Blog Readers, Assemble!

Today is a special update! Still going to do the weekly nonsense, but while I'm at it, I thought I'd bring the full force of my 3 subscribers and dozens of half-interested family members to bear on Washington!

Enough writing about it, let's do something for Jesus.

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2241/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=3097

There's this war that's been going on in Uganda for a long long time. However you feel about war in general, it's hard to feel good about this one. The rebels have been rounding up children, torturing them, then handing them guns and sending them out to fight.

I've called one congressman today, and I'm calling the other one tomorrow, simply because I believe in a risen savior who calls us to do everything we can to bring his kingdom about in our lives and in others' lives. Call a congressman, then do something that actually helps and say a prayer!

(jake)

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2241/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=3097

Of Mouse Tails and Fences, or The Ballad of Desmond Tutu

I have an office. There are two couches. There are pictures of friends and family, probably a picture or two of you. There is a big desk that I sit at, and on this desk are a few more pictures. Most of my pictures hang loose and get stamped up on the wall, simply because I can't afford that many picture frames. But a few of them are especially special, and these ones get frames. One is a picture of me and my wife (I'm married now, heads up.) and the other is a picture of me and a couple of my best friends on what the legends of York College refer to as, "Fabolus Monday." Ask me about that one, seriously.

There is one other picture in a frame, it sits behind me on my bookshelf. It is a picture of one of my personal heroes, the Archbishop Desmond Tutu. I have a few personal heroes, CS Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., whoever will eventually replace Dayton Moore as Royals GM, but Desmond Tutu is the one we're talking about today. Without going into multiple paragraphs about why he is significant, I want to talk about a quote from him. (Don't worry, there's still a Bible verse. Just stick with me.)

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality." - Dezzy T

I know. Bishop Tutu is a clever guy. But seriously, consider this. Consider the implications for your life. Are you neutral? Because the sad fact is, that there is no neutral. Cliche but true, Satan owns the fence.

"I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth." - Revelation 3:15-16


The thing about teaching from the Bible is that it's not all going to make you happy. It will make you a better person, it will make you holier, more blessed, and ultimately someday happier, but at the moment you read it, it will not always make you happy. There's a good chance that today's blog is going to be kind of like that, so if you're the type who likes happiness more than you like truth, I suggest you spend some of your internet time somewhere else. I would suggest icanhascheezburger.com for the remainder of your time online.


Ask yourself something, and do it honestly, wherever you are. Are you really committed to Christ? I'm not asking if you believe, I'm not asking if you're perfect, I'm not asking if you've been overcoming sin in your life, those are all related but different issues. Are you really, truly, and honestly committed to seeking God, and to being a Christian? Are you making some sort of effort to figure out what it means to follow Jesus? If not, then I have bad news.

The way it looks to me, this verse in Revelation is pretty clear on something; God is more annoyed by neutral people than he is by his enemies. And why shouldn't he be? It's not just Jesus and Desmond Tutu; every great leader in history has been more frustrated with apathy than with animosity. Read Dr. King's Letter From a Birmingham Jail if you don't believe me.

Today, unfortunately, I have to call it for what it is. An epidemic of apathy has swept through our Churches. I'm not sure when it happened, if it was before my birth, if it's relatively new, or if it's always been going on, but there are people across the world showing up on Sunday morning, Sunday night, or whenever else your Church meets, and they're not letting a single bit of what happens there bleed into their daily life.

To my readers who are apathetic, please, hear me out. God will puke you up. It's going to be gross in a way that you cannot imagine. Not only that, it's going to be painful and embarrassing. My blog today is a plea for passion; give Jesus just a little bit more of your time. Let the things you learned on Sunday morning affect your week. Start with sermons! Just start by listening to the sermon at your Church, and just one day this week, try to live out whatever it is that the preacher is encouraging. Try it, and see if your life isn't completely different as a result!

Or don't. See if I care.





I do.

(jake)

A Christian Blog that WON'T Mention Glenn Beck

For the record, I like you guys. I appreciate you reading this madness, sticking with me when I disappear for a few months, and I hope that you get something out of it. If we're not already friends on Facebook, you need to add me. Unless you're that guy that bombs abortion clinics who commented one time. You should go to jail. You're a terrorist.

Switching gears completely, I think I may have found the single most incredible verse in all of scripture. It's in John 14:12 -

"I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father."

Okay for a few minutes drop all theology, scholarship, deep thinking and analytical thought and just read that for what it says. Don't over think it, don't start assuming it means something about Church or Holy Spirits, just read the dang thing. Because after 23 years I've finally started doing that. I seriously just read it last night, just really read it and really saw it for what it is, and I seriously nearly freaked out. We will do greater things than Jesus. Greater!

Let's bring everyone up to speed here; Jesus did some big big stuff. He fed thousands, walked on water, RAISED THE DEAD, turned water to wine, cured sickness, RAISED HIMSELF FROM THE DEAD, and preached some pretty killer sermons. Jesus was kind of a big deal. Still is.

But here he is speaking to his disciples, and saying some pretty bold stuff. To think that they would do greater things than Jesus must have been completely thrilling to them! But let's not miss the most significant thing here; Jesus didn't just say this to the people in attendance, he says that anyone who believes in him is going to do even greater things than he did! That means me, you, anyone in the year 2010 AD who believes in Jesus is capable of doing even greater things than Jesus did!

So that brings up the big question; why not? Why aren't we? Why are so many Christians struggling to live up to this promise?

Let me share with you a youth minister secret, the kind of thing that we talk about in upper-division classes, right in between the unit on beards and before the one on how to attract a hot wife. (Yes, it's really covered in class)

The secret is, people will generally give you what you expect of them. (Secretive italics!) In youth ministry what this means is that we shouldn't be afraid to ask a lot of the teens. Most of these guys are taking advanced calculus classes that only 1 in every 100 youth ministers could even sit through, let alone pass. And yet we give them watered down, simple Bible lessons? No no. Not right.

But what this secret means for us as people is that we have to start expecting more of ourselves. We are a culture that is driven by a desire to accomplish things, wanting so desperately to have something that we can say we did, wanting to always find the next big thing to do, and yet in our faith we are content to simply fill a pew once a week?

Or maybe your problem is a low self-esteem? Maybe you, like so many others are afraid of failure, maybe you don't expect much of yourself because you don't think much of yourself. The same Jesus that said that you would do great things also died for you; whether you believe in your own potential or not, Jesus Christ does.

