Liberate Te Ex Inferis

I’m kinda tired of this life
I’m kinda tired of this church
I’m kinda tired of this facade
And of misplacing value and worth.

Lately as I look around me, I find that I am guilty of something that I have always considered rather vein and shallow. I find myself putting on facades and masks so that others around me don’t see the real me. And I am not talking in the direction you might think. No. I am talking in the direction of my true self and true feelings being hidden from those others of my same beliefs.

I don’t put on a mask at work. I tell people at work who I really am and what I really believe. I find that easy, surprisingly. You wouldn’t think that it would be, perhaps I am truly getting old as I often tell my wife that I am, but I really have come to the place in life where I just tell people who I am and let them decide to like or not like me. I like to see if this “tolerance” thing that the world talks about from a soap box really works and if they truly believe it, because if they do… they will “tolerate” my viewpoint even if I don’t tolerate them. But that is another story.

Church is the different story. Lately, I feel that I must not act like my true self at church. I can’t explain why. Nothing has happened recently to change my feelings.  It is just something that has happened gradually over these past few months.

So once more I feel out of place and uncomfortable at church.  I’d much rather just have some friends over, eat dinner, drink a beer and read the bible together.  Maybe some sort of home group or something.  But one day at a time, I’ll just wait and see what God has planned.

Yesterday morning Dr Terry spoke about why King David was called “a man after God’s own heart” David was a murderer, an adulterer, and a ruthless warrior, though these events came later in life and didn’t define the character that built him. Still, God knew these things about him before they happened, and yet the Bible still calls him ‘after God’s own heart’. So why? Short version; because he was always engrossed in God’s Word, through study, prayer and psalms.

Dr Terry spoke of a study done by Fuller Seminary that surveyed its Seminary students with basic questions of Christianity and Bible beliefs. The questionnaire had several questions, but Dr Terry was only really interested in 3.

1) How many minutes per week do you spend in prayer?
2) How many Bible verses do you read per week, on your own time?
3) How many times do you attend a church service, per week?

Mind you, these questions were sent to either Seminary students or seasoned Christians, not the general population or newly converted. The answer shocked Dr Terry, though in my skepticism, I can’t say that I was all that surprised.

Answer to #1 - 32 seconds/week
Answer to #2 - 1/3 of a verse, per week (ex. ‘For God so loved the world that He gave’)
Answer to #3 - 2.25 times/week.

People, we cannot live like this. We cannot say that we believe the things in the Bible yet never read, study or memorize them, hiding them in our heart. We cannot be effective witnesses, effective ’salt of the earth’ with these kinds of statistics. Sure, we read commentaries and other books by C.S. Lewis or John Piper, Billy Graham, Max Lucado, Charles Stanley, etc.. And with all due respect to these men, they are not Bible authors. Yes, they have good things to say that we should want to read, but this isn’t a replacement for Biblical Study.

You cannot expect to lead the life of a Redeemed Saint and ignore these fundamental commandments that God has given us.

Some friends of our who used to attend our church, but moved to another church locally to serve on staff, just learn that they lost their 37-week old unborn child. The mother had to give birth to a still-born baby last Sunday. Here is an excerpt from the email I received on this..
Under the circumstances, they are doing fine. Physically, they are still recovering & they both desperately need to rest. Emotionally, theyhave their ups & downs, but they are incredibly strong. Despite their
sadness & hurting hearts, they are praising God & giving Him the glory.
What an amazing testimony!

Now, I have never experienced this type of situation, nor do I know what it is like to be a parent, so I cannot relate to the types of feelings and emotions that they must be experiencing right now. And the purpose of my post is not to downplay their disappointment and suffering over this event, I have the utmost respect and share in the sorrow of this family that are my friends, but I must write a point of view that my Faith allows me to have during trials like this.

My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

Now, should we rejoice in this event? Obviously not. Should we be saddened? Yes, it is only natural. Should we be mad at God? Why? Because he gave us a life, something that only He could do, and then took it away, only to be with Him in heaven? This child will never experience pain, suffering, sadness, remorse. He will never know heartbreak, will never be tempted by human sexual perversions, will never have any addictions to drugs or alcohol. He will never have to fight in a war, only to be dismembered or killed. He will never have to experience a divorce. He will never know betrayal. He will spend his days in the loving arms of his Heavenly Father, who Himself called the child home, and didn’t have to accept him from a pre-determined murder at an abortion clinic.

