Upsides of Dark sides

This post might seem risky or controversial, but I am just listing three benefits to our most horrible sins. I am not talking about playing cards. I am talking about the stuff that people really do feel horrible about, and habits we would really avoid if we could.  I am not even going to list examples because of the grief I know some people have.  But I wanted to say three things that I think can be extreme benefits of all our weaknesses that we would give anything not to have, but for some reason, haven't chosen to give that "anything."

Sin as a reminder of what has been overcome:  I think our failures can be a reminder of just what kind of obstacles and character weaknesses we have defeated already in our lives. Failing sometimes can help us and others see the big picture that all the good stuff did come at a great risk and cost.  The success and even survival that we do have was never guaranteed, and we might have always been right on the brink of the worst case scenario.  This view gives all righteousness credit for being the miracle that it is.

Sin as a healing consolation for other people who could be jealous or ashamed:

In the long run, for most people who have asked God for mercy and help in this life, it will be very apparent that we are his people and have tried to be good. And it will be so apparent that anyone who tried to thwart that mission will be utterly humiliated.  It is a tragedy, but some of our truly terrible sins might be a comfort for anyone who took the wrong side and whose own weaknesses happened to involve good people as their target.

Sin as the inevitable shadow of a lifestyle that actually is heroic:

People will disagree with me, but I think some sins and even sin habits happen as kind of a flip side for certain ways of life that actually are mostly righteous and might be part of people most being their true self. An example I can think of would be someone like a boss of a pizza business who curses a lot.  Well some people don't curse at all, and that is great, but what I am saying is that if you provide pizza for hundreds of people every day and are making an honest living like that, but you can't manage to do it without cursing, then people should see that cursing as kind of the collateral damage of a life being very well spent and has a lot of other self control.

I could say more about some of this, but the main thing is that good people don't like being sinners, and we are sinners.  It is part of life and it is not fun.  But even the worst of it can sometimes be seen as a work-related injury in the difficult mission of being a good person.

On the right tract

I love this tract and I wanted to share it.  It is great, and hopefully it is true, though I may not be certain until I have actually gone a million years without burning.  The final remainder of my faith will be like a party favor for God at my millionth birthday party in a moment of suspense as he takes out some matches, strikes up a flame as if to ignite a yawning chasm, but then lights the candles on my cake.

A little surprise for God

Well everyone, I have a few blog topics in mind for this blog and I do think of a lot of stuff very often for it.  But all I will say now is that I am thinking about starting to call God "Gosh" when I pray, like to say "Dear Gosh, please help me with such and such." Like it could just be a little nickname for him kind of like he has a new name for each person written on a white rock that will be revealed someday during the book of Revelation.

Church Bulletin

Ok everyone, I have been posting and unposting things on some of my blogs lately, but I think this is a nice safe post.  It is simply a thing I have been wondering as a person who is mostly a Protestant and worries about other people's salvation and sometimes thinks like a Catholic.  It actually has to do with the new testament section where the believers get called "A Royal Priesthood." So here is my question:  If all believers are priests, and I do think that is the idea, then who are the parishoners?  People can say that it means we are priests for each other, but I actually think people do not usually use the term "priest" that loosely in the Old or the New Testament.  David was told he could not be a priest because he killed people, and the whole book of Hebrews is about how qualified for priesthood Christ is.  So I think the concept of the "priesthood of the believer" is a big deal and a very exciting thing, but I also am wondering if it means that there could be another exciting role for people who haven't latched onto Christianity in the ways that make me not worry about them. Sometimes everything hinges on the "laypeople," of churches, and I am wondering if all the people who have signed up for church are getting trained to administer grace in more substantial ways than we realize for anyone in our world, including people who might be participating in God's kingdom more than we are allowed to believe after putting so much stock in official sinner's prayers for salvation. There seem to be a lot of verses that have to get ignored for people's mechanical systematic theology to take shape from a survey of the Bible, and I personally think that this Royal Priesthood idea is one of them.

Not All Talk

Sometimes people will say stuff about other people "talking a good game," and sometimes people are concerned about their own ability to deliver on promises and their professed ideals.  And avoiding hypocrisy can actually become a tormenting obsession for people who are trying to live up to high standards.  But I have thought sometimes that maybe some of the people who seem to be all talk might actually have some kind of communication gift and for them to actually do what they believe in would mean being a speaker of some kind and focusing their energy and strength on talking or writing and being the people to say all the stuff that might be hard to do.  Maybe for some people talking the talk is also the walk that is expected of them.  And maybe that is why preachers get blamed for hypocrisy so often.  Maybe their job really is to tell everyone else what to do and people should be more understanding that for them, speaking is action.

