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RabidPopTart
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Country: United States
State: Pennsylvania
Metro: Pittsburgh
Birthday: 10/13/1986
Gender: Male
Interests: Jesus, the Bible, Robert Morris University, Graphic and Web Design, Music, Computers, Hockey, Politics, Family Guy, The A-Team, Steelers, Penguins
Expertise: fire, frisbee, food
Occupation: Student
Industry: College Student
Message: message me
AIM:  Melchizedek11418
Member Since:
9/16/2003
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Blackrock
By Laurence Breuls, Linda Cropper, Simon Lyndon, Chris Haywood, Rebecca Smart
see related |
Ladies and gentlemen, ZA Magazine is now live.
http://www.zamagazine.org
You might recall me talking about this a little over a year ago here on the Xanga; well, it has finally come to fruition! A good majority of my blogging efforts will now go over there.
But spread the word! Let people know about the site, register to comment yourself, and join the community!
Cheers,
Brendan | | |
| Ephesians 5:15-17
15 Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,
16 making the best use of the time, because the days are evil.
17 Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
This passage cuts me. It cuts me deeply, because I waste so much time.
I've always had a time waster, at least in recent memory. First it was Zelda, then it was NHL 2002, then it was Civilization 3, then Yahoo! Games, then it was Lensmoor, then it was Civ 3 again, then Smash Brothers, and now it's the Internet. Not so much Facebook anymore, though I use it frequently, but a mashup of Facebook, ESPN, CNN, two car blogs, a tech blog, Wikipedia, IMDB, the occasional Daily Show/Colbert Report video...you get the point. None of the above are particularly bad; they're all (mostly) clean fun if you use them right, but that's the thing. I can't use them right. I'm not satisfied with going to ESPN.com once a day - I have to make it three times, and the second time, I'll read all the comments on the articles and get caught up in petty flame wars with fans from teams that got steamrolled by the Penguins. I look at the clock; an hour is gone! Brendan! What are you doing?
So when God, through Paul, tells me that the days are evil and that I should look carefully at how I walk, I grimace. Man! These things are so much fun, but what are they doing? Are they refreshing me to go back into battle, or do they keep my slackjawed gaze fixed on a bunch of pixels while a war is being fought around me?
We have such a sense of purpose as Christians. As Albert Barnes says, "He that has a heaven to win has enough to do to occupy all his time." How true is this? I've lost more than one weekend because I've been so absorbed in getting ZA ready for prime time. What if I had that same kind of abandon, seven days a week? Would I run out of ways to serve the Lord? Of course not!
So here's to change. Here's to looking carefully how I walk. Here's to understanding what the will of the Lord is, because when you have a vision, a goal, you're more likely to walk towards it in a straight line.
And here's to ZA! It's launching on Wednesday! :D
Cheers,
Brendan | | |
| Harry Emerson Fosdick, in his book "The Meaning of Prayer," has this to say in his chapter discussing prayer as a battlefield. In the section that I'm gonna quote from, he's talking about how while some of the old Christian giants like Luther and Wesley spent hours in prayer, other people like Whitefield and St. Augustine did not. Here he makes the point that the length of the prayer isn't as important as the importance that prayer has in your life.
"With many of us time must be divided, as is the land of the United States. The little District given to congress for the Federal Government would on any quantitative basis be most ill-proportioned. Texas is 4,430 times as large as the District of Columbia, and even Rhode Island would contain it twenty times and over.SO one, regarding the brief time that a Christian spends in deliberate prayer, might cry out against such ill proportion, seeing how business and recreation of necessity preoccupy so many hours. But is not the answer clear?In quantity the District is small, but it is preeminently powerful. The government is there. Nothing goes on in all these states utterly out of the control and influence of that District. Its mandates are over the commerce and legislation of all the states; and every mooted question, not elsewhere resolvable, is taken before its Supreme Court for ultimate decision.
"Granted then, that our spiritual District of Columbia must be smaller in area than our State of Texas, have we done with that inward District what our fathers did in the nation? Have we solemnly chosen it and set it sacredly aside? Have we located there the central government, so that all power issues thence and all questions come back to it for settlement? Is it apparent to those who know us best that we would rather any other place in our lives should be taken by the enemy than this Capital of our Country, the place of prayer?"
I love it! Love analogies :)
Anyways, I'm off to Tasmania for Easter break! The land down under the land down under! I'll be in Launceston (LAWN-cess-ton) for two nights, then Cradle mountain for two nights, then Hobart for three more nights. I'll be back on Saturday the 29th in the morning. Between Launny and Hobart, I'll be hiring a car. Toyota Corolla 5-door hatch or similar. I got a freaking huge backpack in which I can carry a week's worth of stuff, and I booked cheap hostels (18-25 dollars a night) all along the way. Some of the details still need to be worked out and I still need to buy a thing or two, but I'm going and I hope it's gonna be great!