This does not mean that we would not have happily watched James grow and become a Spiritual leader, husband and father as we would have expected him to, it simply means that God had other plans for him, to spare him the suffering in this lousy, rotten, twisted-ass world, and to call him home to Heaven earlier than planned by his earthly parents.

We should all be so blessed.

This morning was “Promotion Sunday” which means the beginning of a new year, in case you have never attended a Baptist church. They like to act like it follows a college semester or school year or something. Old habits die hard, I guess.

So to signify promotion Sunday, along with John Meador’s 1-year anniversary with FBC Euless, they launched both a new website and new logos, designs, team and class names for the church. It’s a whole new look and feel and for the most part I think that it is really good.

I like the new logo, but I don’t care for the Easter-Egg, Pastel colors that they chose. I would have preferred a slate gray/ navy blue/ silver / black / or dark red theme. I am sure they care about my opinion Either way, I think it brings a nice change to the look and feel of the new website and change can be a good thing when it means growth, and this church definitely has grown over the past 2-3 years.

It’s going to be exciting to see what comes about in the next several months in the life of this church, a place that tries so desperately to move forward and progress with growing times, but seems to get in it’s own way so often. For the most part, FBC Euless is one of the most progressive Southern Baptist churches in the DFW Metroplex. But as of late, it has taken a few steps backwards into the more traditional Baptist role that we are used to seeing in this area. I think the new website and it’s features are a good contradiction to that, and I am glad to see them, other than the fact that the site doesn’t seem to like Firefox.

The resignation of Claude Thomas , some three years ago, didn’t discourage or bring down this church body, but empowered them to the extent of “let us show you that we follow God and not a man of God” and that is exactly what has transpired here, with the paying off of a $6.5 million mortgage debt in this period of time. Whatever happens next should be worth blogging about.

For the last few months, I have been attending a class on Sunday mornings led by Dr Jack Terry at FBC Euless.  He used to be a professor at Southwestern Baptist Seminary and his teaching style reflects that of a college professor.  Since I have always wanted to attend Seminary but never got the chance to, Dr Terry’s class has been incredibly interesting to me over these past few months.  So I thought that I would write a blog and share some of the insightful things that are discussed in this class, because they are so interesting to me.  So look for more posts on this subject, perhaps not every week, but several times that I find something I can write about

John Chow dot com is a blog that helps you make money online. He is offering to link to your blog if you review his blog.

From his site (this is good info, so I am reposting it.)

The Importance Of The Anchor Text

This post is also a lesson on the importance of linking with keywords or phases. In the Evil Nintendo Wii Blog Contest, I asked people to link to me using “root of all evil.” If you do a Google search for that phrase, you’ll see I am now ranked number three, just behind Wikipedia and RootOfAllEvil.com.

While it’s fun to rank for root of all evil, not many people search for that phase. However, according to the Overture keyword selector tool, there are over 44,000 searches every month for make money online. If I can get on page one of Google for that phrase, it would mean a flood of new traffic.

So I have had several comments and emails to my latest post. I guess I should have started talking about music earlier, it seems to get alot of attention

Anyway, I might have not conveyed my point correctly. I simply meant that the music taste isn’t my personal preference, I didn’t mean to imply that there was anything wrong with it. It would be wrong for me to say there is something wrong with old-style, gospel, or hymnal music, just as I believe it is wrong for someone else to tell me there is something wrong with Christian Rock. That isn’t what I believe at all.

And yes, music can be more about praising God than being evangelical, but to draw in a lost crowd of people who might not come to church on a normal basis, shouldn’t this music be a little more progressive? The message too, I think, but I am talking about music at this time. Why do you think churchs like Fellowship get so many members and attendants? The message is the same… the message is Jesus. No matter how watered-down or on-fire it might be, I don’t believe the attraction is the message. The attraction is the music. And after all, aren’t we trying to reach the lost?

My wife and I decided to change it up a little this morning and go to the 2nd hour service at church. Normally during that hour, we are in Bible Fellowship (Sunday School) class, but today we wanted to try something different.