Whether your great deed is to share the gospel with a co-worker, or if God has called you to something more public, like mission work, whatever it is, stop living like you're not called to something better. Realize your own potential, and live like it.

(jake)

PS - I know, it's been a while. But I have office hours now, and I am way more available to write this nonsense. Tell your friends about this blog. Better yet, tell your enemies, it's a great way to settle an old score.

Bad Dates

Hey guys. Sorry I've been AWOL. I've got most of a devo finished, I've just been super sick for the last few days. I'll get the new one up soon, I promise.

You Don't Know Jake

I have 3 followers! This post is hereby dedicated to Ric McBath, Aaron Nelson, and Shane Latham. Thanks for humoring me, Jesus will reward you heavily one day.

So let's jump back to my education. Yes, I know, still in school. 5.5 years now. This is in fact my 11th semester of undergraduate work. Just to give a little perspective, my friend Sheila Smesrud and I started college the exact same semester...she'll be getting a doctorate in May, just a few months after I pick up my first Bachelor's. It's okay to laugh, really.

Anyway, I'm in a psychology class right now. On the off chance that anyone from that class ever reads this, understand that I have the utmost respect for the field of psychology and am actually enjoying the class a lot. That being said, I often find myself in an interesting predicament in my psychology class. I get annoyed with the theories being presented. No joke, it has actually been proposed by "experts" that people are genetically programmed to cheat on their spouses because they have an instinct to spread their genes as much as possible.

What I've learned in this class more than anything is that I do not like people trying to, "figure me out." I don't like being reduced to a theory, or being defined by a series of behaviors. Call me romantic, but I just prefer to believe that there's more to people than patterns.

Of course being a fairly hypocritical person, it wasn't too long before I realized that I do the very same thing all the time! As I've shifted my education more and more to Biblical Studies, I've slowly begun to view God as something to figure out. Rather than being the infinite creator of my world, he's the theory that keeps me motivated, and he's the force that I might just figure out if I tweak my theology enough. I've got to wonder, if I get annoyed at people trying to decipher me and reduce me to a theory, how must God feel being constantly debated and reduced to theology?

There is this beautiful and epic scene in the Old Testament. It's at the end of a book called Job, a book that is actually one long epic poem in the original Hebrew language. There's a lot to it, but I'll just give you the broad strokes; Job has had a really bad day. Really bad. And he's been trying to figure it out, trying to figure out why God would let that happen. He's actually gone so far as to demand that someone explain it to him, and amazingly enough, God shows up! Trust me, I read a lot of books, watch a lot of movies, and I'm telling you, there are very few scenes in all of literature as beautiful or epic as this. God confronts Job, and tells it like it is.

The incredible thing about all of this scene is that God never gives Job the explanation he's been waiting for! He never once bothers to say, "Job, funny thing, this was all Satan, and I'm here to fix it!" He never says, "Job, everything gets better after you suffer, this was making you a better person!" He just shows himself to Job, and says, "I'm God. You're not. Trust me."

Job's response is equally epic. He says, "Surely I spoke of things I did not understand; things too wonderful for me to know!" - Job 42:3

There's a point where I really just wish that all the psychologists and theorists in the world would just let Jake be Jake. I wish they'd just accept that maybe there's no deeper reason for my behavior than, "It seemed like a good idea," or, "I like comic books." (Two really big reasons why I do everything.) I get the feeling that God feels the same way. I'm paying a lot to learn about him, I'm not saying we shouldn't learn everything we can, but there's a point where we have to accept that God is beyond our understanding. He's just too big!

Eternity; think it over. Go on, try it. I'll be here when you come back.

Scary, huh? That's God. That's all you need to know. That's all we get. And you know what? I've begun to accept that. I didn't always; I still don't always. I have trouble with it. I want to understand, and I want to get my ministry down to a science. I want to be able to tell people that there are certain things that always work, and that no matter what the following 3 points will always be right. (Church of Christ joke.) But that's not how it is. God is just too big and too hard to figure out. But what that does mean is that even though everything else seems shaky, even though it's nearly impossible to find any solid truth in this world, one thing will always be true; God is big, God is strong, and God loves us.

Chill out. Take it from someone who's learning this the hard way. Life is way too short to try and understand. Just do your best, follow God, and trust me when I say that he's got it figured out.

(jake)

Middle Drawer Faith

"Unless you change and become like one of these children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven." - Matthew 18:3

Interesting verse. Lock it down in your brains, we'll come back to it in a bit.

Remember 1997? It was a really good year. Tiger Woods won his first Masters, Mike Tyson bit Evander Holyfield's ear, and a giant Tonka Truck was sent to Mars, where it eventually ran into a rock and stopped talking to us. A little band called dcTalk was proving the Christian music wasn't always corny, and ska music was reaching its peak. It was in this specific year that a young Jake Owens was introduced to a then-rapidly-growing fad. I'm speaking of course about the WWJD bracelet. They came in an assortment of colors, red, blue, purple, teal, etc. Mine was green. Not a bright green, but a dark, strong, forest green. The color of a person's WWJD bracelet said a lot about them and how they served God. The green bracelet just happened to scream, "Will lose his hair by the time he's 20 and eventually surrender to the fact that he's not good at anything other than teaching Sunday School and playing video games." Don't even ask me what a yellow bracelet said about someone.

For my readers who are either older than 30 or younger than 20, you have to understand what these bracelets were all about. See, in ancient times, Christians were persecuted, so they had to come up with clever ways of identifying one another as Christians. In 1997, the true believers identified themselves with a colorful bracelet on the wrist. It meant you got it. It was a sign that you were not just a "christian," but that you were a, "CHRISTIAN." (The difference is subtle, but I'm relatively certain it has something to do with whether you can sing harmony on Light the Fire or not.)

So for a while, things were wonderful. But then that terrible, horrible, dark year of 1998 approached, and the inevitable happened. The fad. WWJD was no longer something secret and sacred, suddenly it was something cheerleaders wore! Suddenly it was a way of identifying who was cool! Suddenly the beautiful people wanted to know me, because I was wearing the same bracelet as them! I remember sitting in the cafeteria with my friends and wanting to scream, "NO! This isn't right! You're not supposed to match your bracelet with your shoes! You're supposed to let it scream something about your faith!" We all fought that long culture war, but in the end, as they always do, the trendsetters won out, and the bracelet became just another accessory. Sometime around 1999, I sadly put my green WWJD bracelet away in the middle drawer for good, to be lost amongst so many back-issues of Nintendo Power.

