Formless and Void

When I think of darkness, I think of being a kid and walking through a haunted house in North Houston.  It was pitch black and I didn't know what kind of crazy clown or monster was going to jump out at me with a chainsaw.  I think of getting swept out by huge waves in Costa Rica, reaching out to my friend Austin, literally thinking I was about to die.  I think about the feeling of hopelessness, knowing that if I take this drink something horrible is going to happen, and doing it anyways.  What does darkness bring to mind for you?  


In the first five verses of the Bible, we're told that in the beginning, the earth was dark.  In fact, it was uninhabited, empty, and void of any life.  I imagine it being like a closet in the middle of the night.  We're told however, that there was one sign of life, and it was the spirit -or breath - of God.  Darkness covered the oceans and abysses of the earth, but the breath of God was moving over all of it.  It was there.  It was present with the darkness and the emptiness.  According to the Hebrew language, the root word that we get "moving" from translates to "relax."  When I think of darkness, I think of chaos and fear.  But, in all of the formless chaos, the spirit of God relaxed in the presence of the darkness.  


Later on, the passage says that God spoke light into existence.  From cold, dark, and formless, light entered into the earth as we know it.  Because there was now light, there was a separation between light and darkness. There was a time for each.  There was now warmth mixed in with the cold.  There was now the chill of evening followed by the warmth of the morning.  


Hope is not a word that I normally get from this famous passage of scripture, but I see it.  I see that there are dark, formless, empty parts of my life that don't seem to be going anywhere.  They are chaotic and seem never ending.  However, the hope is that the breath of God is moving, relaxing in the void parts of my life.  There is hope that eventually, God will let there be light, and He will see to it that the light is good.  

Pus

Fasting sucks.  I know there's this beauty behind it, and it can be this time of deep and intimate connection with God, but I think it sucks right now.  I feel like I set my expectations way too high for myself, and now I feel like a failure.  I broke my fast two nights ago, because I couldn't get my mind to turn off.  I went to sleep tired, but my mind wasn't ready to go to bed.  I felt helpless and defeated already.  I had fought the urge to give in to my desires all day, made it to small group, talked about it, prayed about it, and still didn't have the power to get me through the last few minutes of the night.  


I feel like I've invited guilt into my life after an extended vacation, and I'm pissed off about it.  Not only am I getting pissed at me, but I'm getting pissed at other people for the chaos going on inside my head.  I hate the fact that when I want to give something up intentionally, the something becomes larger than life.  It becomes this monster that I can't get rid of.  It becomes a seemingly larger problem than it was before I started thinking about it so much.  To tell you the truth, I don't know what fasting is doing for me that I wasn't receiving before I went into it.  If anything, it seems like I am beating myself up way more now than I have in a long time.  I don't like that at all.  When I beat myself up, I don't see God.  I don't know where He's working.  All I see are the failures inside of myself and I spend my thinking hours pondering why I even dared test myself in the first place.  


As I sift through all the chaos and confusion of my own weaknesses, I'm not sure where I'm headed.  I don't even know if I'm gonna make it through tonight continuing on this fast.  I'm trying.  I'm trudging.  Maybe I picked something to fast from that's too hard for me.  I don't even think it's possible right now to let go.  I definitely can't do it.  


I've had a bad day partly because I carried my struggles with this fast into work, and everyone else got to be the object of my bitterness.  I had to leave early to literally start my day over.  I didn't feel comfortable in my own skin, and didn't want to fake my way through any more of work than I had to.  One of the definitions of insanity that I really like is, "The inability to think straight."  That was me today.  INSANE.  As I was driving away, I was so fuming mad at myself and people who didn't live like I wanted them to that I was swerving in my lane.  


Fasting is risky, especially for those of us who think we're Jesus with skin on.  I fooled myself into thinking that it wouldn't really be that hard to give up something that in reality, has a lot of control over me.  I'm in it now though.  Part of fasting I think, is the ability to get back up between falls.  I'm getting back up right now.  It also doesn't help to think of any time period other than today.  Thinking about forty days from now doesn't help.  Thinking about giving up something for life doesn't work.  I have to think about right now, and the fact that I am powerless right now over the insanity in my life.  There is One who has all power, and that One is God.  I need Him.  I'm powerless to get through this fast, much less the chaos of now.  To me, that is the beauty of fasting.  It's the recognition that I have not arrived.  I have not reached Utopia.  I have not achieved the Jesus award of the century.  I'm just a broken drunk with a lot of extra baggage that I'm trying to lose.  


