Something moved in me recently to start blogging. I know I kind of blog on facebook with notes, I'm planning on having this blog in tandem with the facebook notes. They will likely share some of my ideas, I may even copy one from here and put them on facebook and vice-versa. However, I will likely be more open and direct with this blog, I plan on being real. Not just putting up some cool ideas I have, but blogging about how life is going, the good and the bad.
We'll start off with a simple blog. Last night was UNL worship night. Afterwords, I had a great 2 1/2 hour conversation with my friend Kevin. We just talked about God and Christianity, it was magnificent. Towards the end of our conversation I had the thought, 'Christianity is so backwards from anything else I've encountered, anything human.'
From a human standpoint when someone pushes us, we're supposed to push them back, but God says, 'turn the other cheek.' When someone lies to us and betrays us, the human response is to get revenge, while God says that He will ultimately judge them, our only job is to love.
One of the final thoughts we had was how different Christianity is from other religions. Nearly all other religions in the world are about what we can do as human to touch the divine. Often times it presents itself as a checklist, do this and that and then you will touch the divine and go to heaven. Lots of religions take the stance that people aren't bad, we just make some mistakes on the way. In particular I am studying Islam in my religion class and they don't believe in original sin, they believe that people often 'forget' about Allah's will and they just need to be fixed.
This thought ultimately boiled down to what Christianity says. Our thought was that the first step of Christianity isn't to go to church or help an old lady cross the street. To become a Christian one doesn't have to pay a tax, say a prayer or do a ritual. The first step to becoming and authentic Christian is to say, 'I suck.' To say that we can't be good enough, no matter how hard we try. To say that we are broken beyond human repair. To give up and surrender.
This is step one, are you there?
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