Now look; I've spent a lot of the last couple of years trying to rediscover my 6th grade faith. Somewhere along the line between 12 and 23, I let my faith become less...potent. It's not that I love God less, it just feels like for some reason I don't rely on him as much. Maybe I grew up and started thinking I was able to take care of myself, maybe I just grew up. Who knows. The point is, 12 year old Jake was a titan of faith. That kid would stand on a bus stop with drug dealers and chain smokers and not bat an eye, because he knew that Jesus protected him. He used to stay awake late at night to pray longer, because he knew it would make tomorrow better. 23 year old Jake? He's having trouble waking up 20 minutes before class to say a prayer.

I'm not about to say that that bracelet was directly tied to my faith, but what I did notice is that the bracelet left about the time I started to develop a healthy dose of cynicism in my attitude. Suddenly, just because other people had diluted the importance of WWJD, I didn't want anything to do with it. The bracelet was just a symptom of something deeper; my faith had become jaded. I was suddenly analyzing others' faith, trying to pinpoint what they were doing wrong so I could "fix" it. I put that bracelet in the drawer about the same time that I started complaining that no one was as enlightened as I was, whining about how youth events could have been done better, trying to identify what others should be doing for me.

Lately my prayers have been a little different. Rather than praying to God for a deeper understanding of him, or praying that he fixes everyone else's attitude, I've started praying that God restores the faith of my youth. It was a selfless faith, one that didn't critique and judge others' performance, the kind of faith that just loved to be among Christians and to worship with them.

Again, I can't be sure that this applies to you. But be honest; do you complain a lot? Do you lean over to the person beside you and complain about how much you hate when Song Leader A leads this song, or how you wish we hadn't moved to the gym, or how much assigned seating bugs you, or what speaker you wish they had instead. Is your faith conditional? Are you only joyful when things go a certain way? Or do you rejoice that God has called you? Do you spend your time being joyful because God is joyful, praising because he deserves it, and loving others because they're God's children too?

It occurs to me that having the faith of a child isn't about anything more than being content, being happy, and being joyful simply that God has called you to be his child. The faith of a child isn't a silly faith or an oversimplified one, it's a faith that lacks cynicism.

The other day, while deep cleaning The 305, I found a WWJD bracelet under my desk. I'm not sure where it came from, but it was in pristine condition. I turned it over backwards, strapped it on, then flipped it, so that it wouldn't come loose. My new bracelet is red. Red seems to be the color that says, "Nothing good is ever truly lost."

(jake)

God's Insanity is Greater than man's Sanity

You knew this was coming. Maybe you dreaded it, maybe you were hoping for it, but one way or another, you knew I'd be back. How am I? Well I'm getting married now. That's pretty exciting. I also now fit into size 38 pants, which hasn't happened for a long long time. They're lime green corduroy pants to boot. I know, you missed me.

Let me give you a look into my life currently. At age 23, I am just a few short months away from marriage and graduation. (Not in that order) I am currently involved in trying to find a job, and while some prospects are beginning to look promising, I wanted to share a little insight, let you see what's going on in this twisted mind of mine.

As I've been searching for a job, I've had this constant temptation. Namely, the temptation to settle for less. Now mind you, I'm not trying to make a statement about what makes a good Church or a bad Church. But you know me, and if you've read even a few of the things I've written on here you know that I'm not going to be able to work at just any Church. That's okay; lots of Churches won't work for a lot of people. It's not about right or wrong, it's about finding the right fit.

The temptation however comes in when a Church that isn't a good fit looks like it would have good money, or at least secure money. Look, it's hard to admit. I'm not getting into ministry for the money, but when you're staring down the barrel of a gun called "responsibility" it's hard to not stop and consider the best financial option. Ministry isn't about money, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone has to eat. Everyone also has to pay of 5 years worth of student loans. Everyone also has to get married. Everyone also has to pay ridiculous gas prices (I refuse to accept $2.75 as okay) and everyone also has to find health insurance and still hopefully have enough money to go out with the new wife once in a while and possibly even revive a long-lost video game hobby. Everyone has a lot on everyone's mind.

So the other day, no joke, I sat down and looked at several job opportunities. There was the temptation to leap in headfirst, and to just start dishing out resumes like so much Halloween candy corn. But my mind keeps drifting back to one of my favorite parts of scripture, the Corinthian Epistles. This is the part where I start talking Bible!

Paul started this Church in Corinth. Then he left. While he was gone, people started looking around at how the local bigwigs ran things. They saw this group called the Sophists, who were (I'm not making this up) fond of teaching people by screaming at each other, and having their students pull pranks on one another. The Corinthian Church saw all of this and thought, "Whoa, those guys are awesome. People would want to be a part of our Church if we were more like that!" The end result? Well of course the Church all turned on one another and began having shouting matches and trying to sabotage one another.

So Paul gets wind of this from someone who works for Phoebe, the lady who helped run the Church in Corinth. He's obviously not pleased, so he writes them a letter, and one of the first (and best) lines in the whole thing goes like this: "The foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength." -1 Corinthians 1:25

You should seriously read the book yourself, but let me sum it up. Paul is explaining to the Corinthians that God's way is always best, even when it looks like the least intelligent way of doing things. Maybe it doesn't look that smart to forgive that person that hurt you so bad; doesn't matter. God knows better than you. Maybe it seems like a dumb idea to give any of your money to other people right now, what with the economy down so much. Do it anyway. Even at his weakest, God is stronger than us or any financial market.

For me, what this reminded me is that God's will for me is best. I might want to seek out the first and most secure thing that comes my way, but God has something better. God will take care of my money, and he will lead me to a Church where I fit, and where I can maximize my affect on the Kingdom. On a side note, shortly after reading this and making the decision to stop pursuing a few specific job opportunities, I was given a promotion at work and am getting paid basically double what I was. God's already got my back.

You? I don't know if this applies to you. Sadly the best I can do is write what God puts on my heart and hope that it connects with you. But know that I love you, and that I have already prayed that God will clear your mind, and show you his will. It will probably look insane. Turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, and trusting an unseen God with your financial security all looks insane. But from one insane person to another, it's a pretty darn good way to live.

(jake)

Back?

