Faith is not denial

I was just practicing this song for choir tomorrow. It just highlighted something. I usually only show one side of myself on this page, but there are two.

The song was called: "God is good." Its words are simple. God is good. He's always good. He's never anything less. God is good. He's always good, that's why I know I am blessed. So great, so great is His goodness. So good, His excellent ways. I'm so glad for His lovingkindness, so glad to give Him all my praise." Then it repeats the chorus over again. "There's peace beyond understanding. There's love flooding my soul. There is joy, joy everlasting, the half has never yet been told." After another chorus, it elaborates on the theme. Oh, God is good. He's good all the time. God is good. He's such a friend of mine." And then winds things up.

I am of such a divided mind. As I'm singin' this song, I really believe it. It's simple, some would say simplistic, faith at its best. Faith is not denial. It never refuses to see the evidence against God. Too often we Christians stand spluttering and get all defensive in the face of evidence that our God is not who we claim He is. One of the first verses that I remember memorizing holds the key to my faith: "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts." Isa. 55:8 For a person to look at the evidence available to us and think to prove or disprove God is to put the God of the universe on trial in our court. We have evidence throughout history of the things that we have misunderstood over the years. Doesn't the word "atom" mean the smallest particle that a thing can be divided into. Well, that's not true. Aren't we even looking inside the protons, neutrons and electrons that form atoms now? And we would think to judge God? Yeah, right!

Isaiah 55 continues: "For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there without watering the earth and making it bear and sprout, and furnishing seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so will My word be which goes forth from My mouth; it will not return to Me empty, without accomplishing what I desire, and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it." There is so much information on the web. There are so many words that people say. There are so many books, good books even. How many of the words that you hear can you really be sure will have a good effect on your life? Only the words of the Bible. As soon as I memorized these verses from Isaiah 55:8-11, I started writin' out verses on just hundreds of little notecards. My pastor couldn't figure out what I was doin' and I couldn't really tell Him. I didn't know why I was doin' what I was doin'. I just had this feeling that God's word was the key to everything for me. If I could just get the WORD, everything would be alright after all. Somehow God would work my life out, if I just got His WORD.

Remember the Scribes and the Pharisees in the Bible? They had God's Word, but they couldn't see the Word for the letters. They got so wound up in themselves and their fascinating analysis of God's words that they didn't love the Son of God. Well, I've been called a scribe.

I still believe that the Bible is the answer. I just think that I went at it wrong. I'm kind of into quantity, not savoring the quality. I stuffed tons of Scripture into my head, making me responsible for all of it all at once, and just really overloading my circuits. I should have started with one nugget, memorized, meditated, completely digested that morsel, acted on it, then gone on to the next morsel.

The Bible says that I can choose to be a slave of one of two kingdoms. I can choose to be a slave of sin, or a slave of Christ, but slavery is my lot in life no matter what I choose. Slavery to Christ can feel relatively freeing once you learn to live within its confines I'm told. I see people who have grown up as slaves to Christ. They do look free.

Gaming & Male Leadership

It is quarter to five in the morning. I've been up all night doing two things: Playing The Sims (a game I got for my nephews and then found out that they already had it, which was great because I'd always wanted to have it), and making a list of games that the boys could choose from so I don't make the same mistake twice. They're old enough now (14 + 17) to be able to choose their Christmas presents before Christmas. But, after spending all this time making this long list of games, a thought just hit me. Well, maybe it didn't just HIT me. I'd been growing more and more dubious the more I saw the descriptions of some of these games. I know the boys play these things, and they're really not my cup of tea. They're gonna play them anyhow. That's how I justified buying them exposure to such violence, besides I've never minded violence in movies that I watch. One of my favoite movies is Fight Club. The violence isn't my favorite part of the movie, but I don't refrain from watching an excellent movie just because violence is a necessary part of it.

(The plotline of Fight Club can be reduced, in my opinion, to this formula. Nihilism destroys civilization. Its end result is total anarchy, survival of the fittest. If you don't believe that you are the biggest, baddest, fittest character on the planet, stop with all the nihilism already. It sounds sophisticated, but it will make fools of us all. We will tear our world down around our ears and have nothing left but the hollow words of some dead hero that we followed to our peril. It is excellent philosophy. The words in that movie are POWERFUL, though some of them are dirty. It's the thoughts. Maybe that movie just speaks for my generation or something. I don't know. "We are a generation of men raised by our mothers. I don't think another woman is really what we need. Do you?" What does it mean to be a generation of women raised in divorce? Perhaps that's a question for another day, but I think it partially means the rejection of one's own feminine qualities. Women get rejected and abandoned, so don't be feminine. Be strong, somehow masculine and feminine both, and neither. Sick. Twisted. I hear people going on and on about giving male mentors and role models to young boys. I think people are so intent on this because they think it will curb the violence in our streets. What they forget is that women who were raised by mothers only are the women who will bear the next generation of children, and probably raise them by themselves. We need godly men in our lives to teach us our worth as women, to show us that there are godly men in the world, to make us dissatisfied with ungodly men. The best way to convince young boys to take God seriously is to convince young girls that guys who don't take God seriously aren't worth having. Beth Moore says that women have the power of influence, and it is a power that we we'd best learn how to wield well. I couldn't agree with her more. If you want to change men, change the women that they're competing for.)

Anyway. I was speaking of games. Once, I threw my games in the dumpster. I believed that that's what God wanted me to do, but then I made the mistake of telling my mom what I had done. She was apalled. So much money wasted. I said, yes, but the money had already been wasted when I spent it on games. Why should I waste both the money and the immense quantities of my time that those games would consume if I let myself get hooked on them. There is a verse in the Bible. Redeem the time, for the days are evil. If you apply that verse to The SIMS and to Civilization III, how do the hours spent playing those games qualify as redeemed time? If the days are evil and you only get so many of them, then how many of them am I wasting playing stupid computer games? They seem harmless. The ones I play aren't violent or anything, but they're not the best I can do with the hours of this life. When I get up to heaven and my life is reviewed by my creator, will I want to show off to him my top score on some game? I don't think so.

So, if I don't think that gaming is good for me, then should I encourage my nephews in it? They're going to do it whether I encourage them in it or not, but should I endorse this habit of theirs, or should they see me stop playing again and maybe sell my games. God, please give me the courage of my convictions.