A Quick Life Update

If you happen to be out driving tomorrow, and if you happen to pass Mission Possible and see a red S-10 in the parking lot, don't bother asking whether or not that's my truck. Between 12 and 6, you will be right in assuming that it is. And you will probably think, Hold on a second... he is living in Huntsville now. What is he doing back here? Well the explanation is very simple: I came back.

Manny Ramirez cuts off throws to the infield from his own position in outfield. He goes (went) into the Green Monster to use the bathroom between innings. He does (did) steroids. They have a saying for this, that it's "Manny being Manny." Regarding my coming back from UAH, I guess you could say that it's "Matt being Matt." I go to college, I take classes, I transfer, I change my major many times, I transfer again, I drop out for a year, I go back, I transfer again... this is in essence my college years crammed into one sentence. And so if you are shocked right now at the fact that I stayed at UAH for a few days and then dropped out and returned, you really shouldn't be. A pig returns to the mud, a dog returns to its vomit, Gomer returned to the street corners and well, I could probably have chosen better examples, but I returned to my habit of not sticking to the plan.

Seriously though, the best explanation I can give is that I got up there and stayed a few days only to realize that living on campus is not for me. It might have been good right out of high school, and there are definitely people out there who love it, but not me. I withdrew from all my classes, gave back my financial aid money, loaded up my truck, and came home. Not once have I regretted it since, and immediately the next day I went to register for whatever I had left to take at Jeff State. Even though I changed colleges, I still fully intend to finish my degree in History and Education and get a job as a teacher. This hasn't set me back or discouraged me one bit.

The one thing I am going to miss about Huntsville is the church that I had the pleasure of attending once. It was called Weatherly Heights and I found it on the Faith and Justice directory on the Sojourners website. At its surface, it was a Baptist church that didn't seem very Baptist at all. Ministers wear robes during the service, the sermon was about 20 minutes long, and women are permitted to be in positions of leadership. During the worship, I couldn't hear the music minister over the voice of the entire congregation, which is always great for worship. Also, the prayers, the sermon, and the entire order of the service were deep and very well-thought out. The pastor preached from Leviticus, and actually provided historical context for what he was talking about. It wasn't some watered down self-help message repackaged for Christians, but actual rich, bare, Biblical theology presented in its context.

I really liked that church, but a minimum 1 hour commute is too much for me to be able to attend now. I'm back in the B-ham area and I'm on the market for a new church. Some might be wondering if I am going to go back to Hilldale, but I'm going to have to say here that I'm not. I like Hilldale, and I really like the people there, but I'm sorry to have to say I'm going to be moving on.

You see, things get a little complicated when I talk about church. After the crap that happened at Hopewell, my take on church changed. Not that it was all Hopewell, but more or less that situation combined with observations on several different fronts (not least of these being WDJC). And somewhere along the line, I lost my faith in church. Church as usual doesn't work for me anymore, but the problem is that I don't know of any churches here that aren't church as usual.

Because I want to start believing in churches again. I want to start believing in God's people to be more than people who simply listen to a different kind of music and don't cuss. But the solution to that is not just more modern worship music. It's not a bunch of lights or the obligatory hip pastor-with-fohawk. It's not wrapping yourself in a watered down Christian subculture where you cut yourself off from the world and wait on Jesus to steal you away to heaven, or at least that's not the way I believe it should be.

But anyways, I did say this would be quick. That's essentially where I'm at now. Peace.

"Heaven and earth, I repeat, are made for each other, and at certain points they intersect and interlock. Jesus is the ultimate such point. We as Christians are meant to be such points, derived from him." -N.T. Wright

Don Miller told me to do this, so I did

The Mentoring Project - Elephant Musth Cycle from The Mentoring Project on Vimeo.

