What is your reaction if I tell you Jesus is the only way to heaven? What if I pull out the big guns, tell you that Jesus said as quoted in the Bible, "I am the way, the truth, & the life. No one comes to my father except through me." There are really only a couple of reactions to this statement. First there is the reaction of those who trust Christ as their savior that say, yes this is the truth. I believe this with all of my being. Then there is pretty much everyone else who says wow, isn't that a bit narrow, isn't that a little extreme, I mean the "only" way. Wow that is pretty harsh and even judgmental. And in the case of some Christians it is judgmental. It is flat black and white with no deep understanding and no compassion involved. This is truth end of story. If you go through Jesus you go to heaven if not you go to hell. No explanation, no understanding offered just this is it. It is exactly these type of Christians that give Christianity a bad name, that make people bitter and angry at Christians the world over. Let me explain it a different way. You work in a large building and you are sitting there at work and hear the fire alarm go off. You think sheesh, what a day for a fire drill. Now I have to stop what I'm doing, shut my computer down, and proceed with the rest of the sheep and hang out outside for lord knows how long and then I may not get my work done today. So you decide to work until the little safety patrol guy comes to your desk and tells you to get outside for the stupid drill. You work a few more minutes and suddenly someone does come up all red faced and tells you, hey didn't you hear the fire alarm? You have got to get outside. You grumble, shut down your computer and grab your sun glasses and keys and start towards the nearest exit, You hear the guy yell at you hey that is not the way. The safest path is posted right here, we've got to go this way. He disappears out a door and you look at him and think, wow is he hyped up about a stupid drill. You open the door that you originally were going to go down and step into the hallway. You think to yourself, man is it hot in here. You get down half a flight of stairs and smell smoke. Another half a flight of stairs and you see the smoke and it is really getting hot. You are thinking Holy crap man, it is a real fire. Now you panic and run full tilt up the stairs you just came down. You get back out onto the floor you were originally on and try to look for the dumb sign that marks the fire exits that the safety guy pointed out to you. By now you are freaking out, in your head you are blaming the safety guy for not spelling it out that there was an actual fire going on and letting you know the full situation. You think you have found the exit he went down and start down that set of stairs and it ends on the ground floor, but you are again smelling smoke and when you go to open the door to the first floor is it scalding hot and you figure at this point you are kind of screwed. You walk resignedly back up the stairs to the top floor again and as you exit the stairway you see the safety guy again and he yells at you with real fear in his voice. What are you doing, I thought you were right behind me, come on I will lead you out the only door the fire hasn't reached yet. This time you listen and you follow right behind him, you run as fast as you can down a hall, down three flights of stairs and get to the bottom. It is smoky and it is really hot but the safety guy opens the door and yells at you to go through that he is right behind you. You run down a really hot, smoke filled hallway but see the red exit sign and run to the door flinging it open and busting outside into the sun where all of your co-workers are standing back away from the building. You look back as you hurry to join them and you hear a scream and a loud crashing noise and realize the safety patrol guy didn't make it out in time. You think about running back into the building but just as you try to will your feel to move the fire department shows up and you think whew, they will save him. They go inside and drag out this body that barely looks human any more, more like a big charred mess of flesh and burnt hair and you stare stunned. He warned you with the alarm, he came up to get you and show you the right way to go, then he came back to get you and make sure you got out safe and because you didn't go the right way the first time he ended up dying for you, because you were too stubborn to realize the right door to go out in the first place. That is how Jesus is the way. We will go our own way almost every time even if someone is there telling us don't go that way. After we've exhausted every other possible way to go, after we realize that they weren't better, but worse off than we ever were before, then maybe we take the right door to the only way out. Now does that sound harsh or judgmental? Does that sound narrow or extreme?

growing up, not out...

