Guns

Where do you go when you have no way to defend yourself? I have in my mind the memories of stories I have heard about young people, kids, who are taken advantage of by adults; usually adults those children believed would defend them. I remember stories of women; raped and kidnapped, killed, abused. Always men that get twisted satisfaction from attacking those that are weaker, which somehow makes them feel strong or satisfies some twisted desire, or purges some guilt. Stories of horrible, evil people that take advantage of other people's trust. That trust was sometimes earned; often times proven out; and always needed but stripped away at the last moment when the victim needed it most.

I pray for those victims; I pray that God will defend them and step in when they need it the most. He doesn't; not always. He seems disinterested or uncaring at times; although I know he isn't. I think He tests us. What I also wish for those victims is strength - power within them that will keep them safe. If God won't defend them, can he give them the power to defend themselves? Or, perhaps send them a hero that can defend them when they are unable to?

When I ask that question of myself, I personalize it. What would I do if I were in a situation that required me to fight back? What if the person threatening me was stronger, more skilled, more able to fight. What if my family was under threat? How can I defend them if the person attacking is stronger and more able to fight than I? What defense would I have?

Then I realize something - God has provided me the means to defend myself if I am willing to take it. He has given us guns.

This is what the founding fathers of the United States realized when they were oppressed by the English Empire. Ultimately, to realize the greatest life, liberty and happiness we needed a way to be sure we could defend ourselves to retain those rights. The intention behind the 2nd amendment of our Bill of Rights was to accomplish exactly that; it was considered the last option for good people desiring to be free to resort to in the face of a tyrannical government; an evil, overwhelming strength that ignored the value of people and their rights.

Using a gun or handling a gun takes quite a bit of strength in and of itself. Using it properly requires discipline, emotional control, self sacrifice. Discipline because you cant allow another person or circumstances control you when you are manipulating the power of life and death. Emotional control because you cannot allow anything but reason to govern you when the choice you are making is to end another persons life. Self sacrifice because anyone who is true and is focused on defense will testify to the self sacrifice required to use a gun. It is never an easy choice to decide to shoot someone or something - you lose a little bit of your soul if your soul is good.

In a world where evil, overwhelming strength exists, the weak need something to balance the scales. The weak become strong by arming themselves with weapons that do what is required - stopping those that use their strength to rob, steal and kill indiscriminately. Guns are not evil; they are a weight that balances the scales of strength when evil becomes materially stronger than good in a world that is in the grip of sin. A world that has fallen from grace, and is ruled by human free will. Make no mistake, humanity rules this world, by God's command. He gave that authority to Adam in the book of Genesis. He does and will intercede when he wishes, and he does orchestrate the world to help His people and see that all people have a way to eternal joy; I believe guns are one thing that he has given us to ensure His goals are met.

What else can he do? For a world that is filled with true evil, and true good, and that He has designed to revolve around all people coming to him through faith, if he were to materially intercede on behalf of everyone that had any wrong done to them there would be no question of his existence, and thus no faith needed to love Him and know he was real. We would see it with our own eyes, and that is not His plan.

On the other hand, he wants all people to experience the greatest joy and greatest life. He guides the steps of the righteous, but the sons of perdition - those who are truly evil and reject all that God stands for - have a guide as well. Satan guides his people to destroy joy and life, and those sons don't know discipline, emotional control, self sacrifice. The last resort for those who are good is to defend themselves with the tools they have at hand that will ensure that evil doesn't flourish and they can continue to live life and have joy.

Gun's are the last resort. Killing is not the first choice. Neither is our first choice to be a victim. I believe God intercedes regularly for His people, and He is our bulwark and our shield. I believe He will ensure our security and our safety. Gun's are one way that he has provided for us to be safe and to be secure.

