I've gone and done it.
I've started a Tumblr.
Which means I will post on here much less.
Wah-wah-waaahhh.
But feel free to start following over there:
http://ofeverythingelse.tumblr.com/
And don't be upset if you see some reposts from here over there.
There was some good stuff on here. I'd like to share it more.
Thanks for reading!
Oh Kim Jong-il...
Why didn't you sell your talent to online dating services?
Millions of people's dating profiles could have been so much more interesting.
And those Match.com commercials would need a lot more props.
Kurt Cobain's Suicide Note
There's so much to think about from this.
To read the full letter, click here.
One line stood out to me:
"I don't have the passion anymore, and so remember, it's better to burn out than to fade away."
A man who admits several times in this letter that he has an amazing life is driven to suicide by this line.
By losing passion.
By losing feeling.
I've heard several Christians talk about walking away from Christ because they "don't feel him anymore" or because it "doesn't seem real". And I've seen Christians never get serious with God because they never find that point where they can actually feel Him for the first time.
I think often we forget the value of feeling our God. Or feeling life in general. Pain. Joy. Sorrow. We forget the value of things actually being real to us.
Sometimes as Christians, we downplay our current feelings. We downplay not feeling God "at the moment" in worship or in prayer by telling people to "praise through" those empty feelings. We have wives who put their goals and dreams aside indefinitely in order to be the good Christian wives they are supposed to be. We rarely call each other on the carpet for our sins, so we never feel condescending and never make other people feel guilty. And there's a hundred other examples, all of which causes us to ignore what we currently feel by putting on a mask of what we should be feeling.
And in a way, I think that disconnects us from reality.
We live as we are expected to live, slowly numbing our own feelings altogether.
And we wonder why we have passionless Christians.
At the end of the day, I'd be pretty apathetic about a God who never felt real either. I wouldn't care what He had to say, and I certainly wouldn't bother following it.
But maybe He doesn't feel real because we don't let Him feel real? Maybe since we are constantly acting inside the masks we create instead of showing our true feelings, God can't address those feelings directly. If we can't stop lying to ourselves about how we feel, how can God help us with those situations?
Maybe we are boxing God up and limiting Him without even knowing it.
Which makes sense.
God would feel less real if I constantly shield myself from feeling him.
From feeling anything.
I can see how a bullet looks pretty good through that haze of numbness.
Fairy Tales
"Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist,
but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
- G.K. Chesterton
but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."
- G.K. Chesterton
There's something fantastic about fairy tales.
About stories and fiction in general.
Something Godly in them.
I'm not sure what it is yet, or at least how to word it, but when I do you'll be the first to know.
Some Christians...
Do it right.
And they might pay for it.
And they might pay for it.
The above picture is a little odd to run into, but read the signs below them and figure out a little of what's happening here.
This is a Christian group that has gone to a gay-pride parade, holding signs that apologize for how the church has treated gay people.
Now the question that's above everything else I have to say, is this: what was your reaction to that statement? What did you think of those Christians?
Because that reaction speaks volumes.
I understand the controversy of what they are doing. In their eyes, those Christians are showing love to people who have been hurt. To hardline evangelicals, they are condoning an act of sin. The world would say Christians are finally being more accepting, and the church would say that's exactly the problem. I understand the tension here.
I understand there's tension in any potent act of Christian ethics, from the traditional acts of giving food to the homeless to the more controversial ideas of Nuns handing out clean needles to drug addicts. We as Christians wrestle with what constitutes loving our neighbor and approving their actions. Often we wrestle with this to the point of inaction, scared to make any move lest it's the wrong one. But let me take a different angle on this, and possibly show us something new.
The picture above was taken from a large image sharing site called Imgur. Traditionally this is a site that shares a lot with Reddit, with both having a large Atheist community. So the question is: what reaction did the frequenters of the site, that sort of community, have to this? Here's some responses:
As you can tell, they loved it. On top of that, this site is meant for people to load pictures that they quickly want to share with their friends. It's almost a throw away picture site. Yet this image and a reposting of it are ranked in it's top hits of all time. That means not only are people sharing this, but people keep coming back to see it.
At the very least, I think we as Christians can accept that this action, and boundary pushing actions like it, open up conversation. It lets us interact with a world that's hungry for love. More importantly, it lets us interact with the world in a way that the world can understand. This is a way to show God's love to people who have no other way of seeing it.
In my opinion, when it comes to communication, the quality of the content of your message matters much less than your ability to have people hear it. You could have the most information imaginable inside your brain, but if you can't communicate it to anyone in a way they will understand, then it means nothing. So I translate that principle here: it matters so much more that we communicate the base idea of Christianity, that God loves people, than where we place that fine line of accepting homosexual behavior. Going to a gay pride parade and telling people they are loved is a way to do that. Sure, people can mistake what that means of God's thoughts on their sin, and people did in the comment section of that website, but that shouldn't stop us from starting the conversation in the first place.
To use Reddit language:
This is a Christian group that has gone to a gay-pride parade, holding signs that apologize for how the church has treated gay people.
Now the question that's above everything else I have to say, is this: what was your reaction to that statement? What did you think of those Christians?
Because that reaction speaks volumes.
I understand the controversy of what they are doing. In their eyes, those Christians are showing love to people who have been hurt. To hardline evangelicals, they are condoning an act of sin. The world would say Christians are finally being more accepting, and the church would say that's exactly the problem. I understand the tension here.
I understand there's tension in any potent act of Christian ethics, from the traditional acts of giving food to the homeless to the more controversial ideas of Nuns handing out clean needles to drug addicts. We as Christians wrestle with what constitutes loving our neighbor and approving their actions. Often we wrestle with this to the point of inaction, scared to make any move lest it's the wrong one. But let me take a different angle on this, and possibly show us something new.
The picture above was taken from a large image sharing site called Imgur. Traditionally this is a site that shares a lot with Reddit, with both having a large Atheist community. So the question is: what reaction did the frequenters of the site, that sort of community, have to this? Here's some responses:
As you can tell, they loved it. On top of that, this site is meant for people to load pictures that they quickly want to share with their friends. It's almost a throw away picture site. Yet this image and a reposting of it are ranked in it's top hits of all time. That means not only are people sharing this, but people keep coming back to see it.
At the very least, I think we as Christians can accept that this action, and boundary pushing actions like it, open up conversation. It lets us interact with a world that's hungry for love. More importantly, it lets us interact with the world in a way that the world can understand. This is a way to show God's love to people who have no other way of seeing it.
In my opinion, when it comes to communication, the quality of the content of your message matters much less than your ability to have people hear it. You could have the most information imaginable inside your brain, but if you can't communicate it to anyone in a way they will understand, then it means nothing. So I translate that principle here: it matters so much more that we communicate the base idea of Christianity, that God loves people, than where we place that fine line of accepting homosexual behavior. Going to a gay pride parade and telling people they are loved is a way to do that. Sure, people can mistake what that means of God's thoughts on their sin, and people did in the comment section of that website, but that shouldn't stop us from starting the conversation in the first place.
To use Reddit language:
tl; dr: Saw this pic on Imgur, wish I was holding a sign with them.
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