Christians, heaven's truth, love and judging
I find the weirdest things fascinating, I've found. I love how a baby finds fun in sucking a remote control, the magic of a fresh espresso and watching an artist perfect it's craft.I believe in some ways, we all are fascinating. My problem is that I stare a lot whenever I find something that fascinates me. Alas I can't stare at every person or else they may, will, think of me as a freak, later getting a brand new restraining order for my amusement.Anyhow... tonight I want to address a huge issue. While in Cancun I had this.. revelation if you want to call it that.I was hearing a story about how a christian girl was seeing this non believer. They asked me my opinion, so next, here's a thought on christian dating, heaven's truth, and judgment.
My first thought came on why would a christian person want to date a non Christian. It came pretty easy. See, the whole point or the whole problem on dating is being comfortable. The first date is more or less nothing but an interview, and we know some shallow 'important' details about the person we are interviewing/dating. If a second date comes, then the whole game becomes about if I am comfortable sharing my true self to this person. The whole thing becomes testing, guessing and measuring how he or she will react to our darkest secrets. If the other person is to pass the test, then he will be granted the privilege of knowing something no one else knows. "There's something you should know about me..."
The problem comes here. I will state this as a fact and I will assume it as true although I have been adviced never to do this, but this is just absolutely true: "We all have problems, dark secrets, things we don't want anyone to know. Things we are ashamed to share, to put it on the 5 o clock news. We prefer no one to know, and if someone should know, this person should not be scared about the situation"
When it comes to dating, I believe Christians prefer or seem to feel more comfortable with non christians simply because non christians have not forgotten a reality even when they may or may not be aware of it. We are all sinners, we are imperfect, we all fail.
The problem with christianity is that somehow, at some point, we are expected not to fail, and if we fail, let no one know about it because there's an image we must protect. Screw it.
The reality is that no matter what you believe, we all fall, stumble and have problems. If you have Christ in you, fine, there's no more condemnation for you and you are expected to fight harder, and eventually by God's grace you wil overcome. But in the mean time, to pretend our struggles cease to exist make us fake people.
The real christian is the one that relates to his nature. The real christian is the one that never forgets that he is a sinner but he has been redeemed, and never tries to pretend that he is better (by being cleaner or healthier) than another that does not believe, simply because in the end, we are all the same, unclean, filthy, sick people who desperately need God one way or the other.
The non christian, it is assumed, does not have an absolute sense of good and evil. He has notions of what is right, but he doesn't match good and evil with God, situation that is verified with christians. So, for a person to share a dark secret with a non christian, he will not judge it as bad or wrong and will not be scared or freaked out about the person, because he does not think the dark secret as dark, but simply as a matter of life.
The christian (not all, I must gladly state), the corny-super-heroe christian will expect to find a mate who has nothing but a positive result of life. The super hero, if you share your dark secret with him will judge you, will think of you as a filthy sinner who needs God more than he does (yeah right!), and that takes a huge leap of daring by calling himself a christian and still have those kinds of struggles.
Sure, with God we lack nothing, but our problems are far from solved.
See... botton line, if you think of Christianity, you can define it as regular people who find a super hero costume (or the costume finds them, better said), put it on, believe they are superheroes, get the power by believing and must save the world by using that power.
Now our mission is certainly to save the world from sin, using God's love, not that we save it, but that Jesus saved it before by giving the key to it, however, sometimes our superpowers break our hearts and hurt us.
I remember a scene from Spiderman 2, where Parker throws his costume away, because his aunt is having problems, Mary Jane leaves him, nothing is working for him because of his super hero side of life. He throws the costume and life gets better.
Now christianity sometimes is the same. We are regular people, sinners, no powers, nothing special. Peter Parker is your regular guy. Weak, not specially athletic, unpopular. He finds his powers, gets the costume and starts saving the world. Everything is great as he relies on his power, until that power starts taking away all that is dear to him.
God tells us all the time that by following him we will lose many things for the sake of getting what is most, Him. What happens when your heart is broken by someone who believes what you do? What happens when your people, fellow superheroes are nothing but jokes? We throw the costume away, renouncing to our superpowers, having a simpler life.
