Love is a Battlefield

A brokenhearted friend once told me in his frustration that the feeling of love is merely a chemical process in the brain and the rest of the body. Mere physiology, or some other technical mumbo jumbo. I hoped he didn't truly believe this: 

If love is a mere chemical process, then so is hate, and therefore hate should not be taken any more seriously than love. It could even be excused. And if those things are only medical goings-on, so are empathy, compassion, and the outrage against injustice that causes so many brave people to speak out against it. 

Every stand of bravery would be meaningless.

[James 1:17] 

The Unfair Gospel of Jesus

Infamous serial killer, cannibal, and necrophiliac Jeffrey Dahmer accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior just two years or so before he himself was murdered in prison in 1994. For a life lived in disbelief, for well over a decade of murder and gruesome, vile acts upon other human beings, Jeffrey Dahmer served just over three years in custody before, according to the facets of the Christian Gospel, he was sent to the eternal bliss of Paradise. A saint simply being one who is in Christ, Jeffrey Dahmer holds the same title as Billy Graham.

This is unfair. The families of Dahmer's victims, who hoped to see him locked behind bars - and worse - received less than an ounce of justice when you consider Dahmer's short prison term on Earth, and the Gospel's promise that he, having accepted Christ, has been given eternal life with God.

The Gospel is a beautiful Gospel, but it's also a difficult one, a gritty one, a gory one, and by the standards of us fleshly creatures, a very unfair Gospel.

Jeffrey Dahmer's crimes may be unique in their exceptionally bizarre and heinous nature, but his circumstances as a whole are not. Multitudes and multitudes of sinners like Dahmer, like me, like you, have accepted the salvation offered by Jesus Christ through His sacrifice on the cross, and our crimes have been washed away, expunged from our records. We were not punished, we were not stoned to death by the congregation, not swallowed up by the earth, not plundered and torn apart by Babylonian invaders.

I, as the 57th worst sinner who ever lived, am not sorry for this. I feel no guilt or shame that I've been rescued from my sins while having paid no price for it to be so. I regret the price I made others pay in my sinful behavior, but the One who removed those crimes from my record doesn't desire that I wallow in shame and misery over it. He is faithful to give me tasks and duties to glorify Him, to live a life in light rather than the one I lived in darkness. But He's not required me to roll in ashes and beat my breast, declaring what miserable, rotten things I've done; He's not required me to pay a monetary tax as penance to keep me in His embrace.

This is grossly unfair. But if it's any consolation to the outside observer, God played by His own unfair rules when He came to Earth in the flesh and suffered just like you and I do.

He endured temptation, but was without sin. He faced scorn, ridicule and plots against His life, though He had done no wrong, though He had brought an abundance of good in His ministry. He endured every day frustrations and agonies like you and me. And, He was tried and condemned, though without sin, and executed in the most agonizing way possible. A true criminal, an insurrectionist named Barabbas, was meanwhile set free.

While He was fastened by nails to that ominous cross, slowly dying, a criminal crucified next to Him groaned in his own agony that this Man from Galilee had done nothing wrong, and asked the He remember him when He came into His kingdom - if the criminal even knew just what that meant.

The condemned sinless One declared to the condemned rotten one, "Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise."

For all his years of habitual offenses and recklessness, a few hours of faith in the One who shows grace and mercy brought the unknown criminal to eternal life where there is no more pain, decay, sorrow or death.

There is no way around it - the Gospel of grace is an unfair Gospel.

drawing by Albert Servaes

"'Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you'...So the last will be first, and the first last. For many are called, but few chosen."
-Jesus Christ, Matthew 20:14, 16

Where Was God?

God has watched innocent men dangle from trees because of the color of their skin. God has watched frightened runaways be tortured, raped, and killed. God has watched old men and old women lonesome beyond lonesome weep in dusty rooms, their faces tight and worn with age, so seemingly dry that we think it’s impossible for tears to be made. God has watched nations crumble under regimes of murderous corruption. When we were in the room with a dying patient, awkward with sadness or discomfort, God has always been the One in the room who watched more deeply than we ever could, who felt more deeply than we could fathom.

“Where was God in all this misery?”

God was at the dangling, kicking feet of the hanged man. God was at the side of the men in
Chechnya forced to sit on bottles in a concentration camp. God was in the derelict shack in Greenville, Illinois with the helpless runaway and her killer. God was in the lonely room with the elderly widow. God was moving about the nations, present where bodies were piled up for mass graves, at the palace stairs when one evil regime overthrew another. God was counting the tears in the eyes, the hairs on the heads, the ounces of excruciating pain in the hearts. God grieved in anger and in sorrow at the lies we told ourselves about the color of skin, the twisted lust of the deviant who killed the runaway, the able bodied men who never visited the widow in her dreary post, the power-hungry madmen who trampled the poor. God must have been at every one of those nightmarish places, because He does not forsake His own word – “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15). The Gospel is one not only of salvation, but of suffering; Christ will not turn away from His own Gospel, as He is the same Christ who cried out, as He Himself was unjustly murdered, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”

Without suffering, this world as we’ve made it would be incomplete, as it’s what we do best – we make one another pay for our sins. And without suffering, without the One who truly paid the debts of our sins on the cross, no atrocity, injustice, or lie could ever be made right, ever be forgiven, ever be driven away by Light that darkness cannot comprehend, either on this earth, or in the eternity to come. God watched His only Son, holy and blameless, mutilated upon a cross. He did not intervene, He did not save Him. He let this ugly, gory thing happen so that you and I, unholy and to blame for making one another suffer so miserably, could be holy, could be restored, redeemed, and given the strength and the light to do good and beautiful things in His name – millions of little candles in a world of mammoth darkness.

