Things I Struggle With...

1) Loving The Avett Borthers, NEEDTOBREATHE, The Civil Wars, Adele (Ahem-Taylor-Swift-ahem), and Mumford & Sons too much.

2) Agnostics: I was one. And I love logic.

3) Moralistic Therapeutic Deism: The American Church’s fake Gospel. It’ll make sound truth of Matthew 7:21-22.

4) Lady Gaga: What’s a ‘gaga?’

5) ‘Christians’ taking their list of conscionable (extra-biblical) morals and placing it on everyone (i.e. legalism).

6) Folks that ask for advice then don’t take the advice. The Three Musketeers had a quote about that, “As a general rule, 'he had once said, 'people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or, if they do follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it.'-Athos”

7) WSU’s Earth Science class, last week we learned about Mars (?!?), and all the videos are from 1980, so mullets prevail.

8) Jalapeño Cheez-its. They look like the original, but they are most definitely not the original, surprise!

9) Straight evolution: If it was Theistic evolution I might could understand a bit more, but straight up undiluted evolution makes me go, “Whoa, that’s a lot of faith,”

10) The Silmarillion, it’s good, but you need to focus to read it.

Legalism Vs. Discipline

“O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” Galatians 3:1-3

This would be the Paul-getting-all-up-in-some-Galatian’s-faces passage. Twice he calls them foolish and twice he asks them a rhetorical question to help them further understand their ludicrous thinking as ludicrous (no, not the rapper). Yet more often than not these words rip directly into my heart, into my thinking, into my actions.

I would guess the majority of us struggle deeply with that fine line between self-discipline and religious legalism. Having our ‘lists’ so neatly centered in our brains so when they are transgressed by someone, anyone else we are appalled at their actions. Or the opposite, of fighting so hard against lists so when someone tries to dictate a certain truth to you your gut reaction is to punch them in the face rather than listen.

But before the ideals of self-discipline may come to bear on our lives we must first understand (and by understand I mean if we don’t get it the rest fails) it is the Spirit who enables faith and it is the Spirit who is perfecting (sanctifying, redeeming) us.

Now, in all our self-discipline if it is placed on the shoulders of others rather than left to being SELF-discipline we have made it a religious legalism. Also, when we start to see discipline in terms of ‘have to’ rather than ‘get to’ it becomes religious legalism. Lastly, when we start to see discipline as more important than Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection, we’ve made our discipline our functional savior… a functional savior to hang ourselves with.

Have we begun in the Spirit to now be perfected by the flesh? Did we receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? These are the questions we must ask ourselves often, though our motivations can nor never will save us our motivations must be thoroughly examined, indeed we must learn to have quick minds. For in the course of life, or even just a day, we strive (because of the work of the Spirit) to be found in Jesus to the glory of God. Because He is our joy, not our actions or our intentions, Jesus, He is and can only ever be the one who saves us, completes us, and gives us true lasting joy.

Plateau-ing

Recently I was chilling in one of my favorite coffee shops working on a few thing when I over heard this statement, “I like my Christianity just the way it is.” Needless to say I dropped eves for the rest of their conversation – I know wrong, somehow.

But it got me to thinking, how many Christians live in this same mindset, “I like my belief just the way it is.” It seems ridiculous to me. To think where your faith is now is where you'll want it to be for the rest of your life. Quite frankly, I don’t think that is the point of faith.

Oughtn’t our faith to be growing and changing? Morphing us from who we were to who we are to who we’ll be. And as our faith grows oughtn’t our capacity to love increase as well? To see those we once held in contempt as either dear brothers or people in need of friends.

To think oneself of having arrived in the perfect position of faith is to not have faith in the least. For if, “you’ve arrived,” then you’ve done everything that is possible leaving nothing more to be done and that’s not faith, it’s legalism.

It’s a dangerous thought – the plateau – killing what little faith might have been present (The Parable of the Sower Matthew 13:1-9). But the thing with the Gospel is it leaves little room for, “arriving,” or, “plateauing,” in fact it leaves little room at all for anything you’ve done (Isa 64:6). The beauty of grace is it makes life unfair and the wonder of Jesus is he makes you good enough.

So in a sense the plateau is real, for Jesus is the plateau and on him we stand. But in the sense of growing faith the plateau is dangerous and ought not be trifled with, for we simply will never arrive at needing Christianity just the way we like it.