Favor

This blog post is just about something I am wondering.  Jesus told people to not favor people who dress in fine clothes. But recently I was helping out at a food place and some Muslim ladies dressed as princesses were in line. And I felt in my heart that it was okay to treat them kind of special based on their appearance. So here is the concept I wonder about.  If someone takes the trouble to dress like a princess, and other people don’t, then wouldn’t the wrong favoritism be more a matter of not recognizing the effort and specialness of the people who did something extra? Do you guys see what I am saying? I am saying if you really treat people the same, as Jesus said, then it would be right to acknowledge whatever greatness seems extra. And I think what I am saying is right, even though that command should not be compromised, even if it is taken literally, which might not even be the most extreme interpretation. Like you can say clothes have to do with anything in life we adorn ourselves with such as opportunities, associations, personalities, and even friends and family, which ultimately of course should not be seen as some kind of clothes or possessions.  But what I am saying is this concept is very deep and could be part of why sometimes justice seems easier said than done.

sunday post

     This meme to me is like going to church. I could just stare at it on a Sunday morning and be thankful for the imaginary animals all around me.  And in heaven at the taverns it will be so fun. I am going to be a teetotaler for no reason in heaven and sell soda to minors.

     I thought about reading Les Miserables during quarantine and decided not to but did notice something interesting about the first part of the book, which was the straightforward portrayal of a good bishop.  All of the drama in the book hinges on the bishop’s good deed of forgiving a thief and adding silver candlesticks to what was already stolen.  This symbolic act of kindness inspires goodness that becomes epic and lifelong.  In fact, it takes a thousand pages to tell the story, which I really just don’t feel like reading.  The musical will do the trick for me, I think, and I hope everyone gets to listen that that music and read the lyrics in a way similar that I was taught in high school. To make it a whole English unit, a class could read the story Babette’s Feast and bring food, which is what another teacher demonstrated in grad school later on.

    Anyway I thought I would mention the rare generosity of the bishop, which isn’t as rare as it is to find a positive Christian authority within literature now.  I guess there are reasons for what gets told and appreciated in books, and some of my favorites, like I Know This Much is True, and The Poisonwood Bible, actually are pretty representative of the modern negative views of some Christian religion.  But I think everyone will eventually get past that phase, and it will be interesting to see what resurrections happen with Christian characters in books.  I personally think there is a literary frontier to mix evangelical foibles with hyper-detailed modern humorous tell-all-possibly-even-inappropriate stuff that I somehow haven’t been able to bring myself to write yet. My feeling that some of it is beyond me could be some good news of future team work and a lot of writers on the horizon thinking of the stuff that can only be theirs to tell.

Soul Food

Well everyone, I don’t usually write about race. I prefer to express my appreciation for people in different ways.  But I think I will post this post about something I have been thinking about during quarantine days which is the idea of “soul food.” I am eating some peach ice cream right now and have been noticing that as I cook what is yummy and easiest to stock up on turns out to be food that is very southern. A lot of it is in the category that gets associated with African American “soul food” like cornbread, biscuits, grits, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken, collards, shrimp, and creative variations on rice and beans. Besides noticing that it is some of the yummiest food I have ever eaten, it also makes me think about something I have organized my prayer life around which is the idea that a lot of things in life are a food of some sort, and I am usually just asking God to feed everyone all kinds of happy comforts when I pray.  I am talking about things like education, attention, exercise, love, talent, and almost anything else that can make life worthwhile.  And to me, one way of describing that would be as “soul food.”  But that term has already been used as a label for actual food.  And I just find that to be very profound and theological in a certain way.  It suggests kind of a spiritual integrity where what feeds the soul is actual food. Maybe people already knew this as the term became commonly used, but I think it really matches a lot of Jesus’s teaching in many ways.  Even though Jesus said that man does not live by bread alone, he also spent a lot of his time and miracles on feeding multitudes, and he explicitly told people to feed the hungry.  And as tempting as it is sometimes for people to aspire to provide things that are less tangible like teaching, philosophy, and a lot of religion, going ahead and zapping people with some real food is just funnily what could end up not only being one of the highest services but could also end up being the most lofty intellectual concept that is also fulfilled completely in physical reality as the most honest food and life there is.

