Month: December 2007

I’ve been thinking about the passage in Isaiah 6 some lately. You know it well I hope. If you don’t, it’s time to learn it. It’s where Isaiah has a vision where he sees the Lord high and exalted on the throne and the angels are there before him and they are singing “Holy, Holy, Holy.” Isaiah is just stunned and says that he is a man of unclean lips who lives among unclean people and he must die for he has seen YHWH, the Lord of hosts.

Let us consider this. These angels are before God and saying one thing about him. He is holy. How often do we see God that way? Do we look at the God of the Bible and think “He’s holy.” Even worse though, if we do think that, do we think that’s a good thing or a bad thing? Has holy become a word that implies something that we really don’t seem to want to have?

Have we ever had times when we’ve thought about Heaven and thought it boring? In all honesty, many times, I’ve wondered about that? Do we ever think about God and see him as someone static? Do we ever see reading the Bible as a duty we’re supposed to do that we do grudgingly? Do we do the same with prayer and tithing and other such practices?

When you think of God, do you really get excited? Have you reached the point where you read about the incarnation and your mind is thinking, “Yeah. God took on flesh. Jesus died and rose from the dead.” Are you getting excited at hearing Jesus died and rose from the dead, or are you just hearing it?

I fear most of us are answering in a way that shows we are not excited. I also fear because I am the same way. The supernatural no longer seems to strike us as wonderful. Christianity has not been good news often but has simply been news, and most of us know if we want to have a good time, we do not turn on the evening news.

And I think we need to repent of this.

We need to ask God to show us who he is. I’m not asking for a new revelation in this. I’m asking that we really understand the revelation that has been given to us. I’m asking that we try to see God as he really is. If we get a thought of God that he is boring for instance or static, we need to throw that thought out.

One way we’ll get to the truth of God is to throw out that which is not true. In fact, it’s good to do this with any belief. If you are saying something that is false, then throw it out, be it about God, yourself, or anything else. We have a tendency to repeat lies so much that we believe them, like the ones that I have been mentioning.

And what a shame that we have done this with God. The thought of the truth of Christianity should excite our souls greatly. We should delight to think about it. We could spend so much time diving into this mystery, but we don’t. I fear we have reached a time when the wonder of the gospel has died on us.

This is what we need, especially around Christmas. We should be celebrating one thing mainly. The incarnation. This is the time we remember that it happened, but are we filled with wonder at the thought? The angels are standing at the throne of God and singing about how holy he is. Dare we disagree?

We all know if we were there, we would be acknowledging that God is holy and awesome and wonderful. Why? Because that’s true and we could not deny it. Could we deny it now? Do we have any reason to believe that it isn’t true now? If no, then we need to start living like that’s true.

We need to see the God who is there.

I’d like to let you in on a secret. Most people tend to fall into two kinds of categories when they doubt. They are either emotional or volitional. Of these, the former is the far more common. The volitional often know at some area that it is true, but they just don’t care. They want to think otherwise. Rational doubters will be happy as soon as the question is answered. Emotional ones ask “What if” questions?

Be sure though. When these people come to you, they are not going to come out and say that they are emotional doubters or even volitional doubters. They are going to say that they are rational and they will give rational objections. To a degree, these should be answered, but these are largely smokescreens.

There are a number of people on here that I’ve seen that as soon as I see them say something my mind is going “Emotional, emotional, emotional, emotional” When someone comes and admits a personal hurt such as a way Christians have wronged them in the past, you are getting into emotional territory. When you raise a good argument and you get a “Yeah, but what if?”

This will happen to you also when you face the most dangerous critic of the faith you will ever face. That is yourself. When you wake up at night and start thinking “What if?” or when you can’t even get to sleep at night because you are thinking about those objections to the faith. This is when you need to get those emotions under control.

Yes. You can control them. It’s not easy. I still work on it. If you are not happy though, you are the reason you are not happy. Happiness is a choice. It’s a hard choice at times, but it’s still a choice. What you need to do at that time is to remind yourself of the facts and go with them.

These emotions can cause you to focus on the wrong things. Suppose someone comes with something like a supposed biblical contradiction. You have to ask yourself, “Does this outweigh the independent evidence for God’s existence and the fact that he has revealed himself in the person of Christ and raised Christ from the dead?” It’s good to review those arguments at that time and realize that there is most likely an answer to this one as well.