Fasting is sort of masochistic if you ask me.  It's like putting a magnifying glass on a cyst that's oozing pus out, while someone's squeezing it.  It requires an outlandish desire to look deep, past the surface, and to take the knife and cut out the root of the sucker.  Ouch.  So, with cyst and pus and knife and all, here I am God.  It's me.  And Jon, you had better start being nicer to yourself.  Who do you think you are?  Jesus with skin on?  Get ahold of yourself!

Why the Grammys Suck

I didn't watch the Grammys because I think the Grammys suck.  I think the lyrics of the song of the year suck.  I had to look them up even though I hear the song every time I turn on FM radio or Pandora.  From what I gather, Adele lost a boyfriend, she's pissed, and she wants him to pay for not fulfilling her expectations.  In the first verse, she threatens her boyfriend before he even appears to make a bad move.  She wants him to know that if he hurts her, he will pay.  "Go ahead and sell me out and I'll lay your ship bare."

She tells this anonymous person in her life not to underestimate the things she will do if he hurts her in any way.  Later in the song, she mentions that she knows a story about her boo, and she's willing to share it to the world. She doesn't have a story to be told, however, implying that she's open about all her stuff.  Very respectable, not.  She's gonna make his head burn through the way she gossips about him.

She wants him to think of her in the depths of his despair, assuming that he's as co-dependent as she says she is.  She tells him to make a home in the depths of his despair, again implying that he must be thinking about her way more than she's thinking of her.

"We could have had it all rolling in the deep.  You had my heart in your hand and you played it to the beat."  Evidently, there is a moment of remorse in this verse, because she gave him her heart.  She let him have her heart, and she blames him for playing it like a drum.  She blames him for her dumb decision to give her heart to some loser.

"Turn my sorrow into treasured gold."  She's in complete self-pity now and wants her sorrow to be the focus of his heart.  She wants him to devote all his attention to her broken heart.  Why?  She's still blaming him for her own decision to give her heart away to a human being, to put all her trust into a flawed boyfriend or lover.  We don't really know if this relationship was a one night stand, or if it went on for years, but she is clear about her purpose.

I want to thank Adele for being honest to the world about her co-dependency issues.  From this song though, it doesn't appear that she's found a solution besides self-pity.  I don't know if they showed the lyrics on some million dollar screen at the awards ceremony, but to me they don't really give a solution on how to deal with issues that human beings face in everyday life.  I hope she won best song based on the musical genius, and not the hopelessness of the lyrics.  She has an awesome voice, and she's got an amazing band surrounding her, but the lyrics are the same old "you hurt me, now I'm gonna hurt you" romantic jealousy lyrics.

The reasons I think not only the Grammys, but mainstream music media sucks is, it's not about the lyrics.  It's about what sounds good and what has a nice beat.  The more unique people sound, the more airplay they get.  I'm tired of hearing lame lyrics.  The mainstream radio is full of them.  Lyrical genius and heart have been replaced with appearance and beat.

Fortunately, there are underground music scenes going on.  They don't get any airplay, but their lyrics are challenging the status quo.  Their are voices crying out from garages and bars throughout the country that are calling for change.  Music as a whole hasn't lost its course.  We've just been persuaded that all their is is what we have on the radio or Grammys.  It's just not true.  The Grammys feed into this idea that to make it we just have to sound good or make ourselves wear crazy outfits and hairdos to get ahead.  Our lyrics don't matter.  Songs that cry out for social justice or true democracy won't make it to the Grammys.  They won't be heard by millions of people either, because those songs are being sung by the ones who don't have what it takes to get past the red tape.  They don't fit into the mold of the Grammy's or mainstream radio.

In conclusion, I think Adele's song Rolling in the Deep sounds great, but the lyrics suck.  They're not original, and they don't provide any hope for someone going through a similar situation.  The lyrics feed into the general idea that it is okay to put our complete trust in human beings, to be co-dependent, and to wish harm onto someone we've put our complete trust in, even though we choose to place all our eggs in the human relationship basket.