I believe I will begin writing here again. I feel the creative flow....well, flowing. Brace yourselves.

jake

Blessed Are You When People Call You "Bible-Thumper"

I try not to be too political with my thinking and with my writings, and I give you my word as a gentleman that I had already written most of this a few weeks ago, but I think it is important to mention something before I go into this blog. Today, this very morning, our President visited a Chinese State Church. For those of you unfamiliar with China and its practices regarding religion, the State Church is a dumbed down, powered down, and God-downed version of Christianity, for those people who would like to go to Church but just don't want all of the hardship it can bring in a communist nation. It's very troubling to me that the leader of our "Christian" nation would go and embrace the public face of persecution. I say all of that just to do my little part to make people more aware, and to inform you that this post is written in honor of and in prayer for all of those who suffer in the name of a risen savior, a just God, and the hope of a redeemed world.

All that being said, I got to thinking about persecution a couple of weeks ago. I heard a sermon about how to react to being persecuted, and I looked around the room. I don't know what your Church is like, but the VH is pretty typical of the sort of congregation I grew up in; very white, very middle class, very well off. The point? In the year of our Lord, 2008, in the United States of America, in the nation's midwestern breadbasket, it is hard to conceive that middle class white people are being persecuted by anyone for anything.

Lets start with a verse that I think is troubling to many modern Christians; "In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil men and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived." - 2 Tim 3:12-13

See, there is this thought in early Christianity that the powers that be are not going to like what Jesus and his Church do. From the earliest moments of his ministry, Jesus is speaking of persecution, and ensuring his followers that they'll be blessed in Heaven for suffering for his sake on Earth. It's amazing to me how modern Christianity has managed to dilute the word persecution. Once upon a time it meant imprisonment, torture, and eventually a gruesome death for those that wouldn't renounce Jesus. Today? Well if most of the preachers I've heard are to be believed, it apparently means getting teased for wearing a WWJD bracelet and not listening to Eminem.

So what I'm asking, what makes this verse so uncomfortable is this; why aren't we being persecuted? The way I see it, there are two possibilities here. Either this world, or at least our own little corner of it has finally seen the light and joined up with God's way of doing things, or we as Christians are not doing our duty.

I'm sure you can guess which way I lean; so my challenge to you? Figure out what you're leaving out. I'm not gonna give all of the answers here, go read you a bible! Dig around, see what Jesus wanted from us, figure out why the world hated him, and why it seems to love us so much. Maybe if you're really good at it you'll upset some government and start a persecution.

(jake)

For more information on the persecuted Church in China and across the world, visit The Voice of the Martyrs at http://www.persecution.com/ If you really wanna stir things up, go to www.cc.org (The Christian Coalition) and www.focusonthefamily.com and ask them why their boy Dubbya is getting buddy buddy with the persecutors.

And They're Always Glad You Came

Okay, it's beginning to flow a little better. Rather than racking my brain for something profound each week, I'm getting back into the groove of just spewing forth whatever God's put on my heart. Brace yourselves for spew.

The scum of the Earth gather there, because they feel welcome there. Some of them are actually highly successful people who have come to wrestle with their demons, perfectly normal and healthy people who simply need some support to keep up with the good work. Good, bad, ugly, all are welcome, all are wanted. Some get extremely involved and are regulars; others simply show up and enjoy the good vibes.

Or there is our second location. It's a high class place, filled with the wealthy and elite. It's a club that seems easy enough to get into, but for some reason a lot of people have trouble sticking around there. The elite rulers of the day are strong advocates, using their membership to springboard themselves into greater positions of power, from which they further exploit the weak and the poor. Everyone is well groomed, everyone is clean, everyone looks perfect. Sadly, beneath the surface there is a great deal of sin and corruption dealing beneath the surface. It's not that the people here are wicked, that they enjoy their state, it's just that no one's ever taken the time to show them any better.

Scene one? A bar.

Scene two? A Church.

Sure, not all Churches are like that, I know, I attend a couple of pretty good ones. And no, bars aren't exactly wholesome places. Still, can't argue with the facts.

I really wish Church were more like a bar.

(jake)

Hitchiker's Guide to Eternity

Ugh. It seems like everytime I get on a roll with this thing and get a decent number of people reading again, I fall out of the loop and forget to post for a month or three. So, for the first of this semester's 3 posts...

To me, that title is brilliant. It's a little known fact that my favorite part of writing these blogs is writing the title. I also wash my hands before I read and sometimes pray for super powers. Seriously, you couldn't handle 20 minutes in my brain.

So while in the land down under I kept thinking about the Bible. I have been thinking about the Bible a whole lot lately, because as you all know I'm now a Bible Major. I spend a lot of time doing homework about the Bible. Why do I say this? Because I think that for a vast majority of my life I have viewed the Bible incorrectly.

Rob Bell is a favorite author of mine, and in his book Velvet Elvis, he implores us to drop the whole Bible-as-an-instruction-manual analogy. I have to say, I love this idea, and I want to second it. It's time we stopped looking at the holy word of the divine God as a rules list.

I got to thinking about this, and how much of the greater sins I've committed against people in my life have really been born of that misunderstanding of scripture. Because I thought that the Bible was a set of rules, I judged people and treated them like I was better than they were. Because I misread Jesus' teachings on grace, I treated people like they were beneath me. If you are a regular reader, or if you're bored enough to trail back a couple of posts, you'll notice my conflict with Cross Guy. I honestly used to think like Cross Guy, I'm ashamed to say, and I think that it's because I wanted to see the Bible as a rulebook.

Now let me clarify; I'm not saying we shouldn't follow the rules in the Bible. God does give some direct commands, and they should be obeyed. But if that's all you're making it, if you're taking this precious gift from God and making it something as simple and legalistic, then you've completely missed the point I'm afraid.

I struggled a lot to find bible verses that would sum this up, because this feels like the sort of thing that it is so important to have God's backing on. The one that seems logical is 2 Timothy 3:16, which says that all scripture is God-breathed and useful for training in righteousness. It seems to me that the term "God-breathed" probably means that it was something straight from the mouth of God, something that carried with it his very will and his heart. I mean think about it, the main time that we see God breathing something into existence, it isn't a rule book, it's a freaking human being! God doesn't breathe things that are unliving, the breath of God is universally recognized as something that brings life.

