Current thoughts on a relationship

I'm on a dating site called "okCupid." It's pretty interesting but one aspect of it makes me chuckle. It's the ignorance of Christians, atheists, agnostics, whatever, when they state their belief and then write "but not too serious about it." How can you not be that serious about atheism? How can you be "slightly serious" about your Christianity? There are only two conclusions I can draw: 1) You don't really care where you stand (or fall) or 2) you're so immersed in living according to the world that you can't help but put "not too serious" in following your convictions.

That being said, I am totally serious about God's faithfulness towards me because I see my own hypocrisy in the above paragraph! I love the Lord without a doubt but I also love my sin just as much at times and am called ONLY to trust in a Savior who gives to me not only my measure of faith, but my strength to run from the carnal desires of my heart. My sin is powerful inside of me so all I can say to others is that God's grace is greater and it is conforming me into the image of God's own Son. My only hope even being saved are the continued and renewed mercies of the Lord every morning.

I wrote that to a girl I met and followed by saying:

If you're interested in me and the above leaves you disheartened then it should because I can promise that I will be a constant let down in and of myself. I don't want a woman who puts her faith in my ability to be a godly man. I want a woman who puts her faith in God to make me the godly man He desires. Likewise, I desire only to know God's grace powerfully so that I may be merciful and forgiving to not only myself but to my future wife as well. It's not a love that makes sense to the world because it's an active love towards those who have hatred against me in their hearts. As Jesus did for us, we are called to fight on behalf of those who are trying to tear us down. That can totally include the "significant other" in our lives. There can be no truly successful relationship without Jesus because unconditional love cannot be offered without knowing Jesus intimately.

The judgment of Lindsay Lohan?

I just read an article about Lindsay Lohan and her father that really troubled me. Her dad has publicly denounced her with comments such as:

"No wonder why God is taking her entire career away from her, because she's forsaken everything He's given her and she's done nothing but misuse all the gifts she's given."

The writer reporting on this responds with appropriate sarcasm about the intentions and hypocrisy of her father when they write, "Following this logic, could another of God's punishments be giving Lindsay a father who is making a career out of trying to destroy his troubled daughter in the press?"

I'm reminded of a passage from Ephesians 6 where Paul is exhorting the followers of Jesus to Godly living between parents and children. He writes:

"Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 'Honor your father and mother'—which is the first commandment with a promise— 'that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.' Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord."

The training begins with the parents, of course. They raise their children and are encouraged to do so with grace and mercy; just as Jesus taught us, His own children. A child does not need to be taught how to sin, after all, but must be trained in righteousness and truth.

In 1 Corinthians 6 followers of Christ are told not to bring judgment on their own outside of the church. We read, "If any of you has a dispute with another, dare he take it before the ungodly for judgment instead of before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world?"

What a wicked man to make a name for himself by heaping condemnation upon the daughter whom God gave him stewardship to raise! No wonder Lindsay Lohan is the way she is with a father who publishes their private conversations and shows by his very actions that he hates her! Why would she serve her father's god when it is apparent that his god is merciless and unholy? Who is deserving of the greater punishment? But you children of the Most High, remember even while you were still enemies of God and in active rebellion against His goodness that He came in the flesh to offer His forgiveness and love. It belongs to those who will simply come to Him for a relationship that will never fail because He loves us perfectly for who we are.

Isn't that love the sort that changes our hearts? For instance, imagine a disrespectful and hateful child on his deathbed for lack of a needed organ donor. The child, though spiteful, is terrified of dying. Yet, at just the right time, a person, seeing the need and not judging the child's nature, finds that he is a match and willingly gives the necessary organ to save the child's life. Can you imagine that child waking up from surgery and spitting in the face of his savior? Does it not seem that the child would be incredibly grateful instead and work to be pleasing to the one who saved him?

If Lindsay Lohan knew of the True God who loves sinners and transforms them because of His love would she not respond as one grateful for having a new life? But instead, she has responded to the cruel and unforgiving God that her dad represents and has run away from that terror! May she and her father come to know the grace and peace of God that transcends the rivalries of the flesh and brings reconciliation to those who are far off and lost.


Romans 5:6-11

"You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

"Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him! For if, when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation."

My (slightly humorous) take on why Christians are so annoying.