Heavenly Handouts

I learned alot of things from my maw-maw Parker.  I remember when I was young, she'd chase me around with a fly swatter.  That was her way of punishing me.  She'd catch me running up the stairs, and barely grab me by the shorts, and start swatting away.  It never really hurt, but I think even using a seemingly harmless object (unless you're a fly), she had a hard time thinking that she was in any way hurting me.  Early in the morning, at about 6:00, she would come knock on my door and quietly murmur, "Jon boy, it's time to wake up."  She had such a warm voice that I never had to fight her to wake up at that awful time.  I wanted to get up.  I was too young to drink coffee, but I remember always smelling the roast drifting up the stairs into my bedroom.  At the bottom of the stairs was the couch that we would sit on.  Maw-maw on the right and paw-paw on the left.  Paw-paw had a copy of the New King James bible, and maw-maw had a small pamphlet full of missionary birthdays around the world.  Paw-paw would always begin reading in his raspy voice.  He had damaged his vocal chords as a soldier in his youth, and to this day it seems like he still struggles to speak.  He would read a passage of scripture.  After that, Maw-Maw would read a missionary's name, what country they were in, and how old they were.  In closing, Paw-Paw would pray us off the couch and we'd eat cereal and go play a round of golf.

I learned how to read the bible and pray from my grandparents.  My grandma died a couple years ago, and I realize now how much of an impact she really had on me throughout my life.  Fast-forward to my early twenties, and I was a disaster.  I never let my grandparents know that my life was a mess.  I would act like everything was okay, and they were always asking me if I needed help with anything.  One of the things I regret the most is the way I would manipulate Maw-Maw into giving me money.  I was in school at the time, and taking out student loans.  I couldn't pay the monthly payments because anything I had left over I spent on alcohol.  So, every couple weeks I would go pay my grandparents a visit.  I figured if I gave them an hour of my time, they would ask me if I needed anything.  And, I would say yes.  Maw-Maw didn't know where my money was going, she just wanted to help me in any way she could.  I never got to tell her the truth about the money I often manipulated out of her hands.  I was too afraid to tell her in the time before she passed.

Alcoholism is an expensive disease, and if I don't have the money I'll find a way to get it.  The problem was that I had used up all my chances with the rest of my family.  My parents and siblings had been pushed to the limit.  I stole, wrecked their cars, and broke their hearts.  My last financial hopes were my unsuspecting grandparents.  I want to make one thing clear:  the money they gave me was not a handout.  It wasn't a handout because they were being manipulated.  If they would have known that I would be taking that $20 or $100 to the liquor store right outside the neighborhood, they wouldn't have given it to me.  They loved me too much to aid my suffering.  Since they trusted that I was being truthful (even though I wasn't), they were more than willing to help me in any way they could.

Looking back on some of the wreckage of my past, I've come to realize something when it comes to following Jesus.  If I'm not honest with God, me, and people, I can't expect that I'm gonna get some kind of heavenly handout that's going to fix me all of a sudden.  There came a time in each individuals' life that I was a part of, that they had to decide that enough was enough.  They clearly saw that I was not being honest with them.  I would try my best to persuade people to give me what I wanted, but after awhile, people started to figure me out.  When I'm honest with people and myself, I experience a peace of mind like no other.  It's an amazing thing to feel like I don't have any secrets.  It's freeing.  When I'm honest with God, I get the sense that He trusts me more and more.  My connection begins to deepen and I start seeing creation in a loving and caring way.  I don't believe God gives handouts.  What do I mean by that?  I don't think he or she suddenly fixes people for believing the right things.  I've believed the right things for the last 19 years, and it wasn't until I got honest that things started to happen.  I started seeing how small I was.  I started listening to what other people had to say (albeit, I still have a lot to learn on this one).  I started to see that God was truly good, and that my perception of God was all jacked up because I didn't really listen to anyone but myself.  I'll be honest and say that believing that Jesus died on the cross didn't save me.  Believing that Jesus was resurrected didn't save me.  Believing that I was a sinner didn't save me.  Believing that Jesus forgave all my sins didn't save me.  In fact, I would say that hell started after I started believing all those things.  The problem was I wasn't honest.  Honesty requires action.  My understanding was that if I believed in all those things then I would go to heaven, this faraway place with mansions and gold streets after I die.  My question was:  Why do I give a crap about mansions in heaven, when I'm living in hell right now?  I want heaven right now!

