News Flash!

I'm back! Well sort of, my internet fast will continue after this post until tomorrow because of internet troubles but I will hopefully have an article ready in the next couple of days. Anyways if anyone is still out there this blog is not dead yet!

No New Posts / My Change on Predestination

I am going on a personal week long internet fast (I still have to use the internet for work), so I will not be posting again until Friday next week. If you are wondering what an internet fast entails it is like a food fast, basically no internet for a week. I have also decided to limit my computer access (minus the internet), to one hour per night, which would be for writing articles for next week and maybe finishing watching arrested development :)


I will write on the experience and why I did it when I return, I just feel I need to regroup mentally. I also see it as a great opportunity to really focus on reading and reflecting on scripture and God's grace and truth which he delivered through Jesus (John 1: 17). So I hope it is a good week and I gain something valuable from the experience and I wish all my readers the best until I post again.


God Bless






Predestination? Craziness or Truth?

I always thought predestination was bonkers. How could we not have a say in our salvation? Did I not decide to believe in God, do I not choose to do good? Why only a few posts ago I argued  how choice was in humans or else our existence did not make any sense. However, I now believe I was wrong.


The reality is that most people believe they have some control over their lives, and that this control is central to their happiness and well-being. This applies to most Christians too. Whether it is about God or the car we drive or our career or what to eat, we see ourselves as having some free will in the decision to do and/or believe. I myself have always held that we have minds that can think and God must have given them to us for a reason. The reason he did though is where I believe I have faulted in my thinking.


Firstly, can we earn salvation? Well I would say no, since that would require perfection and perfect obedience to God, which we cannot do as sinners.We cannot forgive our own sin and cannot earn this forgiveness, we can merely ask God to forgive us through Christ's death on the cross and resurrection. additionally, God's grace cannot be conditioned and compelled, for if it was it would mean he was not in complete control of all things and His dominion could be challenged.


So now to predestination (salvation of the elect), or more specifically double predestination (the elect and everyone else). So God chooses His elect to save through grace alone. And the rest He leaves to themselves to do as they like. The thing to remember is that we all start as sinners in rebellion against God. We have no way of reaching God on our own or of fixing our condition. God chooses to forgive the elect, even without earning forgiveness and "free will" to choose God is merely the awareness of salvation already given, acknowledging the power of the Holy Spirit to help align ourselves more closely to God's will. Meanwhile, those not of the elect, already turned from God, merely face God's justice at the end times. God does not abandon them nor put evil upon them, He merely lets them live in sin and face judgment.


It is not the best explanation of predestination, a better one is found here, but it is suffice to say I am more convinced than ever before of this. When  you remove our desires and opinions and thoughts and read scripture without prejudice, I feel this becomes more clear. I like to think I can explain everything rationally, and learning to be humble and trust in God's plan for me has been difficult but rewarding.


How do we know we are saved or how does God choose are for another day, if they matter at all. Those that follow Christ's example, who act for ours and  for the fulfillment of God's plan and glory are the signs of the saved. It is merely trusting in His grace and mercy, which when you think of it is an immensely freeing experience to know that God will deliver us to salvation regardless of our weakness and failings and the dictates of the world. To end I would say simply if you are not sure about your own salavtion: Love unconditionally to all, as God has loved us unconditionally, as he gave his son unconditionally.

A Note to Readers

Moving forward with this blog, I plan to better plan my posts my having different categories of posts. I feel the blog at the moment is sort of directionless, and having more focus will make it easier to post and more enjoyable to read hopefully. Some of my ideas for post categories include:


Personal Reflections: Posts focusing on my growth as a Christian, the ups and downs of living for Christ in a modern world. (Planning an article about my faith and Predestination tomorrow hopefully)
Intro to Theology/Christian Definitions: This will be posts that will help illustrate basic ideas and concepts in Christianity 
Ancient History: Posts about the history behind biblical events, and possibly early Christian history. 
Bible Study: Review and discussion on particular Bible passages, books and stories.
Book Study: Like bible study, but of non-scripture books. (First book will be The Cost of Discipleship, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Expect to start in next couple of days.)
Inter-Christian Discussion: Posts that will focus on a theological issue and how different groups in Christianity interpret it, as well general comparisons between groups.
Guest Posts: Posts on relevant and interesting Christian topics, discussions, and experiences from writers and people I respect.
Current Events and Christianity: Responding and relating to world events and issues through a Christian perspective.
Other: For the posts that don't fit the above categories.