When dealing with the emotional doubter, try to get past the emotional aspect. If that means focusing on it for the time being, then focus on it. I love the rational debate side of course, but when the emotional side comes in, there is a soul at stake and it’s best to concentrate on winning that soul.

By the way, these kinds of things don’t go away overnight. I am a strong perfectionist and I will spend the rest of my life working on that. These tendencies will be there and you will have to keep controlling them. Be prepared for a long haul and don’t think a mountaintop experience means they’re never coming back.

And to my fellow men, I say this. We are at a huge disadvantage here. Most women who are emotional doubters know that they are. We men are very reluctant to admit that we are emotional doubters. We’re men after all! We’re not supposed to be like that. We should often though fess up and admit that we are emotional doubters.

Christians. Be prepared. This is the most common type of doubt you will find and the most common in yourself as well. Learn to control your emotions instead of them controlling you.

Last night, I wrote on the view of women in Christianity. After pondering such a thing, I decided to write about another great myth. This is the belief that Christianity taught that the Earth was flat. In fact, it is generally assumed that people until the Middle Ages did believe that the Earth was flat.

Sadly enough, Christians have bought into this atheistic fable.

The truth is, the ancients knew that the Earth was round. They’d known it for several years. At the apologetics conference recently, Dinesh D’Souza gave one of the best evidences that I’ve seen of this. His remark was that they saw eclipses and saw that there was a round shadow. Of course, he gave other evidences, but this was the most enjoyable one.

However, consider some quotes. Aristotle’s work “On The Heavens”:

All of which goes to show not only that the earth is circular in shape, but also that it is a sphere of no great size: for otherwise the effect of so slight a change of place would not be quickly apparent. Hence one should not be too sure of the incredibility of the view of those who conceive that there is continuity between the parts about the pillars of Hercules and the parts about India, and that in this way the ocean is one. As further evidence in favour of this they quote the case of elephants, a species occurring in each of these extreme regions, suggesting that the common characteristic of these extremes is explained by their continuity. Also, those mathematicians who try to calculate the size of the earth’s circumference arrive at the figure 400,000 stades. This indicates not only that the earth’s mass is spherical in shape, but also that as compared with the stars it is not of great size.

This is one of the first quotes I’d point to, but he was not really the first one. Aristotle was widely accepted throughout the Middle Ages and that includes the doctrine that the Earth is a sphere. You will not find many an educated person who doubts the sphericity of the Earth.

I would even say at this point that Christianity gave rise to a culture that would allow science to rise. They showed a belief in a reasonable God with a reasonable faith where reason could be used to understand a reasonable universe. Islam and Judaism tend to be religions about right living more than right beliefs. No doubt, there are some right beliefs that are to be held to be orthodox in each of these faiths, but Christianity is the one that emphasized the role of reason.

When did the idea of a flat Earth really become popular? It was in the 1800’s. Until then, it was just known that the ancients knew that the Earth was a sphere. Some secular writers though decided to rewrite history. (Friends. Be cautious of much said in history in relation to the view of Christianity. There are myths about such events as Galileo and the Inquisition that have been repeated so much that they’re believed to be true but no one can say why.)

I’m not the only one to say something like this. This is from a writer for the American Scientific Association also.

http://web.archive.org/web/20040717084200/http://www.id.ucsb.edu/fscf/library/RUSSELL/FlatEarth.html

And his last point is correct. This can be found to show a myth that Christianity and science have always been at odds. It really helps the evolutionary side in their case if this can be shown. This is why Christians need to learn to get rid of these myths and restore our heritage of science. We are the ones that were really doing it first.

Science is not the enemy of Christianity. Neither is reason. They all go together. All truth is indeed God’s truth and whatever is revealed about the natural order, we should embrace it. If it messes with our interpretation of Scripture, well maybe we need to change that. We cannot dare have it where Christianity teaches one thing and science one other thing. Of course, this is something that needs to be established. I have yet to see macroevolutionary theory established. If it was, it wouldn’t keep me up at night, but my reasons for not believing it are scientific and philosophical.

Be watchful though. Atheistic myths need to be brought down. We are often told that ancient people were gullible and would believe anything. The more I think about it though, the more I think that it is actually the reverse. It is modern people that believe anything and this over things they can find simply by doing a little bit of reading.

