you taste like static

1 day ago  /  0 notes

The Fruit of Repentance

First of all i just freaking out a little bit because i just found out cartel, hit the lights, and set your goals are going to be in atlanta april 14, and oh i will be there. its a saturday so its perfect, but i would go if it was a tuesday wednesday whatever day. ahhh im so excited. 

next, some life advice to myself:

Smoking harms nearly every organ of the body. Smoking causes many diseases and reduces the health of smokers in general. -Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Now that those are outta the way, i can begin with a very messy and thought scattered blob of a paragraph on some interesting stuff i learned tonight at crossroads from the mind blowing Greg Pinker…

He talked about how important repentance is. he used Luke 3:1-9 as a reference it was pretty bad ass just to be perfectly honest. First off, John the baptist, before Jesus was born, was telling people about repentance and to prepare their hearts because their savior was coming soon and they needed to be ready. I’ll come back to this later or I might forget. I’ll try anyways.

You know who when, or if, you’re talking to someone about christianity or just religion in general you just wish you were better equipped with knowledge so you could tell whoever you were talking to the perfect answer so then they could know God? If not, well…that’s exactly how I feel. And I’ve thought for a long time the key to solving that problem was if I went to stuff like crossroads and ruf and church and anything else I could think of so that I could learn more about christianity and then I would have a better understanding of it as a whole and my faith with it, leading me to what I wanted: to be able to talk to people about Jesus and christianity and have a better response to their questions then, uhh maybe you should ask someone else that question. But what Greg was saying tonight is that the error or well not error, but the barrier to knowing and loving Christ is not informational. Rather, it is the fact that people’s heart are crooked towards sin. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. John 3:19 (not the ever so popular John 3:16)

C.S Lewis says in Mere Christianity when he was an atheist…”My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.” He talks more and makes a really cool point but I won’t go into that. Maybe I will later, for future reference to myself its on page 38.

Anyways, our hearts are crooked towards sin, and Jesus said it himself that we are slaves to sin. Another question that Greg addressed one that I think some people use to try to undermine the existence of God, but I’ve never been content with an answer I’ve received. It’s, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” and sad truth is there are no good people. We (I) boost oursleves and others up for being “good” and doing good things for others and being involved in religious activity and so on but the thing that so many people, including me, forget is that we have ALL fallen. We are all fucking awful yet we somehow find good in ourselves. We’re blind to our own sin, another thing that goes along with how our hearts are bent towards sin. We’re so crooked we don’t even realize it most times. We are all stained with sin and we aren’t capable of loving God by ourselves. I mean, how sad is that? We are so bad, we can recognize Who God is and what He’s done for us, yet we still fall back to our worldly beliefs constantly. We need God so that we can love God. it’s pathetic, but it’s how much grace he’s given us. We’re told what to do so often and we just can’t seem to get it stuck in our heads…From then on Jesus began to preach, “Repent of your sins and turn to God, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near. Matthew 4:17. 

The point to this is that there is no such thing a repent-less christian. It’s a hugely overlooked aspect that christian culture ignores, maybe not ignores but doesn’t focus on. The typical gospel message these days is something like, you’re messed up, but God saved you, and he wants you to be awesome, and you want you to be awesome, so accept God and be awesome. WRONG. mostly. If someone was to go around campus and ask everyone how they know they’re saved, according to Greg, most of them would say something along the lines of, well I was raised in a christian environment and accepted God at church camp. I prayed a sinner’s prayer and learned about the gospel and believe in Jesus. Obviously, knowing Jesus is not a bad thing, but there is such a depth that people are missing. It’s not just knowing Him. We HAVE to repent and understand that our flesh fucking blows and the spirt is AMAZING. The most miserable people on earth, well what we’re told, are the people who don’t know Jesus. And I’ve always been like, yeah that makes sense, but it really doesn’t. If you don’t know Christ, that sucks, but at the same time, you don’t have any guilt, responsibility, or shame. You’re kinda just along for the ride and not trying to piss people off. In reality, the people who are true christians that screw up and go back to their worldly views and actions are the most miserable. For instance, the people who knew Christ and were “good” in high school come to college and just right off the bat embrace the “college life” would never admit it, but they know how empty they feel. They are openly rebellious, but the thing is they know they’re wrong, and they’re void. Not to say they can’t find their way back, oooh which gives me the oppurtunity to use C.S. Lewis again, actually Georganna used this point on her tumblr post today, i think.Yep. 

“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be…

…And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.”

Just a cool add on…for the win. I don’t know I just feel like if I can ever apply C.S. Lewis my argument is valid.