Reminiscent

Ok everyone, I am sure people thought I would not say something like this, but I am at least going to mention the spiritual topic of plagues as cures. It doesn’t have to be about coronavirus and of course I am sad about people dying. 50 MTA subway workers have died so far, and cops, health workers, and all kinds of people who I of course would not want to ever have died.  But our world has a lot of problems right now worse than death, even if people refuse to ever acknowledge that fact while abusers get away with more and more child abuse, torture, and exploitation of workers essentially on the level of lifelong slavery. As good things come from people abruptly facing mortality and having to adapt to sudden lifestyle changes, some of the bad business people are more obvious, the government problems can’t be denied, and a calling to young people to act on what they have learned is on the table.  And I will not pretend that I don’t hope that God is intervening with some of our society’s ills while we genuinely fight this terrible pandemic that retains its tragic nature even while catalyzing some needed recognition of what is right and wrong. It does not need to be erroneously seen as a blessing of any sort, but God’s wielding of all the bad things in life to get rid of the worse things that people did not fight as well is something I will not ignore and will not keep to myself in case other people can look back in history and see that God has cared all along and always intervened faithfully in ways that outsmarted all of our worst foes and villains.

The Whole World Times

Well hi everyone. I think what I am about to say in this blog post is really good sermon material and probably one of my best ideas to share.  It has to do with Presbyterian theology and a verse in the bible that says “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Well I will say that the both the verse itself and Presbyterian theology have both been a source of stress for me at various times because of my mental illness.  The Presybterian ideas have to do with everything already being in God’s control or already decided, which is some of the best news but can be distorted in your mind to make you think there is no hope for some people’s salvation.  And the verse about not being ashamed of the gospel has driven me crazy personally because I have continual awkward scrupulosity about sharing my faith. People like me imagine that verse sometimes and feel pressure to share things at the wrong times to some people who have often made things more awkward on purpose.  But if you combine those two ideas, the theology of God being in charge of all reality, and the idea of not being ashamed of the gospel, you can realize a tool that can provide some relief to some of our worst angst.  And the idea is simply that because God is good and all loving and in control, then all of reality is the gospel.  It is good news, and an antidote to shame.  You can’t zoom in and get illogical about it and say that tragedies are good, and that is not what I am saying at all.  But I am saying that because all things work out for our benefit, then for some of the problems that we feel really bad about, and truly ashamed even, then we can say instead, “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.” I am talking about not being ashamed of having said the wrong thing, done the wrong thing, being video-taped making rude gestures or being mad at people, failing at a job, embarrassing health problems, a messy apartment, and even our worst sins that maybe we kind of should feel bad about sometimes.  But instead we have full permission to view it all as part of God’s plan and we can tell ourselves, “I am not ashamed of having all the belongings in my apartment ruined by mice and bugs, because it has the power to save.  I am not ashamed of accidentally hitting myself in a zoom meeting, because it is part of the whole gospel of Jesus Christ. Do you guys see this trick I am saying? I really think it could work for some of us who are so tormented by our problems that seem to not have a purpose but actually do.

One of my friends rose from the dead.

    Today is Easter. Jesus died and some of his friends went to check on the grave and someone said “He is not here, he is risen.”  Well that is great news because he had said that he would rise again in three days if people destroyed him. I do not know if some people still had hope about that or not after the bad cross incident but I am sure they were very excited when his prediction or promise turned out to be true. I am going to be excited when I get to heaven and have a stone cottage with a bookstore basement that attaches to the underground lazy river network. 

     I don’t think it will be awkward when people meet Jesus in heaven. I pray in ways that I would never talk to someone face to face, like just a steady stream of requests, but I think that is how it was meant to be and that is the way that I get to experience having God as a boss for some of my most real professions in life, which have to do with prayer and life that can’t be taken away by other jobs and responsibilities. I think that in that way, God is an artist using psychological distance to create the relational effects he wants, and I should be happy for my amount of psychiatric problems that do impact my ability to feel love and happiness from God or anyone else. And what have I learned from it all? Well it is what I would tell people who just arrived at the scene. I would just tell anyone to ask God for 45 million dollars, blessings, or jackpots every day, either as a one-time request for the future or to ask him for it each day. And if there is something that seems better, then ask for that instead. And you will find out that the greatest thing was being able to ask at all.

