Before Class on Sunday, I felt God kind of telling me to go 'out of bounds' and approach the Class differently. We have been doing a series on discovering God, but this week's plan in the series was just a goof-off week, and the students - and myself included - don't really like spending our time in class playing games and just talking. We get a lot of that when we leave church and go to Fuddruckers or China Cottage or Applebee's or whatever. So today seemed like a good week to do it, and I just felt God telling me, "I want you to talk about this today. Don't worry. I won't make you look like a fool. And I won't let the class bomb-out either." So I prayed and said Okay.

We talked about some pretty deep stuff. What does it mean to believe in Jesus Christ? We acknowledged that the majority consensus was that believing in Christ meant knowing and believing to be true all the biblical facts about Jesus - but I reminded them that if that were the case, then many fallen angels would have stronger faith than us! If you look into the ancient texts and the original meaning behind Jesus' words when he says, "All who believe in me will be saved," you will find a deeper meaning, a meaning all but lost in our technology-driven, consumerist, modern era. To believe in this sense is to know Christ; and not to know Christ as you know the President of the United States or the Russian prime minister, nor even as we know our friends and family. It is a deeper and more passionate knowing; an intimate knowing. Jesus is saying, "All who are intimate with Me are intimate with the Father; and their intimacy will set them free... All who are intimate with Me will be saved."

We didn't stop there, though. I asked, "Is there really any way at all, do you think, that we can tell whether or not we're really intimate with God?" Nods of heads. "Okay... Like what?" No one knew, or at least no one spoke up, so I tossed a Bible at Jacque and she read some of John 14. The answer, she then gave, was obedience. We talked about how obedience is not salvation, but obedience flows from true salvation. Jesus says that those who are intimate with Him will obey Him; this is inevitable. The way we act always ties in with what we really believe; we never act 'out-of-line' with our beliefs. We always live up to them - or down to them. We all acknowledged the possibility of pretending to have faith when one does not, and even convincing oneself that he or she has faith when really, he or she does not. I left them - and myself - with a "challenge:" explore our own lives, sift through them, and see what it is we really believe.

The cold is getting much better. I think it was brought on by the sudden change in weather, but I really don't know. My sister contracted it a little, I think, and was bedridden most of yesterday. I am thankful I can breathe easy now, even if it is just out of one nostril. I have been doing a lot of reading (books and the Gospels), a lot of thinking, a lot of praying. I've had the time, too. Except for one or two, I've kind of separated myself from my friends without meaning to. When every day used to be spent driving around, eating out, going to the park, whatever, now my days are filled with listening to music, reading, contemplating. And working. I work today. Afterwards, I might watch a Star Wars movie. I watched A New Hope yesterday; excited about The Revenge of the Sith.

This is a C.S. Lewis quote from The Screwtape Letters that I find to be quite amazing (and fitting for my life right now); it is a Senior demon talking to an apprentice demon:

Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our enemy's [God's] will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

A lot has been going on lately. Lots of work. Birthday celebrations (Dad's forty-something). Borders Books & Music. Lots of work. Last Friday I started developing a sore throat and I attributed it to Strepp. Nope. I've got a really bad cold and the lining of my nose is peeling like a sunburn. The only difference is this hurts worse. So I've been carrying around a box of tissues and praying it will blow over. I really don't like colds. Once again, it's one of those things you promise to be grateful without, but when the time comes and the cold dissipates, you get on with life and are ungrateful. Unless it's something traumatic, I think that's how it is for just about everyone.

The Enemy has been running circles around me lately. One of the biggest moments when his attack became so apparent was last night at K2. I had to read something for Jeff, and when I started reading it, the most insatiable panic gripped me, a panic darker than any I've ever known. I didn't know why this happened. I had been fine stepping up onto the stage. When I finally understood the Enemy was toying around, I didn't pray - I was too terrified to pray. But the panic vanished in a matter of seconds, and I remembered how the Holy Spirit prays for us when we don't have the words. The rest of the composition ran smoothly. I don't think my words left any kind of spiritual mark on anyone, that part was left to Jeff; I think the Enemy was trying to pass on a lying message to me, You're worthless and you won't do any good. You can't do anything right. Just give up.