Cheers,
Brendan | | |
| I didn't pay proper attention to the news, I guess. I vaguely recall hearing about a church shooting, but I really didn't read up on it. I guess I was too busy with the end of the semester and being at RMU and getting ready for Oz.
But a new piece of the puzzle came out recently, and it really grabbed my attention.
So to being everyone up to speed if you didn't hear much about it either, a 24-year-old guy named Matthew Murray shot nine people December 9, 2007. He shot four and killed two at a Youth With A Mission base, then went to New Life Church in Colorado Springs and shot 5 people after a church service, killing two. He was shot by a security guard at the church, but the fatal bullet came from Murray's own gun.
Wikipedia has more details on the incident. Click here to check it out.
The new news came from a letter that was found in Murray's car, a letter that he had written. We don't know when he wrote it. The story on the letter, along with copies of the original letters shown in Murray's own hand, can be found here.
I read the letter, and it made my heart break. Here was the cry of a lost and confused soul! All of the original portrayals of Murray was showed a man who had left his Christian upbringing and loathed the establishment. He had a blog where he posted such lines as ""I'm coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. ...God, I can't wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world." (source) And this was typical. Hateful, remorseless, angry, disillusioned.
However, the new letter really exposed his human side. This guy wasn't an unforgivable monster, he was a human being who, when faced with a lot of temptations and trials, merely made wrong choices.
Truth be told, he reminds me of another person, one who has been crucified by the media and popular culture for centuries but to me is a character on whom I take pity. His name is Judas Iscariot, and he too faced temptation and went the wrong way with it. I think it's interesting that Murray had a chance for atonement as well; but, like Judas, he too chose to end his own life instead of attempting to reconcile. I'd imagine that Judas had an inner monologue that is very similar to the letter that Murray wrote before becoming set in his actions and committing his crime.
So that was one observation. The other observation involves the issue of blame. As an American, I guess I get swept up in our obsession to figure out whose FAULT it was. Most people ask because they want a scapegoat, a figure to direct their grief and anger at. However, I ask the question more as a means of finding a solution. Is the hypocritical, lukewarm church responsible for driving a man to murder, or is Mr. Murray merely a nut who is solely responsible for his actions?
Maybe it's lame to allude to a television show, but one of my favourite episodes of "House" (Season 2, Episode 1 - 'Acceptance') asked the same question without giving an answer. (Warning! Spoilers!) There was a guy on death row who killed a bunch of people, and House's team found out that he had a condition called "pheochromocytoma" which caused him to have these massive adrenaline rushes and therefore could be seen as a cause of his murders. Is he responsible for his own actions, or is the presence of a medical condition enough to mitigate his circumstances, despite the fact that others have the same condition and yet are able to control their impulses?
I have an opinion, but I don't think "Who's to blame?" is a really good question at all. In fact, I think it's a terrible question, because to answer it definitively would absolve the other, and no one is innocent in this situation. It reminds me of Luke 13:1-5, where people want to know if a greater sin caused a greater calamity, and Jesus merely brushes the question aside and says that everyone needs to repent!
And I think that's the case here. The church is guilty! Murray's letter says that "all the Christians I see or meet are miserable, angry, selfish, hypocritical, proud, power hungry, abusive, uncaring, confused, lustful, greedy, unsure of their doctrine and mean-spirited" - and so many who claim to be Christians are! I mean, look at the church he shot up! The senior pastor had resigned just a month before the shooting because he was soliciting sex from a male consort and using drugs to enhance the experience! Can you honestly say that that doesn't have an effect? But what about the millions of other Christians who, faced with the same hypocrisy, continue to press on and not let it affect their faith? Murray was thrown out of the YWAM base before. What about the people who have been excommunicated from the church and subsequently humbled themselves, repented, and came back?
The church has sinned. Matthew Murray sinned. We, the bystander, need to repent, or, like Jesus said in Luke, "you will all likewise perish"!
And THAT is the real lesson that we need to learn. We don't need to hate Matthew Murray. We don't need to hate Christianity. You, dear reader, need to look at your own life and figure out what YOU need to do to get YOUR life in order!
Grace and peace,
Brendan | | |
| Most of what I've been writing lately has been kept under wraps in preparation for the launch of ZA. But this one is less of a timeless article (as I'm discussing recent and dateable events) and I feel like someone needs to read it. So here goes! Enjoy!