Different Kinds of Trusts

All my life I have heard people talk about trusting God, and how it is his main wish and expectation for us. It is most often the advice offered to help with anxiety, and I am currently learning to have more faith and less fear.  However, as someone who has had a lot of chronic burdens and ongoing threats of ruin, and as a person who has also had to manage my own bad tendencies with an exhausting vigilance, I just want to stick up for all the people who suffer with stress and say that doing what you know you are supposed to while feeling extreme stress and danger is also a way of trusting God.  Obedience anyway and doing what God wants while feeling scared to death is not only a form of trust but possibly the most important kind that yields the most long term peace.  Social work mindfulness practices often affect me in the same way as a lot of psychological encouragement to trust God, and those perspectives do sometimes provide temporary relief that can increase endurance for long-term challenges. But those difficulties that are in fact inherently stressful can also be where the real trust is. When there are things like keeping medical insurance, or for some people, working at their callings without medical insurance, or people taking care of kids who need a lot of supervision and monitoring, or life with tough budget requirements, or managing health conditions, or whatever else those anxiety provoking things are, the courage to go ahead and face it with literal responsibility is also a form of dependence on God. Anxiety is a difficult challenge of recent times, and people we will meet in heaven may not have had even a taste of that kind of stress in their lives. They had their own struggles, and I can really see a different world as I schedule out my groceries for the coronoravirus quarantine and think about old times. But I just want to say for anyone else who has sometimes felt pressure to just let it all go and leave all the responsibilities behind in the name of letting God handle everything, that going ahead and carrying a heavy cross, or really any cross or burden, can be the extreme trust that goes unrecognized as simple faith.

Limiting the News

Well everyone, I have been thinking a lot about religion as it relates to the virus outbreak, and the risk of it all has made me think about what counts as the gospel of Jesus Christ and what exactly is promised to who.  It is one of the main things that has gotten confused and confusing in our times, and many people are very mad at any religious person at all because of the way a lot of us tried to convert people for credit, or turned what could have really been good news into a weird warning, like, “you’re going to hell if you don’t believe the same thing I learned at a church camp in middle school.” But in these scary times,  I must say that I think that it is nice that God’s love can be expressed as either something you don’t have to do anything at all to earn, or actually the opposite, which is that there is something you can do, and it is a simple prayer. It is nice in a crisis to have practical steps to take for safety and a sense of agency, and for the matter of eternal destination to be securable with a simple request to God for mercy and salvation is really a great provision that to me surpasses even the bomb shelters fully stocked with groceries and hoarded supplies being sold for five thousand dollars in a culture that cracks down on gouging for cleaning supplies but doesn’t care that almost all the real estate people gouge everyone for rent all year round. Anyway. I don’t need to go on a tangent but some people are going to go on quite a tangent all the way to hell if they think they are going to get away with what has happened in our country for the past 30 years of discrimination, abuse, and healthcare scams against sick people who chose the wrong epidemics to qualify for medical care and government aid. But anyway what was I saying. Ok I was saying there is a prayer that people can pray and a fountain of blood that has the antibodies needed for the worst problems in the world, which is the greed and evil behind all the bad behavior that has come to light in recent days, or unfortunately continues in ways unknown to many but always apparent to an all-knowing God. I meant for this post to be comforting but some people might be comforted by people not knowing what prayer to pray.

Quantity, Quality, and Quarflety

Yesterday, when I was thinking of quarantines and the expressions of consideration for others that can happen in situations that involve disease and health and contagion, I had a philosophical breakthrough about something I have been trying to figure out for a while.  Basically, for about ten years, I have wondered if there is a third Qu word that would complete a trio with quality and quantity.  Those are two things that are often measured when assessing the worth of something, or just measuring some aspect of it, and I have been thinking that there could be a third thing, and trying to figure out what it is.  And I haven’t been able to figure it out at all. Quantity and quality. I mean that is it. The essence and composition of something, or the amount of it.  But I think I figured out what quarflety is, and it could have to do with external value of the thing in question. It would have to do with how it is regarded or valued, so it would be an exterior source’s assessment of it.  The word “value” could be used and is already used sometimes to describe how much people care about something, but sometimes it is used more like the word quality and refers to something more like an objective worth that is not connected to subjective appreciation.  But I think that subjective appreciation, value, or regard could be that third thing, called quarflety, that creates a trio of definition for something that could be understood to have quantity, quality, and quarflety.