I think one of the reasons that the book of Job is the book in the Bible to which many atheists and doubters gravitate is its naked and honest outcry against the horrors of life, as well as the horrors of people, while waiting for God to deliver swift punishment and justice that doesn’t seem like it’s ever going to come. Job wails,
“Some remove landmarks; 
they seize flocks violently and feed on them; 
they drive away the donkey of the fatherless; 
they take the widow’s ox as a pledge. 
They push the needy off the road; 
all the poor of the land are forced to hide. 
Indeed, like wild donkeys in the desert, 
they go out to their work, searching for food. 
The wilderness yields food for them 
and for their children. 
They gather their fodder in the field 
and glean in the vineyard of the wicked. 
They spend the night naked, without clothing, 
and have no covering in the cold. 
They are wet with the showers of the mountains, 
and huddle around the rock for want of shelter.
Some snatch the fatherless from the breast, 
and take a pledge from the poor. 
They cause the poor to go naked, without clothing; 
and they take away the sheaves from the hungry. 
They press out oil within their walls, 
and tread winepresses, yet suffer thirst. 
The dying groan in the city, 
and the souls of the wounded cry out; 
yet God does not charge them with wrong.”

We see hideous injustices in the world, we see those who perpetrate them go free, and we cry out, “Isn’t someone going to be punished for this?” But Someone was punished for the world’s sins – Jesus Christ, on a cross at Calvary. The Scriptures tells us, “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). And Jesus, being God in flesh, could not break His New Covenant and “save Himself,” as those mocking from the ground challenged Him to do. Thus in His flesh, He died as flesh, as sin has no part with God. And having forsaken His Son, God allowed the wrath of sin to fall on Him so that you and I would not know it. Sin has no part with God, but because He who knew no sin “became sin for us,” you and I, sinners, can now have communion with God, in grace and holiness. Sin has no part with God, but our salvation depended on Him.
We muse bitterly that there’s simply no justice left in the world. But the truth is, that it was Jesus who absorbed the punishment of the iniquity of the world – those who believe in Him, in the atonement He provided upon that instrument of execution, have had their own part in the injustices of the world, no matter how big or small in their eyes, cleansed from them. Not only this, but they’ve been given the duty to strive for what is right, to fight against what is wrong, in a world that even God firmly proclaims in His word is evil, and needed a Savior.

Those who don’t believe not only cast away from themselves the forgiveness of their own wrongs, but they refuse to accept their punishment taken by Jesus Christ, refuse to embrace the gift He offers to live life anew. And so, that gift is ignored, dismissed as fiction and superstition, and another life in the world, another part of the world, slips further into apathy, and believes the lie that wrong cannot be made right.


-from Sheep Named Spike by Cpt. Bud Sturguess

God is Everywhere

I'm glad God is everywhere at once. Not only because He comforts earthquake-stricken New Zealand while at the same time numbering the tears of victims of Boko Haram and aiding the hungry in Amarillo, but also because He occupies every piece of a broken heart.
I'm glad God sees everything. Not just because He sees the cash given to a single mother by an anonymous Samaritan while at the same time seeing the corrupt handshakes and intentions of a politician, but also because He sees each time we fall to our knees, alone in our apartments, with no human audience to weep for us.
I'm glad God weeps with us.

"If God sees all and is everywhere, why doesn't He make these things stop?"

God not only sees the evil that we choose to do, but He also sees the good we choose not to do. He sees the hungry in Amarillo. And, He sees us throw the "junk mail" from the High Plains Food Bank and the Salvation Army into the trash can. And, He sees the votes we willingly cast for the corrupt, turning a blind eye to their crimes in the name of our golden calves - the red elephant or the blue donkey.
"Was your mother sent away because I divorced her? Did I sell you as slaves to my creditors? No, you were sold because of your sins. And your mother, too, was taken because of your sins. Why was no one there when I came? Why didn’t anyone answer when I called?" -Isaiah 50:1-2 (NLT)

I thank God that He allows us the choice to do good. What kind of story would the story of humankind be if we only did what is right as autonomous creatures? What a glorious and gritty story it is, that we have the grueling task of choosing good, that we have laughter in relief when good prevails, that we have tears in sorrow when we're afflicted.

And what better eye to form the characters, to write the story, to watch it unfold, as the God who took part in its ugliest, most painful point on the cross?