I have been able to recognize his assaults over the last couple days, in a varied host of dimensions. But the message they are delivering me is clear: You can never be loved. You're too ugly to be loved. Just look at you - God doesn't like you at all. He hates you. You only exist as an object of His mockery. These lies run through my head, through my feelings, and I have to tell myself, "You know very well what is happening. Don't listen to him. He's a liar and he'll get put in his place when the time comes. God will see to it." Awful temptation, too, has been hitting me when I least expect it - in the dead of night, during school (the worst), and even ten minutes before church. It takes all I am to fight through it. And when the temptation comes, and I stand my ground and plead with God to take them off me, not a few moments passes before it vanishes into thin air and I know they're hands have been taken off.

The creation of a new nature does not come from our own determination. True, we must be determined to change – for if determination is absent, then intention is absent. Without intention, no one will get anywhere. It can be said – and accurately so – that one reason many of those who profess fellowship with Christ do not exhibit the extremity and depth of discipleship and life change that Jesus advocates is simply because they do not intend on that change becoming a reality in their own lives. But even the most hard-edged and determined soul will get nowhere – except caught in the bonds of legalism – if God is not involved. For we cannot change ourselves, it is an unfortunate side-effect of our own rebellion against God. Coming from the womb we are indebted to the sinful nature, and we cannot escape that sinful nature without God’s divine touch and guidance. God will often perform the removal of our sinful nature and the replacement of the godly nature by means of spiritual disciplines – meditation, study, fasting, worship, etc.

Just as your outer appearance is the result of genetics between your mother and father (hence you are a son of man), so the creation of a new nature is the result of divine genetics from our Triune God. We are called the children of God not because they are pretty words (for they have deep meaning), but because the new us – ourselves as found overcome with a new nature – comes from the divine genetics of God. As I am a child to my biological parents, so I am a child to God; as my parents passed on some of them to me, so God breathes His life into me. The truth is simple to grasp: we who have been changed are called children of God because God Himself has imparted Himself upon us. He has worked in the deepest corners of our beings, even in the regions of our existence we cannot reach, and he has changed, rewired, and completely redone us. It is a process, to be sure, but we come to realize that it is not something we did (though we intended and desired it) but it is something God did. So we stake our claim as children of God and it means something concrete and real.

Yet the phrase Children of God can be taken deeper. If my parents are shy, then chances are, I will be shy; if my parents are hardworking or lazy, then I’ll be one or the other. It isn’t just the physical make-up that our parents decide – who they are plays a defining role in who we will be. When we call ourselves Children of God, we are acknowledging that who we are has changed; who God is has become part of who we are. We are not God, but we belong to God in an intimate and connected way. Knowing this, we can look at the scriptural expositions on the make-up of the child of God (examples we’ve been referring to are the Sermon on the Mount, 1 Corinthians 13, and Galatians 5:22-6:10) and understand that the attitudes, personalities, and attributes that become second-nature in the new creation are precisely the ways that God is on the inside! We begin to understand that God is loving and patient and kind, and as God breathes Himself into us, so we begin to find ourselves divorcing the sinful nature for a nature whose outsourcing involves loving and patience and kindness. In becoming new creations with new natures, we are not simply just picking up on a new way of living, but we are living life as God would live it (and has and does live it) in our day-to-day lives. The Sermon on the Mount, 1 Corinthians 13, and Galatians 5:22-6:10 are windows into the being of God, and as God imparts a new creation onto us, we step into the window beside God, and we can say with certainty we are like Christ. We are truly Christians.

Paul tells us that it is not circumcision nor uncircumcision that matters, but the creation of the new nature. It is essential that we explore the meaning behind what he said. When we refer to what someone will automatically do, we call it his or her nature. Selfishness, they say, is basic human nature. In other New Testament passages, the authors go into detail on the nature of sinful man: we have the bad fruit of the bad tree coming to light in such passages. In other passages, the Spirit Nature, or New Nature, is given a detailed description, and this is the good fruit of the good tree. By using the word nature, we acknowledge that it is not something we so much choose to do, but something we automatically do in our daily lives. So whenever someone is selfish, we say, “He couldn’t help it – it’s human nature.” When we are locked in the sinful nature, we cannot help it but to live lives highlighted by bad fruit. When we become new creations – when we become owners of a new nature – we cannot help but to live life in the Kingdom as God would desire us to live – and how God originally fashioned us to live.