So we go into service and they have this guest singer that is some famous southern gospel artist who has traveled with some well-known people. I didn’t recognize his name. And regardless of what you see in the movies, we are not all hicks down here. Just because I was born and raised in Dallas, TX, doesn’t necessarily mean that I love Southern Gospel or even Country music. There was a time when I liked Country quite a lot, but I rarely listen to it now. And I cannot remember ever really liking Southern Gospel music.

So we sat through a few songs, which turned out to be relatively painless afterall, and onto the message. Thank goodness. I know that some people like the worship music and the singing before the service, but frankly to me it seems like all fluff. Just get on with it, for crying out loud. I came to here the Word of God preached, not to hear 400 year old hymns and music that makes me think I turned 85 yesterday and forgot my own birthday because I am so old. Now, I don’t think there is anything wrong with this type of music or worship style, it simply isn’t for me. If it works for you, then great. But give me some loud rock-n-roll worship music and see how many more lost people you will reach because they don’t wanna listen to the tired Baptist Hymnal songs, no matter how many times you re-write them over and over again.

Anyway, the service was great and the message was good. I just wish we had something that was more up-to-date from the music standpoint.

Me: Excuse me Mr. Man, Mr. “I’m so cool that I put my hardware in clear cases for all to see because, afterall, that is how God made us, is it not? Naked?”

iTunes: Yo dude, wassup, what can I do fer ya?

Me: Well, I wanna backup my GACing playlist so that if my HDD crashes I don’t have to re-rip all my CDs. But when I try to do the backup in your software, it says :insert disk”

iTunes: Yeah, dude…for sure. You have to like…insert a disk and stuff….to burn. A “burn” disc, you know what I mean?

Me: Well, yeah, thats all well and good, but what about backing up to a network drive? Like on a super Uber Linux 1TB file server running Suse or Ubuntu, how do I get your software to do that?

iTunes: uhhh…is this your first day on the job? You see, they have these things now called writable CDs, which you can write or “burn” information to. You don’t need a network to work them. All you need is a CD burner.

Me: Wow. ok, maybe I was speaking Chinese with my question before. I don’t give a rip about your 1998 CD burning technology, I want to know if it is possible to backup my iTunes to a network drive so I don’t have to go out and buy a cd-r disc every time I wanna make a new backup.

iTunes: Well…you have to have network permissions to create a share and then make a …..

Me: Look….I am not asking for a lesson in your whacked-out AppleTalk version of networking terminology. All I wanna know is IF you can use your asshat Mac-crap software to backup all my music files to a network share, rather than a CD. Is this possible??

iTunes: Sure, you can do that, but why don’t you take a trip down to CompUSA and get in on their special CD-R deals they have this week? Then you could take them anywhere you wish and use them on other computers.

Me: Thanks for the advice, I have had a few drinks tonight, so I may simply not remember asking for your opinion on CD-R’s but the simple fact is that even if I did ask, I don’t really care. What I really need to know is where I can set a network share option in your software.

iTunes: Have you checked the Preferences?

Me: Yes, not there.

iTunes: So what exactly do you need?

Me: Ok, hi, my name is Jason. I want to know if you can backup a iTunes Library to a network share. You know the option under File–>Back Up To Disc–> Back Up Entire Library ? When I choose this, it tells me to insert a disc and doesn’t give me anymore options. I want to know where I can change this option, to backup to another source, rather than a “disc”?

iTunes: So wait, let me get this straight….you don’t want to burn to a CD??

Me: Praise the Lord, he has SEEN the light!!

iTunes: But why would you not wanna burn to a CD, it provides…

Me: Look, yes or no. Can you backup your iTunes library to a network drive? Yes or No??

iTunes: Um…well. We really didn’t anticipate our users having multiple computers or a home network or anything like that…

Me: Ok, so what you are telling me is that with you have spent the bulk of your profits on advertising and stupid TV commercials, trying to make the public think that you are so hip and cool, but you don’t have a simple knowledge of networking 2 or more machines together?

iTunes: Well, our machines are so reliable, we never saw the need for more than 1 per user.

Me: And how would you expect a family, perhaps a husband and wife, who each have a Macincrash computer, to be able to share files?

iTunes: Share? What exactly do you mean….

Me: You know what….You have answered my question. Thanks for the cool-looking machines that have Unix based OS’s (since your own OS sucks ) that cannot be connected to one another. No wonder you’re company products were never picked up by businesses needing file sharing.

iTunes: Still, a CD-R will more than meet your needs…

Me:….SMACK!

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