The argument goes that propagating the most good in the world can be accomplished by destroying all guns and making them impossible to have or use. I applaud that thought - and could support that idea - if that were anywhere near remotely possible. Let's be honest - it is consummately impossible to eliminate guns from the world - and I mean ALL guns. The evil that could be perpetrated by governments or agencies allowed to have guns if they are removed from the hands of the common people is immeasurable and has been demonstrated by dictators throughout history. Understand as well that criminals by definition don't follow the law - making guns illegal disarms the defenseless and empowers the criminal. So it has to truly be ALL guns eliminated or NOTHING. There is no way to make it ALL, so it really should be NOTHING. Any limits on a citizen's ability to protect themselves makes them a victim to those that care nothing for the law.

As a father, a husband, and a man that loves all people, I must enable myself to do all I can to defend the defenseless and the weak. I carry a weapon to ensure that I can be God's instrument when He sees fit to use me in any way He sees fit. There are several that are called to be martyrs, and many that are called to be warriors. Both are righteous. I think of King David, and I think of Stephen the apostle. David was a man of blood called a man after God's own heart. Stephen on his martyrdom saw the face of God and was immediately swept up into His presence. Neither were outside the bounds of Christian morality.

What it means to be Christian

I am sitting here in church, basically ignoring the sermon, writing this blog post. Ironic that this post is about what it means to be Christian. I am more and more convinced that being Christian means avoiding church more than it means attending church. What we are taught in the sermon seems more disconnected from reality than it does connected. How can these platitudes and cliches be worth spending 4 hours every Sunday listening to them for the rest of my life?

Understand, there is nothing I am hearing from the pulpit that is doctrinally wrong, opposing the Bible, unhelpful, or impossible to understand. I think the pastor knows who he is preaching to and I think he sincerely wants to help people in their lives. I am not someone who believes I know everything there is to know about God, and I am certainly not arrogant enough to think that I have the authority, inspiration or responsibility to judge how my church is organized or what my pastor's vision and practice for the church God has given him to lead is. God has not, to date, and will not (that I know of), ever tell me I can stand up and tell my pastor that he is wrong or that what he is doing is wrong - that is entirely between God and my pastor.

I am responsible for myself, and somewhat responsible for my family's spiritual well being - at least, I am responsible for making sure my family has a deep relationship and dialog with God and I am responsible to share with them whatever wisdom I have gleaned over my years as a Christian to ensure they can take responsibility for their spiritual growth. That is the basis I am using to ask the questions I am asking of myself and to measure my church and my pastor. Are my children and my wife growing in their relationship with Jesus Christ? Do they center their lives around his will? Do they exhibit the fruits of the spirit? More to the point of this blog, is my church helping with my family reaching the goals expressed in the questions I am asking?

As a side note, I want to put to rest what I can hear some who may read this are thinking: 'If you are interested in spiritual growth, why focus on Christianity at all? There are many ways to grow spiritually, and Christianity is just one of many choices.'

First, I have been around the block many times, and have not been Christian my whole life - there is no 'religious philosophy' that can match a direct relationship with Jesus Christ. Buddhism, Taoism, Hare Krishna, Grecian philosophies and any theories of spirituality that divorce a god power from the spiritual equation at the root make the individual into a god. We are not gods and regardless of how much we think positively, neutrally, or negatively (whatever your godless philosophy dictates) our time on this earth is finite, our vision is limited and our power is miniscule to effect true macro or micro change without a ton of help. All of the heroes of the philosophical faiths have done nothing without a huge group of followers to buy into and drive that change. Gods don't need that kind of help to get done what they want done.

The religions that attribute authority over spiritual matters to a god or gods vary wildly, but at their root they have common features; works based salvation, possibility for their followers to attain godhood, or a concept of truth that compels the rejection of things we know to be true without spiritual 'inspiration' - things we know from the wisdom we have gleaned over our time on earth. Religions that reject truths that in our natural operation we know to be true mean we have to divorce our faith from our brain, and operate like fanatics - doing instead of thinking, believing without question.