Paul brings the reality of the sinful nature and the spirit nature to par in his letter to the Romans. Chapter Seven finds the pen striking a remorseful tone as he dwells on the sinful nature within him and the sin that resides there. He speaks of how he wants to do what is right, but cannot, and how he wishes not to do what is wrong, but feels powerless not to. I have oft returned to these words in moments of frailty after succumbing to sin, looking to identify with one of the greatest followers of Christ in written history; yet whenever I continued down his laments, I was startled by the break in the sorrow and the exuberance with which he penned: “Who shall deliver me [from my sinful nature]? Thanks be to Jesus Christ our Lord – He is the answer!” The answer to deliverance from the sinful nature is found in Jesus Christ. I stumbled over this verse for so long, wondering how Jesus was the answer, wondering what I was missing (remember, these words became rote for me whenever I caved in to sin), wondering why the Answer wasn’t so evident in my life. Now I understand what Paul is saying: The answer that Jesus Christ gives is simply a changing of our nature, a changing of our instincts; we will be conformed to the instincts and nature of Christ.

What counts, then, is whether or not our natures have been changed by Jesus Christ. In the sinful nature, what came naturally was, obviously, sin and its counterparts and the attributes of a life lived apart from God. In the new nature – the new creation fashioned after the nature of Christ, fashioned as how God originally intended life to be lived – we find that instead of sin and its counterparts coming naturally to us, the holy life – the life built upon God and interaction with God in our daily lives (for this is Kingdom) – comes naturally to us. Where before we had to work to be good, in the new nature we will have to work to be bad. Where we had to work to do good deeds, we will have to work to commit sin. As holiness is, in many ways, alien and foreign to us now, so evil and all its subdivisions will be alien and foreign to us when our natures are changed.

It is when our nature is changed that our lives are changed – Jesus’ words make sense and we look at the Sermon on the Mount and exclaim, perhaps with surprise, “Hey, that’s me!” It is the same for all the other great texts exemplifying the attributes of a new character: we will say, “Look! He’s writing about me!” And when our eyes lay upon those texts detailing the sinful nature, we will wonder how anyone could act that way or be that way, and find it completely unbelievable that anyone could live life apart from God.

So many of us [Christians] are subscribers to the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees without even knowing it. We hear that phrase, "Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees," and we imagine the bottom-line being hypocrisy. But at this time, Jesus wasn't too big on the hypocrisy: that didn't come until later. And can we really believe that all Pharisees and scribes were corrupt and hypocritical? No, of course not! That's like assuming that all priests are child-molesters just because a tiny few are (and a sad thing, too). So what is the righteousness of the scribe and Pharisee, if it isn't hypocrisy?

The scribes and Pharisees, even the most devout and holy, made following God all about keeping the law, not about becoming the kind of person whose deeds naturally conform to the law. A lot of times, in our Christian circles and in our churches, at our prayer meetings and our small groups, we surf the wave that says, "Keep the law and you are righteous." No, no, no! The law won't make us righteous! Instead we need to be saying, "Become the kind of people God wants - to be like Christ, to be new creations (this is what matters) - and then following the Law will come naturally."

If we get away from the righteousness of the scribes and pharisees, and really understand- and pursue - this new reality of not so much 'doing stuff for God,' but 'being someone for God,' is it unreasonable to assume that our lives on a whole will be changed? Is it unreasonable to assume that keeping the law will become second-nature to us? Is it unreasonable that, in pursuing and attaining this righteousness of Christ, we will find that we are obeying the Law without too much effort? Is it unreasonable to believe that we will become the kind of people the Bible talks about when describing the children of God? Is it unreasonable that we will become the kind of person who is patient, kind, free of jealousy, and so on if we pursue conforming to Christ instead of just keeping the Law to the letter?

It is when our hearts are bent into submission to the sinful nature that our lives reap bad fruit, we bear fruit of death. You can tell whether or not a tree is bad by looking at the fruit it produces – Jesus told us this. Why have we begun to imagine anything differently? It makes sense, doesn’t it, that if our lives are full of back-stabbing and vengeance, meanness and hostility, selfishness and jealousy, we are a bad tree? Does it not make sense that if the lives we live are underscored with sex on the brain, wasting hours on the latest craze to seduce us, if we’re hateful and argumentative and angry all the time, then we are bad trees? Is it unreasonable that if we’re drunks and perverts, ultra-competitive, driven by divide-and-conquer, dying inside every time someone else makes it – is it unreasonable, then, to assume that the tree is bad? Simply look at the fruit and you can see – if the fruit is rotten, the tree is bad. If you don’t believe me, read Galatians 5:19-21 for yourself. It is sad to say, but the majority of the Christians have not changed; the majority of us model what has been said above. It is as Gandhi said: “I love your Christ. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

What, then, does a good tree look like? A good tree models the Sermon on the Mount – not an exposition on new laws to be added to our lives, but what someone who lives in the Kingdom of God really looks like, without effort. Good trees give off good fruit; they are loving and alive, sparkling and radiant, calm and not pushy, generous with money, time and people, always ready to help. It hurts to see someone else hurting and it is unbearable to hurt another – physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. Good trees do not double-cross others, do not lose their cool, aren’t in trouble with the government authority.