"I can never escape from Your Spirit!
    I can never get away from Your presence!
If I go up to heaven, You are there;
    if I go down to the grave, You are there.
If I ride the wings of the morning,
    if I dwell by the farthest oceans,
even there Your hand will guide me,
    and Your strength will support me."
-Psalm 139: 7-10 (NLT)

My Disastrous Date With Anna Kendrick

Why I was asked on a date by Anna Kendrick was at first a baffling mystery to me, but one I dared not question. And though the truth was revealed that she had mistaken me for Bradley Cooper, a common occurrence, I swallowed my hurt and tried my best to enjoy our fancy, way-beyond-my-budget dinner at Olive Garden.
Despite our date being purely based on mistaken identity, I thought it was going well. Ms. Kendrick even seemed to enjoy hearing my opinions on the failure of Grover Cleveland's second term as President. But, here's where I f*dged up: as I do with any pretty lady I meet, I instantly fell in love, and began to spout overly-flowery praise of her beauty. My gaucherie was at its worst ("gaucherie" is today's word of the day at dictionary.com).
I declared how much I admired her blue bob hairstyle, chubby cheeks, and how lovely she looked in her red bell sleeve dress. The problem with my words, aside from the forwardness, was that Anna Kendrick of course does not sport a bob haircut, her face is proportionate to her thin frame, and she was actually wearing a Radiohead t-shirt and slacks.

The lovely Anna Kendrick.

As stupid as my gaffe was, we do this very same thing with God. We describe Him as something He is not - nay, we insist He is something He is not - we give Him characteristics we want Him to have, all to fit our preferred version of Him. Jesus' followers did this even when He walked the earth as flesh - they wanted Him to be some militaristic leader who would deliver Israel, by force of battle, from the grip of the Roman empire. But He was not. And when they realized this, many turned away from Him. Just like we do when we realize Jesus doesn't fit into the mold of a poster child for our personal agendas and biases.

We describe Him as a hippie, just a nice man with nice teachings, another Buddha, anything we want Him to be. Anything but what He truly is - the only true God, the Savior of mankind who died for our sins and rose again, the God who calls to us to follow Him and leave behind our fleshly treasures and prejudices.
We try to ham-fist our cultural expectations into the meanings of the words of Jesus and those through whom He worked wonders. For example, we see the strength of Elizabeth and Mary as a symbol of feminism; we misconstrue Jesus' words to the rich young ruler as an endorsement of socialism; we see His words "the worker is worthy of his wages" as an endorsement of capitalism; we see Jesus' message that marriage is sacred and children are precious as a banner for conservatism; we make "do not judge" a mantra for liberalism.
We try to force-feed our idolatrous, worldly isms into our perception of God, what we want Him to be.

We do no differently than I did by imposing chubby cheeks and a blue bob on Anna Kendrick.

The Day God Froze the Weather For Me

The day God froze Amarillo, Texas just for me was Black Friday, 2015.

I'd studied myself into a rather dark corner of mind. A mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon had caused the heated debate on gun control to wake from its troubled nap. Wanting to address the subject via YouTube video, I did research on several spree killers and mass shootings. I recorded the video and uploaded it to YouTube on October 15, 2015. But reading about all of these men who had slaughtered other people in public rampages caused my mind much grief and worry. 
But I didn't have the nerve to be surprised.

I began analyzing every place I went, wondering if the next mass shooting would occur there, and how I could shield people with my own body. I eyed anyone who looked shifty or disturbed – though most of the gunmen were described as calm during their killing sprees, as if their rage, illness, and isolation was being weaned by the sound of death.
With Black Friday approaching the day after Thanksgiving, and knowing it to be the biggest and most chaotic shopping day of the year, traditionally, it instantly clicked in my mind to go to the Westgate Mall, where a mass shooting would take place. My mind had decided that someone was going to unleash horror with a semi-automatic rifle at the mall that day – it was an indisputable fact already, as if the event had already been recorded. All that was missing was my being there to try to disarm the shooter, or protect someone else from death by giving my own life. Then, in the trending news, with the callous irony the media loves, one story would read, “Amarillo Victim Posted YouTube Video About Gun Laws One Month Before Shooting.”

"Vanity, says the preacher."

November 27th would be the day I died. But as Thanksgiving wound to a close, a merciless slew of winter-like weather moved into the area. The next day, the city was frozen. Very few vehicles traveled over the ice-covered streets. No one was going shopping in this Goliath.
Slowly, less quickly as my mind had predicted the shooting and my death, it occurred to me that God had assigned this frigid weather for this city for this day, for me. He had frozen an entire city, rendered it to look like the barrenness of death, to show me what a mind that dwelt on death would look life if it were a place – activity and life everywhere, but all of it locked up for fear of the danger and the cold.
I don't know if a shooting would have occurred at the Westgate Mall on Black Friday. It certainly hasn't happened heretofore. I'm convinced that God predestined that day's weather for me, a troubled and unprofitable servant.
Why couldn't He? Why wouldn't He?

A couple of weeks later, a brother and sister in Christ gave me some money so that I could pay some bills and do some Christmas shopping. I walked that mall in peace as the city basked in the bright near-winter sunshine, made so much brighter by its reflection from the pure white snow of God.

The Golden Idol of Apathy

I asked God to divert my anger and sorrow away from things that don't matter - Kanye West's rantings, Green Day being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame before Deep Purple and Cheap Trick, the fury of Bernie vs. Hillary - to things that do matter.
So, this month, He allowed me to somehow injure my back, my prescription drug plan to change so that my medications would cost more than I can afford every month, that my most important medication would not be covered at all, so that I'd lose it completely, and that my glasses would break, and I'd not be able to afford new ones.