So where does all of this lead? My point is to make us rethink scripture and how we study it. Just memorizing the facts is fine at first, but read the stories, read the words of God, the way he treats his people, the way he cares for them no matter what; learn to mimic the ways of God. Scripture is more than a list of rules, it is a unique look straight into the heart of God, a wonderful examination of the very nature of God, of who he is and what he wants from his people; read it to learn who God is, and in turn, to learn who you are. I promise you, this is something that will completely change your life.

(jake)


-This post is dedicated to Cindy Hess.

A Conundrum if You Will...

I am stranded in York for two more weeks. Every morning I get up and look out my window at the dead campus and let a single tear roll down my eye, pollution-indian style.

Anywho, in keeping with the great educators of history, this week I choose to teach by posing questions. The following is a series of questions that were posed in my Wednesday night High School class last week, and I've got to say, they handled it very well. So now, allow me to play Yoda to your Luke.

I'm not going to directly cite any scripture today, which might be a gutsy move, but I would rather that you open scripture and search for yourself on this one. I will direct you to the Sermon on the Mount in early Matthew, and James 2, starting around verse 15. Now, moving on.

Consider two people. First, a personal hero of mine whose picture hangs on my wall next to one of my many Spiderman posters. No, not Optimus Prime. Mahatma Gandhi. In case you're not up to date on your Indian civil rights leaders, let me fill you in. Gandhi quit a job as a high paid lawyer in order to live with the Untouchables, a group of people in India who were seen as literally, untouchable. They lived in poverty and disease, because they were considered outside society, beneath the notice of civilization. Gandhi dedicated his life to these people, living among them and living like them, trying to help them. This is in fact the most Christ-like thing I've heard of since feeding a multitude.

Unfortunately Gandhi had a major problem in his worldview, namely, Hinduism. Now I'm not about to denigrate someone else's beliefs, but at the same time, I'm not about to say that all roads lead to God. They don't. Some roads lead to lots of vague and fictitious gods, and that's what Gandhi chose.

Exhibit B however is one of my least favorite people in the world. While he has yet to acknowledge our feud publicly, I consider this man to be one of my arch-enemies. I am of course speaking of Pat Robertson of the 700 Club. Pat, for those of you not in the know, has used his media empire to spread wonderful Christian beliefs. Like the time he said that 9-11 was the will of God, brought on to punish us because of feminism. (Might have been Katrina, I'm not entirely sure, so if you read this Pat, don't go getting all techinical on me. You know what I'm getting at.)

So Pat Robertson, a man who is far more concerned with making sure we know who goes to Hell than with helping others get to heaven, calls on the name of Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior. While I'm never ever going to say that Pat Robertson is any kind of Christian, at the same time, I also have to believe that grace can cover hypocrisy and bigotry, or a great number of Christians, including myself, are all going to Hell.

So consider this a different sort of post; rather than a challenge or a moral, today I leave you with a question. Which of these two is more pleasing to God? The man who lives a Christ-like life outside of Christ, or the man who embraces all encompassing grace but denies it to others?

(jake)

Broken Tools

So I have a confession: I have not been in Mexico for two months. I have in fact been in York, Nebraska, finishing up the fourth year of what I'm beginning to suspect is a forty year wandering as punishment for some past sin. The good news is that I am still playing guitar, and I believe it shows; last night some stranger paid for my food at Buffalo Wild Wings, and just today, the girl at the coffee shop gave me a few extra packages of tea as I bought my rooibus. I've said it before, chicks dig the artsy type.

So I have begun to consider leadership. A little late in the game perhaps, but it is important I think that I re-evaluate. I'm not always the best leader, and next year I've got more to lead.

So I took to reading from the Bible, specifically the parts that deal with The Jesus and his take on leadership. Now there are lots of great passages, and one that I want to focus in on, but first I want to take a look at something written by Paul. Pay close attention children, as I can only perform this trick once:

For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength. (1 Cor 1:25)

Understand before we go any further on this adventure that God is not concerned with how humans do things. Humanity views leadership as an upward climb, a battle to the top. You step on who you can to get higher up, you demonstrate the most strength, and people will inevitably respect and follow you. Basically, the idea is to look like you have everything together, even though we all know no one has it all together. Maybe we follow people like this in order to forget our own brokenness? "Hey, he's got it figured out. If I do like him, maybe I'll get all of my crap together." The incredible thing is, that that person we're following is likely every bit if not more broken than we are.

Okay, so with all of that in mind, here's the Jesus part. There's this great passage in Mark where Jesus is just sitting down after a long journey, and he decides he's going to nail the disciples. See, earlier on the road they had been arguing about who was greatest of them, and Jesus decides to put in his two cents. And what does he say? Simply this.

"If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." (Mark 9:35b)

You getting that? Jesus doesn't want people who are powerful and have it all together. If you don't think that's what this verse means, then read the whole freaking story of his life. Jesus didn't show up and change the world by finding the rich and powerful; he went to the broken, the rejected. He picked fishermen and con-men to be his best friends, and then went and hung out with hookers and sick people. What do all of these have in common?

Brokenness.

I submit to you that I, Jake Owens, am a poor leader, because I am completely wrapped up in getting it all together, and projecting an aura of confidence and power. I have wasted my time and talent on trying to appear like I have life figured out, when in reality, I have no freaking clue what I'm doing. I am 22 years old, still in college, and doing my absolute best to figure out how to get out of debt. Sometimes I avoid saying hi to people not because I don't like them or because I'm shy, but because I just assume the don't want to talk to me. Somedays I worry I might be borderline OCD, and every day I wonder if I'll ever get my student loans paid off.

I am messed up. And God still chooses me, and God still loves me.

Leadership is not about getting it all together. Leadership is about admitting to God how broken you are, and letting him do what he will with you. One of the most wonderful things about Jesus is that he does his best work with broken tools like me.

(jake)

Hola Ninos!

I'm gonna be in the land down under (Mexico) for a week or so. I've got a few good ideas for blog when I get back. I'll try and get one posted before I leave, but don't hold out on that. More to come true believers!

(jake)

Comfortably Dead

I have been learning guitar. My fingers hurt pretty bad while typing the last blog, but now they just don't feel at all. I kind of hate that, but I am really convicted that God wants me to play guitar, because I think it will make girls love me, and I think that God wants that for me. I also buy lotto tickets and pray over them. True story.

Bible classes now consume my life. The good news is that I love the Bible, so it's been a pretty good semester so far. One thing I have noticed in my scholarly pursuits of the Old Testament is an interesting trend with the people of Israel. See, early on in Israel's career as a nation, they were just a loose group of tribes, who were constantly harassed by other nations. God always bailed them out, and that was the system. Trust God, live well.

