Birth Marks

Today I was playing with one of my best friends. His name is Drew and he is four years old. He thinks that I am way cooler than I actually am and frankly, I enjoy the self esteem boost. When I hang out with him I get to pretend(Publicly) that I am in space and exploring jungles and being eaten by chairs and pillows. I love hanging out with Drew.

We were playing just like we would any other day and drew picked up a toy and held it to his leg. No matter what I did he would make sure to keep his leg covered by the toy. I finally asked him what the deal was and he shrugged and said that he was hiding something from me.(Kids are honest, and when they're not, it's very obvious.) After much debate, I convinced him to uncover the secret. As he moved the toy from his leg, a small brown circle appeared. He had a birthmark and he was embarrassed about it. I tried to convince him that it was not a problem, but he was sure that he was defected. It was at this point that I remembered that he thought I was awesome and I figured it would be a great chance to show him my own "defect."

So I rolled up the pant leg on my left side to reveal my birth mark. I have a mark that I was embarrassed about for years. I used to put band aids on it and tell people that snakes bit me just to try and make them not pay attention to it. In hind sight, I guess snake bites were not the most effective repellent for curiosity. Anyway, he saw mine and ran his fingers across it. It blew his mind that someone of my stature would have such a mark. He found comfort in himself. (I now know why Thomas stuck his fingers in the wounds.)

It's funny the way that we are uncomfortable about the way we are made. I think it is one thing to try and cover sin with our toys and talents, but to try and cover our characteristics that are God given is just wrong. I want to address the issues together even though they really aren't the same. I am constantly trying to cover up the things I do that people would look down upon and I am also constantly trying to keep people from finding out that I am actually not that good at this or actually not that good at that. What a waste of time and energy!(I'm really ripping off Derek Webb with this last paragraph.)

What if we actually loved each other to the point that we could trust each other enough to be real with each other?

If we were able to be real, we'd be able to pray about real issues. If we were able to be real, we wouldn't be fake. If we were able to be real, we wouldn't try and find ourselves in other people or in other created things.

I want you to find at least one person who you can be real with. I don't mean for you to call them up and confess all your sins and be done. I want you to meet with them regularly and let them in always. Make your life theirs and theirs yours. Your hearts should be so in sync with each other that when one is struggling, the other is very aware.

I have a friend who I am attempting to be this way with. It was really hard at first, and kind of awkward, but it has proven to be worth it. He knows that I struggle with self worth issues and that I try to be smarter than I am. He knows that I am insecure about my "talents" and that I look for easy ways out of social situations because I am scared of what people might think of me. He knows about things I have done that almost no other human is aware of. He knows that I have been a slave to sin and that I am daily being liberated from this weak but pleasure filled hold. He knows my deepest struggles and he loves me deeper than any friend has. I know about his deep sins and about his insecurities as well and I pray for him regularly. We have let the Spirit break down the walls that we put up to block out judgement and love has stormed the city! We love each other in a way that I didn't know strait guys could. I will die for him if the opportunity arises.

I am learning that it is not until we can share in pain that we can share in joy. We can always share in happiness, but unconditional love that delivers an enslaved being evokes a power far greater than that of happiness. I am calling us to chase after joy and love because this is what the Lord has given us. Let's stop settling for happiness.

One can not be resurrected until he is dead! One can not be freed from something that has not enslaved him. If you are saved, you have been saved from something. By denying the sin, we are denying the redemption. By creating a lie, we are eliminating truth.

Life is in raw relationships. We must learn to forgive each other. What is is for you to love your brothers? Even the evil men of this world do that! Love is working when we can forgive the unforgivable. If He can forgive me and love me, so can you. For my sin is against God, and God alone; not you. Love will make this kind of living possible.

The truth is that at the end of the day, we all have our birth marks. Why hide them? Sometimes it is the only way we can relate to those who seem to be greater than us and in essence it is in these moments that we realize that no one is greater except for He who had no sin.

I believe that Jesus is holy and that in his death and resurrection he gave us his Spirit. I believe that if his Spirit is in me and in you, we will become one.