What I really wanted God to do was to give me a quick jolt of salvation.  I wanted to feel the effects that alcohol provided, without the negative consequences.  I wanted an everlasting dose of spiritual drunkenness.  I don't know anything about the after life.  I don't know what happens, and I don't understand the scriptures or any sacred text that talks about it.  It's all metaphor.  I've never died, so I don't know what it's like.  I don't think anyone living knows anything about what happens after death on earth.  There is no possible way to know what it feels like.  The closest I can come to what it may be like, is being able to experience both hell and heaven on earth.  To me, hell is being too scared to live and too scared to die.  It's thinking that God is nowhere to be found, when he's right beside me.  It's waking up in a pile of piss, not knowing where I am or who I've slept with.  It's not believing that God loves me and cares for me, and not believing that he loves us.  Hell for me is living out the belief that some of us are saved, and some are doomed.

Heaven for me is experiencing peace.  It's waking up to an adventure, and knowing that somewhere during the course of the day, I'm going to play some small role in helping someone.  Heaven is not needing to drink today.  Heaven is seeing an alcoholic like me walk into a meeting with the shakes, looking for hope.  Heaven is knowing that God is here, and he cares about all of humanity and creation.

God never snapped his fingers and fixed me.  I'm a work in progress for a lifetime.  Asking God for forgiveness didn't fix me.  The person I really needed forgiveness from all that time was me.  I put myself through hell, and I still can if I choose to.  I have the choice today to choose heaven or hell.  It doesn't make sense to me that if I were to live out hell on earth, that heaven would be waiting on me after life.  It also doesn't make sense that if I were living out heaven on earth, that hell would be waiting on me.  I have a friend who I haven't talked to in months, because he tries to convince me that since I believe in Jesus, I'm not an alcoholic.  He says that anyone who is an alcoholic or an addict simply needs to believe in Jesus, and they'll be cured.  I've gotten in some heated arguments with him, and I just had to back down.  It wasn't worth wasting my serenity over.  That philosophy works for him, and that's okay.  It doesn't work for me though.  Jesus hasn't taken away my alcoholism, but I've been sober.  What he has done is shown me a way to live that completely contradicts that lifestyle that I once chose.  I have the choice to live peacefully, freely, and simply today.  I experience heaven today.

I can't say that believing in Jesus has anything to do with the afterlife.  No one knows.  But, I can say that believing in Jesus and living out my interpretations of his teachings has an unbelievable impact on whether or not I experience heaven now.  Whether his death on a Roman cross is a metaphor or historical fact, I don't know.  But, I believe in the principle behind it.  I believe that death has no sting anymore.  I believe that God loves everyone, and that he's saved everyone from having to live hell on earth.  For most of the world, heaven doesn't mean having a lot of stuff.  It means being content, living one day at a time, and trusting God for everything including basic needs.  I believe that hell on earth looks like greed, domination, corruption, and exploitation.

The point of following Jesus is not to center life around what happens after death, although that may play a small part in it.  What Jesus teaches about the kingdom of heaven has everything to do with how we live right now.  Galations 5:1 says, "It was for freedom that Christ set us free, so keep standing strong and don't be a slave to our addictions anymore."  (paraphrase).  We have the choice to be free, and no one besides ourselves are standing in the way.  We can believe the right things, pray the right prayers, and read the right scriptures, but none of those are going to do anything for us here on earth if we don't get honest with God, ourselves, and other human beings.  Do we want freedom, or a handout?  Do we want heaven on earth, or do we want a quick-fix?  Are we honest enough to let God change us from the inside out?  Amen. 