Eventually, Israel decided they'd had enough of that, and asked for a king. Without posting the whole verse, in the book of 1 Samuel God essentially declares that the Israelites have rejected him as their king. Then, he goes on to declare that the king would be horrible for them, and ruin them. He says that this king will turn their hearts away from God, and that he will lead them to destruction. But they want it, so he gives it.

Skip ahead. Ignore a couple centuries of history. Israel now wants a temple. Specifically, the aforementioned king wants to build a temple. Again I will leave the scripture out, but it's in the reign of Solomon that the temple is built, and during David's reign that the idea comes about, which is in 1 Kings and 2 Samuel respectively. But God's not too keen on the temple thing either. He's more than happy to live in a tent, and to dwell among his people. Still, he gives them what they want.

So where does this lead? Why exactly where God said it would! See, king after king after king continues to bring in pagan Gods, and destroy the worship of Yahweh, the true God of Israel. And as the Temple becomes more and more important, the Hebrew nation begins to forget the real purpose of the ceremonies, of the sacrifices, all of it. They eventually become comfortable in their faith, revelling in the security that their kingdom and religion have given them.

Then God gets mad.

In Isaiah, the Lord says: "These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. Their worship of me is made up only of rules taught by men.

God is ticked! God sends these nasty guys called the Babylonians to kick butt and take names. The entire nation is destroyed, eventually the temple is ransacked and trashed, the king sent into exile, and for all of her safety and comfort, Israel is reduced to a pile of rubble.

Then things get fixed.

The amazing thing about the story of Israel is that it is in exile, in suffering, in the most horrible and shameful experience of its history as a nation, the people of God rediscover just what it means to serve Yahweh. With the protection of the king gone, with the religious security of the temple gone, Israel is finally stripped down to bare bones and forced to turn back to the God who loves them enough to send them into exile.

I am not blaming God for our struggles, nor am I suggesting that church buildings and appointed leaders are evil. (Thought about it, but decided against it.) I am saying that in the end, it is not the comfortable times that I remember God from, it is the painful ones. When I look back on my life, the most precious moments shared between me and my Lord were the ones where I was hurting the most.

Sometimes it takes suffering to break us down and expose us to God's glory. In exile, we rediscover who we are, and what God intends for us. I pray that whoever may read this will be blessed with the wisdom to see through their suffering, to the glorious work that God is preparing them for.

(jake)

Of Eye Pokes and Tooth Fairies

Tomorrow morning I will do something terrifying. I will drive an hour and a half to southern Nebraska to preach to people I have never met before. I am told that this is a great honor, that people enjoy hearing me speak. Rather, I just think God is making me wander all over Nebraska like some sort of wilderness until I'm ready to do his work. Another blog for another day I suppose.

Us against them. It's a mentality that permeates our society, our very way of life. Race, gender, economics, religion, heck, what side of the cafeteria you sit on, it's all one big way of deciding whether you're with us, or with them. I wonder a lot how we got to this point, if there's something encoded in us post-Eden that makes us need an adversary of some kind. Even our view of God is affected; a lot of times we give Satan way too much credit by picturing him on the same playing field as the Almighty, simply because we assume God has to be fighting someone, he has to have some sort of enemy.

I say all of this to make myself look less sinful when I admit that I am in fact one of the worst about this. When I was young, I was surrounded by a very dogmatic form of Christianity, and it was all us against the other denominations. As I got older and began feeling ashamed of that line of thinking, it became us against people who hate other denominations. Then it was us against pharisees, because that sounded better, then it finally settled into us against the non-Christians. It's really very sad to be honest, and I hope you'll accept my apologies on behalf of all humanity.

Having confessed that, I have a story to tell. It happened last semester, and remains one of the best nights of my life. I was going to Lincoln with a bunch of friends, and as I was driving through the labyrinthine parking of O Street, I saw a few other friends of mine standing on a street corner screaming at some people holding signs.

Let me back up.

There is a guy in Lincoln, or it might be a couple of guys working in shifts, who carries around a cross. He stands on O Street, a busy party-type street, and shouts at people walking by. He screams at them that they're sinners, that they're going to burn in Hell, and accuses them of things they probably have never done. At least I've never done any of the things he's accused me of. (Baby killing being primary among those. I've also never had any kind of romantic entanglement with another man. He accused me of both. No lie. It's the bald head. SCREAMS infanticidal Nazi homosexual.)

So occasionally, this group of people come out to defend homosexuals. Primarily homosexuals. I think they just don't like Cross Guy, but they seem to especially hate that he's down on the gays. On this particular night, they were holding signs that said things like, "Homosexuals are People," and were handing out a pamphlet accusing God of being a bad guy who murdered people. Now I'm not saying I agreed with the pamphlet, but the signs weren't really that offensive. I happen to think that homosexuals are people too. Remember, raised by an ex-hippy.

Anyway, I manage to park (5 blocks down!) and walk back to the corner, happy to see my friends still locked in a shouting match with the Humanists. (That's who I later found out they were.) The humanists were very adament that we were very foolish for believing in God, and that if God really loved people he wouldn't hate gays or bomb abortion clinics. My friends were very upset and began shouting at these guys that they were just ignorant and were going to Hell. Really ugly scene, gotta be honest.

I say all of this to tell you that God works through broken vessels like me. That night, with one faithful friend sticking with me, the rest either running or shouting, I managed to preach the gospel to about 15 people on a street corner. It was exhilirating, unlike anything I had ever experienced. I raised my voice and began to speak loudly to the Humanists, explaining to them that Cross Guy was no more a Christian than they were. That the will of God was more about loving people than it was about stopping gay people from getting married. I explained to them that God wants more than for us to stop sinning, he wants us to start loving. And I told them that by showing up to love some sinners, they had done the will of God without even meaning to. By the time I stopped to take a breath, I realized that there was a small crowd growing.

We walked away that night friends. I shook hands and even hugged a few of them. (Except the fat chick with cartilage piercings who blew cigarette smoke in my face. Can't win 'em all.) Did they drop to their knees and beg to be baptized on the spot? No. But they left knowing that Cross Guy doesn't represent me, and he certainly doesn't represent my God.

