- 10:55 -
On this night, there were two dreams, but both were very closely related. In the first, I dreamt that I was at my church, leading the music as usual. Only on this Sunday, I had forgotten my guitar. I t seemed like there was a lot of tension in the air, and we were standing in a big circle on the floor of the fellowship hall.
I could barely hear myself in the speakers and monitors because of the wind and hail beating on the church outside. The weather was going crazy; crazy enough that we all sang half-heartedly, with terror in our eyes, as if we were faced with sudden death. For some reason, I felt like if I kept singing, leading these people, and having faith, the weather would clear. It felt like it was my job to save the church.
A while later (and a lot of forgotten space inbetween) I was on the street in between my house and the high school. The storm had calmed, but I saw horrible clouds in the sky behind the high school. It felt like I needed to save people again. I started running back and forth between my house and the school, trying to convince students that my house was a safe place. There were huge piles of hail all over. Pretty good-sized hail. Once a good majority of the students were in my house, (we were extremely crowded) I started praying and then singing like I had in church. At that point, the storm was raging outside, but the more faith I had, the more the storm faded. I woke up before the plot resolved.
- 10:15 -
I had a dream that most of the senior class overheard a private school-board meeting in which Graybeal (our superintendant) changed the graduation requirements. We would have to wait until next year to graduate. On top of that, as revenge for what we’ve done to him in the past, he secretly decided to have a school lock-down one day in the next year, and gas all of the students. So, as a result, all of the seniors were given powers, but the powers were rewarded according to our most dominant traits. For instance, I remember Taylor Kelley and a few other people who had pride. They could summon and control fire. Others had envy, kindness, ect. Though everyone seemed to find another person who had the same quality, I was the only one with a unique quality. I had humility, and I couldn’t figure out what my powers were, but I could tell that they were very powerful. I was told in a dream (inside my dream) that the task of saving the school would eventually fall onto my shoulders. The last thing I remember is finding out that I could pull things toward me using my mind. I woke up before the plot resolved.
- 10:35 -
This dream was very long, and very clear.
The dream started before I was born, when my parents were trying to concieve. Note: my parents in my dream were totally different from my parents in real life.
My parents soon found that for whatever reason, they were not able to bear children. As a last resort, they contacted an adoption agency in India in order to adopt a needy son. Soon after their adoption was finalized, though, my mom found out that she was pregnant (with me). They called and cancelled the adoption, but it apparently didn’t work, because when I was 4 years old, they sent an Indian baby to my parents.
Of course, my parents really didn’t want the child, so they put him in a crib in a small closet in my basement. The baby stayed right underneath my room, and my parents slept on the level above me. Consequently, when the baby cried, I was the only one who heard it. I brought it food and milk, and conforted it when it cried. The agency had sent a name for him: Oceada. Me, being 4 years old, could read or even understand this name, so I called him Angelo. Eventually, I shortened it even more, and affectionately called him “Jo”. I raised him mostly by myself, and he was my closest friend. My parents were constantly bitter to him, but I tried to stand up for him.
Angelo became so smart that he moved up two grades, so that he was just two grades under me. After my senior year, I graduated and moved to Tennessee to go to college. After that, things were hard on Angelo at home, because my parents hated him intensely. Sometimes I would come home to visit, and find him covered in bruises and gashes.
One time, when I first came to visit, I heard that Angelo was in the counselor’s office making a huge life-changing decision. I ran through the high school, and every one of the students just stood and stared at me as I ran. When I reached the office, I found out that Angelo had decided to become a pirate of all things.
Of course, I was very confused, and I laughed. He was serious, though. He told me that he had to get off of land, and that he couldn’t tell me why.
I trusted him, and let him go. While out on sea, though, he caught a very fatal disease, and his crew abandoned him. I found him washed up, and I asked him why he had to leave, but he couldn’t answer. He died in my arms.
At that point, I vowed that I would find out the reason for his death. After finishing school, changing my emphasis to become a detective, I got on the case and found out that Angelo was being hunted by a hit-man hired by my parents (who were now also dead). I set out to find the assassin, almost catching him a few times.
At one point in time, I got a hunch that he was living in an abandoned store on the 16th street mall in Denver, CO. I knew a girl (Kirstin Knobbe) that owned a coffee shop next-door to the abandoned store, and got her to help. I waited, watching out of a two story building.