In the book of Daniel, three men of God, about to be cast into a furnace for refusing to worship Babylonian idols, said, "our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king. But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up."

In my case, the false gods and gold images with which I'm tempted are in the form of bitterness and disbelief in God, for allowing me to suffer - which is something He never promised we would be exempt from. I've never understood the thought that "bad things happen, so there must be no God." For this to hold merit or logic, God would have to have first promised that He would protect us from the smallest to the most bone-chilling of horrors - which He has not promised. "If x is y, then x cannot be z" does not work here. He has not sworn to wrap us in bubble wrap to protect us from life's everyday trials and tragedies, nor has He bound us in a moral straight jacket that prevents us from committing wrongs that hurt others - slightly or severely. And I'm glad He hasn't - would love be love with the grueling effort, to choose it?
Instead, God promises us reconciliation to Him through His Son Christ Jesus, who suffered unimaginably on the cross so that we could each be offered the gift of eternal life and a personal relationship with Him - but not without suffering and sorrow on Earth. He has promised to comfort us in the midst of terrors, to give us strength when it seems the world is pitch black in darkness, to give us wisdom and discernment when we seek Him in hope, in desperation, in fear, or in confidence.

God has broken no contract in which He promised protection from each hardship and horror. He has not wronged me in the 29 years I've been alive, and I will not turn away from Him to serve the comfort of apathy, cynicism, and anger. Lord, make these words not boastful, but keep Your hand and on my heart; let me never stray from You to serve what is hopeless and bitter, but to minister to those in sorrow and pain - as You've commanded each of us who believe.

Good gosh I'm interesting.

"Though the fig tree may not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines;
Though the labor of the olive may fail,
And the fields yield no food;
Though the flock may be cut off from the fold,
And there be no herd in the stalls—
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The LORD God is my strength;
He will make my feet like deer’s feet,
And He will make me walk on my high hills."
-Habakkuk 3:17-19

Cpt. Bud's Devotionals, 10-4-15: "An Uncomfortable, Inconvenient God"

I've often heard it said and written, as an antithesis to the existence of, or belief in, God, that the concept is much too "comfortable" and "convenient" for Him to be true. That with the idea of a God, we fit too well in the world, in the universe. I've learned, however, after reading the Bible, the Book from which a Christian should derive his or her notions about God, that though He is loving and wonderful, His truth is anything but comfortable and convenient.

How convenient it would be if His holy word did not tell me that life on this earth will be rank with injustices and grief; how convenient it would be if He promised me smooth sailing instead. But He doesn't. How comfortable I'd be in this world if He gave me an explanation of the universe's origin that didn't make Bill Nye think I'm a superstitious bumpkin. But He didn't. How I love to lust, to be angry and spiteful, to hold grudges, to hate. But what a buzzkill that I believe in a God who tells me these things are destructive to myself, and to others.
How convenient to my morality would it be if I had no one to whom to answer, to whom to be accountable, and if all my rotten deeds (and even my few good deeds) rotted along with my corpse after death as I cease to exist, and if those I left behind would wait for the sun to explode and to be like me. But, what an inconvenience it is to my conscience that I will answer to Almighty God for my time on Earth.
How comfortable it would be to blend in with the rest of the world, to be just like everyone else, a world where every fingerprint and snowflake are exactly alike and mean nothing (except when my DNA is needed for a conviction for my embarrassing acts in Santa Fe when I'd stopped taking my Lamictal regimen back in 2011).
How comfortable it would be to go unrecognized in the moral dilemmas we make, to have no conviction from Christ, who the world dismisses and calls a liar. But His Holy and inconvenient Spirit reminds me to speak up, to proclaim Him who died for me and rose again, and who longs for the souls around me in the world - the world in which I don't fit - to be saved as well.

God is beautiful, He is true, He is sovereign, He is merciful, He is good. I suppose He is convenient for me in that respect - that the only real God is the One who took on wrath and punishment on the cross, so that the punishments I deserved would never fall on me, so that I could live abundant life. I am one lucky bumpkin.
But how inconvenient it is for my flesh that the same God convicts me to do good and to shun evil. How inconvenient it is for my flesh that He tells me He loves me, and other gorgeous things that make my cynical mind cringe, when I fail.

I thank God for making me so uncomfortable, for being so inconvenient.
OHMS,
Cpt. Bud Sturguess

"Now when I looked, there was a hand stretched out to me; and behold, a scroll of a book was in it. Then He spread it before me; and there was writing on the inside and on the outside, and written on it were lamentations and mourning and woe. Moreover He said to me, "Son of man, eat what you find; eat this scroll, and go, speak to the house of Israel." So I opened my mouth, and He caused me to eat that scroll.
And He said to me, "Son of man, feed your belly, and fill your stomach with this scroll that I give you." So I ate, and it was in my mouth like honey in sweetness." -Ezekiel 2:9-3:3

Bud's "Easter" Sermon: God, or Jesus?