A good strategy for Bible reading

      There is something that I like to do when I read the Bible, which is to look for actual “good news” that is contained within verses and stories that come across as having a different function, like as a warning, or instructions, or even some kind of bad news. It is a fun and happy thing to discover a side to scary verses that makes you realize how much everything can be in our favor, even when it seems like we might get in trouble, or have our lives ruined by various problems.  To give a few examples, I might look at a verse like “You will give an account for every idle word,” which to me, one of the more extreme Judgement Day warnings.  But I think it could really be some of the best news, which is that God is going to let us tell our side of any story, explaining our every motive and reason behind things we have done as suffering people, possibly in a therapeutic court system filled with the love of Jesus Christ.  It can also be seen as a promise of a debriefing session where God will take all the time necessary to comfort us about things that either went wrong or that we did not understand, or to let us explain such contexts where people brought out the worst in us and only added to the sacrifices we made all along. It is good news after all.  Another verse like that to me could be the verse where God instructs us to say when we get a reward for our obedience on any level at any time, that we were just mere servants doing what was expected.  That seems strict, and to me, you could see this and think that you are not going to get much credit for a lot of work and faithfulness. But really, what it could mean is that the blessings of heaven are so great that we will not be able to help but say that anything right we ever did was truly the least that could be offered in comparison to the gain.  And would we really need to vigilantly keep that plan in mind as we live and die, to rehearse our speech and constantly brace ourselves for an encounter with a holy and almighty God?  I think that it is more likely for that to be the probable automatic reaction from the good heart in our soul that could only ever be provided by God and that will not fail to react in the right way.  

      Finally, one last verse that obviously is one of the scary verses is the verse “they will lie down in torment.” Well it doesn’t get worse than that, except that lying down is exactly what I want to do every time I am in torment.  It is a sign of grace and a consolation for the worst of violators.  So we can know that indeed there is a hell and the bad people won’t get away with anything, but that some kind of mercy may be built in to literally every aspect of creation, even in the far-most realms where people have been cast out and have forfeited everything for reasons that no one would argue with.

      That kind of reading can be done with any section of the Bible, and can be a nice thing to look for along the way, beyond just being thankful for the usual salvation, but to see those blessings expanded into an all-encompassing reality where there ultimately will be nothing to lament, regret, or even fear.

Another fun strategy for Bible reading

This post is like that other post but has a different kind of thing to look for in readings of Bible verses and stories, which has to do with just practical truth that comes to light in stories that seem and really are about other topics.  I don’t know how incidental some of the information would be, but I think that God and Jesus consciously and deliberately provided helpful and basic knowledge about survival and wise living all throughout stories and descriptions that seemed like they were about other spiritual topics.  One example I have noticed before is in the series of stories Jesus tells about someone looking for a coin, someone looking for a lost sheep, and the story about the lost son. The order of those stories becomes an illustration of what should be prioritized and valued, with money being the least and human life being generally the most important.  That is not the main point of the stories, but it is there in the context.  Another example that comes to mind seems so stupid but is contained within Jesus’s sermon on the mount when he tells people they are the light of the world and the salt of the earth.  I really think that as great as those statements are, and truly some of the happiest verses, it could also just be a reminder to use actual salt for various purposes. It could literally be an advertisement for salt, in case individuals or whole cultures have not thought to make use of that cooking resource.  That sounds stupid, but that is exactly what I am saying about the practical knowledge in otherwise shocking or important stories. One more extreme example might have to do with the time that Jesus was doing some stuff and told his disciples about the location of a donkey that they could untie and use. It might have been for palm Sunday. I think that even though it was an example of Jesus’s special supernatural life that was unfolding in a certain unprecedented and unrepeatable way, he was also revealing how some spiritual gifts can work, much like another time when he told Peter or someone else that they could find a fish with a coin in its mouth from another location. Jesus could see stuff, and even though it was because he was the son of God, I think that people who want to do those kinds of things can learn how, and Jesus was making it known that people can see stuff in other locations if they have certain abilities given to them by God, or acquired through some kind of obedience or work of the Holy Spirit. I decided to go ahead and use an example that seems kind of unbelievable in addition to Jesus just saying “please pass the salt.” But the main thing I am saying is that the amount of that helpful and seemingly incidental knowledge in the Bible is amazing and can be very fun to read about and focus on sometimes instead of the more obvious purposes of stories and facts.

