Trinity’s World

After over a week of phone calls, visits from phone technicians, and much cursing of the technology gods, I now am live on the internet via a DSL connection. All I have to say is: It’s about freakin’ time.

OK, so I find myself posting a reply to an other post here for all my faithful viewers (all 3 of you) to enjoy. I must say that there once I started writing this response I was kind of shocked to see a lot of stuff just come out that I have not had to think about in a while, and some things defiantly differ from the way they used to be a few years ago. I guess three years of struggling to make ends meet can change your view of things a bit. Anyway, enjoy.

Posted in responce to the statment:
“I want someone to prove that the Old Testament either is or isn’t neccessary in Christian believes. Then I’ll really have something to rant about.”

OK, well I was with you till your statement at the end. I spent four years at a Christian University (AKA Programming Center) and graduated with a degree in Biblical Studies. The problem is that you have been distracted from the get go by the very people you are trying to speak against. Don’t get sucked into an argument of “what parts of the bible apply to me and which one’s don’t.” This path will only lead you down a road of drawing line after line in order to define what you are supposed to act like…just like they do…just like the Pharisees of old did.

The Old Testament is important for one major reason…with out it you have no foretelling of the coming of Christ, or the reason that he needs to come. With out it, we do not see how God has tried over and over to save people in almost every kind of circumstance, and finally did the ultimate sacrifice in the end in order to make sure as many people were saved as possible. The message of the Bible is not a do an do not do list for life. The message of the Bible is not how to measure up in order to please God. The message of the Bible is that man is corrupt, and in order for there to be any way for Man to be acceptable in the eyes of God something had to be done to intervene.

I question any person who says, “The Bible clearly says,” insert random moral assertion here.” For instance, if you take the Bible as face value, the Old Testament has a few passages about Male Homosexual relationships, however there is a passage in Luke that supports Female Homosexual relationships. If you want the Bible to agree with it’s self, that is impossible. Moses did not write the Torha (sorry good little Sunday School boys and girls, he did not live to see have the things that happen in some of those books, including his funeral). We have four gospel writers, who tell the same story four ways. We have letters from Paul that show how his ideas about how to solve the “Jew/Christian’s who follow God” problem developed over time. Yes, the Bible shows the progression of people’s belief over time, so things at the end are going to conflict with things at the beginning. But with out that launching point to show us where things came from, we don’t understand where our faith tradition comes from.

Besides, the current thinking among Biblical scholars is that the entire Old Testament is slanted with a Post-Exlie outlook on the Jewish faith, setting up the idea that the Pharisees really banked on: following the law means adverting God’s judgment. As with any other book of the Bible, you have to think about the person/people/kind of person who wrote it. Are their issues the same as ours? Do things not apply to us if we don’t see a direct correlation? There are question that no person should be afraid to ask their pastor or youth leader. And if your church leadership is afraid, tell them that you know they are giving you crap and ask them who above them in your denomination you can ask. If you are in a congregational church that does not belong to a larger body or conference then ask your Pastor what Seminary they went to, look them up on the web, and e-mail any professor in the religion department who teaches biblical studies (trust me, they would love to talk to someone who is not already tainted by the bitterness that academics can bring to your search for knowledge). If you don’t have one, go here and ask Dr. Reeves.

Remember, do not let them pull you into the game of drawing lines. The Bible is not the answer book to all of life’s questions, contrary to popular Christian dogma. But dogma is no way to live your life by. The Bible is a collection of different people’s account of how God moved at a particular time in there life. Study it, and understand what God meant to them, and you might find out what God means to your own life. If you try to let it tell you what to believe, then you missed the point entirely.

I placed an order for DSL back in Nov. At the time I found out that a friend of mine was able to get DSL without turning on his phone for his apartment, so I asked the Verizon rep if I could do that too. I was told that yes, but it cost more. Turns out the cost of this ADSL was less then paying for my monthly phone service, and since I my wife and I only use our cell phone it made since to switch and kill our phone service to our house.

Well…apparently ADSL does not get installed very quickly by Verizon, and I’ve been waiting since the beginning of Nov and heard nothing from Verizon about it. I received 5 e-mails this week, saying that the line had been checked, the installation had been authorized, the equipment has been shipped, and that everything is going according to plan. If all goes well, tomorrow I will be surfing the web, from home, at a decent speed, for the first time in over a year.

Woo Hoo!

Wemple posted this great find about how Christians are threatened by Atheists in the US. It got me to thinking, and you know how I can be when that hamster in my head goes into turbo mode. The following is a comment I posted in response to his post:

You really hit the hammer on the head. I think Nietzsche really had some great points to bring up about Christianity, and the sad thing is that the rise of Evangelical Christianity has done nothing but prove him right on so many counts. Does that mean that God is dead? No, but his followers sure act like it. Christianity has started to become so humanistic that it is hard to tell the difference between a Mega Church and a self help seminar. Christians these days are about, “Having a personal relationship with Jesus,” and, “Are you walking right with the Lord,” and jumping on bandwagons that point out the problems that everyone else has. They have developed that same kind of pretentious spirit that the Roman Empire had when if fell. After all, God is on their side so they have to be right…Right?