But once we’re converted, we should be able to see how terrible and repulsive we are and how wonderful God is! I mean, if you ARE truly converted, I wouldn’t think it possible to go back to worldly views. Luke 3: 4-6

“A voice of one calling in the wilderness,

‘Prepare the way for the Lord,

   make straight paths for him.

5 Every valley shall be filled in,

   every mountain and hill made low.

The crooked roads shall become straight,

   the rough ways smooth.

6 And all people will see God’s salvation.

I have to reject my thinking of self-rightousness and trying to build myself up to make myself feel better because the FUCKING TRUTH is that it doesn’t matter how fucked up I am, I’m clean. And that makes it all so much more amazing. When I’m in my good spiritual states, it doesn’t matter, it makes me happy yeah but I shouldn’t put any real value in it or give myself any credit for it. Because it’s a gift from God in the first place and that is where glory should be given! Repent! Our external everything is meaningless. However good we think we are, others are, whatever, unless the crookedness is our heart is made straight, it’s all worthless. That is why salvation is not through good works and a high self esteem, but rather seeing how desperate we really are. “The heart is the heart of the matter.” Do not be deceived by religious activity. It’s great and all, but no matter how involved I might be, it won’t matter unless it’s coming from the right place and with the right motives. Do I know that the grace of God has saved me rather than myself? 

Luke 3:9

“The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.”

Ahh music high…ok, i’ll do my calculus homework.

2 days ago  /  0 notes

my mandolin is calling me. jay is sleeping.

2 days ago  /  0 notes

not yet joy

welcome to my domain! it was a good weekend, and actually its been consistently good. but not yet great. but im very ok with that. things are going well and smooth and i dont have to deal with anymore stupid stuff. i mean, im sure ill get caught up in more stupid stuff eventually, but for now, no stupid stuff. hahaha thats extremely broad. i guess what im saying is emotionally, im stable? im over her and im over it. and im done with all of it. it might now have been the most christian or nicest move i could have pulled but i needed out, and now i am, and its just one less thing to have to deal with. honestly, even when i wasn’t dealing with this one particular person, i was still just…i dont know, mad? yeah actually, except rage is more suitable. I was raging all the time, in my head anyways. its not like i was walking down ped walk just yelling at people and tackling everything i saw, although that would be funny. but i found a dangerous road with music and taking music and lyrics and applying exactly what they were playing and singing directly to myself, and some of it just wasn’t good lo listen to when i was where i was at. i understand exactly why i was, it was almost me self-medicating with music, but it was just like drinking to self-medicate. it wasn’t getting me anywhere. it’d be really fucking hard to stop listening to the music ive been listening to for the past…well 6 months pretty much, because ive simply fallen in love with the genre. but i dont think thats really something i have to do. i think with time ill stop applying the music to certain things, certain people and i can hopefully just enjoy it for what it is. or maybe not, i could be wrong. but all i know is im not going to be able to give it up. however i did make a playlist on spotify today of stuff i wasn’t really too familiar with or not familiar with at all and just wanted to hear. its got close to 300 songs on it, so that should keep me busy for a while at least. i also made a playlist of just all the music ive primarily listened to in the past few months, and its crazy how different it is to the music i listened to, well, for the majority of my life, thank you richard. a shout out to one of my many followers (2) hey georganna as well. thanks for making me smoke cigarettes, i hate you. actually no i dont. hey i made you a sandwich today. ANYWAYS! but yeah so all in all, im doing very well, atleast on a life standpoint. emotionally, yeah id say im pretty good there, now i want to take this probably small window of being content and comfortable and explore my values, beliefs, goals, passions. that sounds really, i dont know, whatever i want to, so im going to. but ill probably write that in my journal so i can look back at in a years to come, so sorry you dont get to know tumblr, what can i say…sucks to suck. ooooh goal number one, start going to bed earlier. its like a hangover in the morning. not that im really hungover and not that im not getting enough sleep because im still getting a good amount, i just sleep late on my weekends and then i cant go to church. i tried this sunday, but i was up til 4 saturday night, thank you again georganna, and it was just not gonna happen once sunday morning came along. i realize im going to have to wake up early for my job when im oldr so i might as well start kind of going back to a regular circadian rhythm, because mine just has to be off! i mean its 2am and im WIDE AWAKE. or maybe i should enjoy this, because its the last few years i get to stay up late and have fun. i dont know, i figure im not really ever going to be a morning person, so my mornings are always going to suck i guess. oh joy. gosh i need to start writing more often but less amount because i write way too much when i do. but anyway, im happy where i am right now, i just dont know whats going to happen tomorrow. everything might change, and thats just scary.  

