Merry Christmas.

This makes me want to throw up.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081226/ap_on_re_us/santa_shooting

It seems too fake, too terrible.
But what hits me, and the more I think about it, the more I'm saddened and disgusted, but what hits me is how destroyed and mutilated these families must feel. How terrified and completely exposed to evil they must feel. What's more, how could one man possibly be so twisted and scarred that he might be led to do something like this? My conclusion to these two thoughts is that as Christians we must seek to love families such as these, but also to love, deeply and truly and meaningfully, men such as these, people such as these, that are so desperate and hopeless and twisted that they would massacre as this.

What's more is that in our American world this shocks and awes us, this makes us tremble and "want to throw up" yet we don't even realize that horror such as this is commonplace in places such as the Sudan, in the Darfur region, where war and genocide and hopelessness has torn people's lives apart. If we are going to say that Christ brings a message of hope for the hopeless, and this is certainly meaning that we, everyone on earth, as sinners receive the hope of forgiveness, but something in me, something in Christ, says that it cannot just be so "spiritual." The hope of Christ cannot just manifest itself in the words of our preachers. It must be carried out, yes, into the suburbs, although this may look different than it does now, but it also must be carried into the places of horror and death, and that can not mean hitting people in the head with the Bible, it must mean showing them the hope of Christ both to have full life, know God, in this world and in the next, the continuation.

And still I carry on with my selfish sin, hardened heart, listening to what I like, what feels good.

But that's not the point, is it?

On the radio earlier today, in the Spirit of Christmas, someone was talking about the freedom Christ offers, and my thought was such, "Well, sure, if you don't sin, but if you keep on sinning, that's not a ton of freedom now, is it?" That thought is kind of shaming now, but I think that there may be some good things drawn from it. First of all, I seem to assert that the point of us following Christ is to "not sin." The point of following Christ is glorifying God, and yes, sinning certainly is defiant of the love of God and therefore, not glorifying to Him, but it's so much more. I don't quite know where to go know, but I guess that it just seems so.. me-oriented to complain of Christ like that. Christ has given me freedom. He has said to me, "Oh no no, my son, you do not understand. You do continue to sin, and that must stop, but what you do not realize is that I continue to love you and forgive you. You don't quite understand that, do you? No matter, it remains."

That is what the freedom of Christ means. Yes, it is partly that we are freed from sin and are freed from its addictive chains, for surely He will change our hearts, at least I do hope that He will, but it also means that we are freed from sin's wages, and even more so, we are allowed to know God, and pleasure I know far too little of, a joy that I do not take joy in so often. It is not a feeling of happiness, if it were, then, well, I would take joy in Christ some of the time, that's for sure, but probably not very constantly. It has to be something more than a feeling, and I may be in the process of finding out what that is. Lord help us, for we are lost little lambs, dumbstruck in a world of mud pies and back alleys, knowing nothing of vacations at the sea, nor anything of hope, nor even knowing why we might need hope or grace or a savior. Lord, help us.

The Prodigal God

I picked up The Prodigal God by Tim Keller a little bit ago and it has certainly made me think.

I was going to share a few quotes from it that describe the condition I and many others, I do believe, have, but was surprised by another thought, an answer to prayers of sorts.

For clarification, the book is about the story of the Prodigal Son, or rather, as Keller calls it, the parable of the two sons. in it, he goes into a description of the parable and goes on to discuss the conditions of the two sons, primarily the elder son, the morally right. In a rather revealing commentary to me, he discusses how jaded both sons are to God, that the sin of the sons is not merely doing good or doing bad, as if it were, the elder son would be justified, rather, it is a wish to have control. Well, here, he explains it better.

Here, then, is Jesus' radical redefinition of what is wrong with us. Nearly everyone defines sin as breaking a list of rules. Jesus, though, shows us that a man who has violated virtually nothing on the list of moral misbehaviors can be every bit as spiritually lost as the most profligate, immoral person. Why? Because sin is not just breaking the rules, it is putting yourself in the place of God as Savior, Lord, and Judge just as each son sought to displace the authority of the father in his own life.