Eels and Seals

I recently was thinking about staying out of touch with some people so I would not be grieved by problems that I did not want to know about, and I also have been thinking about how Jesus told his disciples to shake the dust off their feet when they left the houses of people who rejected the faith in Christ that was offered to them.  I wondered if Jesus told them to do that with their feet because there could be demonic snake spirits trying to hurt them and maybe they could be physically flung off.  I really have wondered if there are all kinds of warnings about that stuff in the Bible that is not that obvious so as not to scare everyone.  But anyway, both of these trains of thought made me think about something from when I was a kid, which is my consistent policy of never wearing goggles when I am swimming in the ocean.  I simply do not want to know what is lurking in the waters. And I think it is something to think about when there are all kinds of things we do not understand or do not know.  It might be that one of the purposes behind simple faith and a flashlight in life that only shows part of the path is that we are better off just getting through stuff and then later watching the movie that shows the giant dragons and monsters and leeches that wanted to hurt everyone, or even the kind angels and angel pets whose love would have distracted us from getting to all the goals ahead of us, which sometimes might include calling some kind of pest control.

Patron Atheists of Saints

Well everyone, I am writing this blog post in the middle of the night and I think that it will be kind of condensed compared to what it could have been with a little more thought.  But now is when I feel like writing it.  It is about something that I have known for a long time and only think about occasionally, and it has to do with the frequent greatness of atheists.  Well people might immediately detect some evangelical flattery like here I am trying to butter up the atheists so they will convert.  But that is really not what I am doing, precisely because I have learned that so many atheists truly are so great the way they are and are helpful not just to people in general but to Christians, and especially Christians with religion problems. I could share my testimony about this sometime in a church, which might not really be welcome, but I actually think it would still match the Christian teaching about all humans being made in God's image and therefore all having the potential or maybe even guaranteed destiny of reflecting his greatness.  I used to want to write a book called "The Heathens Declare the Glory of God," but gave up after a google search that did not list that many good deeds by atheists.  But there are a lot of good deeds, and I think that their honest confessions of atheism can be some of the good that they do.  It does provide instant intellectual accountability to all the so called theologians, and it also is an acceptance of responsibility to get stuff done without waiting for prayers to be answered.  That could seem like such a sin, but I am thinking that it often could be less of a sin than leaving stuff undone because of either a belief that it wasn't up to us or a lazy decision to convince people that something was God's responsibility apart from humans.

    I also think that there can be a purity of motives among atheists who are not seeking rewards from heaven from their friendships and who are not deliberately trying to advance an ideology they have limited knowledge of during every single interaction with people.  As much as not having a conscious Christian purpose might really be a waste for a lot of people, it can also free them to fulfill potential in other ways that still benefit humanity, including church people, who might have had to give up some otherwise very worthwhile endeavors to live their whole lives guessing what a fisherman from 2000 years ago wants them to do.

   The fact is that the atheist souls and minds can be such a relief to be around, and for all the times Christians have used "unbelievers" to improve our own stats, so many atheists' forgiveness and service and unyielding promotion of the good news of God's patience and mercy should also be acknowledged as a very uncommon grace and special revelation.

Is glory something different from recognition, and much less stealable?

   Well everyone, I have thought of a little blog post idea that I think actually is theological, and it is about glory, what it is, and what it means to try to glorify yourself and take credit that does not belong to you.  I am actually truly wondering something that might have more to do with the definition of glory, and whether it is some kind of greatness, or instead, some kind of acknowledgement of greatness.

    What I am wondering is whether glory is an objective thing that belongs to God no matter what and "trying to take the glory for yourself" is a matter of trying to take credit for the glory, and possibly deceiving others so that people's perception, and only their perception, is erroneous.  To look at it this way could still mean that whatever is glorious, like a touchdown or a well cooked meal, is still glorious and the glory still belongs to God, but that people's acknowledgement of that reality is what is the problem.

   To me, the other possibility is that the glory is the credit, and when people glorify themselves, they actually have truly taken the glory itself away from where it belongs and have acquired something that was up for grabs in some way.  So they now possess something that was not supposed to be theirs. 

     A third possibility is that there is still some glory outside of the credit and recognition and it is stealable, kind of like the blessing that Jacob in the Bible got so sneakily.  That sounds confusing, but in another story, which is the Mt. Sinai story in the Bible when Moses or someone has to hide in the cleft of the mountain as God walks by, there is some kind of glory that is dangerous to behold, and it seems a little different than the kind of "giving credit where it is due" recognition that so many people talk about today.

    I think there might be Bible verses that support either view, but I lean toward thinking that glory is some aspect of reality that happens because of God's goodness, so it already belongs to him, and the credit is something different that also belongs to him, and any problem that the humans are having with recognition, no matter on what kind of scale it is, is just some weird mind trick that leaves people being fooled but can't take any actual glory away from anyone in reality or in the view that most matters, which is God's continual accurate perception of all that he has created and made great.
    It may be that simple dictionary definitions could clear this up, or that this is something basic that all pastors learn in seminary and have talked about while I have been at Starbucks, but to me it seems like what people usually talk about when they talk about glory has to do with kneeling in football endzones, and I feel like there might be something else that is, thankfully, unstealable, and knowing this could take some pressure off people.  It could also help people focus on doing truly great things instead of doing mediocre things while spending their real concentration on making it all an ad campaign for Christianity.