All The World A Stage

More proof we live in a tragically fallen world, courtesy of Google Now:
  • Since being hacked Ashley Madison has garnered over a million new subscribers. That means over a million people, AFTER the hack, have said “I am so ready to cheat that I don’t care if it gets my name posted publicly”
  • Dating app OKCupid, which last year added the ability to mark yourself as being in an open relationship, now has 22 genders to choose from and will, staring this week, allow couples who want to bring in more partners to jointly search for them. They call it the polyamorous feature. It was requested by over 30% of their users.

Continue reading “All The World A Stage”

A Shadow of A Doubt

https://youtu.be/QeY8lndPsdE

Powerful. It’s interesting to me that this is a torture many Christians go through that I can’t identify with. Because I tried every path, went down every pagan angle, tried on every answer to see how they didn’t fit. I learned to see God by taking the long way around, and I think it was how He allowed me to sidestep the self-doubt that so cripplingly erodes confidence in Him. I am so very prone to skepticism that He couldn’t let me believe early. Continue reading “A Shadow of A Doubt”

Reach Out and Touch Faith

74 years since the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Since the Japanese empire became so desperate they made a futile stab at the west to provoke us into war. Since an array of Navy personnel blindly rejected the approaching armada as a mistake of the radar. Since Nagumo blessedly aborted a third wave which, in addition to heaping thousands more onto an already 2500-person casualty list between both countries, would have ended any US ability to operate in the Pacific. Since 2400 US soldiers lost their lives, most before they were even fully awake from the jolted nightmare alarm. I first studied that terrible day when the anniversary number was in the 40s; it affects my heart no less today than it did then, despite having learned a great deal more about it.

Continue reading “Reach Out and Touch Faith”

Follow Me If You Want To Live

Follow Me If You Want To Live

I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just… I just can’t take you seriously with a beard like that. I mean… he glued that on, right? This is the whole issue with terrorists. They don’t cause terror, they cause everything but: ridicule, shame, rage, sorrow… You name it. Continue reading “Follow Me If You Want To Live”

The Interview


I know it seems self-centered to post a video of me (this is me if you don’t know me), but I think the message Pastor Paul pulls out of me is salient: God sent Jesus that none would perish, but that through Christ all might find eternal life. It’s the job of every Christian to carry out that mission actively. If you’re not spreading the gospel you’re just staring up at the sky waiting for Him to come back.

I was in my 30s when I was saved, and while I never actually inflicted violence on a Christian I was pretty derisive and Saul-like in my zeal to tear down the “prejudices” and “small-mindedness” of the “Christian fantasy.” I was one of those who are the reason Christians don’t speak out. I insulted them, forcibly debated them to speechlessness… I had no mercy in my heart because science has no concept of mercy.

My existence was cold, fleshy, and rage-filled. And worse, I had lived that way so long I had no idea I’d reached that place.

That is millions of people. People not for anything, but set squarely against anything “white,” politically right, or Christian. And compounded to that are those who are far in the other direction, who are so legalistically attached to their dogma that they have no ability to relate to the lost.

The church has a mighty slanted hill to scale. I feel called, compelled, to be a part of the solution. The Lord gave me this intellect and the power of words and speech to reach this world.

This interview was the first foray into that mission, small as it may be. I post it not for recognition, but in hopes that my testimony might plant a seed of consideration…

Every Starry Night

“Every starry night, that was His design”

I read a story this morning of a young woman at a college who ran for student office as the “diversity officer.” She is a white transgender girl who identifies as a man. Because of this they consider her as a white man running for office and have blackballed him because it would perpetuate the offensive white male control of the nation.

This is what open and unadulterated tolerance brings us, ladies and gentlemen: an Animal Farm-esque battle where you have to focus so hard on appearing universal that you are forced to create exclusivity and bias. The crown goes to the ever-smaller minority group.

There is an analogy to this in humanity: a child smashing a glass into the floor to find out if there will be ramification, a teenager sneaking dad’s beer to find out if that’s where the line is. That is where we are: we are pushing, trying desperately to find structure, limits, and discipline. We are calling out for a parental influence to show us what’s best.

That cry, that acting out… that is where I derive my hope for the future because that thrashing is our need for God, our desperate cry to Him to calm and reset us, to take possession of us.

I have a lot I need to say on this subject, but let me attempt to sum it as best I can: society is not worse or more depraved than it has been in past millenia, but the brokenness is more visible now. The more we see each other acting out the more we act out and the snowball picks up speed down the hill to Hell.

Because that is what Satan did, that is who he is to us: the one who convinced us to question our Father, who cast a stone into the still waters of our relationship with God and sent ripples through history that have become the tidal forces of passion for Christ and passion against Christianity today.

He didn’t take our innocence or our purity, he convinced us to yield our fealty. He struck the single most sensitive chord that can be struck in a couple’s relationship: he asked if God was really being forthright, and thereby stole away our recognition of God’s authority.

Maybe you’ve read my post about the vision of Satan as the lion dancing on the stage, desperate to steal our attention from God. We give him that attention, and we do it not because we like what we see but because we’re desperately searching him for some sign of whether or not his question was valid. We search to see if he knows something we don’t that justifies thousands of years of mistrust of God.

