Jumbled thoughts

So this blog is inspired by the live webcast Don Miller did just a few hours ago. Well anyways I'm gonna post some stuff that caught my attention while he was talking. Everything comes from the notes I took during it when he talked about his thoughts on stuff and I will supplement my own thoughts in.

First thing is some talk about passivity, specifically in a man. At least anyone who has had spiritual formation with Kurt Caddy, if not everyone, have been introduced to the idea that the curse God gave to men is to be passive. Well passivity is a terrible thing, men should be decisive now that is not to say that a married man shouldn't consider what his wife thinks about something or seek council from other men on something but what I am saying is that we shouldn't go to our wife, girlfriend, or whoever and kind of beat around the bush to get them to tell us what they want to do so we can go and sound spiritual by coming back a little later and saying something like 'Oh I prayed about things and God is leading me to '. Now when a question dealing with passivity came up for Don to answer the thing that initially caught me with it was that Don said that "passivity in a man is destroying life". Now in keeping with his recent theme of writing a better life story Don followed this up by saying something close to "if you aren't active in your life someone else is writing your story" and well needless to say while someday when I am married I am gonna love my wife more than almost anything I do NOT want her to dictate my story for me. One last little thought on this and it leads into my next thought Don said one other thing at this point which stood out to me, "Men need to create and protect an environment where love is safe." I love that thought and cannot agree more with Don there.

Now for my next thought process for tonight! Don was talking about initializing change in the country and talk turned to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his nonviolent resistance. Now there wasn't quite as much here as I would have liked but the point was made nonetheless. Nonviolent resistance works. Period. Then there was something of a challenge I picked up and yet this is something I am ever trying to work on because it is the second most important commandment in the Bible only following "Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind." It is to love your neighbor as yourself. The challenge is to learn to genuinely love my enemies. This is difficult for me and really everyone I know. My roommate pisses me off so much so often and I just want to punch him in the face because he is my enemy a lot of the time... Well I guess long story short I need to learn to love him and not just kind of put up with him or love him like I love my dog.. I need to genuinely love him and care about what happens to him.. When my roommate pisses me off I should be praying for him not wishing bad things to happen. This lead me to consider something Don says he is doing to help with this... Don said he is using insulting people, those people who bash him on his blog which you can find at www.donmilleris.com , to learn to love his enemies. I think this is a good way to start. I know there are a lot of people who do not like me for some reason or another I can use that fact to learn to love my enemies by learning to love those people! Ok so this post is getting huge and I'm only like half done! I have two more thoughts from the webcast to share and then I will give a few closing questions I think and be finished.

Third thought from the webcast, Don mentioned at one point that while he does not believe that any church has it one hundred percent right by any means... He thinks the great diversity of churches that we have is necessary. Now what I got out of this is that this vast number of denominations and inner denominational differences found at different churches is necessary for the Church (note when I use Church big C I mean the body of believers church little c is for the building) to thrive. It was briefly noted during this portion of the webcast that several of these denominations and such came about as a result of people trying to live in a more Christ like way. That is the people who founded them saw something amiss in the current system, this doesn't mean it was all bad just part of it, and tried to fix it and make that thing more Christ like. I do however, feel that in fixing that one thing many of these new collections of believers messed up something the previous collection did get right and that is partially why there is no perfectly correct church, that and the fact that we as humans, post fall humans, are in some way flawed and indeed this is why we need Christ but that is a discussion for another time! Now for my last webcast thought!

At the very end there was a question about this so-called "Cool Christianity" Don defined this as "taking a false god to entice people to God." I think this is a pretty neat concept. I don't think it is necessarily the best way to do this but like Don kept saying at this point we live in a fallen world and therefore nothing will be perfect. The interesting thing to me is that this system works and people come to God through this all the time. So I kind of think the Church, particularly that part built up of elderly believers, should reconsider the judgment that gets passed off on younger believers, those believers like me who have piercings and tattoos (I do not have tattoos yet I do plan to get some though) us long haired "hippie" types. We are bringing people to Christ with this so-called "Cool Christianity" and it seems obvious that what worked thirty years ago with the now elderly believers isn't going to work in today's society. Well that about wraps up my thought process from the webcast I would like to pose a question or two of my own now for your consideration!

How can YOU help make a safe environment for love where YOU live?

Is there something YOU can do to make YOUR story better and to help those people involved in YOUR life also live better stories?

Is there a false god in YOUR life? If so what is it?

What does it look like for US to really, truly love OUR enemies? -- I know the Bible has stuff to say here but, lets face it I can look that up and see and ideal example of it but I want to know what it looks like in YOUR life and in MY life.


Well I hope this stimulates some thoughts for you as it did for me. One love.