I'm a well-balanced human being....

I’ve heard so much yuppy nonsense in my life about being well-balanced and on the other side of it, so much well-aimed criticism of anything nearing the borders of the extreme.

Did anyone ever pause to wonder, that maybe it isn’t the ’extreme’ that is the problem, maybe it’s what is chosen to be extreme about. There are a lot of extremes in this world that we don’t consider to be a detrimental thing.

I seem to remember something about a certain person, he said a lot of things….He told people to sell everything they owned, to give up their lives and follow him, He said he had no place to lay his head, I also recall something about taking up your own cross and following him, renouncing everything.
RENOUNCING EVERYTHING

So either I am a little confused as to the definition of the word ’extreme’ or I am a little confused about what this one person said and did, even though a lot of it seems irrevocably straight-forward. Because it seems as though we are told to be extreme about something: loving God and loving others.

And if I remember correctly, there’s this whole crazy story. It involves God becoming a baby, a human, living among people, loving them, telling them He was the way to the Father, and then….dying a horrible death for our sins. But that doesn’t sound extreme at all. I mean, don’t get the wrong idea, living with basically no possessions, giving your life up to help and love others, and then dying for them when they were ignorant, ungrateful wretches…… that’s so well-balanced.

skimming through some stuff this morning....and I came across this. (scroll and read the article entitled Post-Hope) The problem with hope isn't hoping, it's where we place that hope, where we place our expectations.

"To be post-hope is to embrace love and duty despite all evidence around us. And to embrace our duty is to find motivation not in the hope of mountaintop success, but in love."

That is what hope should look like.......

Whoever is wise, let him attend to these things; let them consider the steadfast love of the Lord .

(just in case anyone forgot what 'steadfast' means.....)

1 a : firmly fixed in place : immovable b : not subject to change
2 : firm in belief, determination, or adherence

I just read this from my friends in India.

"Adam, preserved on the way to death and consumed with thirst for life, begets Cain, the murderer. The new thing about Cain, the son of Adam, is that man as sicut deus Cain himself lays violent hands on human life. The man who is not allowed to eat of the tree of life all the more greedily reaches out for the fruit of death, the destruction of life. Only the Creator can destroy life. Cain usurps this ultimate right of the Creator and becomes a murderer. Why does Cain murder? Out of hatred towards God. This hatred is great. Cain is great, he is greater than Adam, for his hatred is greater, and this means that his yearning for life is greater. The story of death stands under the mark of Cain.
Christ on the cross, the murdered Son of God, is the end of the story of Cain, and thus the actual end of the story. This is the last desperate storming of the gate of paradise. And under the flaming sword under the cross, mankind dies. But Christ lives. The stem of the cross becomes the staff of life, and in the midst of the world life is set up anew upon the cursed ground. In the middle of the world the spring of life wells up on the wood of the cross and those who thirst for life are called to this water, and those who have eaten of the wood of this life shall never hunger and thirst again. What a strange paradise is this hill of golgotha, this cross, this blood, this broken body! What a strange tree of life, this tree on which God himself must suffer and die- but it is in fact the Kingdom of Life and of the Resurrection given again by God in grace; it is the opened door of imperishable hope, of waiting and of patience. The tree of life, the cross of Christ, the middle of the fallen and preserved world of God, for us that is the end of the story of paradise."

-dietrich bonhoeffer
Creation and Fall

I don't even have a title.

I probably should have taken the nap. Now I am so indignant I'm not sure if I can find all the right words. There's this post which led me to a certain website(and a few you-tube videos), which led me to a fit of anger that actually left me speechless (other than two words, which I will spare you....)
The general thing I am feeling right now is a really wretched, nasty disgust in what seems to be, not only our fascination with making money off of sin, (yeah, I went there) but our fascination at watching people writhe in pain caused by these actions.... we put them on T.V. shows, in the newspapers, in 'gossip' magazines.....and then talk glibly about how horrible these things are. Or in one case a news reporter, smiling prettily, almost mischievously, while talking about people using a website to have affairs. What about the people who act like robots reciting 'facts' about people getting killed or mistreated..............etc. GET A FREAKING LIFE, PEOPLE! If other people's misery provides you a form of entertainment, you need a new hobby.

If you are going to spend your time worrying about/being informed about other people's pain....then learn the appropriate response, please. It's called crying and being deeply aware of their brokenness and our own. It's called being angry because people don't know how to love eachother. It's called learning how to love others before yourself.

I don't know if I can keep writing about this, I don't know that there's much to elaborate on. It's fairly obvious that we are all a little too obsessed with getting our own way, satisfying what ever desire we may have, and demanding that things happen instantaneously..... otherwise we will give up and go elsewhere.
...and in the end all to our own detriment. We will have refused to learn any of the lessons that would actually benefit us in the end, the ones that teach us what it really means to live, simply because they were hard lessons to learn. And we all know that easy is popular.


'Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.'

To those who are exploiting other people's pain or sin or whatever for their own benefit or profit:


How dare you.
Learn what love is and stop talking all this crap about some fluffy thing you've made up in your imagination that you ridiculously call 'love'.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

so please, go learn what love is. Stop robbing all these people of love- start giving it instead.