The answer to human misery is so simple and so terribly difficult. I could talk about it for hours, write about it for years. It could be that it’s my purpose to do so. As author and orchestrator of this universe — not passive watchmaker, but active painter of every single starry night and every singing bird — He needs us to acknowledge this answer. It’s three small words which have oceans of implication: trust God first.

Father, I don’t know how to express these ideas, these visions You’ve crammed into my tiny brain. I don’t know how to put my toys down and pick up Your work. But I know that You know, and that’s all I need. I will trust You first, above and before all else. I Love You. Amen.

We’ve Got the Power

We’ve Got the Power

As I scroll facebook tonight I think there’s a message that needs shouting to the world: it is not a spirit of hate that drives the disconnection in this uncivilized civilization. That person insulting you or your “group”, that insult hurled by you at the opposing “group” or person… these things are not hate. They are fear. They are a desperate fear, a consuming fear whose seed was planted long ago. A fear of acceptance or rejection, a fear of conversion or corruption. They are fears fed by an ocean of culture obsessed with meaningless rebellion, lawless wandering from God. A fear that presupposes the Lord has no power or care for us.

That fear is Satan. His only option is to make you fear that he is more powerful than you, but he isn’t. Those fears are not, will not be, and indeed cannot be borne out except in and by your mind. That opposing view you think will destroy your world or your household if you give in is nothing but noise, the idle stomping of demon feet in frustration of their inability to affect the world. He lost the battle; Jesus forcibly revoked Satan’s authority to the one realm he held: death. Make no mistake: Satan has no power to destroy you, be you a child of Light or wandering in the dark. The power that we beat each other to death with, and that he beats us to death with, is our own, freely and willingly given. The lingering fear that he can still harm us drives our barbaric need to do unto others before they can do unto us.

It can stop with you and I. In fact it can only stop with you and I. We can lay down the hatchet, suppress the voice of fear and storm the stage of this world in Love. We can bring back the Light. We can create a culture that concerns itself with righteousness and affirmation. We can pull the world out of the devil’s maw like we take the ball from a dog’s mouth. Jesus gave that authority to us. He healed us and gave us a tangible vision of the Word. Love God, He admonishes us, and Love His people. Not “tear down, ridicule, and harass those who disagree” and not “hold at arm’s length anyone with the capacity to harm you.” No. Love people. Do for them what you would do for yourself. Sometimes it means tenderness and sometimes it means correction — iron sharpening iron whereby both swords are shaped and improved by the interaction — but never does it mean unprovoked violence, derision, or dehumanizing. Never does it mean showing another person less value than your own comfort.

Father, we wander still in the dark. We carry the flashlight You gave us but we refuse to turn it on. Let us not find the Light through stumbling, self-directed hands, but by Your power, Your influence. I beg You to remind the world what it means to be made in Your image. Our Father, who is in Heaven, hallowed be Your name (bless Your mighty name!). Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done, in earth (in me, in Texas, in America, in our hearts) as it is in Heaven. Give us this day (every day!) our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. (And Father, show us how to forgive them and ourselves.) Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Yours is the Kingdom, and the Power, and the Glory (Yours and Yours alone) forever and ever. Amen.

Reletavisionism

This subject has been on my mind for weeks and keeps leeching into other discussions and presentations. I am realizing that I’ve been talking about it for years; you could easily dig through my feed history to find the proof. It’s a dense subject:

We — humanity — are in a dire state of complete inability to relate to human beings.
In the Middle Ages gnostic monks would have themselves walled up in caves so they could avoid the temptations of the outside world. We have found ways to do the exact same thing but with virtual walls, walls made up of peer groups and miserly isolation. We have found a way to settle in to comfortable associations and thereby block out the remainder of the world.

The debates tonight, both the event itself and the commentary and side discussions surrounding it, show the bitter, vehement spite we have for those who don’t align to us.
It’s nothing new, but the realization of how foundationally Satan has immobilized us to each other is staggering to me. We are in a strange entropy, seeing the breakdown of even the most sacred threads of connection left.

Even in the small scales you see it: churches who can’t bring themselves to reach out to the lost and broken because they can’t relate, TED talks about poverty from and to people who have never had to pay for their own meal, relatives who don’t speak over ideological differences, the utter destruction of the family unit, the list goes on.

We speak the same words but different languages. We see the same facts but carry away different truths. How do we repair a breach so fundamental? How do we, the followers of Christ, who are driven in this world by the singular desire to bring all of humanity with us to worship and feel the joy of the Almighty God, reach across this Babel-like confusion? The answer is that we can’t. In this I glory, in this I find eternal hope, because it is in these very kinds of absolute impossibility that He steps in to remind us that we do nothing, we affect no change under our own capacity, but that it is He who acts through us to perform miracles.

I can’t express to you what I see coming, what I feel paves the road ahead, but I can tell you that I have been granted a vision of what might be. His power is limitless and He will show every person the truth of His reign. I long for that day, for that reality to come through. These feeble words I wield so often to illustrate my mind, occasionally with the grace to show you the inside of my heart, will fail in that day.

Until then I will continue to follow His guidance and use them to try and expose the enemy for what he is: the deceiving miscreant, the inflated lion-child stomping his feet to garner attention. The world has eyes only for him, but it will not always be so. In the mighty name of Jesus I claim it…