I guess the point I'm making here is that if God can bring those people into my life and teach me about his love through Secular Humanists, then he can certainly teach me something through traditional right-wing Christians, through alcoholic athletes, elitist nerds, or any other opposing social group I've labeled as a "them". There is no them guys. It's just one big us. And if us don't start looking out for each other, then none of us will ever find any kind of heaven.

(jake)

Banana-Flavored Faith

That's right, after a few months of absence, I'm about to strike back like the Empire! A few people have mentioned that they liked these, and my brain is flowing at normal speed again, so here we go again. I was going to save this until after next week because it was going to be my devo, but Greg's tonight was both fantastic and a lot like this, so I decided instead to make this a blog and the devo will be changed.

I'll go ahead and say it; I love my life. I have a great life's story that I really feel would make a good movie or book. Several other people think so too, so that makes it fact. My life is really the final act in a series of stories about some fantastic people and how they overcame their own challenges; I basically like to think of myself as the climax of several stories. (Literature nerd, I know.) The person I want to focus on is kind of the one who started all of this, my grandmother, or as we called her, Nanny.

I've talked about my grandmother a few times at school, but to bring everyone up to speed, she was hands down the coolest old lady alive. She was going to be a nun until she met my granddad, but by the time I came along she was essentially the definition of a "tough old bird." Granddad left her for a younger lady, but left her a nice chunk of money to live on in return. Nanny didn't bake me cookies but once (best cookies ever, the standard by which I still judge all subsequent cookies.) and she never knitted me anything. She did however teach me to keep score on a Cubs game, and explained to me that even when you're watching at home you have to get up and sing along when Harry Carray leads Take Me Out to the Ball Game. One of my favorite things about her house was the fruit; Nanny had great fruit, and my favorite was always bananas.

Whenever I eat a banana, I get swept away in nostalgia, remembering Nanny cussing at the announcers when they insulted Sammy Sosa, or how she used to take care of that nasty black cat I was so scared of. I can even remember the smell of her house, a good catholic house; cheap wine and cigarettes. But you know what? Banana-flavored candy isn't the same. This may seem like a no brainer for you, but for me it's shocking. Banana flavored taffy, runts, whatever, none of it invokes the same memories. It's fake, false, a substitute, and it fails to remind me of that tough old lady who taught me so much.

I guess I feel like our faith is like that. I don't mean for this to be one of the many rip on America posts out there, but the fact is that Christianity in this country is so screwed up. Sure, it's kind of like what Jesus wanted, but how is it any different from the other things out there? What I mean is, maybe the reason people aren't flocking to churches is because we're offering the same thing they can get at any other social club, like boy scouts, or scrapbooking circles, or book clubs. Are we really any different, or are we one more imitation that offers something similar to the real thing?

Faith is more than just a set of political beliefs, and it's a lot more than just sitting around with people who think like you do. True faith is to love people unconditionally, to sacrifice ANYTHING for other people, the same way Jesus did. I tried to find a verse that summed this up, and then I realized, it's all over the whole freaking Bible! The thing is full of it! If we were really offering that authentic flavor of faith, I think people would be way more interested in us.

So the point? No, it's not to go rage against the machine and burn the mother down. Leave your churches standing, they're full of good people who love God. The point here? Let your faith be real. Study the bible for yourself and see what God really wants. Find someone to love. Find an unlovable person, someone not deserving or not receiving unconditional love, and give it to them. That my friends is real faith. None of this bullcrap, "Keep the gays from marrying!" faith-flavored junk.

(jake)

Stickyfeet

Well I'm beginning this back in my apartment. The good news is that it's still a pretty artistic place, eccentric at the very least. I'm watched over by Optimus Prime and Bob Marley, Spiderman and Dr. King. It's the kind of place a genius child would hang out, or at least that's what I like to tell myself when I wake up and adjust the action figures on my desk.

I'm still in the gospels. I can't get enough of it, for real, one of my favorite things about scripture is that the older I get the newer it feels. It's like reading it for the first time and it's really amazing. That being said, let me tell you what I noticed this time through.

Luke tells a story of Jesus eating at a Pharisee's house. I like this image because I picture this like when James Bond eats dinner with Blowfeld right before their big showdown, both of them pretending to be civil, but knowing that this is really about a conflict that's been long coming.

So there sits Jesus, eating what I'm sure was a much nicer meal that he normally got. When I travel I eat a lot of fast food, so I can only imagine the horrors Jesus ate on the road between desert cities. So even if it was just sandwiches, I'm sure Jesus was pretty pleased to be eating something more substantial than a scorpion taco. Anyway, dinner probably goes pretty well, that sort of cold respect emanating everywhere as Jesus and Simon the Pharisee dine together. All of the sudden in comes this sinful woman, and everything changes.

The bible tells us that she was a sinful woman, which I suppose means she was some sort of prostitute because that's what most people think of when they hear sinful woman, but it also points out that she had lived a sinful life in that town. I've wondered a lot over the last few days about her backstory, if she had a happy life as a respectable young lady once in another place. I like to imagine that she was once very happy and liked by the people around her, but I suppose that might not be true.

So anyway, this woman annoints Jesus' feet with both perfume and tears, which strikes me as kind of a messy combo, but it is of course the thought that counts. Simon the Pharisee is clearly upset by this, since he's a respectable guy, and he tries his hardest not to associate with "sinful" people. Ignoring the obvious lessons be learned from Simon's reaction, I find something beautiful in Jesus' response. First, he defends her with a clever story, which I like, then he turns to her, and with nothing but love he says, "Your sins are forgiven."

Now lets consider this; whatever her past, this woman's present is bleak. It's dark, sinful, and painful. For whatever reasons she decides that the best course of action available to her is to literally crawl to Jesus and wash his feet with her hair. But the key here, the very vital point to all of this is that Jesus chose to love her unconditionally.

For those who don't know, I work at a treatment center for kids with behavior disorders. One thing that I've noticed in the last 8 months working there is that the kids who recover the quickest are the ones whose parents are invested in them, loving them regardless and showing up to help them. These kids with the most terrible pasts, and yet because of the love of a parent, they're able to overcome. I think that that's pretty typical of humanity. I can't really speak with any certainty about anyone else, but I know that a lot of what I do is motivated by the need to be loved by someone or something.

It seems to me like a lot of the problem with the human condition is that we are missing the love and/or acceptance of someone. Donald Miller, one of my favorite authors suggests that this is the love of God we're missing, and I've got to say that he's probably right about it. I say all of this to bring us around to a revaltion I've had recently.