I understand the annoyance for God's people, I really do. We are the veritable "people of the cloth" or the "Frozen Chosen" as the "reformed" Presbyterians are so named. I generally roll with that group for some reason. Prior to my conversion I was Episcopalian or, as my friend Rory called the denomination: "Catholic-lite." Apparently we had all the ceremony and only half of the guilt! It sounded like an ad espousing the benefits of Margarine over butter. We love our labels and others love to label us. We usually seem to get labeled in direct accordance with our hypocrisy.

Anyhoo, I came face to face with this Christian hypocrisy my first year as a believer. I was invited to a beach gathering up in LA with the regional church and was very excited to go. For reasons that will become apparent later, I did not get much sleep that night. We had a nice hour and a half long drive up to the beach house where I was lulled into a false sense of serenity. I won a huge container full of Gummy Bears when I guessed closest to the proper amount, won a Bible verse locating round against all odds, swam in the ocean amongst breaker waves that literally crushed my body into the sand and rolled me up the embankment like a ball of limp, masticated noodles, drained fluids from my nose for half an hour after sand burning my face all the way up the shore, oozed into a fabulous leather chair with little mechanical massaging rollers and ultimately fell asleep. Big mistake!

With those rollers buffing relaxing patterns into my musculature I was like a bittersweet square of soft imported Dutch chocolate left on a hot car hood in the middle of the Death Valley desert; I melted. My body sank into every nook and cranny of that chair and time died to me. I woke up half an hour later to the sound of poorly concealed snickering that took place behind hands that were pushed up so hard against mouths that their teeth were almost extractable from behind their ears.

It seems that I had been drooling upon my heaving bosom for the duration of my false-safety, sleep induced coma. Oh, it wasn't just a little drool and it wasn't just a small wet mark; it was foamy white around the edges and encompassed up to half of my now embarrassingly dripping chest. My shame was so thick around me it could have been cut with a chainsaw! I gave a couple of nervous laughs while everyone around me guffawed with open mouths and flapping tongues. They flopped as fish out of water and made a similar, though more guttural sound.

I wiped the last lonely strands of spittle from my sopping chin and made my walk of shame out into the sun to dry my saturated shirt. It was a welcome heat and much more natural than the fire that burned with the heat of a thousand suns within the tips of my ears. Alas, to have had a friend willing to warn me against my own lack of classiness! I would almost have rather walked amongst the best looking women in the world with my fly unzipped for an entire day. I would have at least had a great excuse for being clueless!

I pose this challenge to you believers out there (and a last convenient label): The next time you have the chance to save a brother from embarrassment ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?"

Jury duty.

I will soon be going to the courthouse in Vista to find out if they can use me as a juror. Thankfully, it happens to fall during a time when I am not working so it is possible that it will be a great experience and I don't have to sacrifice any earnings I might be making from work.

The potential to be a juror has caused me to ponder the necessary causes for the justice system to deny a person as juror. The reason coming before my thoughts at this moment as I'm brain storming is moral relativism. How can one stand in judgment over another person if they themselves are not grounded in morality and truth? How can one believe in a system of morality unless it is is first given to them to believe? If we don't believe that morality has been handed down to us or comes from an outside agent, then by default we make ourselves gods and judges of men.

Years ago in 2004 as I was preparing to go on my deployment to the Persian Gulf we had what is called a "workup." It is something that naval vessels do in home waters to prepare for a scheduled deployment. Workups happen a year out and six months out from the actual embarkation date to train the crew ahead of time and hopefully avoid future troubles when out in potential enemy waters. One of the Marines I was on the carrier training with for our workup was a moral relativist. His mantra was, "strive for perfection."

Deciding to walk in his shoes and thus get a better look at how his mind worked I asked him some probing questions to see if he had actually thought about what perfection was. His answers pertained to his performance within the Marine Corps and life in general. His perfection was the standard of the Marine Corps and his own values. He wanted to maintain a perfect score of 300 for his physical fitness test and "be a good person." He couldn't really define what a "good" person was.

Having pinned him to standards of perfection I asked what he would do if he did not either achieve or maintain them. He simply said that he would "lower his standards." Isn't that what we all do? We have an ideal quality in our minds that we strive for and when we find that we cannot achieve it we bring the proverbial bar down to a more manageable level. We smooth out our path and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done because we reached a plateau that an infant could scale and not fall off of. All the while we have this weight bearing down on our backs when we realize our previous standards are leaning over our shoulder and crushing us. For the purpose of revealing our sinful motives Al Pacino says in The Devil's Advocate, "Look but don't touch; touch but don't taste; taste but don't swallow."