A couple years ago I read this great book by Donald Miller called To Own a Dragon. In it, Don details his life growing up without a father and his experiences with several different mentors, or male role models in his life. Growing up without a father, or with a bad father, can wreak havoc on a young boy's emotions and mental state. In fact, an overwhelming majority of men in jail grew up without fathers. This is no coincidence. The family is supposed to work the right way only if a mother and father are both present, but sadly our generation is seeing a crisis in fatherhood. Men aren't sticking around to raise their kids. Some dads are abusive towards their kids or wives, and this leaves the children with what we like to call "issues."

Fortunately there are people out there like Don who are undertaking the daunting task of trying to fix this fatherhood mess. His organization partners with churches so that they can start a mentoring program to give young kids good role models. Their efforts are going to help lots of kids grow up with positive influences in their lives, and that is something that will make a huge difference.

Also, speaking of Donald Miller, I am getting extremely excited about this.

Bible Questions Are Fun

I get so frustrated with the Bible sometimes. It's such a complicated book. It seems like I can't read a chapter without at least one question coming up about something that doesn't seem to make sense or something that contradicts something else. Tonight I decided I would read Jesus' sermon on the mount. So I read it and, as always, something jumped out at me that doesn't really make sense. Unable to come up with a satisfying answer on my own, I thought I'd try to put this question up on the blog and let anybody who feels like it weigh in.

My question comes right after the Lord's prayer when Jesus says, "For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:14-15). What I am wondering is this: Is Jesus putting another condition on salvation when he is saying this?

I noticed that when I was reading through the sermon on the mount, Jesus seems to be warning people that they need to watch what their actions are, or they may be in danger of hell.

"But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, 'You fool!' will be liable to the hell of fire" - Matthew 5:22

"If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell." - Matthew 5:29

This is where it gets tricky for me because I have learned that it doesn't matter what we do, it matters that we accept and believe in Jesus. "For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God," as it says in Romans. So if I insult somebody, look lustfully at somebody, or even kill someone, I can still be saved by God's grace and forgiveness. But Jesus says that if I do these things, I will be "liable to the hell of fire." He doesn't say that "if you don't believe I am the Son of God you will be liable to the hell of fire." And it gets even more confusing when he says that if I don't forgive others for their trespasses, God won't forgive mine.

It's kind of like that old formula for becoming a Christian, the A, B, C's - Admit, Believe, and Confess. Does that mean it's Admit, Believe, Confess, and Forgive? Jesus did say I won't be forgiven if I don't forgive others. And if I'm not forgiven, how can I be saved? (By the way, I don't really believe that salvation is something that can be confined to an ABC formula - a three step process that gets you automatically a place in heaven. But that's another blog entirely.)

I guess it's just odd how the Bible actually treats the idea of "going to heaven." Like it sometimes is treated like a "how to get to heaven" book, but when I dive in the book it doesn't actually read that way. For instance, if I was someone who knew nothing about the Bible, but I wanted to make sure to get into heaven, I would be completely confused by it. Like I would open up to the first page and there is this poem about the creation of the world and a story of the fall of man, and then it goes into this guy Abraham who had a baby even though he was really old and his wife was barren. And then it follows the lives of his family. Finally, I would realize this wasn't what I was looking for, and I would flip through the book. Stories of slavery and wandering around in the desert, history, poems praising God, words of wisdom, writings of prophets, the story of Jesus, letters to different churches. I'm not saying that how to get to heaven is not in there, I'm just saying that it's really hard to find. And it seems like that is a very critical part of our faith, which is why this is so strange. You would think God would put it in there, highlight it, and make the ink glow on the page. Or that there would be a table of contents at the beginning that would say "For information on going to heaven, turn to page 1142." But that's not in there. Even the Romans road, which many Christians are taught to use to lead people to Christ, is several separate verses ripped out of the book of Romans and made into a formula of salvation. Not even Paul actually put them directly together, step by step.

Anyways, this has confused me lately. Is there more to salvation than simply believing and accepting? Can I go to heaven without forgiving others, even if I do believe? And why doesn't God make the way to heaven more obvious?

Any thoughts?