None of this comes because you force it into your life; any application of this as laws will undoubtedly fail. A good tree is only good because its roots are anchored right – anchored in the Son. Then they will draw nourishment from God and the tree will naturally grow into a good tree, feeding off the Spirit. Here lies one of the greatest errors in our thinking regarding spiritual transformation: we think we have to force ourselves to transform, when really the attributes of the Good Tree will invade our lives and become second-nature to us; but only if our roots are anchored correctly. In the same breath, if our roots are not anchored right – and no matter what we may say or think can alter where we have truly placed the roots – then it will be seen: our roots will draw up brackish water and our lives will be dark cesspools whose fruits are radiant only of evil, and we are not in any way like Christ, even if we stamp the name Christian onto our cars and sleeves.

The Chief Priest tried again, this time asking, "Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed?"

Jesus said, "Yes, I am, and you'll see it yourself:

The Son of Man seated
At the right hand of the Mighty One,
Arriving on the clouds of heaven."

The Chief Priest lost his temper. Ripping his clothes, he yelled, "Did you hear that? After that do we need witnesses? You heard the blasphemy. Are you going to stand for it?"

They condemned him, one and all. The sentence: death.

- Mark 14:61-64, the Message

It is common word around lots of [Christian] circles that if we don't shape into people who are like Christ, there may not be anything to worry about. After all, we're all sinners just saved by grace, we're all on a journey together, it's human nature to mess up. All those things Jesus said, all those things the New Testament authors said, about not getting involved in sin, about changing who we are, none of that really matters, because we've been saved by God's grace. If a church is full of people with sins they don't want to get rid of, or full of people who don't want to become like Christ, that's okay, because the church is a hospital of sinners. You know what, if you don't change, that's okay; you don't have to change. Sure, change would be great. But Jesus loves you just as you are and you don't have to go that extra mile if you don't want to!

These are things said - and worse yet, believed - by many Christians. Not surprising, many of these Christians are Christians who have not changed, Christians who have not put on the character of Christ, Christians who have pretty much disregarded the parts of the Bible commanding life change. I have opened up the Bible, and I just can't rest in the belief that it's "okay" to sit Jesus on the back-burner. It is obvious Jesus did not think this way. He says, "Give me all or give me nothing." I think it is some unholy conspiracy to believe that there's nothing wrong at all for a Christian to refuse to change, or a Christian to not care about change. I have seen it a lot, and it really hurts me deep inside, because I know life-change is essential to the Message. After all, didn't Jesus come to usher in a new way of life - union with God in our ordinary lives (Kingdom)? - and to bring about new communities comprised of those who are living out that union with God?

Let me ask you this: if someone says they're a Christian, but who they are doesn't change after their reunion with God through Jesus' sacrifice, are they really Christians? If they say they are Christians but do not show any signs of change (none of us will ever be perfect; in the same breath, we won't be stagnant in our maturity, either) - are they really Christians? Because the meaning behind Christian is "Christ-like" or "like-Christ", are we really Christians if we aren't, God forbid, anything like Jesus? Hmmm...

Work went by fast yesterday, but it was only a four and a half hour shift, so you really can't expect much more. I changed and drove to the High School; Bryon was waiting in his car. I jumped in and he drove down to the Williams', picked up Chris, and we took the Highway to the Tri-County BW3's, where Bryon's girlfriend Jessica works. She went on her break and we all stood amongst the cars under the beautiful stars, watching people go in and out the doors and drinking hot 79-cent coffee. Jessica had to return to work, so we returned to Springboro and visited our own BW3's, where Bryon bought himself some medium-hot buffalo wings. He dropped me off at the High School, I said my good-byes, and upon returning home, slept.

I awoke this morning at 6:30, just popped out of bed and into the shower, and I must be leaving in about three minutes to make it to work for a seven-hour shift. The rest of the day involves perhaps renting a movie, eating out with my dad, and Mr. Porter's take-home essay test on A Tale of Two Cities.

