Going to Hell.

Anonymous said…

December 3, 2009 12:06 PM

Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

(NIV, 1st Corinthians 6:9-11)

Chris, have any thoughts on the “washed” part? I call myself a Christian yet I drink more than my wife thinks I should. Why haven’t I been washed of the desire to drink? Greed, I would rather put money in my bank account than give it to a church (don’t attend), yet I don’t mind sharing with the guy who has the ‘will work for food’ sign. “…will not inherit the kingdom of God..” does this mean I am going to hell? Didn’t Noah dring alot?

     This is a written reprimand against denominations. (my first heresy of the day!) the other stuff is incidental, and I myself will place the words in red before the words of Paul, and I don’t believe that ongoing sin causes us to lose favor with God. Ya know, I don’t read Greek or Hebrew (I’ve actually got some curriculum laying around, for when I get caught up…when I got it the first glance was intimidating :D), but your average churchy fella will probably say that this refers to our being “cleansed” of sin. There are lotsa verses people quote. I like “as far as the east is from the west.” Quite a few Christians I have talked with teach that God does not even remember our sin (This is total bullshit…as Andy Stanley observes, if this were the case, every sermon that mentioned David nailing Bathsheba would leave God puzzled, and disoriented…divine Alzheimer’s.)      Another popular doctrine is that we must ask for forgiveness each time we sin, in spite of the fact that Jesus died for every sin, past present or future. There are a dozen posts just in that concept alone…thanks for the fodder.           God has not removed your desire to drink. I don’t know that he ever will. I predict if you continue to drink, the desire will become more entrenched. If we wanna go on a doctrinal acquisition foray through the Gospels, we find an interesting take on what mainstream religianity calls substance abuse.

•       There is a serious party that has run out of the most popular drug of choice for that culture and that time.
• Jesus’s  Ma nudges him about this (she must think it’s a problem…furthermore, she seems to think he can fix it and his first miracle, according to some, hasn’t happened yet)
• Jesus responds with an irritated “so what, Ma…you ain’t the boss of me anymore”
• Mary ignores him and tells servants to do whatever he says. ( Have you ever told your Mom you didn’t wanna do as she asked, and she just acted like you never spoke? Mary invented this technique. I always forget, as this point in the story, Mary has got to at least  be in her early forties.
• I’ve been to large weddings. When a large wedding has been drunk dry, their are a few serious buzzes stumbling around.
• In spite of this, Jesus miraculously manufactures between 120 and 180 gallons of wine.
• It’s better than anything that has been drank so far that day/evening. (When Jesus makes drugs, he makes ’em good. You would expect no less.)
• This takes us to a spiritual place the average Baptist (or any ‘Alcohol Bad!’ denominational) cannot bring himself to visit…Jesus has “kept the party going” with over 100 gallons of badass hooch when several people have already got a bellyful. This is recreational drug use.

     I get a few unconventional doctrines out of this.

1. Obviously, Alcohol is not a sin.
2. Quite possibly, getting mildly ripped upon occaision is viewed benevolently by God. Let it be so.
3. It’s okay to get irritated with your mother. Do what she asks, anyway.

Of course, Alcoholism is real. Will bite your ass. Just ask my ex wife.
     As to greed, IMO greed is not a have/don’t have characteristic for most of us. It is a question of how much you got, and what form does it take. If you will give to a homeless guy, you must have a nugget of compassion, or guilt, or something buried in that little heart of yours. 🙂
    We know Noah got shitfaced at least once, we don’t know if Noah drank a lot. I feel safe in assuming he didn’t drink enough to be a fuckup.We all have a point where enough alcohol or any recreational drug for that matter, begins to degrade the quality of our life. I assure you that if we have begun to notice it, significant damage has already been done. There are places where “Hell” refers to the Jerusalem town dump, in the red ink, no less. There are references to the “Lake of Fire”. Neither is a good spot to aim for, I would imagine. Their is no place I know of where Jesus said “This is how to stay out of Hell”
     Religianity will detail things you must do to obtain what they call “The Free Gift Of Grace”, which seems a contradiction to me, but I am a heretic. They will list ways you must feel, motives you must have, and even a chant you must utter, as in “repeat after me, to get saved“.
     I don’t think they quite grasp the reality of unmerited favor. I don’t think you are going to hell.

     
Anonymous,
     I would like to mention a couple things.
     More than once, your comments have been sad. You drink. I don’t know how much you drink, but drinking and sadness can precipitate a helluva nasty spiral and you know this, though it is easy to forget. If your wife has a problem, You have a problem. Period. Love comes with complications. Also, I’ve never met a wife who thought her husband drank too much….who was wrong about it. Your wife is afraid. Do something. These things don’t go away and they will contribute to your sadness. And we know what sadness will contribute to, in a man who likes to catch a buzz. Be very careful.
    

Stars In His Eyes,

Stars In His Eyes, originally uploaded by use2blost.

