems were slowly failing and resorting to other idols.

Grr. I'm not making much sense am I? I blame it on the essays I'm busy marking at the moment. Lalalallalala.
I'll try again tomorrow. Or later. Depending how badly I need a break after making a few more

Good ol' Richard Dawkins, Mr Public Science himself...

Wowee! I finally got a chance to read a review of Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion today, and man oh man, the author is scathing at times.

Terry Eagleton, the eminent literary critic, has written an article for the London Review of Book, in which he not only tackles holes in Dawkins' argument, but also presents many of the doctrines of Christianity concisely and clearly. I'm tempted to haul out all the bits that I enjoyed, but I think that mean that I have to copy and paste the whole article, so I'm just going to cut a few snippets out, that are particularly thought provoking and insightful.

For anyone else who wants to read the rest of the article, here you go:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html

"Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought up to believe unquestioningly. Not even the dim-witted clerics who knocked me about at grammar school thought that. For mainstream Christianity, reason, argument and honest doubt have always played an integral role in belief. (Where, given that he invites us at one point to question everything, is Dawkins's own critique of science, objectivity, liberalism, atheism and the like?) Reason, to be sure, doesn't go all the way down for believers, but it doesn't for most sensitive, civilised non-religious types either. Even Richard Dawkins lives more by faith than by reason. "

"Dawkins rejects the surely reasonable case that science and religion are not in competition on the grounds that this insulates religion from rational inquiry. But this is a mistake: to claim that science and religion pose different questions to the world is not to suggest that if the bones of Jesus were discovered in Palestine, the pope should get himself down to the dole queue as fast as possible. It is rather to claim that while faith, rather like love, must involve factual knowledge, it is not reducible to it. For my claim to love you to be coherent, I must be able to explain what it is about you that justifies it; but my bank manager might agree with my dewy-eyed description of you without being in love with you himself. "

"Dawkins thinks it odd that Christians don't look eagerly forward to death, given that they will thereby be ushered into paradise. He does not see that Christianity, like most religious faiths, values human life deeply "

"On the horrors that science and technology have wreaked on humanity, [Dawkins] is predictably silent. Yet the Apocalypse is far more likely to be the product of them than the work of religion. Swap you the Inquisition for chemical warfare."

"Nor does [Dawkins] understand that because God is transcendent of us (which is another way of saying that he did not have to bring us about), he is free of any neurotic need for us and wants simply to be allowed to love us. Dawkins's God, by contrast, is Satanic. Satan ('accuser' in Hebrew) is the misrecognition of God as Big Daddy and punitive judge, and Dawkins's God is precisely such a repulsive superego. This false consciousness is overthrown in the person of Jesus, who reveals the Father as friend and lover rather than judge."

"Because the universe is God's, it shares in his life, which is the life of freedom. This is why it works all by itself, and why science and Richard Dawkins are therefore both possible."

Last but not least: food for thought. "Dawkins quite rightly detests fundamentalists; but as far as I know his anti-religious diatribes have never been matched in his work by a critique of the global capitalism that generates the hatred, anxiety, insecurity and sense of humiliation that breed fundamentalism. Instead, as the obtuse media chatter has it, it's all down to religion."

The voice of truth

I'm busy listening to Casting Crowns' The voice of truth, which made me think about ... the voices in your head. I mean, my head. And yours. Ours. Umm. Moving along.

 

Now now, let's be honest: Everyone's got voices in their head, just like everyone's in the habit of talking to themselves every now and then. (Well, I know I am!). But I don't know if this is also the case for you: quite a lot of the time, the voices in my head can be pretty negative... and horrible. I remember once I was feeling a bit insecure about approaching a group of really pretty people 'cause the voices were saying "You aren't pretty enough to go talk to them/"You're not good enough to be their friend" in the looks-biased approach that the world seems to suggest is normal. But when I told Princess Sarah about these doubts about my self-worth, she said: "Don't listen to those lies. They are not from God."

And that just hit me. God is not the source of our insecurities, our neuroticisms, the negative voices in our heads... So why do we believe them?
 
Okay, this is not to say that if the voice in your head is telling you not to jump into the fire that you should do it. This post is not advocating that. But I'm talking about NOT LISTENING to the lies that chip away at our self-worth and image as God's children. Lies that generally follow the train of thought: "You're good enough."

Because we are. Everyone is. As children made in God's image, we ARE more than enough.

