. (period - end of sentence]

Post started back in February 2011
Post finished on April 5, 2011

I make things too hard, too difficult. Take God for example. Sometimes I really think I am seeing clearly what He wants and then there are times when I haven't the slightest clue. I don't even know if it is possible to know what God wants and even if it is possible I have no idea how to communicate it without sounding like a George W Bush, Glen Beck looney. (Seriously, people who use the phrase "God told me..." are 99% of the time scary, whack jobs; I don't want to be a scary whack job.) This isn't so much because I fear what people think as I don't want to attribute to God something that in end had nothing to do with God; Manifest Destiny, the slaughter of the Native Americans, the instituting of a Pope, the deification of Mary, the creation of saints to pray to, the rise of antisemitism, the false rapture doctrine, the earthquake in Haiti, the breaking of the levees in New Orleans... these are just a few tragedies that certain "Christians" have attributed as to having "Gods blessing". God forbid I attribute my momentary thoughts, my fleeting words as Gods! What arrogance! What presumption!

I second guess that what I think is what I am supposed to think, that what I do is what I am supposed to do. I volley between feeling comfortable and confident to feeling unsure and afraid; I volley between trusting everything and doubting it all. I read something one day and feel like it is ultimate truth and then the next day it means so little to me. A great big truth shrinks down to a translucent vapor and Poof! it's gone. It's supposed to be all about faith, belief in Jesus Christ (John 6:29) but then the Bible also says in the book of James that , "faith without works is dead" so I jerk between legalism and conceited entitlement. Can one ever take God's love for granted? One can never earn God's love but is really good behavior required in order to keep His love? I feel like I am always going back to square one in the faith department. How much of what I believe is really true and how much does what I believe even matter in the grand scheme of things? At times I feel really lonely and insignificant; planet earth seems boundless and huge and I am so small, what does it matter ultimately what I think, feel or experience? All these question are probably giving you a headache, I know they give me one.

I sometimes think Paul would be disappointed in me, you know, Paul, the apostle. I wonder if he would have liked me. Would I have been someone he spoke well of or would it be the other way around, would I be someone he was disappointed in? Listen to what he says in 2 Timothy 4:10, "For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica." Ouch. Colossians 4:14 has Demas greeting others in the faith he evidently shares with them, so what happened? It really makes you wonder. Maybe Paul is writing about two different guys both named Demas but I don't think that's the case. It seems like Christians put Paul on a pedestal. "Oooo Paul!" Don't misunderstand, I like Paul too, I just don't want to deify him. Paul  was human was he not? He couldn't have always, always, always been right.

I guess what is eating at me lately is things like 1 Corinthians 14:34 for example. "Let your women keep silent in the churches, for they are not permitted to speak; but they are to be submissive, as the law also says." When did Jesus ever tell a woman to be silent because she was a woman? Yeah...never. Jesus treated women in such a counter-cultural way, it's beautiful. I know, I know some will say I have to take the verse in its greater context and Paul didn't mean it the way it sounds and yada yada yada. Paul just really irks me sometimes, there I've said it. I want to follow Jesus not Paul and just because Paul wrote something doesn't mean one shouldn't test it in the Spirit just like one should test ALL teaching that comes their way. I write all this and then I go read Romans and I am silent to speak any kind of criticism of Paul. Darn it. I guess we mortals are all mixed bags of right and wrong when left to ourselves; we need God's Spirit guiding us always in truth, to truth. Further reading regarding Paul required.

With this post I am pausing to appreciate the finality of the grammatical period (.) A period represents the end of a sentence, the end of a statement. In life I want an ending that I can be sure of. I want to know that I know something and that what I know about it is never going to change and never become wrong. I want to know that I know I have faith and that I will go on having faith.

Everything changes; I need one thing that wont. Period.

"God is not man, that he should lie,
   or a son of man, that he should change his mind.
Has he said, and will he not do it?
   Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?"
- Numbers 23:19