Seven Days

There have been times in my life where my faith was so centered on my prayer life, and my desire to pray, that when my prayer life faltered, my faith went with it.  It almost felt like a curse, like I had no ground to walk on.  I would ask myself why I felt so far from God, and why my prayers just weren't working.  I felt like it was not normal, so I wouldn't tell anybody about it.  I would keep on going through the motions, acting like I was on a spiritual high, but inside I was dying for an answer.  From what I understood at the time, not praying and not going to church, and not feeling God's presence was a sign that something was wrong with me.  And, there was.  And, there still is.

I have a tendency to believe so strongly in certain ideas, that I couldn't possibly think that my beliefs could be wrong.  My faith will then gravitate around these ideas, like for instance, that God literally created the world in seven days, or that man was created in a minute using the dust of the earth.  Then, when I hear the evolution theory or theories of quantum physics, I may tune it out, writing it off as heresy or unrealistic.  The Big Bang theory doesn't mesh with my belief in a world created in seven days, so the Big Bang is false.  Or, for instance, I tend to gravitate towards Jesus' sermon on the mount.  So, in reality, I believe killing an enemy is always wrong.  I also believe not feeding the hungry when the opportunity arises is always wrong.  One of the dangers, though, in centering faith around ideas and teachings is that eventually my faith will be thrown around in a blender.  For example, lets say I'm a college student and I'm also a literal creationist (the belief in the literal seven-day creation).  My professor describes to the class the techniques of using a telescope.  Then, the class goes on a field trip to observe different stars and systems in the sky.  The professor mentions that what we are actually looking at is millions of years old.  It just doesn't make sense.  The professor says that the amount of time it actually takes for the light from the star I'm looking at to reach the lens of my telescope is one million light years.  I leave confused beyond belief.

Two weeks later, the professor explains that scientists have learned how planets, stars, and solar systems are created, and he says they know this through observation.  Through the telescopic lens, scientists over the last century all over the world, have been able to collect comprehensive data describing the age, density, composition, characteristics, and distance of all the lights we see in the sky.  Through this data, I learn that nothing in the universe is created in seconds, minutes, hours, or days.  A star is not created in a day.  It changes throughout the course of a day, but the thing I look at in the sky took millions of years to form and produce light.  

Driving home after class, my mind is a washing machine.  It's so jumbled because it wants to throw out everything I've just heard.  It goes against my faith in a seven day creation story.  But, being the faithful person I am, I'm not going to let these scientists prove my faith wrong.  I'm going to bite the bullet, and disregard everything I've just heard.  It's too radical.  It messes up everything I've ever believed.  A few days later, I'm still feeling this horrible dread in my heart.  Something's going on inside of me, but I can't explain what it is.  It's a loneliness, a sense of loss.  My foundation feels like it's cracked and in need of repair.  I become resentful toward science and professors everywhere.  I begin a campaign outlawing the teaching of evolution in high schools, because it would be horrible if kids everywhere had to get their foundation rocked like I have.  Pretty soon, I have a group of people around me who believe in a literal seven day creation, and we try to tell other people about the threat of science on faith.  

Throughout the daily fight, though, something deep inside me knows that something is a little off.  I can't describe it in words, but it feels like my heart is being squeezed.  I go to bed feeling more and more hopeless, thinking, "What if the professor was right?  What if it did take millions of years for the Earth, and plant life, and mankind to form?  What if Eve didn't magically appear out of a rib from Adam, but it took thousands, possibly millions, of years?"  In order to fall asleep because my depression about the subject has gotten so bad, I routinely convince myself that I'm right and the professor is badly mistaken.  Day in, day out.  Night in, night out.  I fight this inward battle, holding as firmly as I can to my belief in a seven day creation.  In order to secure my faith, I have to completely stay away from anyone who believes in evolution or the Big Bang theory.  They're a threat to my faith.  I may even go to the point of calling them false witnesses.  Over months of grappling, I learn how to keep those evil thoughts out of my mind about that professor and what he said.  I'm able to deny the fact that I even went on the field trip and looked at those stars.  I look up at the night sky, and the bright lights have no meaning.  They just shine.  They happen to be there because God threw them there, or stuck them in their precise position.  The sun becomes stagnant.  The moon becomes the random object in the sky that provides light at night.  The earth is disconnected from the Moon, the moon from the sun, the sun from the stars, and the stars from the universe.  Everything is independent and stagnant.  Nothing has meaning except for the small parts they played over the course of seven days.  In order for my faith to be protected, I can't allow the universe to have meaning.

