Anapapist

I have been absent for awhile. I am feeling the need to write again. There are multiple things going on. Mostly I am sensing a deep despair as I am absent from the church. Em and I went to Peter H’s new church plant, which is really a split, and there has to be a different way to be the church. The psychologizing of the Text and hyper-individuality is really problematic. The shallow theological framework is killing the church. Peter has been going through some good changes, in my humble opinion, and I wonder how this will effect this “new” thing?????

The commons area that Missio Dei has been praying and waiting for is beginning to come to fruition. We will know more in the next week or so

I wrote yesterday that deep pain pain had been inflicted by fundies. The facist actions by most fundies is reprehensible and immoral. I can remember my closest friends several years ago abandoning me because I was reading Brueggemann. I was rethinking the creation account as non-factual. I read Yoder for the first time and renegotiated my Christology. They thought I had abandoned the faith and had fallen away. They actually told me that they were praying for my salvation and that it was not to late for me to repent! This group of friends was my family. We called ourselves the pallbearers. This was in refernece to our commitment to one another. The ones that were left, after one of us died, would carry the casket and care for their family. One sees what is more important to fundies! I have been thinking about fundies like Buchanan, Dobson, Warren, etc. and was googling and came across this. I am surprised how many of these categories fundies meet.

These guys rebuked me in public and stripped me naked. They abused me because tRUTH is more important than Truth. It is no wonder to me that I am afraid of being open. I am not ashamed of me but these people who mentally aquire salvation but they have no allegiance to KING JESUS!

It has been a while since I have written anything. This is not because I have nothing to say, just ask those who know me I am still the arrogant bastard that loves to piss off my fundamentalist “brothers” and “sisters”, I will come back to that later.
I has been a very tough time for me this last few months. Now don’t get me wrong I have a beautiful and brilliant fiance, friends that love me, an ok job. What else would one need? This has been a hard time for me because I have struggled with depression my whole life and it has revisited me on and off over the last few months. Today I went to see my therapist and get a 50,000 mile check up. He read me like a Haiku poem. His work with me was short and sweet. Today he undid me and it took about eight hours for it to hit me. I am afraid of being seen. I hide myself behind the books I read and the things I “know.” I cover myself and decieve those around me with smoke and mirrors. I am afraid to be naked and exposed before the world.

Now part of this comes from a deep fear of fundies. These pseudo believers who have no desire to model the Cruciform life!! My alma matter is a training camp for these young psuedo’s. Men like this emasculate the faith everytime they open their frickin’ mouth. People of his deep, pseudo, commitment have inflicted deep pain and I have not really dealt with it. Instead of dealing with it I have hid. Today I am deciding to not hide anymore!

“The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.” Ghandi

This is something that I have meditated and contemplated for years. In the current self-interested climate of Empire building perhaps Christians, since we seem unable or unwilling to embody Jesus, can set our goal at living up to somebody who lived a life that we should envy?

Two things strike me as interesting today.

this one is about building the Kingdom. I was happy

this one is about building Empire. I am not surprised. This one makes me think of a Christainity that does not need Jesus!

Well I am a few days into my experiment of trying to think like and live like a conservative. My biggest isuue today was the moral quandary that I found myself in. As a conservative how does one navigate the complex world that God created? When my life was being destroyed by those liberal, anabaptist types I could navigate the world beacuse I knew that context matters. Now I see that context does not matter self-evidence does. This is what I mean. I always was suspect of the conservatives when they spoke about activist justices on the bench. These wicked people who have a paradigm that guides how they judge should not be allowed on the bench. Thank you to the men below for showing me my error. What we need are judges that have no ideology, like those who would be anti-environment, or would limit ones civil liberties. We need conservative judges that aren’t idological.
another quandary that I found myself in today was the war. As one who has been rescued from my wanton ways I now see that this is not an illegal and immoral war. This pre-emptive war is cool and will help us spread the gospel of Jesus to the heathen.

I would like to thank a few people for helping me see the light.

I am thankful that these men see things so clearly and have opened my eyes. I can overlook the sexism, racism, militarism, consumerism, the fact that they look more like good Americans and less like Jesus. After all they have a personal relationship with Jesus.

The love of my life got promoted today. I am so proud of her.

I have written about my depression in the past. I have been in a funk again the last few weeks. My job sucks and now I find out that I, although not alone, am an immoral person. According to exit polls only one half of the US of A is moral. Well I went into a tail spin that almost killed me. I wanted to kill myself when I realized that my whole life of trying to live the cruciform life of Christ was a waste. Reading the Scripture, praying, being part of a community of faith, loving those who don’t love me, etc. are practices and actions that I have done with infrequent success. I work my salvation out with fear and trembling every day! Yet I come to find out that I am worse than a murderer, a pedaphile, a terrorist I am a democrat who has wasted his life in Service of God. I was mistaken of course. Thank you to all you moral Conservatives out there who have opened my eyes.

So here is what I am going to do so that I can be moral nad follow Jesus in more genuine and Faithful ways.

1. Buy a copy of the Purpose Driven Life.
2. Tell my wife to be what to do all the time.
3. stop caring about everybody but myself first, other white middle class Americans second.
4. Don’t worry about how I spend my money.
5. I will stop caring about the 100,000 + Iraqi humans who have died.
6. Become an IDOL WORSHIPPER and trust the Bushites to be my security. After all why do I need Jesus??

Being moral will be easier than I thought. I just have to worry about myself. I just have to realize that my personal realtionship Jesus is all that matters. I just have to realize that I don’t really owe all of my faith to Jesus, the call of the Gospel is after all not to be taken serious, man I am halfway to being a good republican.

Thank you Bill Bennet.

You have got to see this movie it was absolutely wonderful.

I was so moved by the performance from all the characters. Jamie Foxx should win an Oscar, if he does not the Oscar is a joke.