The rushing voice in the back of our heads that leads us to doubt and lose strength is saying to us "YOU DO NOT MEASURE UP!" What other reason could we have for our feelings of guilt and fear? Why else would we spend time wasting away in self-doubt, pity, loneliness and depression?

We have days where all seems well and we can feel happy for a time but they are like the last few hours of a waning Sunday night when we realize that we are drunk and exhausted and have to wake up early for work the next morning. Worldly happiness is a fading shadow that is a constant reminder of the sorrows that are to come. We can eat, drink and be merry, but tomorrow WE WILL DIE! There has to be something better than this!

Thus, the result of moral relativism is the establishment in our own hearts of a throne that we sit upon in judgment. We judge the world through scandalous and haughty eyes and rule unjustly from a heart that is sinking in shifting sand. We fail to live up to our standards but we are furious and demand justice for those who also fail to live up to our expectations. We hate in others what is most prominent in us. How can we judge when we are worthy of judgment? How can we be faithful stewards of the lives of men unless we can find a firm foundation and rule in the truth of justice? How may we depart from the deceit that has struck us a mortal blow from within? We are nothing but moral anarchists.

We see before us the need to judge the wickedness of others when we ourselves are wicked and deserving of judgment. However, we cannot let a child rapist or serial murderer roam the streets if it is within our power to take them away. The convicted murderer will serve his time, but what of us who rail and hate in our hearts? If the convicted murderer could not escape just punishment in this life then how can we escape judgment for the very same sins that abide within us? True justice demands an account of all iniquity that is committed in the flesh AND in the heart! We cannot escape our sins without help.

From where does our help come? Our help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth! Our help comes from our advocate who stands before the Judge in our place. Our help comes from the cross! It is the Good Helper who has healed us from all our iniquities and stains. He has clothed us in His righteousness and taken the judgment for our sins upon Himself. His name is Jesus! His name is Messiah! He is the Lord's anointed one; the Holy Lamb of God! He alone can teach us to judge with justice, mercy, grace and compassion for He abides perfectly in shiftless standards.

Protection of money or life?

I found the picture for my blog here: http://mediocracy.us/category/hypocrisy/

In a macabre display of worldly hypocrisy I watched the Brinks armored car pull up to the school today. Out came an armed security guard carrying his money bag inside while the armed driver kept a close watch. Apparently, they weren't told that our school is a "gun-free zone" as are all public school in California.

There I was in the front of the school with a badge clearly stating "security" on it and a small self-defense pepper sprayer on my hip. My jaw went slack for a moment as I realized the implications of what I was seeing. Here I was as a security guard at a school in charge of protecting hundreds of students and, though I am qualified to own a gun, I was not allowed, by law, to keep it on my person outside of the home. So why can someone in charge of hundreds of thousands of dollars in actual money pack heat to protect the greenbacks in his possession?

This small act proved to me that society, as a whole, believes that money is worth more than the people who eventually produce the capital to make it. We potentially sacrifice our future growth and prosperity by not adequately defending our children while we simultaneously protect something that is worth far less. Money's worth is found only in the strength of the government promise that backs it. A person has worth invested in them by others who sacrifice of themselves to build them up.

We should not have the expectation of making a sacrifice of death to uphold life especially when it is within our ability to provide safety. A few people wanting to burying their heads in the sand and calling a place "gun-free" does not a "gun-free" place make. It just means that those who have the guns and the desire to use them nefariously will detect no threat in bringing them into the gun-free zone. At that point, the badge on my arm will no longer mean "security" but instead "shoot me first." It is a sacrifice I will hopefully be willing to make if I am called to do so and, by God's grace, I will be allowed to defend the lives of those students who have been entrusted into my care.

I am grateful that at the end of the day I do not have to worry about such things as death. My God invested me with great worth that will never perish. It was granted to me by the incorruptible blood of Christ that washed away my sins. I have gained worth from the sacrifice of Christ and if I am able to sacrifice of myself to prove to others that they too have worth then I will be thankful for the opportunity. My hope is found in these words and I encourage you to read them carefully and meditate upon them:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom having not seen you love. Though now you do not see Him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith—the salvation of your souls."