My travels in Australia are very revealing. There's a sense of urgency down here, man! I'm here for four months and that's it! I may NEVER return to Oz again after my semester abroad here! This idea that my time is temporary affects my travel plans. I'm going to MAKE a trip to Tasmania works, because I have to! I'm going to try my best to MAKE trips to the Outback and Sydney work, because there might not be a second chance.
Contrast that to my perspective at home. Isn't it odd that I have now been to Mexico, Canada, and Australia, but haven't spent more than an afternoon in Philadelphia, which is in the same state as me! I've not been to New York City, Chicago, anywhere in New England proper, and so on. Because "I can do that anytime I want to!" Right? Goodness, how much haven't I done in Pittsburgh! Or what about my hometown of Latrobe? I've never gone to training camp at St. Vincent because I con go whenever I want!
You get the idea. Now let's make it interpersonal.
Relationships. When you want to get the other's attention, you do all kinds of awesome stuff! When guy is courting a girl, he wants to make her love him enough that when he drops the knee the answer is yes. But how many times do you hear stories about marriages that get stale? The passion goes. That kinda thing. I can't speak too much on this cause obviously I'm not experienced, but I would have to believe that the same line of reasoning applies here. When you're married (and if you reject divorce), you know that the other isn't gonna leave. I can imagine that it would be quite easy to then not spend time or not do stuff because "you have your whole life to do that!" "She said 'I do' forever! She's always gonna love me!"
Now let's go spiritual.
We have it hammered into our Christian heads that God will never leave us or forsake us. Cause it's true! It's the promise that God gave the Israelites before they entered the Promised Land, and it's the promise that God gives us, so long as we continue to seek and serve and love Him. He'll pick us up and brush us off when we fall, He'll keep us on the right path, He'll give us strength beyond anything we can comprehend! I've experienced that down here. I'm in new situations with a lot of challenges. I'm in a house that has a culture contrary to God, and I'm getting physically beat up by a combination of heat, exertion, and nasty bicycle spills. But even though my prayer time has been often mediocre and my reading has gone in spurts, I've felt so strong, because God has been helping me!
Can you see where I'm going with this? If we have a God that'll never leave us, do you honestly think that we won't at least be tempted to get complacent? What if we knew that we only had a day to get as close to God as possible? What if God left us if we didn't show enough passion? The first is unlikely and the latter is untrue, but how would that affect your fervency?
So we gain two perspectives. One, we've gotta realize just how short life is.
Psalm 39:4-5
4 O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am!
5 Behold, you have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is as nothing before you. Surely all mankind stands as a mere breath!
Life is short! David gets it, I get it sometimes and forget it just as quickly. When I pitched over the handlebars of my bicycle for a second time in a week, I was able to stand up, look at my wounds briefly, pick up my bike, straighten the handlebars, and get to the sidewalk before an approaching car passed the place where I had fallen. Had I left the house 30 seconds later? I was going around a corner; I totally would have hit the corner the same way, and I would have flipped right into it.
Boom. That quick. Makes a few scrapes and bruises feel pretty good! (God's really been helping me, like I said!)
So, when it comes to my spiritual walk, I want to make sure that I have my house in order, every day. Cause if I die that day, which is gonna matter more: the prayer time I had, or that I was caught up on all the tech, auto, and Mac news that I get from the Internet?
Perspective number two: We've gotta fear the Lord.
Psalm 110:10
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
Psalm 114:7-8
7 Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob,
8 who turns the rock into a pool of water, the flint into a spring of water.
Psalm 114 is interesting because it personifies the elements of nature and has them genuinely being afraid of God. If you read the Scriptures, you'll find that God has more problems with humans than He does with nature. Mountains don't rebel against God. Rocks will cry out to God if necessary. You could easily shrug that observation off and I'd understand, but do you think that fear and obedience have something do to with this? Fear of God is the starting place for a lot of good qualities: humility, urgency, wisdom, fervency, penitence, and so on. If you had a good dad, you'll know that he'd always love you but man, you didn't want to cross him, right? Well, how much more complete is God's love and His fearsomeness?
I don't want to overstate the fear element because the commandment is "love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength" not "fear the Lord your God..." but I don't want you ignore this, either. I have a friend who doesn't believe that Christians can lose their salvation (which is a whole different discussion!), but, he says, "Live like you can lose it." And I think that's a good way to look at it, so long as you're motivated by love instead of fear.
To sum it up in a sentence, I'd merely say that life is short and God is not to be messed with. If we can get this straight, we'll find our permanent relationship with the Lord (and life in general!) to be a lot more inspired.
Grace and peace,
Brendan | | |
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