A prayer

Dear God, please help everyone be happy and safe and healthy and full of love and peace. Please give everyone who worked in the factories of the products of perpetually reselected fifteen hundred grocery stores 45 million prize package 63s and a billion jackpots, and add that same amount to all the accounts of all the people in their communities or who went to schools with those people or read five of the same words they did at any time, and please give everyone 45 million prize package 89s and a deluxe tailored theme spinning shipment to all the people who helped a child or prayed for a friend on any day that one of those grocery stores sold a transaction totaling $65.35. Please take the transaction number of the receipts for 40 other totals based on secret triumphs and make that a full and growing representational code in a sequence of a thousand prize packages designed to include Christmas blessings plus charged game provision maximums. Please categorize all things with 80 percent overlap and give a variety bonus of a thousand variation color-codings to the interior designs in any building with a blue door. Please activate and apply the key map with eventual resets whenever there is a person or animal in a room or a computer on with names in some databases. Please expand the relevant population to include all siblings and cousins and extra generations, people on the same roads that the same times, plus their school and work associations and a linked sequence of thousand thousand thousand based on that, with a thousand blessing additions per person to the main jackpot to be duplicated and repeated with a distribution pattern based on the answer lists to the tests that a new included population scored high on after studying or just taking a risk for. Please take the whole group of people now and add 50 million treasure map quest hauls from eternal layer 500 plus repeat for each person with a restart translation give-away including all people in societies ten societies away, plus an account booster collection jumble added to all accounts for the inverse of the original grocery factory winners.

You can’t be Protestant without the Catholics

     I have recently decided to be both Presbyterian and Catholic, or really have just accepted that I really am both things and do not have to choose one or the other.  The Protestant Reformation was literally a reaction to the Catholic Church and some of its ways of doing things at that time, and I think that Protestants are better off sharing their theology in a Catholic context. People say that is not true and that the Presbyterian doctrine is so sound that it doesn’t need any association with Catholicism at all, or that it always has that context, because any erroneous view of the world is a form of Catholicism, with people thinking they are good enough for God or can earn his approval.   All I can say is that first of all, trying to please God is not the default status of all people needing salvation, and to present Catholicism merely as a religion of trying to earn God’s favor is also a distortion of the truth.  In other words, the hope of pleasing God is usually a good thing, and should not be turned into some kind of offense, even with the glorious truth that Jesus accomplished all the righteousness that is needed for people's eternal salvation.

    That is the special news that Presbyterians try to believe and profess, and it is based a lot on Christ’s statement at the cross when he said “It is finished.”  It is an announcement that he has done the required lifelong act of salvation, living perfectly in every moment and offering his life as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of his people and anyone who wants his righteousness to count for them. 

    For me, where Catholicism comes in is how people can still interact with Jesus while he is on the cross.  He is the eternal God, and he is a priest. There is no disputing the fact that even as the sacrificial lamb satisfying a true need for atonement in the Jewish sense, he was also a priest and a spiritual master using real authority to forgive people, heal them, and establish various relationships and realities in their lives. In all his life and especially on the cross, he was reconciling people to God. No matter how much people want to talk about his statement that “it is finished,” we know just as much as we know people are still being born that the priestly intervention is still happening. So if people want to live a Catholic life and receive their salvation day by day, gradually, over a lifetime or even millions of years, that power and negotiation is all there at the cross and it is all there in Christ’s eternal existence. It’s just not a problem to ask him for actual, personal righteousness now and continually, and should not be viewed as a problem except when people have specific fears about assurance of salvation.  And I think the people who most often have those kinds of problems tend to be Presbyterians, who might see a lack of justice and personal righteousness in their life or corrupt systems, which causes them to doubt whether the transaction that provided salvation really worked.  Well is it more true to say it worked, or it is working and won’t fail?  I usually prefer to go for the real time righteousness and believe that life is probably worthwhile in some way even though people try to reduce it all to some kind of account status or legal verdict that already happened. I also think that on the Catholic path is where the most obvious revelation of the Presbyterian thing Christ did will become apparent.  Without that effort to please God, saving faith becomes kind of like a Baptist Catholicism, where you earn your salvation by believing something, which is really nothing but the cheapest of Catholic indulgences.