Eventually, a man came out of the abandoned building and approached Kirstin, inviting her to come inside the store. She went with him a couple steps, and then suddenly ran back to her booth, pulled out a gun and aimed it at him. I called in the back-up and I caught the man and brought justice to Angelo’s death.
Filed under: Philosophies | Tags: attention, Christianity, magnetism, negative, philosophy, positive
“No attention is better than negative attention.”
Especially in the context of school, this statement is verified by students everyday. For instance, if a student is never noticed in any class, and is not popular at all, they are more likely not to turn thier homework in. Why? Because the teacher will give them, although in a negative way, their wanted attention.
The same concept applies to our relationship with God.
God is positive. Always. He never changes. He is the Almighty Encourager. When we become content and happy with our lives, we also become positive, and all too often, create distance between God and ourselves. We come up with the false idea that we can become self-sufficient. That is not the case. Like in magnetics, Two positives repel each other.
It says in the Bible, however, that Christ’s Power is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9) When we are weak and down-trodden, we turn to God and say, “Why me?” We give God negative attention. That’s why we must face tribulations: because God would rather have our negative attention, than our ignorance. As in magnetics, positives and negatives attract.
Here’s the catch: once we realize that we are weak, we are forced to depend on God. At that point, we come running back to Him, admitting that we were wrong for believing we could function on our own. We are transformed from negative back to positive, this time, getting closer to God. Through these cycles in our faith, we mature in faith. Positive to negative to positive and back again.
And that doesn’t normally happen in magnetics.
We can choose to live life one of two different ways. One, we can choose to spend our time feeling cursed or shunned, saying that out of all the things that happen, most events are bad: curses from God. On the other hand, we can also choose, reguardless of whether it is the truth, to think that we have been blessed beyond measure throughout our entire lives.
Like most everything, these contrasting mindsets have contrasting consequences. By expecting one of them, you provoke it to be so. So, with this understanding, how can God bless a person who always expects to recieve curses? And more importantly, how can God bless someone who mistakes His blessings for curses?
Say that there is a cook who works under a very wealthy man. The cook, who is very experienced, was trained to know what kinds of foods are healthy and delicious to eat. Each night, the cook labors away, fixing his best possible meal for the man. One day, however, the man comes to the false conclusion that the hard-working cook’s true intentions were to poison him. The wealthy man, enraged, says to the cook, “You have cursed my life to sickness because of your poisonous food! Every meal you have ever prepared me was nothing more than an ill-begotten horror!”
What motivation, then, does the cook have to continue to prepare the man good food?
What motivation, then, does God have to bless you while you see everything as a curse?
Filed under: Philosophies | Tags: bad, Christianity, faith, fire, good, philosophy, works
What, do you think, is the biggest misconception about Christianity? In too many cases, people consider their faith like a mighty balance, weighing their good deeds, and their bad ones. Every time one does something that coincides with their morals, another coin gets thrown onto the “good” side of the balance. Likewise, every morally wicked act casts another coin on the “bad” side. The absolute worst misconception is the thought that once you die, God looks at this scale, and if the “good” coins outweigh the “bad”, you get an eternal pass to heaven.
The Bible, however, makes it very clear this is NOT the case.
The true answer to eternal life is faith, but not faith alone. “Faith without works is death.” Many, including myself, have wondered what this verse means. Here is the answer: Faith comes first. Without faith, all good deeds are like dirty rags. Nothing one does would ever be good enough. Once with faith, though, one gains mercy (not recieving the punishment one deserves) and grace (not recieving the punishment one deserves, but instead, recieving rewards). And when faith comes, so does works. Once one has faith, Christ living inside motivates to be obedient. Without obedient works, a man really has no faith at all. “Faith without works is death.”
In that case, a better picture of faith would be a bonfire. A huge, burning bonfire in the soul. The bigger the flame, the more smoke fills the air. If the fire is extinguished, though, there can be no more smoke; only hot embers waiting to be rekindled.
Filed under: Philosophies | Tags: God, judge, judgement, new, old, philosophy, testament
Many people, when asked about the Christian God, often ask me about the difference between the judgemental, Old Testament God, and the loving, New Testament God. They argue that such inconsistancies put the Bible into a half-truth, half-fiction catagory. I can’t believe how many times I’ve had to state my case; my case for my Creator.