I believe we ought not to be thinking aobut how life is better with Jesus on your side, although it is, but we must rather focus on how we shouldn't lose sight that love, the real love, the real superpower is the one that allows everyone to coexist in peace. The moment we start thinking ourselves as better or gifted or special, that is the moment we will lose our mission.
Paul says it perfectly on how we should never forget where we come from, understanding the world so we can reach it:
"Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, 21meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized--whoever. I didn't take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ--but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I've become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn't just want to talk about it; I wanted to be real about it!"
Why do christians date non christians? Christians can be jerks. Christians can hold that truth so dear that we can forget that everyone is regular people on the inside, and that the superhero costume is only a privilege and we are learning to be always heroes, not mortals.
My first thought came on why would a christian person want to date a non Christian. It came pretty easy. See, the whole point or the whole problem on dating is being comfortable. The first date is more or less nothing but an interview, and we know some shallow 'important' details about the person we are interviewing/dating. If a second date comes, then the whole game becomes about if I am comfortable sharing my true self to this person. The whole thing becomes testing, guessing and measuring how he or she will react to our darkest secrets. If the other person is to pass the test, then he will be granted the privilege of knowing something no one else knows. "There's something you should know about me..."
The problem comes here. I will state this as a fact and I will assume it as true although I have been adviced never to do this, but this is just absolutely true: "We all have problems, dark secrets, things we don't want anyone to know. Things we are ashamed to share, to put it on the 5 o clock news. We prefer no one to know, and if someone should know, this person should not be scared about the situation"
When it comes to dating, I believe Christians prefer or seem to feel more comfortable with non christians simply because non christians have not forgotten a reality even when they may or may not be aware of it. We are all sinners, we are imperfect, we all fail.
The problem with christianity is that somehow, at some point, we are expected not to fail, and if we fail, let no one know about it because there's an image we must protect. Screw it.
The reality is that no matter what you believe, we all fall, stumble and have problems. If you have Christ in you, fine, there's no more condemnation for you and you are expected to fight harder, and eventually by God's grace you wil overcome. But in the mean time, to pretend our struggles cease to exist make us fake people.
The real christian is the one that relates to his nature. The real christian is the one that never forgets that he is a sinner but he has been redeemed, and never tries to pretend that he is better (by being cleaner or healthier) than another that does not believe, simply because in the end, we are all the same, unclean, filthy, sick people who desperately need God one way or the other.
The non christian, it is assumed, does not have an absolute sense of good and evil. He has notions of what is right, but he doesn't match good and evil with God, situation that is verified with christians. So, for a person to share a dark secret with a non christian, he will not judge it as bad or wrong and will not be scared or freaked out about the person, because he does not think the dark secret as dark, but simply as a matter of life.
The christian (not all, I must gladly state), the corny-super-heroe christian will expect to find a mate who has nothing but a positive result of life. The super hero, if you share your dark secret with him will judge you, will think of you as a filthy sinner who needs God more than he does (yeah right!), and that takes a huge leap of daring by calling himself a christian and still have those kinds of struggles.
Sure, with God we lack nothing, but our problems are far from solved.
See... botton line, if you think of Christianity, you can define it as regular people who find a super hero costume (or the costume finds them, better said), put it on, believe they are superheroes, get the power by believing and must save the world by using that power.
Now our mission is certainly to save the world from sin, using God's love, not that we save it, but that Jesus saved it before by giving the key to it, however, sometimes our superpowers break our hearts and hurt us.
I remember a scene from Spiderman 2, where Parker throws his costume away, because his aunt is having problems, Mary Jane leaves him, nothing is working for him because of his super hero side of life. He throws the costume and life gets better.
Now christianity sometimes is the same. We are regular people, sinners, no powers, nothing special. Peter Parker is your regular guy. Weak, not specially athletic, unpopular. He finds his powers, gets the costume and starts saving the world. Everything is great as he relies on his power, until that power starts taking away all that is dear to him.