I could be wrong about this

     There is something in the Bible that people worry about sometimes, and it is referred to as a sin that is unforgivable. I think it is in the letters of Paul and it says that blaspheming the Holy Spirit is the unforgivable sin.  A lot of people think it has to do with saying something bad about the Holy Spirit, or maybe saying something bad about God and Jesus. A lot of mentally ill people worry about it, because we have a lot of problem thoughts and behaviors sometimes. I myself now have a disorder with a lot of intrusive thoughts that are by nature exactly what you don't want to think and say.  One of the solutions for accepting that condition is to know that the worse those thoughts are, the more it is an expression and even profession that you don't approve of that content. So it could be like expressing something more positive if people really understood.
    But this post is not about that. It is about what I think that passage refers to instead as something unforgivable. I have started suspecting that the idea of that kind of blasphemy might refer to something different than saying something very bad, and that the level of harm and offense in question is more related to things like horrific child abuse that tears souls and burns holy things like God himself.
    You can kind of get an idea from what I am talking about from learning about trauma symptoms, and I think there are problems even beyond that where people hurt very innocent life with evil and disrespect that is incalculable. People would say, actually, thankfully it is calculable and therefore finite and disposable.  Well I guess that is probably true.  But anyway, the main thing I am saying is that people are mostly right when they say anyone can be forgiven for anything. And that the things that are by nature unforgivable are actually beyond even the bad choice of refusing forgiveness.  It is evil beyond that.
   I do not understand it all, and I actually differ in my beliefs from a lot of people by thinking that there could be a range of destinies for people, which include death, hell, purgatory, jail sentences, creative Judgement Day verdicts, life experiences that simply teach people things over millions of years, and of course total forgiveness and heaven.
   But the thing that I do feel more suspecting of is that something truly unpardonable is not something that people just stumble upon during a confusing life in a confusing culture.  It is a deliberate and calculated, defining and inevitable violation of innocent, precious life.  Child abuse is probably closer to it than cursing, though God has officially made an offer to forgive anyone who asks, including people who get in trouble for almost any crime we could think of.  Not asking for forgiveness is probably not the unforgivable thing either, but also not a good idea. I mean wouldn't it be all the more stupid to make forgivable things be unforgivable after all.

Tending in the fields

     The book of Matthew in the Bible finishes with a commission for Jesus’s disciples to go make disciples of all people and baptize them in his name. It is a great book, written by someone who started out as a tax collector and dramatically dropped everything to follow Jesus Christ when Christ walked by his tax collector booth one day and said “Follow me.” Jesus invited two fishermen named Peter and Andrew in a similar way and said, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”  

     The fishers of men idea is usually applied to all Christians and the idea is that Christians should always be striving to invite other people to a life that is blessed and transformed by learning from Jesus in a way that is similar to the disciples in the Bible. It is very obvious and almost doesn’t have to be explained after reading the stories of those guys.

    But I think for me and for many others, especially from evangelical backgrounds where we really did think that we should share our faith in some way, there is another component to these stories that is also important but hard to remember. And that is the fact that the fishermen already were fishermen, so the calling was partially to just do more of the same but at a shockingly miraculous level.  And funnily, you could look back and see that maybe Matthew as a tax collector was like a creditor stalking people to take their money, so when Jesus said, “Follow me,” it was just as tailored a calling as for the fishermen, only Matthew would be following someone who did not hate him.

    Anyway, there are all kinds of interesting things about all of it, but I think the thing that helps me balance my messed up evangelical failures with my true identity, is to think that in some ways, the calling wasn’t about transforming all Christians into evangelicals, but that it was about turbo-boosting what people were already good at, so that they could be more truly themselves and unencumbered by deceptions and traps that keep people from meeting their true potential. People could interpret it as meaning that a good athlete has permission to follow Christ’s teaching in order to become a great athlete instead of a good FCA leader. And Christ’s teaching could just as well help an artist reach heights of genius instead of just switching over to religious paintings.