2 days ago  /  0 notes

brainzzz

My head doesn’t want anymore chemistry crammed into it, so i’ll type. I had bible study today which was absolutely fantastic. We talked about salt and light again this week and what it meant to be a christian and integrate yourself into the lives of others like salt and to preserve the good in the world from spoiling. Because yes, the world is is corrupt, but it is also good. God said it himself. We are meant to help preserve the goodness of it. I am meant to preserve the goodness of it. In the sense of being a light, typically I do a fucking awful job. But it’s absurd to think that just because I’m a christian, I’m going to be able to be a light everywhere all the time. Because I’m still not perfect, I’ve fallen just like everyone else. It’s just the cultural view that christians are supposed to be perfect and have it all together, and when we aren’t and we screw up, our sins are magnified and we are viewed as hypocrites. Which is true, we are hypocrites. We live by standards that we know are right and we tell people it is the way to live, but when we cant do it ourselves it just makes us look bad. Which I think is why I struggle with wanting to be a light for others. Because it makes me a light alone in the darkness, and if I don’t do a good job of showing God’s beauty and love, well then that’s on me. And it’s so much easier to be a lukewarm christian. It’s not cool to not be a christian and its really not cool to be super passionate about it because people automatically want to call you out on how screwed up you are.  Being a “lukewarm christian” is well easy…I mean, I don’t have to go out of my way to show God to others, so I can avoid confrontation, but I can have forgiveness from God even though I don’t deserve it. It’s pretty much all the glory from christianity but I’m not paying anything back, which is starting to really bother me. I’m also afraid if I were to be a light in darkness, someone might take my light and I might become lost. I don’t think I’m strong enough in my faith to not be swayed by what some might say about christianity and how wrong it is. Even though I know what I believe in, I just don’t know if I’m really that bright yet. What I found interesting was that Brent, pointed out that the christian ghettos we create for ourselves are often the least lit places. Because we create this bubble surrounded by “good people and good things” and we convince ourselves that we are good. That just because we call ourselves christians, we’re better than everyone else. And that’s totally not the case. The only things we DO have is a hunger for Christ and the light that He has put in us. It is absolutely nothing we have done or deserve. Back to the christian bubble thing…He gave an example of a private christian school, and a girl screws up and gets pregnant. Is it christianly for the school to kick her out? It makes it seem like the school is for perfect people only, an exclusive christian club. Which is the complete opposite of what christianity is all about! What that is saying is that it is not ok to not be ok. Even though we all sin and we all know that, we still pretend that we’re perfect. but since God saved us, it is ok that we’re not ok. Gahh i just love that! But rather we hide behind our christian barricades and throw evangelical grenades at people who we think deserve them, when in reality we all deserve to just suck it. So why do we feel so highly esteemed; so royal? (Matthew 5:13-16 is what our bible study was based off of in case whoever is reading this wants to look at it.) It was just a really interesting topic and discussion and very convicting. It impacted the rest of my day, and I can say that honestly. I didn’t just walk out and forget it, but it actually changed my thinking on how I should act and how I should treat others. Now we’ll see about tomorrow…

What was really intriguing though was the conversation we had after bible study was over. About six or so guys stayed and we were just talking to Brent about stuff like, well we were kind of talking about legalism? Brent gave his opinion on stuff like cussing in art. Like how mumford and sons have some of the most redemptive lyrics, period. But in “Little Lion Man” they say,” I really fucked it up this time” and Brent had a pretty cool statement. He pretty much said what we see as bad in a general worldly view I suppose is just not comparable when talking about art. Because the word “fuck” if used in the sense it’s often used in, well that’s wrong. But it adds passion to the song when mumford uses it because if they were to say” we really messed it up this time”…well it just doesn’t get the point across that they were trying to convey. If someone were to confide in me and let’s say that they’re father beat them or something horrible like that, it would sound better to say “dude, thats really fucked up. I’m sorry.” than,” dude, thats messed up…” Brent made it clear that he wasn’t right at all, but it was just his view of the word “fuck” in context of certain situations. I don’t know. Food for thought. 

Whatever tomorrow brings I’ll be there, with open arms and open eyes.

-Incubus (Drive)

So I guess to conclude this poorly conveyed message I have in my head but probably doesn’t make much sense on here…I’m going to read some Mere Christianity and go to bed. UGH DEATH. I have a chemistry quiz tomorrow a.m.

6 days ago  /  0 notes