Read 1 John 1:5-10
Better yet, read 1 John. It's short.

The Basketball wasn't Free.

Earlier today I was walking through the garage at my parents house. It is filled with all kinds of things that none of us need. I stood in the corner and scanned the abyss in search of a weed eater. I didn't find it, but I did find an old beat up basketball. It was white and orange and said "The University of Texas" on it. My mind immediately flashed back to seventh grade when I went to a UT basketball camp with my friend. He had sweat bands and I didn't, so I just modified some tube socks to make myself equal. In hind sight, I must have looked like an idiot. Anyway, I saw this basketball and immediately remembered that I had gotten it for free when I completed the week of camp. When I got the ball, I was extremely excited and used it until it was smooth like a watermelon. It was the ball that I used the most and it was the one ball that made me better at what I loved to do. I had a great court ball that never touched the street, but I didn't care about its perfection anymore. The white and orange one was special and It was FREE!!!

Now that I am older I know that my parents paid for the ball when they paid for the camp. The ball isn't as cool now. It was the type of ball that no one would ever buy, but in the event that it was free, it would be cool. (Kind of like AOL CDs.) The thing is, I spent lots of time with that ball. It was my favorite even though it wasn't my best.

God bought me this life and it's about time I stop acting like it was free. It isn't something that I get at the end of camp because my father paid enough money. It is something that my father offered and that I accepted. I have access to it NOW. It is a present blessing and a future reality.

My life is far from perfect. It isn't thick with leather and it hasn't only been used on a shiny court. It is beat up and smooth and shaped like a watermelon because cars have run over it. But dad gummit, this life was bought for me and I want to start treating it this way.

Let's stop thinking that life was free. Life has been invented, stolen, bought back and given to us.

Do us all a favor and USE YOURS.

Turn the other Cheek? But that hurts!

"If your God makes war,
then he's no God I know.
Because Christ
would not send boys to die."
-A.A. Bondy (American Hearts)

While I love this song and I love this album, I have to confess that I don't agree with Bondy's logic. I do agree that God does not make war, but I don't agree with the second part of the statement. I would say that Christ would not send boys to kill. For me to say that Christ would never send boys to die would be for me to deny the line of martyrs who have kept this movement going. It would be for me to deny Christ's act of mercy.

I believe that Christ died. I believe that he had the ability not to, and that he didn't really want to. He asked the father to pass the cup from him. I believe that a strong message in the gospel is the one of submission. Christ's death was the ultimate example of submission. Many people died much more painful deaths than the one Christ did. So if your faith is rooted in the message of The Passion of the Christ, I would encourage you to rethink things a bit. To me, a god- The God, stepping down to a level far below his, and then letting the inhabitants of this level kill him, is much more powerful of a statement than the blood and guts that were spilled in the process. Don't misunderstand me here, I don't mean to say that the cross style of death should be treated as insignificant. I am simply saying that the fact that He died means more to me than the way that He died.

Christ set an example for us.

He trusted that the father had things under control.(?)

He chose not to exercise his power over the people as an act of love for them.(?)

I think it is safe to say that we don't trust and that we do exercise power because if we do trust and don't exercise power, we will certainly die. We are living a life rooted in fear. When people say things like "well you just have to take up your cross." in response to a stressful social issue, I am enraged. I don't think they realize what this means. This is a call to die. This isn't saying that when ever life gets hard, we are to label it as persecution and let it be our cross. Life is hard for everyone- Christians too. The difference is that Christians have a hope in death. My buddy Ben said to me once, "You're not defined by the ways you fall, but by the ways you get back up."

Taking up your cross means to submit your will and life to an other. (This means that their life is now more important than your own. If we live like this, how can we possibly kill?!) I have heard a story about a guy who is no longer an active BLOOD member, but is still technically in the gang. We will call him Steve. He has recently found Christ and is walking closely with some college Christians in this. He recently presented a concern to his new friends. He told them that when a BLOOD member joins a religion or an other gang, his former members will track him down and beat him with bats and chains. He is very scared for his life. One of his friends, we'll call him Fred, has told this ex-gang member that he will walk with him at all times. Fred has committed to being a part of the beating when it happens. He might die a the hands of hate filled men, all for something that he didn't even do. But what an act of love to my boy Steve! This is what Christ does for us.