     These concepts have to do with things that people often decide very early in life, and I think many people could read this and think I am honestly saying nothing at all.  But I actually do think that all kinds of people have deep, torturesome problems related to frustrations about work, identity, and Christian service.  I read once that only 13 percent of bartenders are Christians, but if people were following the example of support that Jesus demonstrated, shouldn’t bartenders be the ones serving communion? It is just suspicious, and to me could just mean that more pastors should be behind bars.

An interesting theological question for discussion:

In the Bible, a lot of the opposition people face can be divided into three categories: the world, the flesh, and the devil. It is a very standard theological idea, and I think it is interesting to consider it along with how conflict is described in literature settings.  In English classrooms, a lot of the conflict that drives stories is described as either being man vs. man, man vs himself, or man vs. nature.  

What I am wondering is if all of these categories refer to the same things in life and in what ways they can overlap or not overlap.  Would it mean that “the world” is part of nature, no matter how technological it gets? Would it mean something about the origin of demons? Some people refer to family members as flesh.  Well what would that mean if flesh and the devil could be combined, and flesh can also refer to oneself? It’s really pretty horrifying.

Probably these ideas are very obvious to some people, but I think considering all of it at the same time is actually an opportunity sometimes lost because of efforts to keep religion completely separate from things like public education.  I am sure that most teachers and students manage to have great discussions about anything, but it could be good to be aware of what gets lost in the shuffle of priorities that usually do start with a purpose of protecting people from society and other monsters.

Thoughts about Bonhoeffer

    Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an awesome book called The Cost of Discipleship, and one of the most amazing things about it is that he himself was martyred, and not just martyred, but killed by some of the most notoriously evil people, the Nazis, for plotting to get rid of one of the worst people ever, Hitler.  The story is kind of famous, but the emphasis among Christians is usually on Bonhoeffer’s willingness to die.  That is definitely a compelling thing, especially with his book in mind, but I think people would also benefit from looking at the reasons he died, and seeing that perhaps the more significant issue is that he was willing to kill. That kind of moral courage and sacrifice is not always appreciated as much as dying for something, but I think a lot of people could learn as much from that example as from Bonhoeffer’s willingness to put himself in danger. He cracked the code on what was happening and intended to do something that others did not see as urgent.  And as much as that courage is celebrated now, many people today are still sometimes slow to see the value of justice and the sacrifice of people who make the call on ridding this earth of evil leaders, of murderers and rapists, and of child abusers.

food truck smells

    Ok everyone, I have one more blog post for the theology blog, and this blog is about religious scrupulosity, which can be in the form of OCD or not a matter of mental illness at all.  It has to do with doing what you are supposed to in super specific detailed situations where it could be questionable to spend a disproportionate amount of religious strength to keep a certain standard.  I go ahead and use the word questionable in order to put the scrupulosity on the defense, instead of the people trying to do what they are supposed to.

     The example I want to mention is something I think about very frequently, but know that it is just not a big deal.  It has to do with Halal trucks, which have a certain kind of food that has some kind of religious approval that some people (Muslims, I think) are supposed to have in order to eat almost anything.  I am thankful that many people are providing for each other and that there is food like that available.  I myself usually do not eat from those trucks at all, as a way of practicing my own religion. I think most people aren’t that scrupulous, though, and they would eat that food just as I sometimes eat food that is kosher and blessed by a rabbi even though I am a Christian and not Jewish.

   But that is still not the exact thing I want to say.  The thing I want to say has to do with how I really like good smells and sometimes feel like when I walk by those trucks and inhale the yummy food smell on purpose, then I actually am partaking in Halal food to some extent.  I have held my breath before, but I have mostly come to the conclusion that I should just relax and enjoy the smells as I walk by.  In fact, that seems pretty obvious to me, and I think that I have to take that information and apply it to my whole OCD problem, which is an all-pervasive condition that affects almost every moment of my life.