The myth of the Flat Earth. It’s one sign modern people are gullible.

I’d like to tie something in with a sermon I heard John MacArthur giving on the radio on Matthew 1. (I believe it was John MacArthur. It sure sounded like him.) He was speaking on the genealogies in Matthew and the birth of Christ and he mentioned the women that are found in there. Let’s look at them.

First off is Tamar. You know her story? It’s in Genesis 38. She tricked her father-in-law Judah into thinking she was a shrine prostitute and slept with him and bore two sons. One of those sons was Perez and the lineage of the Messiah passed through him. Hardly a lady of character.

Second is Rahab. If you remember the conquest of Jericho, you remember her. She was more of a lady of character as she was faithful to the God of Israel, but when she was found, she was a prostitute running a brothel. She converted though to follow the God of Israel and is included in the lineage of the Messiah.

Third is Ruth. Things are getting better now. This was a Moabitess who left her people behind to follow Naomi back to the land of Israel and embrace Naomi’s God as her God. Ruth is seen as a noble figure in the book and the book of Ruth ends by pointing out that king David came from the lineage of Ruth.

Fourth on the list is Bathsheba. Now we all know the story of David and Bathsheba. Ravi Zacharias once said that if you made a documentary of the Sermon on the Mount and played it one Sunday night, you would only get a few Christian viewers. If you made one of David and Bathsheba, everyone would be watching. It’s obvious why!

This was the girl that David got pregnant and then had her husband killed in order to explain the pregnancy and save his own hide. He later married her after he did this, but the Lord was not pleased. To her credit, Bathsheba is a heroic figure later on as she takes a stand and gets Solomon on the throne.

Last though is Mary. Mary is seen as the most blessed of all in that she gets to be the mother of the Messiah. Now I don’t hold Catholic doctrines in that Mary remained a virgin or that she was sinless, but I think every Protestant should affirm that Mary does deserve a place of honor.

Why am I saying this? Because it seems to be the view in Christianity that women are downplayed. The skeptical worldview does not take kindly to the treatment women get. However, women were elevated by Christianity. The OT law placed them in a higher position than existing laws of the time. Now we may say that their witness didn’t count in NT times, and that was true, which makes it astounding that women get to be the first witnesses of the resurrection and thus, the embarrassment criteria lends credibility to the account, but it is Christianity that made it so that wouldn’t always be so.

When Paul wrote that a husband was to love his wife as Christ loved the church which would mean dying for her, the listening audience would have been stunned. This was an extraordinary new concept. When we see that there is no male or female in Christ, we realize how far this has gone. (By the way, he’s not saying male and female don’t exist as we are in Christ now and male or female. He’s saying there’s no favoritism.)

When we look at church history, we see this played out. Pliny the Younger talks about Deaconesses in the church and Paul sent his letter to the Romans by Phoebe. Theodora, the wife of Justinian, was an empress and Bathilda, the wife of Clovis II was venerated as a saint and helped free the slaves long before the New World.

Now today in America, we believe in the equality of men and women. We mean by that that they are both fully human. We do not mean that men are women or that women are men.  Please note though that this idea we have of equality makes no sense apart from what we see in Scripture. We see it in Genesis 1:26-27 and we see it in Galatians 3 with Paul reaffirming that concept in Christ.

This year, when you celebrate Christmas, think of how much the world changed as a result of that baby coming. Christianity has been a huge blessing to the world. If you’re a female and you enjoy the liberties you have today, then thank Christ for them. It is through him that they have come.

I was in church Sunday during what we call our educational hour. Usually, the person who spoke speaks again and the audience gets to ask questions. At one point, the speaker was speaking on something, though what it was was not the focus of the blog tonight. I kept noticing he used two words and he used them as if they had different meanings. So I raised my hand.

I told him that I was hearing these two words to which he agreed. I then told him that he was using them as if they were different. He agreed to that also. I then asked if he could explain the distinction between the two for me. Now I know there’s no context for my readers in what words were used and how they were used, but I want to recommend this for people. When you listen to someone or read something someone has written, watch their words very closely.

This is especially important in an age of the cults. When the Mormons come to you and say they believe in the deity of Christ, it does not mean what you think it means. Even JWs will tell you they believe in it, but they do not mean what you think it means either. JWs would say Jesus is a god so he is deity and Mormons have a Christ who is the brother of Satan. Neither of these are orthodox.