Jesus didn't spend time trying to convince people to join his new religion. He never once told people to subscribe to a certain religious belief. Rather than preach at people about a new system of rituals, he simply gave them their heart's deepest desire; love.

It sounds cliche, but truth usually does, since it's really old and we all tend to find it piece by piece over the years. I've got to just say it, for the longest time I've seen evangelism the wrong way. It's not about convincing people of anything, it's not about selling them something, it's not even about eternal life. It's quite simply about offering them the love that they so desperatley crave, the kind of love Jesus would offer people.

It's really no wonder the Pharisees weren't receptive to what Jesus had to say, they thought they already had all the acceptance and love they needed. My challenge to you? Find an unloved person and give 'em some lovin'. There aren't many better ways to connect with Christ than to follow his example.

(jake)

There are Worse Ways to Get Superpowers

A few months back I took an Eharmony.com personality test. The matches it gave me were a joke, but the test itself was pretty insightful. One thing it insisted upon was that I am an artistic soul. I have always wanted to be an artistic soul, so I was pretty pleased to find that I already am one. Being artistic of course requires a lot of you, so I did some research, and here I am, filling my niche nicely. I woke up from my nap today, put on some torn up sandals, 2 bracelets, one hemp, one from an activist group, put on my favorite jeans with the left leg held together by safety pins, and headed off to a coffee shop. Not a Starbucks, but a locally owned coffee shop where I can better fight the man.

I rather like being artistic, because on my way in, 2 girls waved at me. I think that they could tell I was an artist, and from what I understand, girls eventually grow out of the athelete-liking-phase and grow into an artist-liking-phase. It's good to know I'll get to be some girl's phase soon.

I've been reading the Gospels a lot lately, both because I want to know Jesus better and because I'm in a class right now on the first three gospels. I recently got the chance to read through one of my favorite bible stories, and I noticed a few things about it.

We all know the story, and if we don't, we need to read it. It's in Matthew 14, and it tells the story of Jesus walking on the water. Now this is really neat, I always love reading about Jesus' superpowers, because I like the idea of Jesus as this superhero in disguise. So Jesus walks on the water, and Peter being Peter decides to get gutsy, and he asks Jesus to call him out. I like to imagine that Jesus loved this, and that he was thrilled to call Peter out, although I suppose it's possible that he was totally emotionless like I used to imagine him when I was younger.

So Peter does the obvious thing and gets out of the boat to walk on the water. But when the waves get pretty intense, he looks away from Jesus, and boom, starts to sink. So Jesus of course pulls him out, but what I kind of want to focus on is just the simple fact that Peter got great power by just looking at Jesus. I love this aspect of the story, that he gets his power from focusing on Jesus.

I suppose I write this because I feel like in the world around me we have looked away from Jesus. All of you at York, you know what I'm talking about. Don't get me wrong, I love York College, and that's why I say this to hold us all accountable: Whether it was coaches, administration, presidents, teachers, students, whoever, at some point we made the mistake of putting our faith in something other than Christ. To be blunt, I feel like we put our faith in the financial power of athletics, and I find it rather ironic that the result was us losing at a lot of sports. Don't hate atheletes, just calling it like I see it.

So where's this going? Well to be honest, it's simply an acknowledgement. As previously stated a few months ago on this page, I feel like a problem becomes a crisis when it's ignored, so here I go pointing out what we all know but don't want to say. Things are on their way back to healthy, but it'll take a concious effort from us the students to make sure that the higher-ups carry through on it.

The moral of the story is simply this: We may have sunk a little last year, but just like with Peter, Jesus is overjoyed to reach out and pull us out of the water. The catch? We're going to have to shift our focus back on him. As atheletes, as students, as people, it's our responsibility to look to Christ, whether you're a freshman or a senior, a trustee or the president, look to Christ, and see what kind of superpowers he gives you.

(jake)

What I Learned This Summer, by Jake Owens, age 21

I've been on the road for a while, and then I had to move, but the dust is finally settling, and I'm back at last, so here I am, to plague you with more nonsense.

I have good news. Jesus was a human. I know, you've heard it before, but let's do some considering here. I spent the last two weeks teaching the book of Hebrews to high school kids up in Wisconsin, and I'm pretty convinced that I got a lot more out of it than they did. I have weeks worth of blog material, but I want to focus on this first. Let's have a look:

"For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin." Hebrews 4:15

First of all, I'm not going to directly quote scripture again in this blog, but I will be referencing it, feel free to look it up and check my sources. That being said, re-read that up there. Jesus Christ was God incarnate, and yet he was tempted in the same way we are. That's a verse that never meant a lot to me, because the reality is that Jesus was God, and it never occured to me that he was actually tempted. But consider a few things.

First of all, to quote Nate Cleveland, Jesus was on a different pay scale than the rest of us. To be tempted with money or lust probably wasn't a big deal for him. But when Satan tempted Jesus, he went straight to the top. He promised Jesus the world. Now me, I wouldn't worship someone to rule the world, because we all know that a Jake-ruled world would implode on itself very quickly. Don't believe me? See my new bedroom.

But Jesus was seriously tempted to take this! Think it over, if Jesus came to Earth and there was no risk, if there was no chance that he would fail, then this salvation thing is not what we think it is. For this to work, there had to be a chance that Jesus would give in and would bow down to Satan and take the world. When I think about it, it makes sense. Jesus Christ, praying in the garden was begging God to find a different way to save the world. When Peter offered to make Jesus a king, Jesus rebuked him and yelled at him, he fled from people who tried to give him a crown, Jesus Christ was genuinely tempted to take an Earthly throne and try to save the world his own way!

Now consider that: I don't for one second think that Jesus ever considered going to the Dark Side and doing bad things, I think that he considered different ways of saving humanity, ways that wouldn't suck nearly as much as being nailed to a death stick. But the reality is that in the final moment, in the greatest temptation, in the garden, Jesus Christ answered the question once and for all by saying, "Not my will, but yours be done."

My sins have never been so major as to consider screwing up God's great scheme to save the world, but I think I can sympathize with Jesus. At the end of the day, all of my sins basically boil down to the fact that I am completely convinced that I know better than God, and I'm deciding to do things my own way, not his. My prayer for myself and for anyone who reads this is that we can be possessed by the same spirit of wisdom that Jesus was, and that we can have the foresight to give God his way. He knows better.

(jake)