One thing that is generally accepted as true by all people, something we know instinctively in the root of our being when we are thinking without the influence of skewed philosophies, is that all life matters. Every society throughout history has laws against murder or assault - we recoil physically from murder and death, we fight for our own survival and the survival of the ones we love without apology. True, some societies have applied the laws they have made against murder selectively at times, but generally, people faced with the raw reality of another human being's destruction naturally go to that person's defense if they are not clouded by some form of pseudo spirituality or twisted philosophy that denies the sanctity of life. 

Religions or philosophies that reject this reality can't be taken seriously - although people often times do take them very seriously. Islam is a good example. At the center of the religious sentiment that drives Muslims is the belief that Mohammed is infallible and Allah is the only one worthy of worship - not dissimilar to Christian belief in the role of Jesus and God - however, both Mohammed and Allah calls their people to jihad; killing, destroying utterly, or subjugating whole people groups that are not Muslim (or not Muslim enough) as a requirement for entry into the faith. Believing that this idea is not a core tenet of fundamental Islam, and is part of radical Islam only, is reckless and naïve. Let's quote Muslim thought leaders themselves on this - don't take my word for it; research the writings and speeches of the Muslim believers themselves. A great place to start is here.

Second, two core pieces of 'worldly wisdom' that are fundamental to the heart and core of human endeavor and accomplishment is liberty and the pursuit of  happiness. While these principles are most famously codified in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, they didn't come from a vacuum. People the world over fight for liberty and happiness from oppression and subjugation in the mundane day to day arc of their individual lives as well as throughout history under political banners for almost any reason - the pursuit of liberty and happiness is reason enough in itself. Religions that remove liberty through excessive and insurmountable rules and works, or that diminish happiness through guilt or ostracizing their adherents we instinctively despise.

If you follow me on the assertion that at the core of our spiritual selves is the sanctity of life, the greatest degree of liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - and that these things are an accurate measure of the efficacy or 'truth' of a religious philosophy or practice, continue reading. If you reject that idea, I can't help you any longer but to ask - when you live in a world with a thousand competing spiritual philosophies, many of which directly oppose each other and claim that their opponents are false - what measure do you use to determine wrong from right? Make no mistake, the proponents of those philosophies have an absolute measure, no matter how much they insist they don't - otherwise, why does it matter what philosophy you choose if they are right or wrong based on sentiment alone?

For those that follow me on my assertions, let me take them a step further, and accentuate my point. I would like to add that fundamentally, we all believe in absolutes. We operate in a largely binary environment. We choose daily between options presented to us and weigh those options based on binary measures - one option is good (right, roughly) and one option is bad (wrong, roughly). When we have multiple options, we make multiple binary decisions to winnow down our choice to a final two - ultimately binary. Our final choice is based on absolutes we often can't express clearly but we instinctually understand. Easy targets we hit daily are issues surrounding lying, stealing, cheating, murdering - targets less easy are things like how we spend our money, where we live, what we say to friends and family in our daily conversations - these have circumstantial facts that color our decisions, but truly those circumstances are coloring our ultimate decision alone, not the absolute that drives that decision.

The summation of the points I am making above is that we operate with absolutes - and central to those absolute principles are the concepts of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. My assertion is that regardless of philosophy each of the absolutes are written into our souls and are fundamental to our being. One thing that I haven't done, and that needs more space than I want to take with this blog, is define what those concepts mean. I will cut the definition conversation short by saying that the only religion, philosophy, belief or whatever you want to call it that upholds those fundamentals from stem to stern is Christianity.

Now, I know what you are thinking - life sure, but happiness and liberty codified in the Christian philosophy definitively? REALLY? Yes, and that is my point - it is the only religion that aligns with what we are created to believe - what is knit into our DNA. The reason the United States immortalized the statement 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' is because the US was founded on Biblical principles. Honestly check the history - and check it in its entirety. You can find isolated statements from almost all of our founders that seems to disparage or diminish Christian belief, but you can't take the entire body of works of any individual founder and definitively show that any of them were nothing less that driven by Judeo/Christian principles, contained in the Bible. The beauty of this is that they found that those truths were self evident - not realized by convolutions of thought or unintelligible philosophy that have been filtered through history.