The homosexual left is out in full force often today and we have people saying gay instead of saying homosexual. Friends. Don’t say gay or queer or any other term. Say homosexual. This is an effort of rephrasing things to make them more friendly to the public. What a shock that the next word to be redefined on their list is marriage.

This is also in the abortion debate. What does it mean to be a human? What does it mean to be a person? What does it mean to be a life? What does it mean to be innocent? All of these terms have to be watched closely. The other side will jump at any slip that they can find in you.

The same goes with creation/evolution. What exactly do we mean by each of these words? What does it mean to say something is scientific? What is science? What is truth? People must be asked what they mean. Don’t accept a dictionary definition either. We often say words without having the dictionary definition in mind. Ask them to say exactly what they mean by the word.

This is going to be quite prevalent in our postmodern generation with the emerging church coming. What does the word “Truth” mean? Is X true for everyone, or is it true for you but not for me? What about tolerance? Does tolerance mean that I welcome the practicing homosexual into our midst? Does it mean I cannot disagree?

Friends. Our words are essential. We have to watch them closely. When you hear someone speak and they want to talk about something, ask yourself what they mean by that word. Have they said what it is yet? Be willing to ask questions and be willing to insist on distinctions. Make your own language clear as well. The gospel needs to be said with clarity after all.

A friend of mine took a risk today. Unfortunately, he did not win out on the risk. However, I am quite pleased with him. My friend is not normally one to act in such a way, but with encouragement, he got up the guts to go ahead and do it. Sure, he lost what he was going after, but he was willing to try.

My friend realized something and it’s something I need to realize more often also. Life is an adventure. There are rarely times where we know what will happen with certainty. We have to go out and take a chance. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, is certainly a true maxim to keep in mind.

Consider any adventure story? Does the hero know he will leave the fight alive? Not usually, unless he’s really skilled and fighting a weak opponent. Do not the heroes often take the most desperate drives and rush into the most dangerous odds in an attempt to get at that one sliver of hope? Yep.

Friends. Life is not to be played safe. Where would we be today if the church played it safe? In fact, maybe the reason we are in this situation in America is that the American church plays it safe. The disciples knew nothing about playing it safe. Go read Hebrews 11 and get to the end and read about what they were willing to go through.

We need leaders today. We need leaders that will stand up and face the world and say “Your system needs to change!” We need people who will stand up in the public square when Christ is maligned and say “That is my Lord you are speaking about!” We need to learn from the JWs and Mormons. They are highly evangelistic with a lie. We have the truth and don’t have half the evangelism they have.

My friend is a model for all of us now. Now are you going to speak up at times and get laughed at and shamed? Yes. Deal with it. Are you going to take chances at times and lose out? Yep. Deal with it. Are you going to enter into a debate and get stumped with a hard question and not know an answer? Deal with it and read up and learn an answer.

J.P. Moreland once said that when you start apologetics, what will happen is that as you start, you’ll go out from time to time and get your tail feathers blown out from under you. I am sure he speaks from experience. So do I. This happened to me numerous times when I started. Arguments that in the past made me cringe and be fearful today do not even make me blink.

Why? Because I kept taking risks. I’ve been in a number of debates now. I still get nervous before many of them, but each time, they get easier and easier. It’s a risk. I know I’m putting my reputation on the line and worse, the way some people might see Christianity. If I am seen as a champion of the faith and I fail, what might some people think about the faith?

Friends. We have to risk though. There’s no excuse to not do so. We are on an adventure and we need to live it like an adventure. We can cross the finish line in Heaven without taking a lot of risks I believe, but I think we will be at the loss for it. Why not try to cross that line as if we were truly racing for that crown Paul talks about in 1 Cor. 9? Would you not give it your all instead of just walking across? I think you would.

Friend. I’m proud of you. You took a risk. May we all learn from your example!

I had a pretty hectic evening I’d say. My workplace was rushed and I had somewhat of a headache, (still do actually) and my feet felt like they would fall off. I came home tonight though and started chatting with my roommate and before too long we’re off doing some internet activity on a forum together.

I think more and more about the joy of my friends. I look at where I am at in the world and in my life now and realize that while I did take the prerogative to do what I am doing, that I would not have done it and would not be able to keep doing it if it wasn’t for the support of my friends.

