Aftermath of anger

August 1, 2007Posted inGeneral2 Comments

After reading a similar post by John over at mindonfire.com, I thought I would capture my thoughts here in a post based on my comments there.

It is amazing how anger can spur action and give us endless amounts of energy and creativity. My anger caused me to leave bad churches, reevaluate bad theology and religion, and rethink a large part of my beliefs about the spiritual life that I had just believed without thinking. It caused me to create a weblog and join a community of other folks like me who were also reeling from similar bad experiences – people who were also trying to figure out the spiritual life in the aftermath of their bad experiences.

However, as I mentioned in an earlier post on forgiveness, my anger has run its course. It has now been 3-4 years or so since my encounters with bad religion occurred. It has been one year since I started truthandpurpose.com. I have wrangled with those bad experiences and come out at peace. Even though I have not answered all the questions that come pounding at one’s door when life becomes painful, I have been able to answer enough of them sufficiently to be in a place of peace.

For me, something unique in my experience is happening. I have become pulled very strongly towards a greater cause that I don’t understand yet. It is a very strong feeling – one that is driving me even more strongly than my anger did (which I didn’t think possible): an unselfish desire to prepare my life for something very big – much bigger than myself. It was so profound a change in who I am and what fundamentally motivates me that it drove me to redesign my weblog from scratch – images and recoding templates, pack up my family and move to another state, and enroll in a masters degree program at a seminary there. It is the greater motivator.

In the aftermath of anger, there is something with more energy and creativity. Anger, like other things in life, was meant to lead us to a greater thing. It’s energy wanes – it was designed to have a greater thing take its place. It is not unlike how romantic love leads a person to embrace love in its fullest sense – unconditional true love.

So what replaces anger? What is greater? That’s what I want to explore here.

Site Update

July 9, 2007Posted inGeneral6 Comments
I just finished a site overhaul. Whew. It took me about 15 hours from the drawing to the final upload to the server. Let me know if anyone sees some…

The “Lone Ranger” Spiritual Life – is it possible?

June 26, 2007Posted inPersonal Background, Spiritual Life9 Comments

One essential element of living a thriving spiritual life is being part of a spiritual community. Being an independent-thinking kind of guy, I can’t say I really like this reality. When I was young, I was just part of a good community (which was composed of people from many, many churches) and didn’t think about things. When left home and went out on my own at college, I continued to go on autopilot – I attended a church regularly. Only when things went sour, after I had left college and started attending a bad church near where I worked, did I start to question the need for one. Can a person get along without a community of other spiritual people? Can a person live a thriving spiritual life by himself/herself?

Forgiveness

June 20, 2007Posted inBelief, Confusion, Motivations, Personal, Worldviews1 Comment

About three years ago, I had a very bad church experience. It colored how I thought about church for a long time after – that it was corrupt and imperfect, an entity that detracts from a person’s thriving spiritual life. However, I realized the other day that I have completely recovered from my anger towards all churches.

What was the thing that helped me?

Disputable matters

June 1, 2007Posted inDoctrinal Issues4 Comments

Elise got me thinking about an interesting topic based on my last post – the discussion of what is a sin for you is not a sin for me – i.e. disputable matters within Christianity. Even though the apostle Paul clearly stated how to deal with them, religious institutions have a hard time with them because they want to codify the sin lists into “doctrinal statements” – unfortunately including the issues that are disputable. This is just more religion piled onto otherwise healthy Christianity. By doing so, they are in violation of Paul’s command (and thus sin): to not “pass judgment on disputable matters” (Romans 14:1). I will not attend a church that has disputable matters in their doctrinal statements for this reason.

However, there might be some argument as to if a “disputable matters”-focused church is good. Could there be a church of weaker believers who can keep each other accountable in a common area of weakness?

My conversation about drinking

May 26, 2007Posted inDoctrinal Issues4 Comments

Thought I’d post a re-occurring discussion I have with other Christians around this area. I’m kind of a jerk in it, but that’s because I’m getting tired of this kind of debating in general, which I find myself getting pulled into it a lot. The irony is that I don’t like drinking alcoholic beverages. So why do I defend it? I’m just a stickler for not calling something a sin that clearly isn’t. I believe that drinking may be a sin for people who have alcohol addiction problems, but if you don’t, than it is OK in moderation.

I don’t have a problem with people who think it is a sin for them. In fact, I have a lot of respect for them. However, I do have a problem with people who think it is a sin for everyone on the planet and like to vocalize this opinion.