What it means to be Christian is that you base your life on those fundamentals, and fight for them in your words and actions. Being Christian has nothing to do with your church attendance - being a christian does. Notice the small 'c'. Christianity is real, operates in the realms of fact, and the truths it purports are self evident and are not hampered by works constraints, belief that we as humans are something we are not, and are not constrained by a god that needs irrational convolutions of philosophy that have no basis in history and fact. An honest evaluation of history shows that Jesus was who he said he was and all that is needed to be Christian is to follow that powerful figure that changed the world.

Father's Day

What does it mean to declare yourself a father? In today's America, father is a bad word. My father was not a man I had anything but hate for when I was growing up, and I think that hate existed so strongly because my love for him was so strong. I admired him, and wanted to be like him, which is the same feelings any young boy has. Now that I can look back and understand the shoes he stood in much better, I have nothing but love for the man. He wasn't a saint, but he was and still is one of my heroes.

I write this as a tribute to my father, and as a rebuke to the fathers out there that have traded puerile sexual activity for the pure love of a woman, and have fostered and abandoned their children in the process.

My father was loyal, hard working, and severely flawed. I can't fault him for that; I am as flawed as he was, just with different scars, scrapes, and bruises. I find myself at once acting so much like him and not wanting to be like him - but to be my own man. Not because I have any dislike of how he acted - I just don't want to be the stereotype; I want to be different. I have a vision of how I should treat my children framed perfectly in my mind - and that is not now how I act. A twisted cacophony of God, my wife, the psychological establishment, and my own feelings rings in my ears telling me a hundred different things about how I should raise my kids. Strangely, the moments that are the most vital are the ones that happen with the least thought. I move in the flow of the spirit of God in my life and the result is children that are grateful to me for disciplining them. Weird. God says, 'I discipline those whom I love' (Proverbs 3:11-12) and 'whoever spares the rod hates their children...' (Proverbs 13:24). We must not be afraid to give our children what they crave - a clear definition of right and wrong based on an objective truth.

History and Howard Zinn

I recently had a conversation with a couple of my neighbors at the bus stop prior to putting my sons on the bus to get them on their way to school. It was a terrific conversation - I love getting to know people - hearing their opinions and ideas and sharing their joys and sorrows and the experiences in their lives. The conversation turned toward education, and how history is taught in our schools. There are significant portions of American history that are not taught, or that are taught incorrectly, and one of the topics brought up was the author Howard Zinn. His history book, A People's History of the United States, is the most popular history book ever written, and it is hugely biased, and in fact wrong on several points. The feedback I got from the people I was speaking with was 'Oh, history is always biased - people write what they want to write that fits their viewpoint.' NO, NO NO! That's how bad historians write! And even if historians do write that way, generally thoughtful people don't accept their biased viewpoints as fact - and we should at the least present both sides of any issue if one side is biased when we are teaching our children. Unfortunately that does not happen in our school systems. There is rarely unbiased teaching going on.

For those of you who have read Howard Zinn, here are some facts about his writing from discoverthenetworks.org:

The author of more than twenty books, Zinn is best known for writing A People's History of the United States (1980), a Marxist tract that describes America as a predatory and repressive capitalist state -- sexist, racist, imperialist -- that is run by a corporate ruling class for the benefit of the rich. The book claims to present American history through the eyes of workers, American Indians, slaves, women, blacks, and populists. A People’s History has sold more than a million copies, making it one of the best-selling history books of all time. Despite its lack of footnotes and other scholarly apparatus, it is one of most influential texts in college classrooms today -- not only in history classes, but also in such fields as economics, political science, literature, and women’s studies. Professor Zinn announced the overtly political agenda of A People’s History in an explanatory coda to the 1995 edition: "I wanted my writing of history and my teaching of history to be a part of social struggle. I wanted to be a part of history and not just a recorder and teacher of history. So that kind of attitude towards history, history itself as a political act, has always informed my writing and my teaching.”