   I think the thing I have to learn from it is that all of us probably do not have to be perfect in the details, and that it might even be impossible.  What does this mean?  A lot of people might find that really obvious, but I actually know that there are probably people reading this who are more like me and actually have a hard time believing what I am saying and about to say, which is that a general righteousness and obedience from people might be mainly what God expects sometimes.  Of course, there are crucial moments and ethical dilemmas that do deserve everyone’s best efforts, but if we know that there are any examples at all of times where the compromise is okay, then it makes sense to apply that logic to the more important things, too.

   And as much as interesting ethical situations can seem defining or representative, if people took another view and thought about how society would be if everyone simply pretty much did what they were generally supposed to, the more extreme goodness might actually be more likely to take place than with rare strictness or even heroism that has often, and maybe too often, been celebrated.

Unconditional Conditional Love

    Well everyone, this post is about my great theological secret that I think could benefit many people. I have already written one blog post about it before. The idea is based on an adaptation of the kind of love I learned about at church a long time ago.  Sometimes people talk about “unconditional love,” which supposedly is love that continues even when people are not in a condition that seems as lovable as usual, or as lovable as possible.  It seems so nice, except for the fact that a lot of times, it becomes more of some kind of “unconditional condescension” instead, because in your heart, you think the person is not actually lovable.  People think that they are just flinging their amazing and priceless love into a void as some heroic act, when really, for them to take that view means they have to ignore great worth that God himself has created.  I became unsatisfied with that hypocrisy early in my life, and have tried a different way of relating to people, which might seem contradictory or even redundant. But I think that really, it is closer to what unconditional love was supposed to be. I think it would be best described as “unconditional conditional love.”  The idea of it is that your choice to extend goodwill and appreciation to people is unconditional, but the love itself is based on actual lovable factors about people that you deliberately search for and easily find if you are a good person yourself.

    People might interrupt here and excitedly say, “oh, like “tough love” where you get to confront people about their faults.”  No, I still mean a kind positive caring effort in thought and feeling and deed, that gives people the benefit of the doubt even if that doubt is reminiscent of total depravity.

    There are all kinds of things to love and even admire about almost anyone. The intellectual effort of it can kind of turn you into a robot if not enough nice people love you back, but I think in the end, it is much more effective and true than insulting people with a love so fake that you have to remind everyone that it is not based on anything whatsoever except for your own decision to ignore Jesus’s command not to throw your pearls to pigs.

   It starts with looking around and questioning church doctrine, and secretly whispering to yourself and to God, “What if these people actually are lovable?” and “What if really I’m not in a zombie movie like the people who disapprove of zombie movies tried to tell me?”

    I myself do not like zombie movies, so that is not exactly my point. My point is that if you think being friends with someone is such a miracle that brought life out of an abyss of pure evil, then you should also be doing other miracles that are more obvious, like making trees walk. And if you’re not, then maybe the miracle is that people would be friends with you.

The real problem with cursing

Ok everyone I am going to phrase this post mostly as questions because I am truly not sure about it.  It has to do with curses and justice.  The thing I am wondering has to do with something Jesus taught people which is to bless others and not to curse them, even if they are our enemies.  And he said to pray for people and love your enemies.  But most people figure out that sometimes you do have to stand up for yourself or others in some way, even just to help keep children safe from each other. There has to be justice in the world, and mercy without it seems meaningless and even dangerous.  Something else Jesus said is that people should not give someone a verbal blessing without backing it up with actions.  Well I am a very verbal person and I like kind words, but the command has more to do with telling people to be blessed but not giving them food if they are hungry.  It becomes hypocritical to say religious things and not help people in need.  So here is the question:  Could the same thing be said about cursing people who harm others but not doing anything to stop them?  Is it also hypocritical to criticize society, or literally say curse words at people, or try to pray a curse for people without taking action as some use of force? I think most army people and cops would see immediately the importance of keeping people safe through justice, but in religious contexts, to say that you should back up curses with actions is pretty crazy.  And yet I believe I am really on to something.  There are curses later in the New Testament, from people like Paul and then an interesting one at the end of Revelation.  And I think the reason they weren’t backed up with obvious violence is because the spiritual power of those making the curses actually is so extreme that the use of force is integrated with the curse.  It is very interesting, and I think for me, the place to start with action is simply to follow Jesus’s command to feed the hungry, and then to remember that there are different types of hunger, and different things that are food, and different ways of intervening when people block food or ruin life.