One might wonder – and does well to – “Why aren’t Christians changing?” Why isn’t the radical life-change that Jesus commands taking root in our ordinary lives? There are many ideas circulating as to why change is lacking: perhaps we do not desire it, but yet there are many who do desire the change but are unable to grasp it; perhaps we do not know how to go about the change, and certainly this is an admirable reason, not unlike being stuck in the ocean beside a raft with no idea how to get on. These play a part, no doubt, but it can be said that if we desire it strongly enough and we are determined enough, we can discover the ‘how’ behind it all, and eventually will climb into the raft. It is not my belief that the reason we do not change is because we do not desire nor because we do not know how; not primarily, at least. I believe the key reason behind the failure for the majority of Christians to be so ‘unlike Christ’ lies in our intent.

William Law writes, “…If you will here stop and ask yourselves why you are not as pious as the primitive Christians were, your own heart will tell you that it is neither through ignorance nor inability, but purely because you never thoroughly intended it… [T]he reason why you see no real mortification or self-denial, no eminent charity, no profound humility, no heavenly affection, no true contempt of the world, no Christian meekness, no sincere zeal, no eminent piety in the common lives of Christians, is this: because they do not so much as intend to be exact and exemplary in these virtues.”

I have sat around with Christian friends and we have discussed what it means to be a ‘new creation.’ We have talked about ‘putting on the character of Christ’ and ‘loving one another as we love God.’ And after giving a discourse and enjoying discussion on what it means to ‘love thy neighbor,’ we have stood, and I have beheld with a dropping heart and immense sorrow those who were so adamant and involved in the discourse and discussion, cutting others down and mocking one another in malicious intent. I have seen many such things, such hypocrisy to the nth degree, and I do not believe I must go on to convince you that it is in the lack of intent that the reason for true change occurs. Even if we know all the right answers and we know what it means to change, if we do not intend for that to be a reality in our own lives, nothing will happen. It is God’s gift of free will.

As a small group leader and teacher, I realize that I've spent a lot of time talking about having to get over the lust and porn (a big deal if you're a guy) or jealousy or gossip (if you're a girl). But how many times have I just sat down with everyone, and said, "Look. We're never going to get anywhere with this if we don't go beneath the skin." Not a lot. How many times have I asked them, "Whatever happened to loving others? Whatever happened to not being judgmental and condemning? Whatever happened to forgiveness and mercy and grace? Whatever happened to selflessness and sacrifice? Whatever happened to repentance?" I think we'd all just look at one another. Because every one of us, as a general rule, has a tendency to be mean and selfish, judgmental and hypocritical, back-biting and vengeful. We treat others like scum and make fun of them and reject them or despise them, we are judgmental and condemning, we hold grudges and exact revenge and don't know what grace is all about. We're all ME, ME, ME and hoard everything we own. It is really sad.

This isn't a very happy post. My posts have been really happy lately, and I apologize for this break in the flow. This is just something that has been on my mind: a concern for those around me and for myself. Because we aren't really going anywhere. We're not making much progress. Who we were at baptism is who we are now, for the most part: we haven't grown up! We still yell at people we don't like, we still hate others, we're still mean and we still back-stab. It is really sad. My friend made a good point of this when, at a small group, after reading Galatians 5:19-21, he eloquently noted, "That's every one of us in this room."

Why can't we get anywhere? Why haven't we changed? How come we are just forced to look at one another with stupid gazes when reading such ancient texts as Galatians 5:22-6:10 or 1 Corinthians 13? I just want to know how to express this to people to make them care as much as I do. I want us to really change. I have felt the changes happening in my own life and I am thankful. That's another story. But how do I share my concern with others - and how do I let them see how much a concern this really is?

This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden, under the shadow of these vines. But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out over the wide lands, you know very well what I would see--brigands on the high roads, pirates on the seas; in the amphitheaters men murdered to please applauding crowds; under all roofs misery and selfishness. It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. Yet in the midst of it I have found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy which is a thousand times better than any pleasures of this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are the Christians -- and I am one of them.

---St. Cyprian, c. 258, a letter

God is silly. He just doesn't make sense. Every time we think we have something figured out, he just shows us how we've gone and got it wrong. It's because the ways of 'the world' - the ways that are natural to us - are not the ways that God acts and breathes and moves in. Jesus is just always not doing what we want him to do! In the days he walked the earth, the people were frustrated because he wasn't living up to their Messianic image: he wasn't taking the throne and kicking the Romans out. He wasn't uplifting the religiously superior and exalting those who have the Bible memorized inside-out. Instead he did something amazing and said, "Blessed is the person who isn't disappointed in me."

