How To Be A Christian Without Being A Jerk

Faith in real life

What If You Don’t Want God?

August 1st, 2012

Self-worship affects every part of us. The final impact is on everything we are. The soul, that holds it all together, is in ruin. When we mistake ourselves for God, then God becomes meaningless or an enemy. We cannot want him. If we work against God in every part our being, we become the kind of people who cannot want God.

Jesus speaks about hell often. “Hell” is to be separated from the presence of God forever. When you have soul ruin, hell is the destination. It is not so much God sends people to hell. In many ways, hell becomes a choice. It is the logical destination for those who cannot want God. We are given the choice of being in relationship with God and if we choose to turn away, God honors that. He will never force himself on us.

Often people will speak of death-bed conversions where someone denies God all their life, and before they die, they repent and seek him. Is this authentic? That person may have been seeking all along and it just finally surfaced in the light of day, so, yes, I think it is possible.

Yet, probable? No, not likely. If life away from God is the life we are living, being with God is not an option that is within our realm of choice. God has an infinitely flexible will; we do not. No one “just misses out” of heaven. Life without God is a constant choice that keeps a person focused in a destructive direction. In the end, God is faithful to our choices.

To paraphrase a thought from C.S. Lewis, Instead of one who trusts saying, “Thy will be done,” God says to the person in soul ruin, “Thy will be done.”

 

“Spending so much emotional energy on those who don’t want God, results in less focus and energy reaching out to those who do.” Comment.

 

Living With Pleasure-Seeking Obsessions

July 31st, 2012

When we are turned from God, our bodies become the place where sin is lived out. The path of self-worship goes directly through what we look like and how we physically feel. We can see this obsession everywhere.

Look at any issue of a fitness magazine like Men’s Health or Shape. What do the models look like? Carved statues of the “ideal.” Abs and diet on every cover. People like myself who have a “one pack” are invited to know that life is transformed with a “six pack.” It’s never too early to start. Page through any issue of Seventeen and you may notice a slight obsession over looks?!

Then there is physical feeling. According to advertisers, I am invited to try any product with the understanding that I am going to be sexually satisfied as a result. Other than a touchy/ feely family love theme, every product out there is marketed on sex. God-given creativity and imagination seems to be stuck in the public arena on how many different ways I can make sex my god.

Pornography, alcohol, and drug abuse all are pure body ruin. We are bombarded with the message of feel good or don’t feel at all. Without a good spam blocker you will notice the two “V’s”, Viagra and Vicodin. They seem to be the solution to all my problems. Giving in to the search for pleasure is a direct result of heart and mind ruin. Social ruin follows because I don’t need you unless it means I can use you for pleasure. Even anger is not exempt from body ruin. Anger is lived out physically, as well. Getting a “rush” over rage.

So if heart, mind, body and social relationships are all on the path to ruin, what happens to me?

Notice sexual themes in all the media and advertising you come into contact with today.

 

Living With Unhealthy Relationships

July 26th, 2012

As we experience mind ruin and the emotional ruin that goes along with it, our interaction with other people is never really authentically beneficial. I liken it to a dance where we try to move each other around the dance floor. If both partners are trying to lead at the same time, it doesn’t work.

Social life ruin is seen in the lack of depth of our friendships. It is seen in the struggles of marriage. It is a key source of the dissatisfaction so many have for their jobs. If I am trying to remain in charge of my life, when things don’t go my way I will respond in one of two ways.
Author M. Scott Peck considers these two responses in his classic work, The Road Less Traveled. When I am struggling in life, I place the blame on myself or others in an exaggerated way. When I am always wrong, it is neurosis. When someone else is always wrong it is character disorder. Here is how it works.

For a neurotic person I try to remain in control by putting huge demands of perfection upon myself, coupled with low expectations. In this way when someone fails me, I can always blame it on me. In this way I stay in control because life is happening just like I predicted. Eeyore, from Winnie the Pooh, is an example of this neurotic response.

For a character disorder person, I try to remain in control by placing the blame for anything that goes wrong in my life squarely where it belongs. On you. Or anyone else. On the government. On multi-national corporations. On society in general. On the “man.” Never, in any waking moment, would my problems be owned up to as “my problems.” In character disorder, I am always the victim. After all, if I am the center of my own universe, how can any conflict, failure or disappointment be my doing?
In our relationships, then, we may operate out of character disorder or neurosis, but the results are the same. A life turned from God.

Do you function more with neurosis or character disorder? (Actually, if it is character disorder, you probably disagree with what is being said in the first place!)

Living With Unhealthy Relationships

July 19th, 2012

As we experience mind ruin and the emotional ruin that goes along with it, our interaction with other people is never really authentically beneficial. I liken it to a dance where we try to move each other around the dance floor. If both partners are trying to lead at the same time, it doesn’t work.

