“all men dream but not equally. those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.” - t.e. lawrence
“this be the realest thing I ever wrote for sure, after this a lot of folks wont like me no more…” - lyfe jennings
the dictionary defines ‘jaded’ as “tired, bored, or lacking enthusiasm; typically after having too much of something”.
yep… i’m jaded, alright. this is going to be a mind dump, so bear with me…
“i wonder if the gospel of love has become the gospel of being right” … dan merchant (author/writer/director of ‘lord, save us from your followers’)
i grew up in a horribly dogmatic and legalistic abomination, i mean denomination. =) i spent the first 25 years of my life surrounded by people who had a warped view of the salvation experience and who were quick to send a lot of people to hell if a strict religious code was not adhered to. they were so concerned with being convinced they were “right”, that in the process they weren’t really loving anybody. i left that church a little over 8 years ago, but in a lot of ways, and for a lot of reasons, i am still coming to terms with various aspects of that whole experience and continue to try to reconcile it with where i am in my life today. religion sucks.
before i go any further, i want to say that i am not angry, and i am not bitter… but if you will indulge me being totally honest here on my blog… i am tired.
i love Jesus and i want my life to reflect the character of Christ to those around me. i want to be an instrument of the grace that I so desperately need every day of my life. the ‘body of Christ’ is beautiful, man! i have been blessed to travel extensively and have met some of the most amazing and beautiful disciples of Christ all over this country and all over the world. so don’t get it twisted… i love the church… but “church”? yeeeeeaaaah… i’m pretty much not feeling it at the moment.
i’m not the only one. i often have these conversations with a few close friends of mine who are also on the same page. “church” isn’t cutting it for our generation. we desire to be a part of a thriving faith community that is making a difference in the lives of those in our respective spheres of influence.
to be fair, i do know that there are churches out there who are doing it… they are doing exactly what I am talking about… they are the hands of feet of Christ, love and justice in action that is the heartbeat of Jesus. but sadly enough they are few and far between.
i believe that the heart of God is for real live faith, love and community in action. however, in my life, i have seen a lot of people whose lives revolve around the sunday morning experience as if it were the apex of what it means to be a christian in america… who are satisfied to be “church people”… but outside of their sunday morning gloriously euphoric spiritual expression, they are having zero effect on the world around them once they walk out the doors.
the great christian paradox seems to be this… that we are quick to go to great lengths to profess our christianity, but yet do so little or nothing to act on that profession. i must wonder, when did we trade in being disciples of Christ for being “christians”? when did we trade in talking with people for talking at them? when did we trade being the church for doing church?
i am not a pastor, a priest or a theologian. i am simply someone who loves Jesus and who legitimately struggles with whether or not my life is a consistent enough reflection of the new life that i have been freely given. i don’t have all the answers. in fact, by comparison i probably have very few of them. i’m just saying something’s missing… i love Jesus, i’m just not sold on all the stuff that we’ve put in between him and us… so yeah… jaded.
i just finished watching an advance copy of “lord, save us from your followers”, a documentary by dan merchant and it got me on this page tonight. it releases june 13, and i am sure you will be hearing a lot more about it very soon. i watched the last 30-40 minutes of the film through tears, thinking “my God, people are hurting, and we’re… in church…”
you can stream the entire film online for $6.99 now. if you are a pastor, show it to your congregation. if you are a parent, show it to your children. challenge those around you… get the dialogue going where you live. be the catalyst to get the people around you off their ass and into the real world… living, loving and looking like Jesus. part of me was a little afraid to post this, but you know what? i’m tired of acting like i don’t really feel this way… tired of acting like i’m not tired. so, let the discussion begin…
when i first set out with the gideon chronicles blog, my intent was to have outlet exclusively dedicated to some of my more “purposeful” and significant thoughts, musings and/or ramblings. i was feeling like I needed to narrow the focus of my blogging somewhat, and the blog you are reading is the result of that desire.
however, i have lately been thinking about this approach as well as the fact that i actually have 3 blogs… this one, myspace and my music blog, flava in ya ear. my blog and thoughts have been kind of segmented and it has had me thinking about life and how we can tend to segment and compartmentalize our lives, sometimes feeling overwhelmed because of the pressure to keep all the plates spinning, independently of each other. i’ve been thinking lately how absurd it is to think that we have all these different life elements that we try to keep separate from the others as if they don’t feed and flow into and out of each other. i recently heard someone talking about the term “faith life” or “spiritual life” in the context of people using these terms like they are actually separate and independent from the other elements of their life. after all, what parts of our lives aren’t spiritual or faith-centric?
that being said, i am going to be broadening the scope of the gideon chronicles a bit. sometimes i’ll be sharing something particularly purposeful, but i will also be sharing from the other pieces of me and my life that all flow into one another, making me uniquely me. it might be music, art, culture, humor, relationships, love, random thoughts, pictures, stories or any number of other things… but all together, they are the sum total of who i am striving to be and of the life i am learning to walk out every day… ever growing… ever changing…
hope you enjoy the ride…
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love one another.
the great tragedy is not mainly believers in Jesus continuing to commit acts of sin. the tragedy is that satan uses the guilt of these failures to strip you of every radical dream you ever had, or might have, and in its place give you a happy, safe, secure, american life of superficial pleasures until you die in your lakeside rocking chair, wrinkled and useless, leaving a big fat inheritance to your middle-aged children to confirm them in their worldliness. that’s the main tragedy. - john piper
/// becoming… intentionally excellent \\\
why do we strive for excellence when mediocrity is required?
there is little demand in the commercial world for excellence. there is a much, much bigger demand for mediocrity. the truth is, I’m glad it’s this way.
imagine a world where all clients were wonderful, where we could produce whatever we felt like with no restrictions, with everybody having freedom to produce all their fantasies unfettered by tedious clients. what would we do?
we would react against it, saying, “isn’t this boring? how can we be dull? let’s do it badly, let’s make it ugly, and let’s make it really cheaply.”
that’s the nature of the creative person. all creative people need something to rebel against, it’s what gives their lives excitement, and it’s creative people who make the clients’ lives exciting.
… excerpt from “it’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be” by paul arden
this is a great excerpt from this book. while the specific context it was written in applies to things of a commercial and marketing-type nature, the principle applies across the board.
there’s not a lot of demand to live and love with excellence these days. mediocrity seems to be the unfortunate status quo.
this is why people who live and love with such passionate abandon always stand out, are admired and sometimes idolized. these are people are go against the grain and say, “i refuse to allow my approach to life and love to be average.” they rebel against the low expectations dictated by the day’s culture and purpose in their heart to become more than what is expected.
is that you? are you becoming more than what they expect? no one was ever accidentally great.
mediocrity happens. excellence is intentional.
rebel!
from the outside, the processes of “burying” and “planting” look a lot alike, but they are not. you might see something and it looks like it was buried, but in reality, God is just planting it. (john 12:20-26)
as long as a seed remains in a protected environment, it’s potential will never be realized.
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