Note: I don't like to call Easter by that name, because it was named after a false god by certain Christians with anti-Semitic intents who wanted to distance themselves from the Jews and Passover. Then again, I still call Thursday "Thursday," despite its being named for Thor, and I still call Mars "Mars," and so on, yet God in His rich mercy does not hold it against me. Not withstanding, I prefer "Resurrection Sunday." Anyway...

Whether intentionally or not, we often perceive God and Jesus as not only two different Characters of history and creation, but two different Gods. We see God (the Father) as the angry One who grants wishes, and Jesus (the Son) as the nice One who did nice things and commanded us to do likewise.
The problem is not that we prefer One over the Other, but that we go to One depending on our specific needs. When we cry out for vengeance and justice, for wrath to come upon those who do wrong, we pray to the One we call "God." When we want to remember and teach kindness and love, we cite the One we call "Jesus."
But what is often missing in our perception of the Creator is the fact that the Two cannot be separated. The same God who destroyed Pharaoh's army, who rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah, who struck many a wicked man with blindness and leprosy, became flesh and bone, grew inside and exited a womb - a Son. God, the Son. The feet of the Almighty wore sandals, were covered in dust and sweat, and were cleansed with the tears of the same kind of sinner on whom He had executed wrath at Sodom.
This was not two different Gods, but a different covenant the one God made with His creations. But this New Covenant, sealed by His blood on a cross, was not a "plan B" - He told us from the beginning, from the fall of man in the Garden of Eden, and through His prophet Moses, that for years man would strive under Law and punishment, but a time would come when He would do away with the rigorous and fearful tastes of this Law, and open our hearts and eyes to the love and mercy with which it was written, so that the Law would taste sweet as honeycomb.
The angry invisible God cannot be set apart as a different Being than the meek and gentle Jesus. It was after all this precious Lamb of Nazareth who, on a cross, became the very object of the wrath of that distant, gloomy, stormy God, so that we would now see Him as He is and always truly was - present, close, abundant in love and the desire to know we who consider Him so baffling, so far away.

John 8:37-58

God's Job

I've been judged by many people in many hypocritical ways, but I suspect nothing compares to being judged like God is judged - by an inaccurate description we've created of Him, by the cramped box we've tried to fit Him in, rather than by His true nature, character, and by the very words He's spoken.

Among the most irksome reasons one can hear for a disbelief in God is, "Bad things happen." Which of course holds no philosophical water, as God's job has never been to keep us happy, or to keep the world healthy and clean. It's not even a Scriptural truth. In fact, before sin entered the world, and we people began turning the planet into, literally, a world of hurt, it was still not God's job to make everything comfortable - it was man to whom He gave the directive to tend the Garden and keep out lying intruders. And we all know how man did with that task.

Nor is God's job to, in a matter of will over will, change the already-made-up mind of the public shooter or the power hungry dictator. It is however among His sovereign duties to judge them for their actions and choices with divine and holy judgment. I realized long ago that if God did not allow bad things into the world - or, rather, allow people to choose to do bad things to each other - He wouldn't be able to give you and I the beautiful and glorious task of doing good things. And if He, in some trump of will, made us all do good all the time, would our good really be good? Wouldn't it be as fleeting as a blink or a breath?

It is not God's job to make people treat each other fairly, or to make sure every exchange and transaction between people is fair - don't tell God, who sent His sinless Son to die for my sins, about what's "fair."

One of God's chores is, I suppose, to keep things running; the weather, biology, time, all of those vast things we humans can't control, try as we might.
But even more vast than those things too lofty for me to comprehend is something even more puzzling to me and my bitterness - love. And God did His job, kept every promise in every prophecy He ever gave the prophets to utter, when He came to this earth in the flesh. He did His job to the fullest when He gave a Savior to be the perfect Atonement, the punishment for the sins of all who would be willing to accept that this Messiah took on Himself the very literal wrath of God, so that we who bemoan the injustices in this world without doing a thing to cure them, would be free from that wrath and given to a life under His grace - even the shooter and the dictator could have the gift of grace and cleansing of evil.

That's God's job. To love us, though we have turned His creation into a smoking, fuming globe of waste. But this job was certainly not something owed to us, definitely not something we deserved. It is a job He gave Himself, because no one else could. And He exemplified His job when He, in human flesh, let His hands be stretched out and nailed to an ugly stake of capital punishment. A part of love is keeping promises - He's promised to return someday, and that you and I who believe will spend eternity with Him, where this love is never approached by the darkness of doubt, of prejudice, of bitterness. 

Adam Raised a Cain (A Discourse on Sin & the Garden of Eden)

"In the Bible, Cain slew Abel 
 and east of Eden he was cast
 You're born into this life paying for the sins
 of somebody else's past."
 -Bruce Springsteen, "Adam Raised a Cain"

A female friend was trying to text me the other day, when she complained about her phone. "It's taking forever to send messages."
"Taking forever, eh?" I remarked, "your phone must be a woman."
AMIRITE fellas?!
We men and women have fun berating each other. It reminds me of the playful boys-vs-girls debate among believers, and even non-believers, about whose fault it truly was that mankind fell into sin in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve, the first two human beings on Earth, disobeyed God and ate of the forbidden fruit. And while the man in me wants to put the blame at 60/40, judging by Scripture I can only surmise that the Fall in the Garden was equally the fault of man and woman.