     Naivete in his heart.
     History and Political Science have been an embarrassingly rude awakening awakening to me. I knew about slavery, of course, and you would have to have lived on the moon to not realize we took a big dump on the Indians. Somehow, I still thought we were fairly well behaved, as a nation. It seems this is not the case. I realized we had migrated away from the vision of government our forefathers held, but I had no idea the level of blatant self interest voter apathy permits in our elected officials, and I had never reflected on the truth that a selfish, fearful population is the one most easily manipulated. I find myself alarmed, but try to keep in mind I am like a emotional savant, with childish expectations of virture, and a petulant cynicism born of growing up in what counts for poverty in the one of the most prosperous countries in the world. I find myself considering political issues, and wondering at a lasting solution. It seems to me, probably the best thing we could do to straighten out politics would be to eliminate the middleman. The selfishness of the general population creates more than enough chaos. We want what serves us best, and to hell with the other faction. This makes the American Public easy to manipulate, and the politcal machine, which to me seems to include business, government, and organized religion, grows in wealth and power by siphoning these off of the American people. Most of us seem to realize that the roofies has worn off…we even know who is screwing us. We just can’t seem to reach enough lucidity to do anything about it. A platform of specific reforms would be lengthy, and probably impractical after the editing required to get a huge grass roots movement to all agree on it. Perhaps just a few things at a time, is the ticket. we could chisel away at the problem rather than specific symptoms. I think the election process need to be more about competency than money, and the name recognition generated by the media exposure the money purchases. So from now on, no reporting on elections. every candidate gets equal time, his voting record on past issues is published, and media coverage is limited to live rhetoric or debate. Please do not analyze the candidates for us. We wanna grow up and learn to do it ourselves.
     I also think election campaigns should have a cap on spending. If we remove the need to compete for campaign contirutions, the public interest will begin to have the same clout as the corporate interest, and citizens will be as important as lobbyists. And we pay them too much. Pay them less, and make them utilize public health care. They’ll come up with a great plan, overnight. I promise. My little pea brain thinks this would completely change the political climate of America.

About the picture… I seldom go to the trouble to take a self portrait, but insomnia can take you out of your comfort zone. The right eye is A star similar to our sun that has exploded, and the left eye is The Orion Nebula, both taken by the Hubble Telescope and gathered from the Hubble website. Airbrushing them into my irises with Photoshop Elements, was the last thing I did after processing my mug. The HDR was done with Mediachance Dynamic Photo. I tried a little bit of burning, on my wrinkles, to add some mileage.

Large

as to lighting, this was taken in the bathroom with me sitting on the counter opposite the mirror, which has a fixture across the top holding 6 bulbs. for this shot, a couple of the bulbs are unscrewed, so I submitted it to the ghetto lighting pool.

Self Control, The first Spiritual Discipline

the indispensable prerequisite to all personal growth. Ya just can’t have too much of it, and if it is lacking, it will sooner or later be felt. “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” but Christ must have something to strengthen. Andy Stanley tells us that yesterday we “wrote a chapter” in our story, the saga that chronicles the unavoidable change in our character. The question is which way did we go? Did we progress, or regress? Is our path in a consistent direction? All to often, I go forward and backward In great loops, content to trudge upward ever so slowly, satisfied that I am better than I used to be.

I watch no broadcast television. None. Sometimes, I get a little pharisee (Luke 18:9) pride about it, but lately, it occurs to me that I spend an enormous amount of time tweaking my blog, reading your blog, and posting thoughts and feelings. These are not bad things but moderation (ah, self-control!) has always been my weak point. I want to spend time in “Centering Prayer”, and other spiritual disciplines. I feel starved, sometimes for a closer, more conversational relationship with the Ancient, Eternal, Holy, Perfect, God. My God. The One who loves me (can it be?) like no other.

My Pastor spoke of prioritizing, and I keep a constant low-grade whine in my head about hearing the voice of God, and lately, It seems as if He has nudged me, and called me to a life of more self-discipline so that I can begin to practice spiritual disciplines with a little more sucess, not to win Divine approval, but so that my prayers can be answered, and one of my fondest wishes granted. My Father, perhaps, wants to give me my best (I have more than one… lol) hearts desire.

In the space of a few days, I have stumbled across many mentions of denying the flesh to feed the spirit

• The fast that God desires
• The Benefits of Suffering
  
• Sabbath
• and a cool posting on getting your house in order which I couldn’t find the trackback too 😦

Now I think, like ms. Rachel, I need to drop back and punt, though not as extremely as she has, and probably keep my Internet tomfoolery down to weekends or something. The Blogging, and Flickr, have captured me. I need to get control of my self.

I think God told me to.

(And that money I save on cable… I spend it on Marlboros)

ΧΡΙΣΤΌΣ ΠΑΡΑΜΈΝΕΙ. (CHRIST REMAINS.)