God tells us all the time that by following him we will lose many things for the sake of getting what is most, Him. What happens when your heart is broken by someone who believes what you do? What happens when your people, fellow superheroes are nothing but jokes? We throw the costume away, renouncing to our superpowers, having a simpler life.
I believe we ought not to be thinking aobut how life is better with Jesus on your side, although it is, but we must rather focus on how we shouldn't lose sight that love, the real love, the real superpower is the one that allows everyone to coexist in peace. The moment we start thinking ourselves as better or gifted or special, that is the moment we will lose our mission.
Paul says it perfectly on how we should never forget where we come from, understanding the world so we can reach it:
"Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, 21meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized--whoever. I didn't take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ--but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I've become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. I did all this because of the Message. I didn't just want to talk about it; I wanted to be real about it!"
Why do christians date non christians? Christians can be jerks. Christians can hold that truth so dear that we can forget that everyone is regular people on the inside, and that the superhero costume is only a privilege and we are learning to be always heroes, not mortals.
posted by Havoc at 9:50 PM
2 Comments:
Absolutely. The yoke relates to that part of our nature, having being spiritually dead or alive. However, I happen to believe that the yoke also refers to the stage in which you are in your life.
What I realize all the time, and it honestly makes me sick, is that because we possess this powerful truth sometimes we think that we are somehow special. I mean, sure we are, but to lose ground and forget that the world needs some sort of connection, that is simply unacceptable.
I did not suggest some sort of messianic dating plan. I find it very hard to accomplish, even maybe foolish.
This point goes even further than dating. Think of movies and TV Shows and the pop-culture. We as christians are taught, encouraged, ruled that we are to keep ourselves from PG-13 movies if they are rated that for language. We are expected to walk out from the theaters if Pacino drops 10 too many f,a,m,s,c,z.... bombs. We are expected to censor every single thing that happens out there because we are supposed to find it offensive.
I have a friend who is exactly like that. She walks out of movies for any given reason, refuses to read certain articles if she finds it too offensive. She is the kind of girl that not only couldn't finish the movie Saved! but mostly found it offensive.
Now about these things I can say a couple of things. Starting with the easy one. The movie Saved. I know some people who, like me, thought it was remarkable. It was very well done, very real, very crude but smart. It portraits the reality of prune christians and of course they find it offensive. Instead of being mad about it, realize that Mandy Moore's character relates to you (not you danny) and deal with it. Sometimes we have to deal with being like Peter or Thomas or Judas or Pilate or Esau. We have to deal with that all the time.
Now, about the movies in general. Why are we supposed to walk out and be offended? I'll give you this much to make my point. I could make it very vague but I'll make it personal.
Even when I am a christian and I have lived quite a long way with God, I have a certaind understanding of his ways and will, I am definitely not a baby anymore, sometimes I have to confess I have thoughts and actions that would not be G, but mostly they would match in the description of NC-17, sometimes even R.
This is the reality folks. We are christians, we are still learning to deal with our nature, hoping and fighting everyday that we stop sinning once and for all.
To cease to be in touch with what happens in the world only disarms you. You stop having any common ground whatsoever.
You want to reach the kid who disobeys his parents? Learn what myspace is, learn what Viva la Bam is, learn from their role models. If we are do not learn from the world we are trying to reach we are only doomed.
It seems that the world knows about our world (christianity) than us from theirs. Not for nothing many christians went astray after the da Vinci Code. They learned our basics, twisted it and the results are there.
One more thing. I am not trying to justify sin by saying that it's just nature.
To the contrary, I am saying that sin is in fact a natural part of our nature that, when we know Christ, we learn to deny and cease. However, in that trying process we fall, stumble and fail.I have never seen anyone trying to do something for the first time, that is against his very nature that doesn't fail.
A few months ago I tried to learn how to ski. You have the board attached to your foot and you have to slide your other foot to move and then step on it and glide.
The instructor said that the reason why it's so difficult is because it isn't natural to have a 3 feet long board stuck to your foot with huge hard boots walking on snow. It's just not natural to slide. We are supposed to walk.
Needless to say, I fell more times than I could count
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