Christ had every right to fight back. The men who killed him were doing so with hate in their eyes and it was unjust. Imagine what it would be like if we chose to submit as Christ did! The world wouldn't know what to do with us!

To take up your cross is to walk into danger for the sake of an other. (Many will back up being a soldier with this. I won't.)
To take up your cross is not to fear other men so much that you will fly across the ocean and kill them before they can kill you.

Let's stop acting like it is our job to know and enforce things. If you claim to understand God, you don't. The God of the universe will never be understood by a man, and therefore any man who thinks that he understands him is a man understanding a god other than that of the universe. I can't stand the fact that we think that we are so right that we have split up with each other. When I drive around the city and see church after church, doing their own thing in their own bubble, I get this feeling like something is wrong. The gospel of Jesus Christ is one of unity. This means that we can be different and that we can disagree, but we will still get along. This is what makes us different from the world. Our love should make people wonder what we are up to.

We shall be known by our love for each other, not our hate for the world. From the outside looking in, we look like a group of rule followers who can't stand our own kind and who advocate the hate of the other kinds.

Let's love one an other. The Spirit of God, through Jesus Christ, is the only way. It is the only way. Let's start by submitting to one an other. It will be hard. Submitting could mean that even when your idea is better, you go with an other one. I promise you that if you prayerfully submit to one an other, you will find life and fulfillment in the process. My mom gave up a whole life to have kids. My life became more important to her than her own and in the process she had to watch me do some really stupid stuff that she knew was unnecessary. That is true submission. Ask her and I bet she'll tell you that she would do it all over again. When we submit, we love, and when we love, we submit.

If you disagree, make it known to me. I said all of these things because I believe them to be true, but realize that my belief is completely incomplete without yours included. I don't claim for this to be the only way or only idea and I don't want to fight. I am seeking peace among believers and as a result, peace in the world. I am a ligament in a body that has much greater parts. Please bring yourself to the table in a realistic manner. Real love will not be experienced unless we are real people. Let's love each other. I'm praying that we would learn to love each other.

"If a writer is so cautious that he never writes anything that cannot be criticized, he will never write anything worth reading. If you want to help other people you have got to make up your mind to write things that some men will condemn,"
-Thomas Merton.

Thank you for reading. I love you.

It's Naked Time.

I am not surprised that Adam and Eve put clothes on when they noticed that they were naked.
While being naked is amazing and liberating, it is also scary. Very scary. It's who we are.
But if we never get naked, we'll never make babies.
Therefore, we must get naked and be naked to each other. I am sitting next to my friend, Wes, and we just told each other a whole lot about ourselves. We uncovered sins that have been hidden since they happened, and it was scary, but liberating.
In a sense- a very real sense, we became naked. We shed all of the crap that we have wrapped ourselves in and as a result, our true selves, that we ourselves have never seen, were exposed. It was amazing.

True love is experienced when you are looking at someone else with such intensity and fascination that you can't even think about yourself.

What I mean is this: When you have a penis, a vagina is incredibly fascinating. The opposite it also true(so I hear). When a naked man is standing before a naked woman, they both completely stop thinking about their own nakedness and focus on the naked beauty of the other. This is why we must not taint our minds and hearts with pornography. If we constantly focus our eyes on pornography, we get used to the opposite gender. When we get used to it, it is nothing special to us. When it is nothing special to us, we have to look into our own minds to find new ideas to feed our fix. It is at this point that we have become self-centered people who are owned by our own desires. Not to mention, porn is unrealistic!

