Father, forgive them.

April 11, 2009Posted inChurch, God, Love2 Comments

I’m taking a quick break from my weekly paper writing.  I was recently asked by my pastor, who didn’t know better :),  to give a short meditation to speak in church on Jesus’ first statement while on the cross.  I thought I’d post it, because in seeing Jesus’ reaction, I was immediately reminded of my failure to be anything like him when I was going though very painful times in my life, specifically my ugly church experiences where I made many enemies.  It has been an inspiration for me to read and think about this moment in Jesus’ life, and is a story about a person’s heart that we should all strive for, whether Christian or not.

When they came to the place called the Skull, there they crucified him, along with the criminals—one on his right and one on his left. Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” And they divided up his clothes by casting lots. – Luke 23:33-34

Atonement

February 9, 2007Posted inDivine Revelation, Dreams, God, Love6 Comments

A long time ago, I had a dream. It was one of the most amazing dreams I’ve ever had, and I felt tonight that I should write about it.

I can’t remember what I was going through at the time in my life, but usually dreams like this come when I am really discouraged. But I don’t even remember what exactly it was I was discouraged with. This is probably because my dream was so powerful it overshadowed all my memories in the year it happened. It will definitely sound weird to most, and if it isn’t helpful, just stop reading it. I just don’t have the talent for writing about things in my life that are so wild.

In my dream, I remember being in a place of fog – I could not see further than a few yards in any direction, but I believe I was standing on a smooth hard surface. Even though I could not see, there was an ambient light that made my entire surroundings glow, so I was not in darkness. What happened next is very hard for me to describe.

Foundations of my belief (part 2)

October 25, 2006Posted inBelief, God, Love, Personal BackgroundNo Comments

John over at MindonFire.com helped me remember that not only reading, but also writing, has had a huge impact on what I believe. I thought I would actually write about this experience, and how it shaped me. I have written a collection of short stories that blend the spaces of SF and fantasy. It is in the strange marriage of these two genres, where the worlds of magic and theoretical science come together, that my imagination has always been most stirred.  To me, the two are one and the same thing, only in different contexts.

Is God loving through inaction? (part 1)

October 17, 2006Posted inGod, Love3 Comments

Piggybacking off of my previous post, Dear God?, I wanted to try to tackle a couple of interesting issues that arose there. I pulled the whole faith-based reasoning that I did there out and put it in this new post because it didn’t really belong there. All I really wanted to do was ask the question and explain in detail what I was confused by, and hopefully someone would come along and explain things. The discussion that follows is just my humble attempt at making sense of something that is a controversial subject, so if you find it doesn’t help you, as C.S. Lewis would say, just throw it out and don’t read it.

Anyway, out of the song, Dear God, the singer comes across as angry at God for not acting in a loving way towards His creation, which made me think about the nature of love and God and His interactions with us, a subject I wanted to give more depth to here. The argument is that through either His perceived inaction to rescue innocent people from the harm of others, or though His direct action to hurt innocent people through “acts of God” or natural disasters, He comes across as unloving.

Avoiding “religion”

October 2, 2006Posted inLove, ReligionNo Comments

If you have been following some of my previous posts, I have been working on a short series on religion and the spiritual life. So far, I have concluded that to live a thriving spiritual life, “religion” has to go. In an amatureish attempt to explain the spiritual life allegorically, I concluded that it is simply living in a fiery romantic relationship with God. Attempting to live a spiritual life other than this way is like putting your spouse in a glass case and visiting once a week, being entralled by his/her beauty, saying some nice things to them, and then walking away, never even listening to hear if they are speaking back to you and ignoring the tears running down their cheeks as they watch you walk away.

The problem with living the spiritual life in the world we find ourselves in is that by being human, we are by nature drawn to understand and relate to God not in a love relationship, but through the system of religion. Even for those of us who hate religion and are drawn towards God and enter into a relationship with Him, we are still sucked unconsciously by our culture into their mindset, and are thus drawn away from the intimacy and slowly put God back into the glass case.

So what does this religious system look like? What are the signs that we will see if we are slipping back into it? I have tried to come up with a list of common signs and how to avoid them.

Socrates and World of Warcraft

September 11, 2006Posted inC.S. Lewis, Love, SocratesNo Comments

I was reading the Symposium (Plato) and I came across the speech by Socrates which has come to be known as “The Ascent.” I was absolutely astounded by his insight. I read a similar description of this concept long ago by another author I greatly admire — C.S. Lewis, who was talking about the same subject – love. The idea is that all objects of our affection, whether they are people, places, things, causes, etc. are all pointers to greater objects. Once experienced, they appear to be not as wonderful as you thought them to be — their reality comes crashing down upon you and it is no longer so beautiful a thing as you once imagined before you had it.