Digging Deep

I will now be taking a turn with my blog; instead of entertaining fluff and stories that humiliate myself for the sake of your delight. I will be digging deep....

................ digging deep into my thoughts, my mind, my soul. I will dig deep and whatever plunder I find, I will lay it all on the table for you to see.

I have done some initial digging and this is what I've found ...

... a treasure chest filled with lead,

..........a box filled with snakes and scorpions, and

................a bottle of numbing poison.

Obviously those are metaphors - metaphors to represent heavy burdens, internal conflicts, dilemmas, and things that chip away at your soul.

Sounds depressing?

It is only depressing because I don't know what to do...

It is a lose-lose situation...

........It is like asking out an ugly girl.

1) if she says yes, you got an ugly girl,

2) if she says no, you just got rejected by an ugly girl. (okay, that's the last metaphor).

(Don't worry - I will continue my "Adventures in Fort McMurray"...though it seems a better name would be "Fort Mac Funnies".)

Redefining 'church'

Started on a new devotion book "4Life - God's values for Living".
It's a book meant for a mentor and mentee, guiding the mentee from the embryonic stages of their faith and guiding them to the mature stages.

Though I would consider myself a long-time, mature Christian... there are still MANY MANY things to learn. Let's say, I'm on chapter 3, and I've already been challenged and already chewing on some concepts.

As the title of this post says: "Redefining church".
Just finished Chapter 3 "A new family". There's the cliche; "the church is the 'gathering of people', not the building."

But cutting to the chase, the book asked a simple question and provided some answers you can check off...

What's your experience of church?
o A friendly club
o A distant organization
o A committed family
o A bunch of hypocrites
o Other:

I chose; a friendly club, committed family, and a bunch of hypocrites.

After choosing the last one... I paused for a moment to churn over what I selected and questioned my reasoning behind the choices. This is what I came up with...

My own personal experience of the the church is the people are friendly and are a committed family. But Kevin Chong always looks at both sides of the picture. I am well aware of what the people outside the church think of the church... and one is: hypocrites.

Don't Christians get labeled as that? Say this, do another. Judge this and that, but does this and that. This is what the Bible says about that:

"Don't pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It's easy to see a smudge on your neighbor's face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, 'Let me wash your face for you,' when your own face is distorted by contempt? It's this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor."
- Matthew 7:1-5 (The Message)

My honest belief: Hypocritical "christians" do more damage to the Church than the any intelligent atheists or whateverists could ever do.

Something to ponder, how does this even relate to 'church'? Until next time... until next time.