Social life ruin is seen in the lack of depth of our friendships. It is seen in the struggles of marriage. It is a key source of the dissatisfaction so many have for their jobs. If I am trying to remain in charge of my life, when things don’t go my way, I will usually respond in one of two ways: Neurosis or Character Disorder.

Author M. Scott Peck considers these two responses in his classic work, The Road Less Traveled.

When I am struggling in life, I place the blame on myself or others in an exaggerated way. When I am always wrong, it is neurosis. When someone else is always wrong it is character disorder. Here is how it works.

For a neurotic person, I try to remain in control by putting huge demands of perfection upon myself, coupled with low expectations. In this way when someone fails me, I can always blame it on me. I stay in control because life is happening just like I predicted. Eeyore, from Winnie the Pooh, is an example of this neurotic response.

For a character disorder person, I try to remain in control by placing the blame for anything that goes wrong in my life squarely where it belongs. On you. Or anyone else. On the government. On multi-national corporations. On society in general. On the “man.” Never, in any waking moment, would my problems be owned up to as “my problems.” In character disorder, I am always the victim. After all, if I am the center of my own universe, how can any conflict, failure or disappointment be my doing?

In our relationships, then, we may operate out of character disorder or neurosis, but the results are the same. A life turned from God.

Do you function more with neurosis or character disorder? (Actually, if it is character disorder, you probably disagree with what is being said in the first place!)

 

Living With a Ruined Heart

July 17th, 2012

“Acting on belief that is based on evidence” is a good definition of faith. When an atheist claims there is no God, the belief is not based on a solid body of evidence. There is so much evidence to the contrary, it may be the atheist has more “blind faith” than faith.

Romans 1:20 (NLT)
From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God.

Today, we are able to see way more of “earth and sky and all that God made.” The evidence for design in the universe- and the big bang evidence for space, time, energy and matter being created simultaneously- all point to to a likely conclusion that there is a causative, extra-dimensional agency. This doesn’t specifically warrant this being the God of the Bible, but there is other evidence for that being the case. Let’s just consider a “god” in general.

Why do a small minority of people not trust there is a god? Why do so many more people act as if there is no god? The challenge is, if God exists then God must somehow be in charge. If God is in charge then guess what? We’re not.

The path of ruin begins with the heart. Choices are made as if there is no God. These choices affect all the other parts of our lives. We wish to be in charge and if God exists we can’t logically hold to that viewpoint. So we begin to deceive ourselves in one of two ways. We either choose to believe there is no God, or we act as if there is no God. Either way we lose.

This is why unhealthy behavior by atheists and by people who identify as Christian can look very similar. One ignores the consequences of there being a God, and the other acts as if God doesn’t care. If we keep choosing to ignore God, we keep ignoring the blessings God has in store for us. When our hearts are turned in another direction, we cannot be our best, true selves.

Look for evidence of God today.

 

How do we deceive ourselves?

July 13th, 2012

Living With a Ruined Mind

When we choose not to deal with God, then our minds have to go to work. We need to find ways to convince ourselves that God doesn’t exist or God doesn’t matter.

We have worked on this in our country with some interesting mental gymnastics. In the public square, we attempt to follow a strict Darwinian evolution model, for example, and desperately hold on to natural selection and random mutation as the sole mechanisms for the development of life. However, this position is becoming more and more difficult to defend.

Origins of life research (“abiogenesis”) provides an impossible scenario for a strict view of Darwinian evolution to work. You see, in order for natural selection and random mutation to occur in the first place, you need something to select from; something to mutate. The apparent necessity of an outside agent of some kind getting the ball rolling is simply dismissed as something beyond the scope of discussion.

Those who do believe in God may also be tempted to follow viewpoints that may be more about themselves than about God’s desire, focusing on what they want, not what God wants.

One of the interesting attempts to cloud our thinking about God today is to is question the validity of God’s Word. When Bible scholars go out of their way to try to show the Bible doesn’t mean what it says it means, always look for a possible “conflict of interest,” from their lives.

The most common and controversial issue today where some contemporary Bible scholars attempt to undo a clear overall message from Scripture is supporting sexual fulfillment outside of a male/ female marriage. Whether the issue is same-sex sexuality or sexuality outside of marriage between men and women, they have taken a position contrary to traditional “sex between a man and woman within a marriage covenant.”

Scholars can choose to say the teachings of the Bible are out dated because the Bible falls strongly on the male/female marriage side, and indeed some scholars simply declare the Bible irrelevant to the matter in question. They say the Bible writers couldn’t comprehend an issue this complex.

The challenge of taking this position on the Bible in general is that it places a person outside of the scope of traditional Christianity. Christians claim God is the source of the Bible. God is certainly capable of knowing about situations we face in life today, having inspired Bible writers to address similar situations.

Once our choices turn us away from God, then our thinking goes to work. Deceiving ourselves in order to get what we want is not a difficult task. We are experts at it. Self-worship and deception are a great match.

What are some other issues upheld by traditional Christian morality that are being challenged today?

 

How To Be A Christian Without Being A Jerk

Faith in real life