Inertia

I can’t seem to move, really. I can wander from room to room, but purpose escapes me. I stumble across memories…How could I have expected to begin functioning today? I know I scheduled an appointment, but I cannot for the life of me find the data, location, time. I feel worse. and different, and disconnected than ever before. I’m not drinking enough water. The task of programming the coffee pot taxes my intellect. I feel my lower back degenerating as I neglect my physical therapy. Prayer seems a joke. I could sit here all day. I would read my bible, but to reach for it would require some strange effort that feels foreign to me, I cannot muster up the energy to even engage in self destructive behavior. lol. It’s a long walk to the toothbrush. I can’t unpack a box, clean my vehicle, run a vacuum. activate spellcheck. Log in to check my financial aid. find a pair of socks. decide how to end my post

compassion

I am so glad this week is over. I felt a constant strain, a pressure to do and speak in a way that would honor my father. In the midst of it, as divorce came over the horizon, the situation with my wife was so confusing, her compassion, and the knowledge that the love one rightfully expects from a spouse was absent, were a source of an explosive cocktail of emotion. I was never comfortable enough to concentrate on my grief. Understanding, rage, disappointment, and bitterness were exhausting me, even now I would do almost anything to be free of them, if only for a little while. Every time she tells me to let her know if I need anything it breaks my heart.

Denied Prayer

He died. It is likely that after 16 minutes of CPR he would have not been himself if he had recovered. It is hard to sort through my feelings. There is bitter disappointment, lonliness, an inarticulate longing for closeness and love. It is strange. I am loved much, and greatly, by many people, but my inner emptiness resounds within my soul…ebbs and flows, retreating when I feel like another moment would be my undoing. I find another hour has passed. I was a failure as a son and as a man for much of our relationship, but by God’s Grace, a bridge had been rebuilt and my father knew many of my regrets, and freely forgave me.
I harbor no resentment at the Ancient Of Days, He administers the universe as he sees fit, and some time ago I surrendered, and said “let Him do to me as seems good to Him”. I may complain, question, even wallow in childish petulance, but I know I have no where else to turn. When things were inconvenient, and difficult to understand Peter said “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life”

Lamentation and Petition

Frustration, and futility. The helpless sense that my world is unravelling. I was actually kind of surprised that there was WI–FI at the medical center of central Georgia…it seems strange to me. though Macon is a larger town than Warner Robins, I have always felt that Warner Robins was more up-to-date…go figure. I guess shit began hitting the fan about 10 days ago…My marriage fell apart, and in the whirlwind of drastically changing circumstances-living location, gathering the requisite paperwork to obtain a divorce, and the struggle to hold together a plan to continue my education, my Dad’s health took a nosedive. I have much to be grateful for, God’s Provision and his impeccable timing…These things are so momentous in this situation that the Lord’s intrevention seems clear to me, and I cannot rail against injustice, and I walk through no material hardship that I did not bring upon my self. My Dad’s heart cathertization went as wrong as it can go without actual death. as it was it was scheduled for lunchtime today and had to be moved up to this morning because his condition was so bad. He had a heart attack during the procedure, and had to be recescutated. Now he has been moved to a better equipped facility to continue the fight for life. As I blog from the waiting room, I think of prayer, it’s paradoxical nature, and the unfathomable criteria by which God chooses to grant or deny petition. Scripture tells us that “the prayer of a righteous man availeth much”, and I sit painfully aware that my righteousness, by the standards of the evangelical community, is flimsy and unimpressive. Even my Savior had prayers denied and these in his darkest, lonliest moments. Who Am I? Papa please. Don’t take my Dad. I am so sorry, and my heart is already broken. Please. Mercy. Pity. Grace. Your servant requests your favor yet again.

Lamentation and Petition

Frustration, and futility. The helpless sense that my world is unravelling. I was actually kind of surprised that there was WI–FI at the medical center of central Georgia…it seems strange to me. though Macon is a larger town than Warner Robins, I have always felt that Warner Robins was more up-to-date…go figure. I guess shit began hitting the fan about 10 days ago…My marriage fell apart, and in the whirlwind of drastically changing circumstances-living location, gathering the requisite paperwork to obtain a divorce, and the struggle to hold together a plan to continue my education, my Dad’s health took a nosedive. I have much to be grateful for, God’s Provision and his impeccable timing…These things are so momentous in this situation that the Lord’s intrevention seems clear to me, and I cannot rail against injustice, and I walk through no material hardship that I did not bring upon my self. My Dad’s heart cathertization went as wrong as it can go without actual death. as it was it was scheduled for lunchtime today and had to be moved up to this morning because his condition was so bad. He had a heart attack during the procedure, and had to be recescutated. Now he has been moved to a better equipped facility to continue the fight for life. As I blog from the waiting room, I think of prayer, it’s paradoxical nature, and the unfathomable criteria by which God chooses to grant or deny petition. Scripture tells us that “the prayer of a righteous man availeth much”, and I sit painfully aware that my righteousness, by the standards of the evangelical community, is flimsy and unimpressive. Even my Savior had prayers denied and these in his darkest, lonliest moments. Who Am I? Papa please. Don’t take my Dad. I am so sorry, and my heart is already broken. Please. Mercy. Pity. Grace. Your servant requests your favor yet again.