This is a scary place to be in, on both sides of the spectrum.  For the scientist, it's a scary thing to know that there are things like black holes and gravity that can't be explained, but to gloss over any inference of the divine.  For the faithful, it's a scary thing to hold so tightly to a belief, that even when it's proven wrong, they can still deny it even happened.  Science and faith, in their purest sense, point to the divine attributes of a creative God.  From the way God's spirit hovered over the waters of the earth, to the biological microsystems that evolved over millions of years into carbon-filled algae, science and faith co-exist to expose the creative working of a god who uses literature as well as physics to reveal to us the inner workings of his creation.  

I believe studying the scriptures and studying the universe must both be done with questions.  To constantly be on the lookout for an answer that will satisfy my belief system, I am putting myself at huge risk.  I will find myself becoming so in love with my faith, that I fall out of love with the author of my faith.  I believe faith is very important in achieving qualities like peace, freedom, and security, but my faith has to be in God, not in my lop-sided belief systems.  When reading the Bible, I have to decide for myself, "What am I looking for?" If I'm looking for answers, I'm always going to run down a rabbit trail, even though I'm almost positive I can dig out the answer I'm looking for.  For the record, I see gray, black, and white when I read the Bible.  There are some parts of it that I ask God, "What the hell were you thinking wiping out that whole city?  Were you out of your mind?"  There are other parts that I'm like, "Wow.  God, you're amazing."  I think it's ridiculous to think that the Bible is the only evidence I need to know God, and to develop my faith.  There are probably trillions of people from past to present, who never even heard of the Bible.  Did they just somehow miss out on the whole God thing?  Were they the unfortunate ones?  

Believing the right things doesn't get me any extra rewards with God, just like believing in a literal seven day creation and denying any reality of scientific discovery won't get me anything on earth besides a constant headache.  Personal faith is good, but God's faith is great.  His faith in us makes our faith in him look ridiculous.  Through asking questions in my studies of the scriptures, and not looking for quick-fixes, I'm able to see a God who loves us more than we could ever imagine.  Our faith in God becomes less significant and unimpressive, while God's faith in us begins to overwhelm us as we see how cherished we really are.  

I need to make one last point before I wrap this up.  Faith does not replace the hard work of changing.  For example, for years I thought that since I believed the right things I could get away with drinking.  I was saved, so I had insurance to cover my alcohol abuse.  How could I think that I had received salvation from some fiery place that no one knows if it even exists, if I hadn't even been saved from the hell I was living on earth?  My version of faith exempted me from actually living out a relationship with God.  In my mind, I was believing the right things, and I could say the right things, so that all made up for the hell I was living.  That was a misguided faith.  My faith was in me, and my beliefs.  My awareness of God was nonexistent because I was too busy trying get over the guilt that my lifestyle was producing.  I wanted faith to take my problems away, and make me feel good about myself, even though the contrary was happening.  My faith was in the idea that since I believed in Jesus, I could go to heaven, be saved from hell, and just pass on through this horrible life because I had a better one waiting for me.  What I did on earth didn't really matter, because what really mattered was the stuff that came after life - which happened to also be the stuff that no one knows anything about since the requirement for knowing anything about it is death!  

Science and faith are supposed to co-exist.  But, due to the desire of man to be God, and not be like God, the two are often polarized.  They become the enemies of each other.  Science sharpens faith, and faith sharpens science.  They both point to the divine and creative nature of God.  If your faith is being shattered by scientific discovery, then chances are you haven't delved into the idea that maybe God uses processes and order in the way he creates.  If your scientific inquiry is locking faith out, then maybe you haven't considered something divine at the center of all the order.

The purpose of faith is to eventually lead us into the overwhelming passion of a faith driven towards us, from a Creator who is at work in the stillness and the chaos.  Faith evolves from being about how much we have, to how much God has.  We become enamored by the enormous love and compassion of a god who calls us his children and his friends.  We are able to do things we'd never thought possible.  We're able to let go of the things that hinder us, that keep us from experiencing freedom.  God becomes real to us, as each day becomes an adventure, and what used to be impossible seems possible now.