I’m struggling here to wrap my mind, heart, & soul around some things. I have financial problems, weight problems, & emotional problems but they all seem to come from the same place inside myself. There is just all of this angst inside me. That was supposed to stop after high school wasn’t it? In some ways I feel like I haven’t grown beyond those years. Oh yea I’ve gotten better at pretending like I assume everyone else does. Most days I can even convince myself that I’m fine and that nothing is wrong or out of place. But there is this scared shitless kid inside me who is afraid of being found out. I’m a mass of paradoxes. At one moment I believe that I am a failure and can not ever succeed and then in the next breath I judge others as less than me. Why do I do this? Why can’t I ever seem to get to the middle ground? Why can’t I realize I’m not a worthless idiot but I’m not amazingly outstanding either. It is just this battle inside me that keeps me in a sort of stasis, unable to change and unable to move forward toward any sort of resolution in my life. On top of it add my faith in God, in the cleansing power of Jesus in my life. Again on one hand I get brief glimpses of who I really am in God’s eyes as his child but then I come back to the fact that I am not living for him. Not walking the walk the way I know the Bible says I should be. I don’t feel like a new creation most of the time and even when I do feel that way for a short period it is quickly vanquished as soon as I open my mouth, or succumb to one of my myriad of weaknesses.
Now before you wonder if I am just being over dramatic I must admit that my weaknesses are not just run of the mill weaknesses. They are the kind of weaknesses that would get me thrown out of any ministry in even fairly open minded churches. In the case of a lot of churches I would likely be thrown out of the church body altogether. I’m not a murderer in action or a rapist in action but there is a great darkness in my heart and thoughts. I do commit real sin on a regular basis as well. I lie, cheat, swear, relapse into drug use and succumb to pornography. There is a song by the 77’s that comes to mind “…The lust, the flesh, the eyes, & the pride of life drain the life right out of me…” Or another by Mike Roe from the Lost Dogs “…Paid all my money and what did I get, left here to smolder like some cigarette. I smoked every pack of lies made yet. I never read the little warning that said I’d be an eternal soul with an eternal crave…”
Now I know God has forgiven me but I struggle with getting any sort of peace for more that brief periods of time. How could this happen, how did I get here? Through a long series of failures and defeats mostly at my own hands. I am not a victim of some evil person or group. Sure I understand that I am in a war with the devil and can even intellectually understand that God has already defeated him and claimed me as his own. So why can I not get the victory? I long for change, I long to be the guy standing up living the true Christian life, being bold and uncompromising. But in reality I doubt that many people I encounter in my life even know I’m a Christian at all. I mean sure I’m involved in a ministry at my church and I put on the Christian face to those people, but even then I think they know I’m just really a surface, not really walking the walk. What’s worse is that there have been several times in my life that I have felt God calling me to something and I have willfully closed the door on those things out fear and out of the knowledge of my lack.
I understand that the point is that God uses the weak sinner to give himself even more glory, but I just can’t imagine the next step for myself if I were to move towards one of those open doors into the calling of God on my life. Now I’m sure anyone who reads this will think, man he is whacked and pathetic and way overdoing it and you may be right. But why can I not rise out of this and allow God to change me and mold me into what he wants? It is the knowledge of my closing those doors and of my constant failures that keeps me paralyzed to move on to grow. I just saw a bumper sticker last night that made me wonder. It said that change is inevitable but growth is optional. I pray with everything I am today that I can grow and become the man God intended me to be and not be the hapless loser that I am right now. Well that’s it for today. I hope no one actually reads this…

Just Like Samson

Well here is the explanation. Many years ago I saw a band named Scaterd Few in St. Paul, MN and afterwards a bunch of us talking with The singer Allan Aguire. As I remember it someone asked him what bible character he related to and he said Samson. It was something like this(forgive me Allan, my memory is less than perfect) "Samson was this guy who God blessed in a huge way with an amazing gift and he totally blew it but in the end God forgave him and used him again." It struck me at the time that I was that guy too. I think that when it comes down to it a lot of us are pretty much like Samson. God blesses us, we screw up and turn our backs on him and he forgives us and still chooses to use us. I'm also reminded of the fact that God once used Balaam's ass too, so I guess it's no surprise.

I think there are a couple of points we can get from this and they are nothing new but here goes. For one thing God is ever gracious especially when we don't deserve it, and second when he does chose to use us dregs, us losers, it is for his glory not because we are special. One of my favorite sections in the Bible talks about this

1st Corinthians-26Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. 27But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. 28He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, 29so that no one may boast before him. 30It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption.

This is sort of my life passage. I think of the Steve Taylor Song Jesus is for Losers.

By now if you have read this you realize why I title my blog deep thoughts from the shallow end. Nothing new here, but there is really nothing new under the sun anyways. More later.

Jon