While this whole sexual thing is true, I want to address a social thing instead. Back to Wes and I. As we stripped ourselves down, we began to see things in each other that we have never found within ourselves. It was incredible to see how beautifully this guy was made! I was so in love with who he was that I began to have no fear of revealing who I am to him. Like biological reproduction, two parties carried unique things to the table, and mixed to create an ultimate product. Our relationship is the child that is created when we are connected by the Holy Spirit living in us. This child is its own being with its own characteristics that are completely unique to this conception. It grows on its own but is constantly cultivated by the two of us. It mingles with the other children and effects them completely. As we grow, so does it and it begins to amaze us with its beauty.

Please seek purity in your hearts. The pure hearted are the ones who get to see God. God wants us to see him, why else would he have showed up here in a man-suit?! Not only is he capable of purifying our hearts, he is willing! He desires for us to strip away the mortal clothes and live as immortal beings who are not afraid of the grave. As long as we wear mortal clothes, we will judge mortal clothes. If we want to make this work, we must trust each other enough to be who we are around each other. We must be able to drop our rocks that the other person deserves to get thrown at them and trust that they will drop the rocks that should be thrown at us.

Be real with each other. It is really cool. What is love if it is limited to good things? What is a pond if it is limited to what you can see from the land? Of course we love the good things, so do the tax collectors, but what if we were able to love the quirks about a person? What if we were able to love the people nailing us to a cross?! We can through the blood of Jesus Christ, our Lord who cared enough to die. I have seen small glimpses of this love and they have been the best glimpses of anything I have ever seen.

One thing I know for sure is that we can't do this alone. I am only able to truly love when that special girl is standing before me with such perfection that I have forgotten all personal desires except for the one to let her know how amazingly she is built. While marriage is the easy example, we must find this passion for every other human being. We are all made by God and therefore we are all hiding things that will blow each others' minds when we let Him uncover them.

Let's get naked.

(Please know that I am aware of my ignorance. I am simply wondering.)

A Parable.

There was a room and inside it was a painting. It was more beautiful than any other painting and had many things in it. Among them, there was a sandy beach, forrest, sky, and an ocean. Four people were brought into the room and were sat down in front of the painting. They were each given a pencil and a paper and were asked to write down the five most important words about the painting.

Person A wrote the words:
1. Sandy
2. Tan
3. Beach
4. Warm
5. Peaceful

Person B wrote the words:
1. Green
2. Lush
3. Tropical
4. Alive
5. Forest

Person C wrote the words:
1. Infinite
2. Clouds
3. Big
4. Blue
5. Sky

Person D wrote the words:
1. Vast
2. Deep
3. Sea
4. Wet
5. Salty

When they were done writing their words, they all shared with each other what they had written. As person A read her list, the others began to scoff at her because they felt she was wrong. The same thing happened as each read their own list to the group. None of the lists had the same words and so each of the people felt as if all the others were wrong. Angry, and stuffed with pride, they all left the room and the painting behind, and went to ineffectively tell people about the painting, using only the words they had written themselves.

Person A had five words.
Person B had five words.
Person C had five words.
Person D had five words.
Just think, together they'd have twenty words- and a room with a painting.

Salt Water.

I freaking hate salt water.
It tastes nasty, burns my eyes, burns in my cuts and makes my skin itchy. It is that bad kind of itchy that scratching doesn't help.
I love fresh water.
It tastes good, agrees with my eyes, leaves my cuts alone, and doesn't make my skin itchy.(Unless, of course, it is the water from my shower in Austin, which dries my skin out like jerky.)

I have two glasses of water, one salt, and the other fresh. If I lift the fresh water and pour a small amount of it into the salt water glass, the salt water is still salt water. But if I pour a small amount of the salt water into the fresh water, I now have two glasses of salt water. Concentration of salt is irrelevant, for there is salt in both and that is final.

James says that our mouths flow both blessing and cursing; fresh and salt water. I have always assumed that the curses were salt water because they burn and itch, and the blessings were fresh water because they are pure. I want to challenge this notion. If we read the bible through the lense of the sermon of the mount, salt will trigger a flag. We are the salt of the earth.

How can we be the salt of the earth and not produce water with salt in it?