I am incredibly thankful for these people that God has allowed to put in my life. As my roommate and I laugh back and forth concerning an incident tonight, I think back to that one day he contacted me with a simple message. From there began a long friendship which has come to this point. If it wasn’t for the friendship of others though, I wouldn’t have met this friend I have today either.

These people are people we just tend to take for granted sometimes. I recall the definition of a friend as one who knows everything there is to know about you, but likes you anyway. I am a character with many strange idiosyncracies, yet my friends like me and support me anyway and it just blows me away.

I often hope I can do the same for them. When my friends are attacked, it is one thing that will thoroughly make me angry. They can go after me all they want to, but when someone goes after my friends, then that is an act of war. I fight on the side of my friends. They stand with me and I with them.

Each of us has been there. We’ve seen good times and we’ve seen bad times. My friends have seen me when I’ve been happy and they’ve seen me when I’ve been sad. They’ve seen me when I thought I could handle any opponent and they’ve seen me when I thought I couldn’t handle anyone.

If I need an ear to talk to, there are several people I know I can turn to. My cell phone is filled with contacts. I can pick it up and call them and if it is an emergency, I know that they would be there for me. There’s a great joy in going down that list and seeing friend after friend after friend.

I am not an emotional person, but as I write this, I do get emotional. It’s hard not to, and I think it’s a good thing that I do. When I’m depressed nowadays, I think about my friends and how much they mean to me. When I am scared about the future, which sometimes happens, I think about them and realize they will be there.

I even think about my old church. As I write this, someone from back there is in IM with me wanting to talk about how it is doing and they are finally teaching apologetics. That pleases me greatly. My church was generous enough that they took a love offering for me to go to Seminary which has paid for my first course. I’m a member of a church here now, but they still email me about things that are going on. I’m still treated like a member.

We near the holiday season now. I look forward to seeing my family, but I still must say “Thank God for Friends!”

The philosopher John Locke believed in the idea that all knowledge comes through sense-experience. Berkeley took this idea and raised some questions about matter. In the end, Berkeley did not believe the material world existed. The transition is an interesting one and can be read about in Gordon Clark’s book “Thales to Dewey.” By the way, both of these thinkers were Christians.

Yet it raises a question. Is anything objective? Do we discover the world or do we define the world? I find it amazing that when I look at an action such as the 9/11 attacks or school shootings in America and call them evil, I am told by moral relativists that that intuition that I have that tells me that something is evil is what is really wrong. Morality is not objective but relative. I would be more inclined to believe with Berkeley that the material world was relative before I’d believe morality is relative.

Yet solipsism has been an idea that many people have sought to avoid. (If you don’t know what it is, I recommend doing a google search for a philosophical article on the topic.) If solipsism is false though, then there is a reality outside of our minds. There really is a world that is there.

Kant could leave us in basic doubt if all we have is sense-knowledge. Kant argued that we can’t know the things in themselves. We can only know the impressions that we receive from them. Kant spoke much about the moral law though and definitely treated it as if it was a reality. He wasn’t a solipsist either. He believed in the material world. He said the two things that would always leave him in awe are the starry host above and the moral law within.

Yet this is a valid point that is raised and one that Dinesh D’Souza brings up in “What’s So Great About Christianity?” If the atheist wishes to rely on sense-experience, what tells him that it is reliable? If he wishes to use reason, what tells him that reason is reliable? Can he ever truly say he has knowledge?

While this applies to sense-experience, I think it applies to so much more as well. C.S. Lewis wrote in the Screwtape Letters of how the demons of Hell could not yet create one pleasure. Pleasure was purely the ground of the enemy, who would be God in this case as it’s one demon writing to another.

Consider this though as you look at the world. What happens if you hear a piece of music and think “My! That is beautiful!” Immediately to avoid a reality you must say, “Stop! Don’t think such a thing! There is no real beauty in the world! Nothing is objectively beautiful! It is only an illusion in your mind!”

If you give your children a hug when they come home from school and think that love has taken place, that voice must shout again. “Stop! Do not think such a thing! There is no you there! There is only a machine acting on chemical reactions! Don’t think that there is something objectively loving or something objectively lovable!”