So remember that. Slay that nasty voice in your head - it's not from God.

 

Born Again... Lazy?!?

Tonight I realized that I have replaced God in my life with another idol. I'm not going to mention what that is, 'cause it's kinda personal, but either way, I realized that God is (has not been for a while) not number one in my life anymore.

I was visiting another church, casually minding my own business, when the phrase 'born again lazy' hit me hard enough to be bury into my head, from where I later took it out and pondered over it. I mean, I know for months now that I haven't been doing my QTs, and the signs that THIS IS affecting my walk with Christ are all too visible - the appearance of expletives in my vocabulary (even if it's only said in my head or muttered under my breath), the easy slippage into judgmental thoughts when others are different, the prioritizing of other things.. And all because I'm born again lazy - because I haven't really been fighting for God's place as number one in my life.

This isn't too say that God hasn't been trying to make me alert to this- tonight's sermon wasn't the first time He's tried to bring my attention back to Him.. I'm just really lazy, stubborn, and sinful. But tonight I realized that I don't want to be a three-word Christian - I don't want to be born again lazy. I just want to be born again :). So I'm dropping the lazy, and I'm getting back to reading my word, and really talking to God.

Yay.

BLERGH... being sick sucks :(

You might have noticed that this month's posts this far, have been more signposts to other people's words and sites, rather than my own blogposts.

This is because I have only recently returned from the dead. *cough cough*

[Excuse me, evidently melodrama, as well as the odd germ, evidently still courses through my blood.]

Either way, I bet you it wasn't pretty. I'm not quite sure myself, as I was out of it most of the time. I'm not even sure what hit me. Whatever it was, it hit swiftly, and it hit hard. Sunday morning I was feeling a bit yuck. Sunday evening, I went to bed with a slight fever.. and then proceeded to sleep for pretty much 33 hours (with maybe three hours on-off/asleep-awake dozing inbetween). And I've pretty much spent most of that time since in bed, recovering. Slowly. Sigh.

And the irony of it all was that May was/is CRAZY month. Lots of admin, lots of research, lots of marking, lots lots lots lots of things scheduled into my diary. And with one swift invasion of little invisible bacteria, all this was cleared out of my lifeplan and instead rest and sleep became priority. And I think there're two key lessons that can be drawn from this:

1) Perspective. Like I said, I'd thought this would be my crazy month, but as soon as it came to the point of living (by staying at home to rest) or dying (forcing myself to go to all those scheduled things), perspective came into place and all the things that had seemed so important, didn't really seem so important after all. And I suppose that's what the eternal perspective we need to be keeping - not in the sense that we should be lassez faire and unconcerned about everything.

2) Control. God really reminded me again that He is in sovereign control. I'm one of those people who organise and plan like crazy (mostly 'cause I have to - much to the frustration of my inner slob - what with all my interests and hobbies), but sometimes God gently reminds me (or in this case, rather abruptly) that I'm not in control - He is. I had no idea this was coming, and I had no idea how long this would last. Only God does!

So yay. I actually think I had a good week off work - though tomorrow I'm going to have my first full day in four days - and time to think through some stuff. Who thought being sick would be so productive!

A N Wilson - return to faith?

Here's an article written by an "ex-atheist", a friend of mine passed along. It makes for an interesting read "from the other side" and he presents some intriguing insights and points. Very well-written and humourous as well :). I don't think the reasons he presents would convince every atheist, but I'm including this here, cause it's another prime example of God working to melt our stubborn, hard hearts:

http://www.newstatesman.com/religion/2009/04/conversion-experience-atheism

A response to the issue of homosexuality

From homosexuality to the Gospel
- Ian Carmichael
Have you noticed how often non-Christians raise the issue of homosexuality with us these days? "Why is the church so anti-gay?" "What do you think about gay marriage?" "How can you be against two people being in a long-tern, loving and supportive relationship? Why should it matter what gender they are?" Next time a non-Christian raises this topic, instead of fumbling around, try responding with "Why are you non-Christians so obsessed with sex ad sexuality?" Expect your non-Christians to respond like this: "What do you mean? It's Christians who have always been obsessed with sex!" Then you can say, "Hey no, that's not true. I don't want to talk about sexuality at all. I'd much rather talk about how God has shown his love for us in sending his Son, Jesus, to rescue us. That's a far more important topic to talk about. Can we talk about that together?"

- From BRIEFING 368