road to recovery...

Veronica’s recovery from knee surgery has been much more difficult than we expected. She is finally making a little progress after 2 months of being on crutches but it is still a long way from complete. I have to admit that a part of me has enjoyed taking care of her and pampering her during this time of healing. I am however grateful to all her friends that have chipped in to give me a break and lift her spirits. I think she has had about as much of this as she can take since she normally never sits still for more than 20 minutes.

Stop paying taxes now!

For the last couple of months I get up and drive to work past the new construction site for Zackby’s on Furys Ferry road. There are regularly 20-30 trucks parked out front and the building changes dramatically every day. They have at least 3 different types of crews all working at the same time. Then I turn the corner onto furys ferry rd. and face a 2 mile stretch of unfinished road construction that looks just like it has for the last 2 months. Not a frickin’ sole is ever working on the road.

The other day I was shocked to see a “we ARE open” sign in front of the restaurant right behind the 30 feet of mangled dirt and debris of the road construction.

I wonder which construction project is funded with private money and which one is funded with “taxes” that could be better described as OPM (other people’s money) or “government extortion funds”.

I think I remember another organization (the mafia) that forced its “tenants” to pay money in exchange for protection from a so-called “evil force”. Of course this evil force was created, funded, and frequently pissed off by the protecting organization.

Why would we even think about letting the government feed our poor, care for our sick, or manage our retirement?

Questions that I can’t shake…

I can’t help but think that Jesus would be disgusted with this entire religion of “Christianity” that we created. I don’t recall anything ever being written about how Jesus wanted to be worshiped or admired in a “bigger than life” sense. Did he really expect us to turn his life into a metaphor or was he expecting us to see his life as a very real example of how to live, love, forgive and serve?

Does anyone really want to worship a god that “wants to be worshipped”? Did we end up creating an image of God that is actually they way WE would want to be treated if we were a god? Isn’t the main reason the Jews could not accept Jesus because he didn’t fit their view of what God is like?

Maybe the scriptural metaphor of God as a king with a kingdom was based on the world view of a people that were conditioned to be comfortable serving kings chosen for them based on bloodlines and cast systems. Maybe the view of a God we now embrace is a metaphor based on our current worldview that now chooses its leaders and values freedom and individual choice. It is no wonder this new view of God was created and accepted in Greece and Rome (birthplaces for modern government structures) during the following centuries. Did we change our view of God because we no longer could follow a God that represented a leadership model we no longer respected?

I’m not sure we are any better off now. I feel like I have spent my whole life so obsessed with this new metaphor that I have missed the larger point of the message. I'm struggling to determine if the answer is another "newer" view of God or if a better answer is an understanding that recognizes all these views as what they are and move on to the larger message.

A New Kind of Christian

I have read a bunch of books in the last year that have helped me reshape my view of God and the Bible but I had a real hard time expressing what I now believe to other people (my wife and other people at church in particular). I started reading “A new kind of Christian” by Brian Mclaren and I couldn’t put it down (thaks Chad!). I read the whole thing last night. I feel vindicated by it. I also feel like I spent a year walking from NY to CA when there was a plane ticket sitting on my kitchen table that I didn’t know was there. I wish I had read this earlier. Although maybe it is better that I found these ideas on my own and now find others that came to the same conclusions. Maybe my belief system will be stronger since I feel like I have more “ownership” of the ideas rather than if I was just following the herd and doing what I was told.

Just like the lead character in the book if I actually expressed how I felt I thought I would get kicked out of the church or something. That’s why I refused to lead a small group when I was asked by our group. I am tired of being controversial but I didn’t want to keep preaching the party line either. I have felt like I am “in between” theologies and haven’t nailed it down yet or figured out exactly how these views should effect my everyday life, but this book made me realize that maybe I don’t have to (or can’t) get it all carved out in stone before I begin moving again.

http://www.anewkindofchristian.com/