If you donate money to a needy cause and think you have done a good thing, you must hear it again. “Stop! Do not think that is good! There is nothing that is truly good out there! It is only in your mind that you think it is good! Do not say it is good if it is not really good!”

Then, if you want to complain about God allowing suffering in the world, you can’t even do that before that voice repeats. “Stop! There is nothing objectively evil out there lest there be an objective good! You must not allow this! You must deny that there is an evil and that there is a good!”

I believe this is why pleasure is God’s territory. The demons can only twist the pleasures that God has made. They can only rip them out of their context and use them as they see fit. If you have true pleasure though, it is a transcendent experience. It draws you into a reality beyond yourself. You see the world as it is.

And isn’t that what we’ve talked about here before? The Christian can look at the world in such a way. He can say it is beautiful and wonderful and good. The Christian can say that there is such a thing as love and he can even affirm that he is not just a machine. He is a being in the image of God.

In fact, the Christian should engage in such thoughts. The more we think about the world as it is and see the wonder and beauty of it all, the more we will be drawn to the one who is wonderful and beautiful. The more we participate in true pleasure, the more pleasurable he will be to us.

I recently chatted with a lady who talked about having anxiety attacks. Now I used to have those frequently in the past, so I was able to offer some advice. Before too long though, she began talking to another lady nearby about how their pastor nailed it in his sermon the other night. I was curious so I asked what it was on. I was told it was about how we should be giving money to the poor instead of buying gifts at Christmas.

Somehow, I think anxiety attacks and messages like that are not unrelated.

So what of it? Is it okay to buy those gifts at Christmastime? Could we not spend the money going to buy that Wii to help children in underdeveloped nations? Could the money that went to buy that DVD for your brother have gone to the Salvation Army? Could the money for that book you got your Mom not go to the church offering?

Somehow, this reminds me of someone else commenting on an expensive item. Could not it have been sold and the money given to the poor? If you are thinking biblically, I hope you’ll remember that that was Judas Iscariot who asked that to Jesus upon seeing him being anointed with expensive perfume. His answer was that they would always have the poor with them, but not him.

Don’t get me wrong on this. I’m not against giving money to the poor. I have great admiration for the ministry of the Salvation Army for instance. I do believe that you should be supporting your local church. However, I don’t think you should suffer guilt for buying gifts on Christmas day.

And no, I’m not saying this because I expect a lot of loot. As I’ve got older, I’ve found there is less and less I really want. Most of my gifts are in the line of books. I’ve asked mainly for household items this year though. The big one for me will probably be a vacuum for the apartment. Thus, I’m not saying this out of my own interest.

I do know what Christmas was like growing up though. For me, I loved walking into my aunt’s house on Christmas Eve and seeing the place loaded up with gifts. I could not believe it each year. It seemed there were more and more. Of course, as I grew older, the place got smaller and smaller. I now see the greatest joys are the gag gifts sometimes given and the “Who’d want it?” gifts.

Being away from home at a much greater distance now, I have had to rely on my own traditions still. I made sure my roommate and I went out and bought a Christmas tree. I have a few gifts underneath it already. I plan to keep tradition with my family until I get married and start having a family of my own to build our traditions with.

I think several other children deserve that as well.

I have no problem with you giving a gift to someone on Christmas. Each gift is a way of saying “I care for you and I want you to know that.” Generally, when I buy gifts, I have been most secretive. I don’t usually like people to tell me what they want. I try to study the person and see if I can get them something that I know will match their heart. If my mother’s words are any indication, I do a good job!

There is a great joy in seeing someone upon a gift and see that smile on their face. I don’t think there is any wrong in that. Could the money have been spent elsewhere? Sure it could have! Let’s stop though before we go down this road and see if there are any other examples we should consider.

You’re a married man and you just spent a bundle to take your wife out for your 25th anniversary. That money could have gone to the poor. Did you do wrong?

You just went to the ball game with your son for some bonding. That money could have gone to the poor. Did you do wrong?

You got on a plane and flew to be a bridesmaid in your sister’s wedding. That money could have gone to the poor. Did you do wrong? (Never mind how much your parents spent on the wedding!)

With everything we do, the money could have gone to the poor! It could have gone instead of you buying gas in your car or even buying your car! The money you use to buy groceries or pay for the internet could have gone there. The money you used to buy piano lessons could have gone there.

