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| | I just got through looking at a magazine called Children's Ministry, and it was really interesting. There were quite a few ads for VBS programs, featuring hip action heroes and fun activities to instill biblical values in kids. I kinda miss those days. You know the ones I'm talking about—the ones where you accepted what you were told without any hesitation because you trusted people, the ones where there was no doubt in your mind about God, the ones where all of life was reduced to a simple black-and-white decision without any grey area. The days before strife, conflict, doubt, pain, and hormonal fluctuations. The days when you could sing "I'm in the Lord's Army" and not feel silly. The days where you had all of life ahead of you, and all you wanted to do was grow up and get your driver's license. The days when God was allowed in school (which, granted, God was banned from school before I was born [the 70s, wasn't it?], but at my elementary school, we had a Baptist principal who wouldn't hear of not having prayer in school). The days with playgrounds and books with colorful pictures. I miss those days. Why can't we all have the faith of a child? I think that's a great thing to desire.
Oh, I know, don't tell me. A child's faith is a blind faith that resides not in logic but in trust, not in empirical evidence but in hearsay. And in this day in age, we should take everything we hear with a grain of salt—we should always test the spirits. But a child's faith is based on truth. If you tell a child that Jesus came and healed people and fed people and made everybody happy, then he'll believe that. For a while. But in that child's life, there is a center, a truth, a focal point that he go cling to. A anchor against the winds (and whims) of society. Roots that hold him fast against the ebb and tide of atheism. I wish we today had that same center. It seems that everything now is subjective—if a religion fits you, go with it. Until something new and better arrives. It's like computers: You can buy either a Mac (which only sinners and graphic designers use) or a PC, so you have a choice right there, and neither selection is the right one. There's no correct computer to buy. It's subjective. And then, in five minutes, they'll have another computer, a better one, one that can kick your computer's tail. So you go buy the next model, and your cyberlife is always changing, fleeing from one form of obsolescence to another one. There's nothing in computers we can anchor ourselves to. Nothing that works regardless of what platform you use, what browser you use, what peripherals you own, or how many gigs you have. We can cling to calculators as the ultimate truth because they're outdated and obsolete in the light of computers. Faith is like that. People use to be content to be Christian or pagan, but then they wanted combine the two religions, and they came up with Catholicism. And after a couple of centuries, people became unhappy again, so they invented Islam. Then Lutheranism. Then Calvinism and Presbyterianism. Then Baptists, Methodists, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Church of God, Church of God in Christ, Church of Blah Blah Blah, Blahism, and so on. It seems there's no real, true religion to cling to. No truth in the face of all these opposing viewpoints and beliefs. You might say, "You can always cling to the Bible," but there's even more than one of those. Catholics include the Apocrypha, Jehovah's Witnesses have their ridiculous New World Translation, Mormons have their Book of Mormon, Episcopalians have their Book of Common Prayer, and, more inclusively, there's the Qur'an and every other religion's "holy" book. And, excluding all of those examples, we can't even agree on a Bible to use. Some hold the KJV as inspired ("If the KJV was good enough for Peter, it's good enough for me."), some say the NIV is more like a New International Perversion, some pronounce anathema on the TNIV for its gender-inclusive wording, and there's The Message which rewords everything God already said. The times are filled with subjectivism—if ABC book/religion/political party/computer/hooker/cabbage/toothbrush/(insert anything here) isn't right for you, try XYZ etc./etc./etc. Let me say now that if you get to choose your religion, that invalidates it right then and there. You can't choose what's objective for you. Objective truth is objective for everyone everywhere at all times. And because people don't want to accept this, our society is riddled with subjectivity. I want to return to the days of childhood where the Bible was the Bible, the church was the church, and God was God. I want the faith of a child that clings to Truth unquestioningly.
On different yet similar note, I'm kinda tired of watching religious TV. Here at OC, we get TBN and DayStar, and they're both a disappointment. TBN is full of crazies—hands waving, "amens" and "hallelujahs" flying everywhere, miracles, female preachers, you name it. DayStar is a little less scary, but no better. I'm tired of Joel O'Steen's ridiculous "wealth gospel" (if you follow God, you'll get riches and power and fame and hookers or something), I'm tired of people thinking they can do miracles and fooling others into thinking the same (I don't deny that miracles don't happen today; I deny that they happen through laying on of hands and other similar means—that power died with the apostles), I'm tired of allegedly religious people being so physically minded (some seem to preach that the only thing God is good for is a cure for arthritis—how 'bout we preach spiritual healing first, and then physical healing?), I'm tired of stuff about our "Jewish brothers" (some seem to think that God will still save the nation of Israel), I'm tired of watered-down theology (by this I mean that some seem to preach only happiness, fluffy clouds, and pink bunnies, as if sadness is an emotion Christians don't experience), and I'm tired of people just plain skipping over the truth (as in denying that baptism saves, teaching the unbiblical "sinner's prayer," and so on). On Sunday mornings on channel 9, a show called The Gospel of Christ comes on, and it's clear, plain, simple biblical truth. I like that. 'Tis a good show. I want religious TV that's worth watching—not necessarily something that will make me feel good, but something worth my time.
While I'm on the subject, let's discuss these physically-minded "spiritual" folk. I am not saying that we shouldn't pray to God for physical healing, because we most definitely should. After all, He's kinda in charge of the universe; if you want to talk to anybody, He's the Man. But some shows are all about physical healing. "Miracle" services, "victory campaigns," prayer cloths, prayer . . . I don't know, prayer cabbage probably. I saw this one show last summer, and they wanted people to take a piece of cloth about a foot long and mail that cloth to Such-and-Such Ministries. All the cloths they received would then be placed in a few piles on the front of the stage, and some woman, during their healing service, would pray over the cloths. Then Such-and-Such Ministries would mail them back to their owners, and the owners would place them under the pillows so they can be healed overnight. What a bunch of bull-honky. Ree. Donk. You. Lus. They treat God like He's a good-luck charm, as if having a cloth blessed by some "holy" person will heal your infirmities. God is not your Vending Machine in the Sky, your Cosmic Coke Machine. With a vending machine, you insert some coins and receive a beverage. With God, if you insert a cloth, you get a cloth back! Not a miracle. God owes us absolutely nothing, so when we expect God to give us something, why don't we go by biblical expectation? Insert faith, receive an eternal home in heaven.
Sorry, I just had to get all that off my chest. I didn't intend on being so deep in this post, but there it is. In other news, we had a Japanese Night at OC tonight. It was pretty fun. I got to eat some Japanese food (prettty tasty, I must say), and a girl wrote my name in Japanese: じゃれっど. For some reason, she wrote it in Hiragana, but it's really pretty nonetheless. Thanks, Japanese girl, whoever you are. Oh, by the way, what that actually says is "jah-reh-(pause)-doh" for you non-speakers-of-Japanese. Don't ask why the "doh" is there. It just is.
My Psalms teacher Niccum is in Germany right now. I really like that class, so I'm kinda sad. Oh, well. Hey, I should start working on that paper that I have to do for that class. All right, well, here are my Video Picks for the Week:
America’s
Funniest Videos: Slides
Tango
Commercial
Star
Wars: The Empire Brokeback
Top
Gun 2: Brokeback Squadron
Brokeback
to the Future
The
Brokeback Samurai
Okay, yeah, I know, that's very hypocritical of me to talk about Christianity and then post mock trailers about gay people/driods. But I thought they were funny. Chao. | | | Posted 2/20/2006 9:23 PM - 5 Views - 8 eProps - 4 comments
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