With Jesus' birth, the idea of Kingdom stopped being an idea and became a reality. Sure, God has always been present, but before Jesus, he simply wasn't available 24/7 - you had to go the Temple to meet him. When Jesus came, things took a different direction. When Jesus' refers to the Kingdom of God he isn't talking about Heaven: he's talking about human beings being able to interact with and involve themselves with God!

Kingdom isn't just open to the ministers and priests and deacons and Bible college graduates. No, it's for everyone - and Jesus made this so clear when he offered it no-hands-barred to the physically repulsive, the ones who smell bad, the twisted, misshapen, deformed, the too big, too little, too loud, the bald, the fat, the old, and those not relentlessly engaged in romance, sex, and fashionably equipped physical activities. He offers the Kingdom to the flunk-outs and drop-outs and burn-outs, the druggies and the divorced, the HIV-positive herpes-ridden, brain-damaged and terminally-ill. He offers it to the overemployed, the underemployed, the unemployed. He offers it to the barren and the pregnant-too-many-times and pregnant-at-the-wrong-time. Don't forget the swindled, the shoved aside, the replaced; the parents with children on the street and children with parents who won't die in "rest" homes. The lonely, incompetent, the stupid. The emotionally starved or emotionally dead. Murderers and child-molesters, war criminals and sadists, terrorists, drug lords, pornographers. The brutal and the bigoted. The David Berkowitzs, Jeffrey Dahmers, and Colonel Noriegas. The pederasts and perpetrators of incest. He offers it to the worshippers of Satan, to those who rob the aged and weak, to the cheaters and the liars, the bloodsuckers and the vengeful. Socialists, fascists, Nazis, capitalists. Fundamentalists and New Agers, Wiccans and Muslims, those who grew up in religion and those who know nothing about it. He offers it to the barbarian - and even the barbarian's barbarian. Jesus says that when these people cling to Kingdom, they are blessed!

No wonder Jesus doesn't make sense. Isn't he supposed to be some big religious guy???

**Kudos to Dallas Willard on this one.

Do you ever wonder if there were people like you and me in ancient Rome? Just living their lives, thinking they were up with the times, not knowing how different everything would be? I mean, how will things be different for the world in 3000 years? They'll think about us and say, "I wonder if any of them thought about romance and marriage and worried about jobs or school?"

And do you know how we've all but forgotten Rome, and it was bigger and more powerful than the United States? I think, one day, the U.S. will be forgotten. We'll be just another name in the history books, with ruins that will be visited, ruins of New York City and Washington, D.C. Maybe 3000 years after a nuclear war or something. Weird to think about. All major world super-powers throughout the ages have come and gone in all their glory and splendor - and every one claimed they would be the one to 'make it.' How arrogant we are to think we're so different.

Even if we bank on God being on our side, I don't know if God would appreciate words like that from a country who's moral decline is the highest in the world. Oh, if Jesus doesn't come back before it, I promise you, the United States will fall and be replaced, and we'll be names in history books. It's just the way things work. Nations rise and fall. Maybe we'll go the way of the Romans: get too powerful, too greedy, and the Republic will become an Empire, and our own greed and corruption will lead to our downfall.

Yesterday Mom, Dad and I left around 7:45, bound south, into the heart of Price Hill, and eventually emerging at Cincinnati Bible College. We were split up and I scheduled my classes. I decided to act on some wisdom and took an Early Week class - I will start school on August 15, and throughout that entire week will take a psychology course (at least it isn't math... praise God!) from 8-5. It will be nice to get it out of the way, and afterwards I may just hang out with friends from the class or listen to music in my dorm room. I get the weekend off (obviously), and then the next weekend is Freshmen Orientation week, where we go through a whole bunch of stuff and get to know each other. Only after that weekend (half a month into my C.C.U. career) will my roomie John come from Pennsylvania, and actual school will start. My schedule looks something like this: Monday I have two classes, one an hour and fifteen minutes long and the other fifty minutes long, and I get out at noon. Tuesday I'm done by ten o'clock. Wednesday is the same as Monday; Thursday I have a class in the morning, then a block class in the afternoon. Friday is the same as Monday and Wednesday. So except for Thursday, I will always be done by noon (or ten o'clock) and I don't have to wake up till seven (YES!!!). College will be so grand.