In A People's History, Zinn describes the founding of the American Republic as an exercise in tyrannical control of the many by the few, for greed and profit: “The American Revolution … was a work of genius, and the Founding Fathers ... created the most effective system of national control devised in modern times, and showed future generations of leaders the advantages of combining paternalism with command.” By Zinn’s reckoning, the Declaration of Independence was not so much a revolutionary statement of rights, as it was a cynical means of manipulating popular groups into overthrowing the King to benefit the rich. The rights which the Declaration appeared to guarantee were “limited to life, liberty and happiness for white males” -- and actually for wealthy white males -- because they excluded black slaves and “ignored the existing inequalities in property.” (In other words, they were not socialist rights). Zinn's book contends that Maoist China was “the closest thing, in the long history of that ancient country, to a people’s government, independent of outside control”

Are you kidding? Maoist China? That was the government that started the Cultural Revolution that killed millions and still today suppresses the free expression of speech and religion? For those of you who enjoy Zinn, think again.

Quantum Theory and the New Relativism

I don't know how many out there have heard of Quantum Theory and the concept of Schroedinger's cat, but the topic actually came up in a facebook discussion I had and I wanted to blog about it.

Schroedinger's cat is a representative analogy that attempts to concisely describe the concepts behind quantum theory. In quantum theory, all possibilities- even mutually exclusive ones, coexist and have a reality of their own. Schroedinger's cat is a quantum cat, in an opaque box, with a switch in it that will either feed the cat food or feed the cat poison. The switch is triggered by the random decay of a radioactive sample - if the decay particle hits one switch, the cat is fed food. If the other, poison. The quantum science comes in in the act of observation, which in itself affects the experiment and by itself determines the state of the cat. In a quantum world, the cat is both/and alive/dead. When we observe the cat, he becomes one or the other.

This experiment has never been executed, and does not exist in either the observable or quantum worlds - but it is an example of what has been observed in quantum physics.

At the fundamental level, quantum theory is, indeed, a collection of mathematical formula used to describe the indescribable world of subatomic particles. The following is a terrific laymen's description of the theory and its development.

http://www.thebigview.com/spacetime/uncertainty.html

What is so striking about this theory is not the theory itself - it is essentially confirming what Christianity has always taught - that we cannot know the mind of God (Isaiah 55:8). Much of the subatomic world seems to change with the method or means used to observe it, however, like Einstein and several others - I just think we haven't learned the proper way to observe its true nature - much like we cannot think exactly like God.

That being said, our current culture's love of relativistic morality has taken cues from quantum theory and attempted to apply that theory to concepts of truth and what is right and wrong. What I saw on facebook was a person taking the concepts of quantum theory and applying it to the concepts of moral truth and tolerance. Unfortunately, he contradicted himself within his own discussion and effectively abrogated his own argument, however, his initial foray into the topic is worth repeating simply for its shock value.

The assertion goes something like this: since Reality exists only in our observation of it, concepts of right and wrong only exist in relation to our observation and assertion of what is right and wrong. In the dialog I had, the person in question then explained this by saying that he believes a certain type of gas is good, and his wife believes a certain type of gas is bad. He says that both ideas are true, because no matter what he says to the contrary, his wife sees the gasoline and its effect on her vehicle as bad.

I have to point out that this is a summarized view of his argument - but it captures the gist.