We read in Genesis 2:15 "Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it." Concerning Eve's creation, she was described in relation to Adam as "a helper comparable to him." Further, Genesis 2:24 tells us, concerning the spousal relationship, "Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh."
In the third chapter of Genesis, we're sent headlong into the Fall of Man. "The serpent," it says, "was more cunning than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made." 
Note here the distinction - maybe I'm just reading too much into semantics, but the serpent (who we of course know was Satan) is identified with "the field," not with the Garden. If one accepts any significance about the use of the word "field" rather than "garden" in describing the serpent, we can logically assume he had no business in the Garden of Eden. He was an intruder. And, as we read previously, God had given Adam the specific duty of tending and keeping the Garden. So, Adam had overlooked one responsibility already in preventing the serpent from entering his home - just as we today must keep evil influences and destructive behaviors from our own doors.

What happens next is infamous - it should be, because it led to the world sucking. The serpent persuaded Eve, through lies and twisting of speech, that there would be no disastrous consequence to eating of the fruit of "the tree of life." So she did, her and "her husband with her" (emphasis added, Genesis 3:6).
Long story short, mortality and sin entered the world, Adam and Eve were kicked out of the Garden of Eden, and every ugly, hurtful deed that's ever been done can be traced back to this fateful day.

But concerning whose "fault" it was that this happened, we see plainly that Adam and Eve were "one flesh," that Adam had a responsibility and duty in overseeing the Garden of Eden, that he faltered in negligence when he allowed the serpent near his wife, and that Eve too stumbled when she heeded the word of the enemy. The man and woman were one flesh.
In the New Testament, Paul at two points seems to distribute responsibility evenly. In his masterpiece of Romans, Paul writes in the fifth chapter, "through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned". (It would be an injustice to grace if I didn't include Paul's complete thought here - he writes that though sin entered the world through one man, "the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many.") Later, in his first epistle to his protege and faithful companion Timothy, while referring to the authority of men in the church, Paul scolds Eve particularly for her part in the Fall, writing, "Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression." (1 Timothy 2:14)

I used to read a lot about serial killers. One thing that linked almost all of them was an abusive and painful childhood. So many of these murderers' parents or guardians beat or neglected them, allowed them to be exposed to hideous things, or forced them to commit atrocious acts at tender ages. These killers' parents made them pay for their twisted actions, leading them to paths of darkness and destruction.
In God's grace, He often won't punish us for our sins - but we sure make each other pay for them.

It goes right back to the beginning of man on Earth - if Cain's parents had not sinned, he would not have been envious of his brother Abel, would never have killed his own flesh and blood. (Not to suggest our sins as individuals, much like Cain's sins, are merely results of environment or ancestry - rather, they are the result of our surrender to temptation, as it was from the beginning in the Garden).

But it should also be noted that the first Biblical prophecy of the Messiah, Jesus, is spoken directly by God, during His casting of Adam and Eve from the Garden - He says to Satan the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel." (Genesis 3:15) In the bruising of His heel, God was speaking of the unthinkable pain His Son would endure on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice to atone for the sins of man; this would bring doom to Satan, a destiny for a lake of fire, therefore the bruising of his head. But compared to the abundant life, on Earth and after, which Jesus' death and resurrection gives to so many, the pain He would endure on account of sin would seem like a wound of the heel.

Some might ask "Why didn't God just atone for the sins of all mankind right then and there?"
Thousands of years passed between the casting of man from the Garden of Eden and the death of Jesus on the cross. In those thousands of years, not only were we given prophecy after prophecy of the coming Savior who would atone for us, but we see the Hebrews who lived under the rigorous Law of Moses - which was fulfilled by the final, ultimate sacrificial Lamb in Jesus Christ. So, we have thousands of years of prophets foretelling the suffering and victory of the Messiah, and years of "the law of sin and death" as Paul described it. These things were an ominous prelude to what was to come, a prologue if you will, so that we would have more reason to believe that Jesus is the Messiah.
Despite this, there are still many who don't believe - how much less would believe if Jesus had been sacrificed on the same day as the Fall of Man? We would have had no prophets, no anchor of history, to affirm to Jesus' Authority.

Speaking of prophecy and the rotten things we do to one another, individually or collectively, sometimes I let the assurances of Biblical prophecy turn into apathy. For example, I know there will never be world peace, at least until Christ's millennial reign, so I don't fret about it; I know we'll never eliminate poverty and starvation from the world because the Bible tells us that people will become more and more evil, always swindling, stealing, and wronging each other. I believe in global warming and climate change, but I believe it to be a prelude to the Great Tribulation which Jesus described. And all of this was entered into the world through the devil's deception in the Garden.
But I shouldn't think that the fact that the world will always be a rotten place excuses me from my responsibility as an individual - Christ has given us a responsibility to live peaceably as individuals even if many others don't, to give and bless those in need, even if there are many who don't, not to litter and to care for the environment, even if so many don't even acknowledge that the environment is changing, and not for the better.
Will it bring peace to the Middle East or Washington DC? No. Will it eliminate tyranny and poverty? No. But each good deed done in Christ's name, no matter how small in the world's eyes, sends a ripple of hope in a sea of very ugly, bloody water.

“Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way. But when the grain had sprouted and produced a crop, then the tares also appeared. So the servants of the owner came and said to him, ‘Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares?’ He said to them, ‘An enemy has done this.’ The servants said to him, ‘Do you want us then to go and gather them up?’ But he said, ‘No, lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.”’”
-our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, Matthew 13:24-30

Why I Can't Attack Evolution & Islam & Etc

I've learned recently, or may have just forgotten in complacency, that if one has guts enough to believe in something, he or she can't be thin-skinned about it.

Among the words of Jesus I remember and cherish the most are those recorded in Matthew 10:16 - "Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves. Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves."

I've long touted the claim that I hope to keep my mind as narrow as "the narrow way" preached by our Lord. If I leave it open to any doctrine, teaching, theory, philosophy or creed, I become a random mess of miscellany. My mind and heart must test what is spoken to me before I believe it. And if I believe the words of the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit to be the absolute truth, then to those words I have a duty, to preach, to encourage, to defend. But I've recently come to realize that the verse on which the practice of 'Christian apologetics,' i.e. the defense of our belief, should be based is Matthew 5:39, when Jesus said, "whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also."
Actions speak louder than words. If I'm criticized for my faith, I do no good, I win no souls for Christ, I warm no hearts, by retaliating with endless strife and arguing. Sure, I may have once owned Richard Dawkins in a debate at Oxford Lecture Hall, and made him hold my jacket while doing so - but who did I feed? Who did I bless, to whom did I minister?
Nobody.
God's words through the apostle Paul are "Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies," and "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal."

I would have done far more good to have kept silent, left the lecture hall, and went to whom the Lord led me to bless, rather than keying "LOSER" on Mr. Dawkins' car and going to the Manchester United after-game party at a local pub.
Jesus' silence during His interrogation was among His greatest works - He knew the men questioning and striking Him would have accepted no answer He could have given; the Pharisees were only determined to see Him crucified, Herod Antipas wanted only a miracle for his own amusement, and Pontius Pilate only wanted desperately to be rid of the whole matter. Jesus' actions spoke louder than any response He could have given - He gave Himself on the cross as a ransom for the souls of you and me, and rose again from the dead.
As Isaiah prophesied six hundred or so years before Jesus' birth, "He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so He opened not His mouth" (Isaiah 53:7).

I convince no one of the truth of the Gospel by arguing about it; I have a much better chance abiding by it.

So, what does this have to do with my defense of the Gospel and of my Lord, and my newfound refusal to directly attack any other doctrine?

I don't know if the Koran teaches or endorses violence against non-Muslims; as far as religion goes, it's really irrelevant to me, because what I do know is that Islam does not profess Jesus Christ as "the way, the truth and the life," as the only Lord and Savior. Rather, Islam teaches that Jesus was only a prophet or "helper" of God, and further denies His death on the cross and Resurrection from the dead. This is all I need to know about Islam, or any religion, creed, or doctrine of spiritual substance, before I give it any attention. It doesn't matter if Scientology truly teaches men to eat placentas or not - it does matter that Scientology denies Jesus as the Christ. It doesn't matter if Mormonism teaches its members to wear special underwear or not - it does matter that Mormonism was founded when false gospels were added to the truth of Jesus, which the Word of God strictly forbids.
Do I desire for Muslims or Scientologists to come to know Jesus Christ as their Savior? Do I desire for Mormons to abandon the false teachings they follow? Absolutely. But I cannot lead them to Him with venom in my words.

As for the evolutionary and Big Bang theories, at least in the way they've been so widely accepted, there are many Christians who subscribe to them. I've found that science and the Bible are in harmony - but when a theory or claim, scientific or not, denies what was authored by God through prophets and parchment, I can't accept it. For the the Big Bang or human evolution to work, the Biblical account of Creation must be denied. This comes from the Scripture I believe to be holy and sovereign, from God's mouth to man's hand, a Book He would not let become faulty or flawed. I don't have to attack the ins and outs of evolution or other theories to defend what I believe.

I'm too stupid for lots of things - mathematics, algebra, women, and science among them. The most profound scientific thing in my argumentative canon, and even this is probably theoretically flawed somehow, is that if Louis Pasteur disproved the myth of spontaneous generation, why is the Big Bang Theory still being taught? Again, I'm sure someone from the scientific field would correct me or explain this, but remember: I know little to nothing about those things. So if you're a scientist, you probably would find it frivolous to correct an idiot like me, admittedly unlearned, on my claim.

And, again, being uneducated on matters of evolution, Big Bangs and et cetera, I've no business attacking them. I do however have every right to dismiss them as they pertain to the Word I believe to be flawless and holy. Much like I would not want someone with little or no knowledge of the Bible to attack it, if I were an evolutionist, I'd have no time for someone like me, whose last scientific studies came from watching Beakman's World, criticizing their claims.

It's enough for a person to defend his or her own beliefs without directly attacking another's; if the defense is done so in love, he or she makes a case, whether he can prove it or not, even if there are others who believe the same thing though they may not behave as they should. In the eyes of the world, my claim of Jesus' divinity may be dismissed as superstition, but I open the door to many more ears if I stick to what I know, and who I love, rather than what I don't know and those whose love I could drive away from accepting the Gospel.