Salt burns because it cleans. When it gets in a cut, it cleanses. When it gets in your eyes, it sucks. But I do know that my eyes are evil and disobedient, so I'd hope that they would react to cleansing. Everyone who has used Listerine knows that it only works if it hurts!

The words we speak are the overflow of our heart. So if we ever speak truth then there is salt water coming up, even if it is extremely diluted by the fresh water. The cool thing about the salt is that by its very nature, it is what defines the solution around it. If I have one tablespoon of salt in my friend's swimming pool, it is technically salt water.

Currently, my pool is mostly fresh water, with a small spoon of salt in it. While it is mostly curses, blessing is present and dominant. Imagine what life would be found if I was pumping water with a higher concentration of salt and a smaller concentration of suck. When the water in my heart is drank, the small amount of salt I gave is mixed with the water in the listener's heart.

This is where it gets serious. This means that speech is not the issue. This means that the heart is the issue. My friend, Wes, told me that there is no use in trying to tame the tongue. We should instead just pursue the purity of the heart so our tongue becomes a life bringing tool. In other words, don't arrest the drug dealers, burn the field of opium and plant a field of potatoes.(Everyone loves potatoes, except Travis Chapman... Sorry, man.)

Pray for the purity of your heart. Spend more time on this spiritual matter and less time on the social treadmill of taming the tongue. James and Wes agree on the fact that the tongue can't be tamed. Plus, why limit something that brings blessing?

It is my prayer that this water has enough salt to burn our wounds. Please excuse the weak, diluted, solution that it is. I assure you, any salt is from the Lord and is much more definite than the fresh water is has graciously mixed with. My goal is to be like the dead sea; so thick with salt that people can walk on it.

The Feast

I just got back from taking lunch to my friend. He has been begging me to bring him whataburger for the last few weeks and today I finally did it. It was really strange, but fun, to step back into a middle school cafeteria. It was just the way I left it- Full of children. As I made my way in, I immediately noticed the divisions. There were perfectly organized long tables and people were only sitting with people that looked like themselves. I finally found my friend, spotting his teeth before anything else.(What a smile that kid's got!) As I walked to his table, every eyeball in the room moved with me. People whispered and some laughed. I had three kids ask me if I was Jesus because I have long hair, leather sandals, a smile, and compared to their clothes, was wearing rags. I sat down and my friend was so excited he couldn't breath right. He immediately introduced me to the guys around him, who apparently knew more about me than I do, and we began to eat. A few kids from the neighborhood, whom I know, but rarely see, came up to me and talked as if we were best friends. They reminisced on the christmas gifts I had given them and talked about how fun football was that one time. They were clearly just coming to make it clear to everyone in the room that we had met before. The secret handshakes I had to take part in made it clear that they just needed some sort of outward sign that we were friends or something.

It was weird.
They all seemed to know me so well that the rest of the cafeteria thought they were saints.
But I don't know them. They never hang out with me.

We had plenty of food and I was able to share it with the guys sitting around us. My table had a blast and they all want me to come back. I think I will. I will bring a burger to whoever asks me for one.

After eating, we had about fifteen minutes to sit around. Kids immediately started telling me about each kid at each other table. They gossiped about how the other kids did things or how bad they smelled, or about the fact that they tuck their shirt into their whitie tighties. The girls would make orgasm noises to make the guys giggle. That one kid mixed all his food together and ate it so I would look at him. They talked to me about how much of a freak the girl at the end of the table was. It was disgusting. What was bad wasn't the words or actions, but the lack of worth in them. It wasn't that these kids were braking moral rules, but that they had no respect for each other or for themselves. It was in this lack of respect that they resorted to abusive rule breaking. These kids were tearing each other down for things that clearly didn't matter to me at all! These kids were splitting themselves apart for things that don't matter at all!

There were tons of other things that went on, each holding rich metaphorical value, but I think this breif description should be sufficient.

Do you know Christ, or do you play football with him and give him credit for the gifts he gave you?
Do you split yourselves apart over things that don't even matter a little bit?
Do you have a secret handshake with Christ, or do you let him hold you close?
Are you asking him to show up with food?