Most of what is wrong with this starts with extrapolating our inability to effectively observe atoms into the world of morality and ethics. There is no correlary, as our world of morality is not measurable in the physical sense at any level - I cannot say my right thought is 3 inches long. This might seem to be a ridiculous statement until you dig deeper into what quantum theory's goals and pursuits are - they are not attempting at any level to do anything other than describe the different states of matter. Morality doesn't come into their realm of discussion. Applying quantum theory to discussion of right and wrong is like trying say 'love is about as big as a grapefruit, but smaller than a watermelon'. Its ridiculous. You cannot measure moral values with physical measurements. Again, as I write this it seems ridiculous, but this is exactly what the relativistic fringe is attempting to do.

When pressed, we all have moral absolutes. We all have a strong grasp of what is right and wrong in our realms of endeavor. We also have conflicts in our views of what is right and wrong. We must stand on that ground - it is intellectually dishonest and eminently desctructive to allow diametrically opposing viewpoints to go unchallenged - this is relativism. Additionally, it is immoral to reject other people's ideas simply because they conflict with your own - this is bigotry. True and lasting peace comes with a dialog driven by intellectual honesty and principle, and backed with a plan for resolution if the opposing viewpoints cannot be resolved. We must defend our lives from people whose goal is to destroy us. Any idea about 'tolerance' that rejects right and wrong is intolerant of solutions, community, and lasting peace - it allows for bigotry, hatred and inflexible thinking to continue to exist and to breed destruction.

Lord, Save Us From Your Followers

I had the distinct pleasure last night of watching a film by Dan Merchant called 'Lord, Save Us From Your Followers'. It is a documentary of his travels around the United States trying to dialog with people about christians and Christianity. His perspectives were nothing new, and the ideas he represents are not new to the Christian community as a whole; however, it was astounding to me how fundamentally blind many of the christian people he interacted with were to the world at large.

Those christians that were clearly engaged in the culture and were making a difference were the ones that were getting their hands dirty. Here in Portland, there is a ministry Mr. Merchant highlights called 'Bridgetown Ministries' that perform 'Night Strikes' under the Burnside bridge - a place where a significant number of destitute people spend their time because the Portland Rescue Mission, the Union Gospel Mission and the Salvation Army are all located proximal to the area, and the bridge itself provides shelter from the weather. Being a 'Christian Ministry', it would be easy to assume that these 'Night Strikes' are filled with prosletyzing and preaching. This is not the case - the ministry provides hair cuts, clothing and most striking of all is the foot washing. The voluteers come and provide the homeless with a hands on foot washing - just like Jesus did with his 12 disciples that lived, breathed, and ate with Him when He lived on this earth in human form. What is even more surprising is that one of the volunteers is quoted as saying the foot washing is difficult for her not because it is dirty, or smelly or gross - but because she has to wear protective gloves. She was homeless and was treated as untouchable by people she interacted with and she feels that using the protective gloves enforces that feeling some homeless have of being 'untouchable'. Wow.

For those of you out there that are christian - I am not going to try to tell you that what you are doing is wrong, but if all you are doing is making sure your bills are paid and your stomach is full you aren't following Jesus. Try getting dirty in the streets with the destitute and you will find yourself closer to God than you could ever be anywhere else.

Sometimes 'Nice' is not 'Good'

Early in my married life I was under the mistaken impression that God had it in for me to be a pastor. I love church (little c) and all that comes with it - the people, the ideas, and oh yeah - God. I go to church to meet God - not to say that I can't meet Him elsewhere; He is everywhere after all. At church, He comes to us in a special way. The scriptures say that 'where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them.' (Matt. 18:20, NKJV) He promises, without question, His literal presence whenever we gather together as believers in His name. That is what makes church special - and makes Church (big C) decidedly un-special; but that's another topic for another time.