Yesterday I met a lot of cool people. I already knew John, and had been acquainted with Nick, a guy who reminds me of Blue from The Jungle Book. There's Kara from Missouri, she's really cool; John is going out with a girl named Julie, and she can never stop smiling. Cassie wants a massage every ten seconds, and John is good at massages. Michael dresses like a gangster, but he doesn't sound like one. We pretty much just hung out, laughed, played video games, went to see a movie, drove to Kroger and McDonald's and got 19-cent slushies at AmeriStop. John is into Ace Ventura, too, so I know I'm not alone. (Good evening, Captain Stubing, permission to come aboard, sir!). John's current roomie only showers once every four days and I wish I would've known that before sleeping in the bed. John leaves the room window open 24/7 to keep out the smell (or attempt at such).

While there was much laughter yesterday, one thing happened that made me laugh the hardest - on the inside; on the outside, I just cracked a smile. We were driving through Price Hill, and there was this ten-year old white kid dressed like a gangster, rummaging through a store's cigarette dispenser, and I wonder if he was looking for a cigarette. I hope not. Just the thought made me laugh.

The topic of salvation sprang up at small group and I threw out a blank question, "What do you guys think salvation is all about?" Really, I expected someone to say something, but instead we were all engulfed in an inpenetratable silence. I looked up at the ceiling and said, "Oh boy..." Finally someone said, "Does it mean we're saved?" "Uh-huh. What does it mean, though, to be 'saved'?" Another: "Forgiveness." "Yeah, forgiveness is a part of it, but it's so much more than that. Forgiveness paved the way for this." "So we can go to heaven?" A friend laughed: "Sunday school answers." I kind of looked at them all with a face not unlike that of a racoon caught in headlights.

It's amazing, isn't it? We will sing songs in church, thanking God for salvation, yet we can't define what salvation is. We will talk to our friends about being saved, but God be with us if our friends ask what being saved is all about. How would you define being saved? What would you define it as? The most common answer is: forgiven of our sin. But yet that's only a part of what true salvation really is.

Salvation is simply us being friends with God; it is us being able to interact with God. Salvation is entering into a new reality, a truer reality, one where God consumes us, lives in us, lives with us. It is when we are pulled into God's story, given an acting role. Salvation itself is made up of many parts, not the least of which is forgiveness and life transformation. It is because of salvation that such arenas of life as prayer and fasting, meditation and work, worship and humility take on new meaning. If we say salvation is just being forgiven of our sins, I think we've all but completely missed the boat; we're barely holding on to an oar.

I think a lot of us live in this mindset that Jesus came to bring our ordinary lives into the divine. But I think it is actually the other way around: Jesus brings the divine into our ordinary lives. I find it strange that our centers of religious extremity are places overflowing with the extravagant and the indescribable, visions of churches bursting at the seams with purple banners and stained glass windows. These religious icons, no doubt, serve a purpose in the aesthetics, but I think they are responsible, in some way, for the blinding of our eyes: many of us have come to think that it is in these arenas of religious extremity that God has made himself most available. On the contrary, I think it is in the ordinary, the mundane, in our day-to-day existence that God most desires to meet with us; sometimes when we enter a church, we change, but in our own homes, at our own tables, in our own neighborhoods and workplaces, we are most real with ourselves and each other. The real us - that's what God wants. So God took it upon himself to enter our world in the ordinary and the mundane.

Have we forgotten that God was not born in a hospital, but in a feeding trough? Have we forgotten that Jesus did not spend most of his life in a church, but sweating in a steaming carpentry shop, working 12 hour-shifts under the blistering desert heat? Have we forgotten that Jesus knows what it's like to lose those close to him - his biological father Joseph probably died when he was just about thirteen or fourteen, leaving him alone to work the shop.

God did not enter our world through a church. He entered our world through the everyday, monotonous, even boring lives we live. So we know this: the Message of Jesus isn't one solely about life in the hereafter, but one about life in the here and now, about life in the mundane, monotonous, the boring and uninteresting. It is in the everyday that God - that Jesus - resides.

