Holiness? How old fashioned.

I've started reading this awesome book called You can change by Tim Chester, and there're some epic quotes in it. One that particularly struck me is that:

"One of our problems is that we think of holiness as giving up things we enjoy out of a vague sense of obligation. But I'm convinced that holiness is always, always good news. God calls us to the good life. He's always bigger and better than anything sin offers."

How true. When was the last time you had to choose between being holy and doing what you wanted to do, and chose the former option without feeling like you were missing out on something? I know I still struggle with that at times.

But Tim's right - God calls us to the GOOD life, and it's important to remember that instead of seeing everything else as the good life, and the life we live in our Christian walk as second-best. There's much that can be said about the negative effects about sin on us and others, but for now, let it suffice to say that having created us, God is the only one who knows how we can live life to the fullest - and that's knowing, trusting and obeying our Creator.

Sometimes there is nothing left but despair

As I grow older, I've been struggling more and more with frustration that God seems to be ignoring my prayers. It's especially frustrating when my prayers seem to be in line with God's: I mean, I understand if I don't get the all-expenses-paid-trip-to-Costa-Rica, but surely God could open the eyes and hearts of my family members and friends that don't know Jesus yet. Please?

And yet, days turn into weeks turn into months, which are slowly turning into years, and nothing. The same people still politely nod their heads at me when I try share the gospel, the same people still go searching for meaning in meaningless things, and slowly but slowly, I start to despair a little.

And that is all I want this post to be about. I despair. I get sad, mad, cross, despondent, furious at God for not doing something. There are many 'answers' to respond to my emotions, but you know what? For tonight, I would just like to acknowledge that it can be tough and exacting to trust and obey a God is bigger than we are. And that's okay. That's okay. We can be real before Him.

Sole idols

Take 2:

Okay, so I'm trying to figure out what it was I was trying to say earlier in the post:Soul idols, and I think I worked it out.

What I was trying to say that, because God is such an overwhelming BIG God, that if you lose sight of Him, you're in trouble and a million things will rush in to take His place in your life. Sorta like your feet being a lank important part of your body. Because we walk so often.

No, okay, I can see why you might disagree that it isn't really like that. But yes, I'm still on the feet issue. (As you can see from my pun in the title, ha-di-ha-ha.)
Tonight is Monday, and I finally have an appointment with a physio on Wednesday. So far away, so far. And I'm at the point where I'm completely COMPLETELY fedup with my silly plaguing injury. And, in the funny coincidental way that sometimes overtakes life, tonight I'm really struggling with my idols. And I'm completely COMPLETELY fedup with my own sinfulness. Isn't it ironic how we become so blinded to the things, the Thing, that matters most in life?

Grr.

Again, I doubt this post made much sense. Maybe there'll be a Take 3...

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.