Not only this, he goes on to explain that he believes the condition of the elder son, the moralist, is a much more desperate condition than the one who is "doin' all the wrong." This, the condition of the moralist and self-righteous yet still self-seeking "Christian" is surely what I have been.

So, as I have been reading through this book, my kind of off and on prayer has been, "Well, God, if I'm in this condition, how do I fix it? How am I changed so that I do things out of a love for you, not out of a want for my own good? For surely, even though You promise good to those who come to you, our hearts must be changed so that they desire You above all things, even our own good!"

What was His answer? Well, I certainly expected a lengthier wait for any response from God, as it seems that with regards to His work I always seem to think I'll have to wait years for things to change. But He hit me with a thought. If the end of man is to glorify God, then our lives should be spent trying to seek out how we can do that, correct? With the hopeful consent of a dear friend, I shall borrow an analogy. If we are to be mirrors reflecting God's own glory, sin has fogged our mirror. What Jesus has come to do is un-fog those mirrors. His blood on the Cross and continued work in our lives is the Windex, if you will, to clean our mirrors that they may shine brightly the glory of He Who Created Us. (He Who Must Be Named? A Harry Potter joke..) Therefore, my question of, "How can I fix myself, how can I get out of this moralistic attitude?" must be addressed with a why? Why do I want to get out of this moralistic attitude? Is it merely because I know it's the right thing to want, or because true life is found in Jesus and to truly follow Jesus I must truly love God, and that cannot come of moralism?

Regardless, the answer that I came to was that perhaps it is not something I am obligated to fix. Perhaps I must make every effort to seek God truthfully and honestly, keeping in line with His commands and following His wisdom, but at the very heart of it all, depending on Jesus to cleanse me. Perhaps my job is not to worry about changing my heart beyond prayer. Perhaps I simply must continue to attempt to know God, but instead of relying on my own good, relying on the good of Jesus, the blood that He spilled in order for my mirror to be unfogged, my life to be full of what it's supposed to be, and believing that He is big enough, faithful enough, gracious enough to change me.

Whew.

Psalm 5

So, I was just reading through Psalm 5.
It's pretty cool, the first few verses (not trying to downplay these, they just aren't what I was wanting to talk about) talk about the faithfulness of God "In the morning, O Lord, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation." The author (or would we call the author God? well, that's a whole 'nother discussion), David, goes on to pray that God, as a God who does not take pleasure in evil, who cannot stand the arrogant, who hates all who do wrong, would banish those whose "throat is an open grave", who with "their tongue [..] speak deceit." My question was, how do we respond to this? Do we look at God who takes out His wrath on the evil because we pray for it, and are we to be people who pray for God to take out His wrath on evildoers? My immediate response was, "well no, of course not, for I was once evil, and He did not take out His wrath on me." But I don't realy know how to think about God's justice in this sense, because He certainly does punish those who do wrong, that's fairly Biblical, but are we, as Christians, to be people who desire that?

Another thought hit me as I was thinking about this.
Let me quote verses 7-10.

7 But I, by your great mercy,
will come into your house;
in reverence will I bow down
toward your holy temple.

8 Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness
because of my enemies—
make straight your way before me.

9 Not a word from their mouth can be trusted;
their heart is filled with destruction.
Their throat is an open grave;
with their tongue they speak deceit.

10 Declare them guilty, O God!
Let their intrigues be their downfall.
Banish them for their many sins,
for they have rebelled against you.

Now, the thought that hit me was that in verse 9, David refers to "their mouth," "their heart," and "their throat." He is talking about "[his] enemies," so I would think that he would refer to 'their mouthS' not, "their mouth," or 'their hearts,' not "their heart." Maybe this is just a literary technique I am not aware of, or perhaps I'm simply more grammar ignorant that I had before thought, but it seems as thought David is talking about a group of people, not certain people. Perhaps he is not condemning people specifically, but people who are in sin? That wouldn't make much more sense either.

Regardless, the beauty of a blog?

You guys.