May the grace and peace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.

What God Taught Me When I Gave Away My Cat

I'd always known that in addition to being omnipotent and omniscient, Yahweh God is also a loving God. There was no question in my mind of this, no matter what gritty and sorrowful, ugly things came my way. But I'd always struggled with the thought of God weeping. Is it okay to think such a thing? No one living knows what God looks like in His physical form, so that added to the difficulty of picturing Him crying. All I know is He's not an old bald man because aging and decay are human side effects from the Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden - God does not sin, is not mere flesh and bone and therefore does not age.

I knew He had emotions such as anger, joy, even regret - we're told in Genesis He "was sorry" He had made mankind before He gracefully saved Noah and his family from the Great Flood.
But did He shed tears when I hurt? Did He grieve in His heart when I strayed from Him?

I suppose, in my Clint Eastwood wannabe mind, tears and crying reflected weakness, which could never exist in an almighty and all-powerful God. But also, being omnipotent, God does not contradict Himself - He wrote through the apostle Paul in Romans 12:15, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep."

This past February, West Texas A&M University purchased the property on which my apartment sat in Canyon, Texas, with plans to turn it into a parking lot. All residents had until April 15th to get out. I couldn't take my cat, Catman Crothers, to Amarillo where I was moving. So, I had to send him back home to my mother with my friend Jake.

But I knew Catman Crothers would not understand, being an animal. He wouldn't understand why I was chasing him to put him in his carrier as he meowed in defiance. For the three hour journey back home to my mother, he would be confined to his pet carrier, in the dark, scared and wanting his human. As I sat him in Jake's backseat, I made a guttural sound and began babbling about the Chicago Bears - man-talk, you know. I walked back up to my apartment, tightened with the feeling I mustn't bust out bawling.

And the Holy Spirit told me, not audibly but you know what I mean, that God feels the same a lot of the time, but to a degree we can't begin to fathom. He allows us to go through certain trials, afflictions, and tests, changes in environment, employment, and emotion, for reasons we may not understand at the time - and may never understand until we get to His bosom in heaven - but they must happen.

Any parent who's ever left a crying child on their first day of kindergarten knows what I'm talking about. Hey, I know what it's like to have kids - I've had two cats.

We must also remember God watched His only Son die an agonizing death.

And through His Son's resurrection we are united with the Father, which must bring Him abundant joy, just as He must grieve when we stray from Him, defy His word, or deny He's even there.

My Sinful Desire For Death

"I think it's a sin not to want to live." - Warren Zevon

There was a time in my life (it may be known to you as "2005-2009") when I didn't like being alive. To put it further, I didn't want to live anymore. For the most part, I wasn't doing anything to hasten my death - save for a suicide attempt on January 8, 2006, which as it turned out did no damage whatsoever to my physical well-being.

My desire to die came from a compound of things, namely a psychiatric illness that still backhands me, an illness I can describe best as being like "an anthology of vulgar words on a vandalized memorial." What made it worse was the devil's exploitation of my illness; it's no sin to be ill by any means, and any doctrine that teaches so is un-Biblical and false. Knowing God has things for me to do, epic and awesome things, the devil decided to try and convince me to not do anything at all but wait for death, knowing he could no longer convince me to commit outright suicide.

But though it's no sin to be ill, mentally or physically, my sin lay in the things borne of my desire for death. In 2 Corinthians 5:1-8, the apostle Paul wrote of worldly trials and the subsequent desire to leave this earth and be with God in heaven, and the promise that, though we remain temporarily on this earth, we have a heavenly home with the Lord to which we will go someday.
But my desire to die defied God's holy Scripture in that, though my main want was to be with Him and away from pain, I did not delight in doing His will by living before dying; rather, I was merely existing.
Further, each aspect of my wish for death was rooted in selfishness and vanity. When I'd fantasize about my funeral I'd think of what song they would play; maybe some mid-tempo tune that described me so poignantly. I'd think of people getting up to speak, telling stories of me, and the funny things I did; I'd even relish the thought of Marlon Prichard telling of the time I tricked him into joining the Black Panthers, eliciting laughter for me, and of course, tears for me.

Philippians 3:7-14 tells us of leaving our worldly riches, our worldly wisdoms and self-perceived awesomenesses behind for the sake of following Christ. In my case, my riches in this world were very dark and bitter riches, a wealth of death and tears.

These days, I revel not in a desire to die, but I revel in the struggles on earth, the battles of good and evil, the overcoming of painful, lonely trials with faith and love. It oddly gives me strength, to hear someone tell me that my belief is an unevolved superstition, as the whole time my faith is cursed, I live and feel His strength and truth down to my bone marrow - I liken their mockery to the college kids in the 60s who spat on Vietnam War veterans; they were haughty in their own perceived righteousness, and held disdain for those who had been to war, all the while safe with their Dylan records and smoky dorms.
I'm living now, and painful as living can be, I'm alive; God delivered me, and led me away from the cushy, Nerf-soft comfort of hopelessness and death.