I imagine driving down the highway and seeing the semi plowing into my lane. Time slows, dripping away to almost nothing. An insane calm, peace, tranquility and happiness comes over me – the portal into heaven is opening, its atmosphere washing over me. Bright light fills the Jeep; the sound of the engine fades, my entire body tingling, a gentle warm air and salty breeze rushing past me. I suddenly realize I am no longer in the seat, no longer strapped down, and an indescribable feeling, so much more intense than an orgasm or even being high on drugs, overcomes everything I am and all I know. I am standing, except no longer do I wear my ruddy work-clothes; now I am dressed in loose jean shorts and a t-shirt. The flab from my weight-loss is gone, my entire body shaped and molded in a stunning physique, the icon of masculine perfection; the acne has completely vanished without leaving even a scar or blemish in its wake. I am spinning around on my heels in the brilliant light, confused yet excited at the same time. I feel as if I am rushing through a wind tunnel; my eyes fall upon the walls and I see my life flashing by on either side, everything from birth to now, except its only the good times, the happy times. My years of depression and sorrow are absent, as are all the mistakes I’ve made. Then it is over, and the whiteness sharpens into a corridor, a corridor stretching forever; a door appears on the horizon, rushing at me, and suddenly it is right before me, so close my forehead almost touches it. My hand instinctively grabs the doorknob; it seems to pulse in my grasp and its warmth floods through me. An earthen glow comes between the cracks in the door, and I hear laughter, the songs of birds and the crashing waves of the ocean; the scent of flowers in mountain pastures; the doorknob twists in the palm of my hand, and as it swings open, a wave of energy washes over me. Beyond the door… indescribable.

One question that has always remained at the forefront of my mind, haunting my dreams and imagination for as long as I can recall: what is death like? God tells us Jesus has conquered death, and in the New Testament letters, the "Jesus-followers" do not seem to fear death at all! This always bothered me, because for so long - as far into my childhood as I can remember - I have, to great extremes, feared death, feared the actual experience of dying; the casuality and flippancy of the New Testament authors regarding death left me unsettled - how come death frightened me so and not them? And I was not alone; I've had many conversations with friends who, too, admit to fearing death.

Then I came to a new understanding of Jesus' words when he says, "God is not the God of the dead, but the living." The realization hit me that God will never allow us to cease to exist. Jesus says in John 8:51, as translated in the Amplified Bible, "I assure you, most solemnly I tell you, if anyone observes my teaching [lives in accordance with My message, keeps My word], he will by no means ever see and experience death." We will never cease to exist. The life we live now as the person we now are will continue, and it will continue in the universe in which we now exist. "Wow," you tell me, "that really makes me feel better." Wait - just think about what this means! For the soldier in Iraq, his spirit leaves the body right before the bullet strikes. For the innocent teen driver, she is whisked away before the semi crosses into her lane. For the repentant criminal in the electric chair, he has departed before electricity surges into his skull. For the Christians of the early church, their spirits crossed into Paradise before their bodies were mauled by lions in the arenas.

Thinking about it now, it's no small wonder the Christians of the early church weren't so concerned with death as we are. They understood that death literally holds no power over us; because we have been ransomed with the blood of the Messiah, because we have become heirs to the throne, destined to live in union and paradise with God forever, because we are children of the Creator, we do not have to face the physical ending of our bodies. We will be carried on before it ever comes to that - whether our transition be slowly in a nursing home or in the split-seconds before the semi slams into us on the freeway.

My weekend of work is, for the most part, over. I worked four hours Thursday (oooh, big deal), four and a half hours Friday, and eight hours today. It actually went by really fast today because Mary gave me a fifteen-minute break, and for lunch I was allowed to go home for an hour. I have a little more 'work' to do tomorrow, leading the Sunday School for 412 Student Ministries Sr. High. It should be fun. In other news, I haven't done much lately except watch movies, read and write, as I've told you. I just finished my latest short story, in the style of H.P. Lovecraft and Richard Matheson, called "The Shadow of the Wolf or Notebook Found in a Deserted Barn." I like the first title first. Since I finished the short story, I re:vamped my website where I house all my novellas, short stories, etc., and if you feel so obliged, you can find it under the Mystery/Suspense section. There's really not anything especially exciting going on; Chris is with Jessica, Lee is in Indiana, Dylan and Tyler are in Chicago, and I can't get a hold of Pat Dewenter. So for right now life is pretty boring. I will keep trying to get Pat on the phone. It would be fun to hang out with him a little.

Ever seen the movie Dead Man Walking with Sean Penn? Crazy-good movie. Lee and I watched it Thursday night at his place, on the big screen. Sean Penn is such an amazing actor in that movie (wasn't too fond of him in The Thin Red Line). During his execution, I got chills. What would it be like, I wonder, to feel them putting the needle into my arm, to feel the fluid running through my body, numbing me as my lungs collapsed and my heart ceased beating? What kind of terror is like that? I don't know, but I imagine hardly anything comes close to being a dead man walking.