Considering the fact of God's literal presence in our midst, one would think we would experience church differently. After all, the very creator of all things is there with us - shouldn't we sing louder, or dance better, or experience more miracles or something? It could be argued that a worship experience that lacks vitality is evidence for the fact that a church is not actually meeting in Jesus' name. After all, His presence in our lives is transforming - isn't it? Churches (little c) I have attended sometimes begin to work to leverage that idea when they find their Sunday mornings coming into a slump - their people seem bored. They begin to expend much effort making the 'big show' on Sunday something to remember and to insure a positive experience for their congregants. They justify this by saying 'this is the way the big boys do it down the block; the churches out there with 10,000 - 15,000 members - in those churches its all about lights and music and video and drama and, and, and,'...Jesus? Not so much.

My point is really very simple, but is hard to accept for those of us whose lives have gone through a transformation because we know where we have been - and it didn't look pretty. We know that what Jesus' offers is better than anything we ever had and we expect our lives to feel different - its difficult because when we start living our lives after we know Jesus, all of those 'nice' feelings go away and reality sets in. Life is, after all, life. Our mistake is in refusing to accept that reality; we sometimes start faking it to try to get those 'nice' feelings back. The staggering thing about this is that the reality I am asserting we refuse to accept is truly a completely new reality - we are new beings; reborn as children of God. Nothing in our past lives compares to what Jesus has opened up for us. Its just that it doesn't feel that way - and that feeling (or lack thereof) creates all kinds of goofiness in the name of Jesus.

I can already hear the nay-sayers response, and several of them are from the Word of Faith movement. 'If you speak it, the tongue has the power of life and death and you are speaking death to yourself - Mr. Yonko. Your life SHOULD feel different - you are a Kingdom Kid now - put on your crown and start behaving like you are saved!' Nonsense. Speaking the truth of the reality you see is the first step to understanding the True Reality - and the True Reality I love in today hasn't put any crown on my head. The biggest downfall of folks that hold on to that verse from Proverbs (18:21) is their eminent inability to see the forest for the trees. The forest is beautiful, but it is full of trees that have nasty pokey needles on them. The 'good' of that forest is that we are strangers here. The world, created by God, was originally beautiful and still has glimpses in it of God's beauty - but it has been and continues to be corrupted in equal parts by both man and Satan and his minions. Our home is in a different land, and trying to assert that the life we have today is anything similar to what our life will be when He returns cheapens that new life that is coming.

Perhaps I am being too harsh on those that hold to the truth of Proverbs 18:21 - we can, after all, build people up and tear them down with the words we speak. The problem is, if you gnash your teeth and tell lies to someone whose ears are only attuned to the truth of God's word, all of the 'death' in your tongue will come to naught. Case in point is Stephen - first martyr after Jesus death; he never believed the lies the Jewish council he was brought in front of told about him - he held on to the True Reality to his death (Acts 7:54). That was good - it most decidedly was not 'nice', and it certainly didn't feel good. In the end, the words of his tongue brought him death, even though they were truth. No - in the True Reality, Stephen was brought to the real life - and Jesus was there waiting for him.

You see, we put way too much focus on today - we try to make ourselves have all those 'nice' feelings we seemingly lost, and not step on each other's toes and we make our churches feel good so that tons of people come to them...and in the end, we lose all that is truly 'good'. Jesus is most certainly there in the midst of us, and His presence is truly transforming - but when we speak those words do they fit into our definition of 'nice' and what 'reality' is? Or do we hear Jesus and allow the transformation to complete its work, even in our perceptions, and speak those words knowing the true definitions that come from the True Reality? This life is a glimpse, a wisp, a puff of smoke - we have only so much time to do what Jesus has called us to do on this earth and all the effort we put into being 'nice' keeps us from being 'good'.

Read the scripture. There aren't very many 'nice' people immortalized in that text. They weren't all 'good' either, according to our definition of the word, but I believe that if we listen to Jesus and accept the True Reality our worship will be vital, and it won't change one bit. Our lives will be made holy - and we will simply be doing what seems natural. Our compassion will deepen because our focus is on Him, and not on us. We must begin to accept that Jesus is truly sovereign and that following Him sometimes just feels normal - and that is good.