Let’s not forget about time! The time I spent watching Smallville could have been spent in Bible Study. Did I do wrong? I don’t think so. I’m not a machine. I’m allowed some leisure.  The time you spent soaking in the tub could have been spent in prayer instead. Does that mean you did wrong? The time you spent cooking a meal for your family could have been spent in evangelizing on the streets.

Granted, many of us might need to get our priorities more in alignment at times, but I think while this preacher’s message was well-intentioned, it lays an unnecessary burden on people. We should support those less fortunate than ourselves and devote time to Christian activity, but we have to remember that we can’t just give, give give. We have to relax some as well and the apostles pointed out that we have to care for our own families as well. Yes. That applies even to those in ministry.

This Christmas, when you’re with family and friends, enjoy the gifts they give you, and enjoy the gifts you give them, and be sure to remember the gift God gave you, that of his son. Don’t let guilt kill your holiday. (And it only will if you let it.)

I often picture myself as a Timothy without a Paul. In all honesty, I am amazed that it seems so many people look up to me. I know my roommate has made it clear enough times that he admires me, and he’d tell you that just as many times I tell him that I don’t see why. That is my problem and it is something I’m working on.

I thought about it last night though. I was struggling with an issue and thought about how I’ve avoided some things since I’ve come to this town with a roommate. There are some things I just haven’t done and I’m a better person in many ways. If you asked what was different, I would tell you that I have a friend nearby.

As an example, I’ve said before that I can’t swim. I’m hydrophobic. My roommate, on the other hand, I swear is half-fish in the water. It has been through our experiences at the Y that I have wanted more and more to get over that fear and learn how to swim. Is it something he’s said? Nope. He’s never told me I should join him in swimming or told me my fear is silly or anything like that. Instead, he’s just been a friend and in seeing him enjoy himself and knowing that I need to show him I trust him, I await more and more my chance to plunge. Fortunately, I have other friends who are sure I will.

It seems overall for me that my own attitude is improving in many cases. Things I used to dwell on endlessly I don’t any more. Of course, I still have my blah periods. I am really a quite melancholy and quiet individual. Those times aren’t lasting as long as they used to though. I know I have a friend beside me.

So I thought about this last night and the things I’ve avoided and it occurred to me “What if your roommate not only admires your knowledge, but sees you as a spiritual role model also?” I’d never really thought about that before. Could I be showing him Christ in the way I live my life and not just in how I think and do apologetics and argue with skeptics?

Now, you might think the thought of being a spiritual role model would lead to arrogance.  It was just the opposite. It made me immediately feel quite humble and think about the way I was living my life and how I needed to keep living a good and pure life in order to be sure to not risk leading just myself astray but him as well. I’m not saying if I stumbled, he would. I doubt it. However, I would lose some of my example and impact I could have on his life.

Then though, I thought that in many ways, I have been one all along. To everyone I meet, I am to be a spiritual example. I am to show them what Christ is like. Am I really doing that? I can look at many instances in my life where I don’t think I am. I can look at the struggles and temptations I have and really wonder.

I can also look back at the sin in my past. I recall doing some interviews with someone in the recent past and how I told him some of them. It didn’t change his view of me. He wrote that I had crafted sin, but not to be insulting. He meant it to say that I had been there and I knew what it meant to screw up. I look back at that and hope I never do such again for the sake of those around me.

Is he looking up to me there? Well, I can’t say for sure. I know I admire his walk though and that’s something that probably helps also. Remember Ecclesiastes 4:9-12? A friend is always a good thing to have when you are dealing with anything. Somehow, at the end of the day, I know when I come home, that I am safe. I have my friend here.

Now will I find a mentor someday soon? I certainly hope so. There’s so much more out there I need to learn and want to learn. Until then though, what am I to do? I am to look at the way I am living my life. Am I showing those around me the life of Christ? I should show it to all, but how can I show it to strangers if I can’t even show it to the friends closest to me?

Faithful readers! Do pray for me in this. It is a struggle I face and rest assured that while I may seem to some of you maybe to be at a level you wonder if you can reach, and I don’t mean that in any arrogant sense, it isn’t easy and it requires much work and even I am lazy at times. Pray for me as I am one like you as well. I will bleed if you cut me also. As I said in an earlier blog, I am simply trying to climb that mountain, and I hope you’ll help me reach the top as I help you.