I think what struck me most about your post was this: in order for there to be growth there must be conflict. What makes us question who we are, that which forces us to think about why we believe what we believe, is a catalyst that makes us search deeper for the truth behind the reality that we see. These days the Christian Reich has helped non-believers paint the rest of the church as uncaring activists who only want to mold the world into their ideal version of perfection. Why should we fear people who have conflicting views? Why should we jump on and kill anything that might stand against what we believe? The only way that Christianity can actually be effective in a post-modern world is if the activists back it up, and actually listen to the opinions of others around them instead of treating these opinions like they were the plague. There is a reason the Nazis burned books during WWII: in order to keep your people under control you have to make sure they are not exposed to ideas that conflict with what you have told them to be true. I think that the Fundamentalists need to check their enthusiasm for do the, “will of God,” and start remembering that God has called us to be loving, compassionate, and caring.

Oh yeah, and to work with the people he has put in power over us. I’m sick of Christians complaining about how God has left the government, and how politicians do not do his will. I think I remember a passage in the gospels where the Pharisees asked Jesus about paying taxes, and his response really is a kick in the pants. He basically tells them that all power on heave and earth is given by the Father above and that they should, “render to Caser what is Caesar’s.” Stop trying to blame the problems of the country on all of these liberals who get elected into office, as if they were put there specifically to rob God of his power. If God did not want them there, they wouldn’t be there. Maybe what God is trying to show us is that we do not need him to “Heal our Land,” like so many Evangelical Rallies are proclaiming. Maybe, instead, he is trying to show us how to first accept people who have different views on how a life is to lived so that we can lovingly show them why we live life the way we do. The down side to this goes right back to how you opened up your post. If we are only doing the Christian thing because we are in it for the fire insurance for our soul, then we can’t really minister to those who thing differently by any other way than scaring them. The reason being: the only reason we jumped on the bad wagon ourselves was someone scared us into it.

Thanks again for such a great post, it got me to think about a lot of stuff that has been stirring underneath the surface of my mind for a while.

As stated in a previous post, I do not like New Years resolutions. However I did see something on a friend’s blog that I that would be cool to do. Basically it a wrap of the best of 2006, so here is the top ten for 2006:

10. Went wine tasting in Temecula (Near San Diego)
9. Made some major headway on the fantasy book I’m writing
8. Got assigned to work at an after school program, called HalfTime, for my agency
7. Helped my wife write a story that many people have received very well
6. Intervened in two suicide attempts at my schools that were serious
5. I’ve touched the lives of five kids who I hold dear to my heart
4. My wife and I both (at separate times) joined the Bells of Bedlam
3. Forged new/stronger friendships with people in my life
2. Forgave myself for loosing my job almost 2 years ago
1. Celebrated my one year wedding anniversary to the world’s most wonderful woman

That about wraps up the best of the best. Sometimes it is important to actually force yourself to think of the good things that happened in the past. For me, it took a while to remember all of these things because, honestly, last year was one of the hardest in my life. But, so much good did happen, and I’m looking forward to trudging on with this new year to find what new and exciting things await me.

Once again my friend ElGuapo5000 has posted a fun video on his blog. This time, you may want to make sure you are not on a government watch list before you view it. Yes, you too can make your own potato gun in the comfort of your own home. Great fun for the whole family, take your potato gun to the park and scar away all the other families. Or even better, sign up for the neighborhood watch and patrol your street with it. Take a gander at this and exercise your 2nd amendment right today.

Howto: Build a potato gun

Its that time of year again. It’s time where everyone looks back at their life and says…this is not where I thought I would be. Or, in the words of a friend of mine, “All my life I thought I was going to go somewhere and be something, instead I ended up here.” Yes, I recognize that it is probably bad luck to start the New Year off with a very sarcastic and bitter post, but if you can’t bitch on your blog about the world where can you? In that spirit, I make the following resolutions for the New Year:

1. Get a job that pays enough to pay all my bills on time, instead of cycling them each month which to pay.

2. Write more, I have a book that I’ve been writing and I really need to stop making excuses and just finish the thing so I can go back and start editing the parts that suck.

3. Read 20+ books, not a very ambitious goal as I read 28 last year, but it’s a reasonable goal.

4. Find new and interesting ways to show my wife I love her.

5. Save up money to move the hell out of California, so I can actually afford to live and start thinking about having a kid.

6. Drink more good beer (as opposed to most of the beers out there) because beer makes everything better; that and Jack Daniels

That’s it. No unrealistic goals about loosing weight, or going to the gym, or working out every day. I will not run a marathon, give to more charity, or plant any trees. In stead I will focus on making my life situation better, making my wife happier, and work on being able to accept compliments for what they are instead of shrugging them off.

2007 shall be the year of renewal for me. I shall stop worrying about where I have been, and focus on where I am going. Mistakes will be learned from, not dwelt on. So its time to look fate in the eye, dig my heals in, and get ready for what is to come. I’ve been beaten repeatedly over the last year, and this time I’m going to spit in the face of fate if it tries to make things any worse. I will pick myself up from last years ashes, and charge forward into the New Year with a sense of purpose and future. This year will be better, because I have said so. So let it be written, so let it be done, the Trinity has spoken.