First of all, the Biblical God, throughout the entire coarse of the Bible is just. He upholds his laws, and it is his nature to punish if we are not obedient. While many people flinch upon hearing only this, what one must realize is that God is also extremely loving at the same time. The Bible says that his love is unconditional, agape love. And, in the same lines, it says that God is a mighty judge.
However, I won’t deny the fact that the two parts of the Bible depict God in a different manner. In the Old Testament, God seems vicious and strict, where in the New Testament, He appears kind and fogiving. Why is this?
Think about a mother and her son. The mother, working as a judge, is very disappointed to hear that her son was accused of robbing a store. She was put in charge of the case, and because of her moral beliefs and obligations to the law, she would have to rule fairly, either for or against her own son.
The day of the ruling, the evidence was presented, and her son, without a doubt, was guilty. In anguish, she read the verdict silently and prepared to convict her own son. She was interrupted by a man in the third row of the courtroom, who stood and said in a clear voice, “Take that boy off of the stand. I will serve his punishment.” The woman was shocked when she realized her other son was the man who was now standing.
So what’s the difference? The most perfect case of deus ex machina. Since God had to send his own innocent Son to serve the punishments of so many who were guilty, He could no longer punish us who believe, because Jesus stands in our defense, saying, “Please, Dad. I love them. I died for them.”
Don’t get me wrong, God still loved the people who lived in the times of the Old Testament, but they didn’t know what was coming yet.
Filed under: Philosophies | Tags: Bible, elephant, misunderstanding, philosophy
The same story of the six blind men and the elephant can be applied to how we view the Bible.
If we take part of the Bible, while completely blinded to the rest of it, we could get only a vague depiction of the real scenario, or in the worst case, come up with a totally miscontrued idea of what the verse is really trying to say. Like the elephant, we must take a look at the Bible as a whole. Only then can we come close to grasping what the big picture is.
In the same way, by adding or taking away from this Holy Word, we are left with misunderstandings. What good is an elephant without his trunk, or with an extra leg? By doing these things, we make our biblical elephant disfunctional. So why not add in or take away what we like or dislike? Because when we try to please ourselves, be never benifit in the longrun.
God made the elephant exactly how he wanted it in the beggining…
In my spare time, I really enjoy studying up on religions. Not just my own, but I also like to study what others believe. I remember coming to church and hearing about what many people of this earth truly believe, and I also remember how many people outside of our church hated it. This always sparked my curiousity.
First of all, as a Christian, we believe that Christ died innocently to save us, and we want to spread that truth throughout the world. If we could ever complete this quest, we would undoubtedly encounter people of other religions.
I’ve heard many people talk of spiritual warfare: the constant battle between truth and deception in the midst of the human soul. Everyday, we participate in this war by the choices we make. My point is; why go into war unarmed? If we are truly to convince others of our truth, then we must try to imagine what state of mind they might be in already. By knowing the beliefs of others, we gain a foothold into their motives and desires. Once we know this, we are able to show them how Christ can meet the needs that their previous idols can’t provide.
More importantly, though, is the very concept of truth itself. There is an old Indian legend about six blind men and an elephant. The first blind man ran into the side of the elephant, exclaiming, “There is a wall in my way!”. The second man, reaching out and feeling the elephant’s tusk, says, “It is not a wall, but a sharp spear!”. The third, out to prove both wrong, feels the trunk and shouts in horror, “It is not a spear nor a wall! It is a snake!” Then the fourth walks up to the mysterious object and wraps his arm around it’s mighty knee. “Why, you’re all wrong! It is a tree!” Said he. Then the sixth man feels the elephant’s ear confidently, exclaiming, “Even the blindest man can see that this is a fan!” Finally, the sixth man comes to the elephant, and grasps it’s tail. “You all are so foolish! This, of course, is a rope!”
The tale, then, ends like this:
And so these men of Indostan
Disputed loud and long,
Each in his own opinion
Exceeding stiff and strong,
Though each was partly in the right,
And all were in the wrong!
This, in essence, is very true of most arguments, especially in the world of religion. When we only have our own knowledge of the big picture, or the broad concepts of the people of our world, we will always have conflict. The solution is to learn. Learn without compromising your beliefs, because someone, sometime, is bound to say, “Why this is an elephant!” Once someone is bold enough to declare their real truth, while keeping in mind the beliefs of others, the world will stop in silence and ponder: “Maybe it really is an elephant…”