If I have missed any categories that seem essential to cover, let me know. I will try very hard to develop a basic schedule to help readers follow along better and to deliver content on a more regular basis.


God Bless

Post about Cats!!!

I promise not to do this too often, but with my last post about my blog not caving in to popular demands and tastes, i decided to become a hypocrite and talk about the populist topic on the internet: CATS!!! More specifically, about my two family cats back home, Kitty and Pepper. There are some pictures to hopefully redeem this tangent.

Why blog?

What is a blog?

I think its more difficult to answer than it seems. Are blogs journals of people's personal lives thrown open to an unexpecting public, part of the "new" media, virtual cafe's were people go to consume a product and interact with the clientele. Do they primarily transit objective information or subjective experience. Are they the future, the past or merely the present? Are these questions even relevant?

My philosophizing is based on my reactions and thoughts to reading other blogs this weekend. Looking at these blogs, many which are far more popular than mine, I thought about what makes a blog successful and how to go about doing that. 

My blog is not optimized for attaining maximum viewership. Its layout is generic and undistinct, although I hope it is readable. The articles tend to be of short essay length and style, which drives anyway the temporally and attention challenged. The overall topic of the blog is specific and it is hard to imagine how one could appeal outside of Christians for reliable viewership, supposing that was desirable. The biggest knock against it however is simply the lack of images and videos, which from what I have gathered are usually critical to higher viewership.

So do I plan to change? In one sense no, because I want to be loyal to any repeat viewers I may have and because the blog is an expression of me and dramatic changes would probably come at the cost of being inauthentic. That said, I will likely make small, incremental changes to mostly improve formatting and maintain a common consistency in fonts used and colors and how scripture is quoted. As well, more focus on what type of things I talk about, maybe a few guest writers, and most important of all; pictures!

Are you sure?

Confidence rules the world. Or at least confident people do. These are audacious statements indeed, but the evidence is clear. Its the people that don't take no for an answer, know who they are and what they can do then go out and do it. People that do not allow failure and travails to detour them their goals and dreams. In most aspects of life, confidence, and not a lack therefore leads to success.

I bring the issue up because I was reading some blog articles on dating, and more specifically Christian dating, and the thing that strikes me is the importance of confidence, especially in one's faith. While both genders benefit from confidence, it seems as though Christian men should have it be a very identifiable aspect of their personality. Confidence is seen as a very attractive trait, if not an essential one oftentimes.

Now, to get personal, I am not all that confident. Certainly not in the whole dating/relationship arena, and in my life in general. For most of my life I have viewed myself as a freak of sorts that people despised at worse or tolerated at best. I realize now that its not completely true, but that view of myself has been hard to erase and has made me sensitive to criticism and causing harm to others. Plus, I am somewhat a perfectionist who tends to take failure, in action or being, far too personal. The result is poor self-perception and missed opportunities in my life.

Now in regards to dating, I prefer to see myself as hopeless and largely unlovable, even while the reality is not quite so depressing, since lower expectations are easier to achieve.The truth is, I'm a smart, funny, good-looking, nice, and thoughtful guy. Sounds good right? The problem is that I can write that and might even believe it intellectually, but the moment I talk to a girl or a superior at work or a stranger I'm fat and weird and ugly and annoying. I create a negative persona in my head that makes doing what I want and enjoying life more difficult 

So why can I not be confident? FEAR. I thinks its that simple. When you allow fear to consume you, you are unable to react as you really desire and thus only present a shadow of yourself. Instead of trusting in Christ and removing the fear that somehow the LORD is not fully able to meet all our needs, we diminish the creation we were made to be.

In truth, this post is more about my lack of complete trust in Christ. I read all this posts about these mature, confident Christians and say to myself " I will never meet anyone to love and share our lives together because i'm not a fully developed Christian". I also wonder about how strong my faith really is, how much do I really want to devote myself to God, and not feel ashamed that I am somehow deceiving myself about His truth and existence? I feel inadequate and it frustrates me.

I know change is slow and that I have transformed myself before to confront the challenges that I faced and to grow as a person. But its hard in the present to trust in the future and I get scared and discouraged more often than I like to admit. Sometimes I want the answers now, I want to know the plan now instead of trusting in the  power of His grace and righteousness.

Finally, I think the truth is ultimately to ask God for strength in such times, to put your joys and sorrow before Him and to ask Him to move through you transform into a new creation in Him. It just time and patience and plenty of faith.

Should I stay or should I go?

Do people have the right to assisted suicide? article here

I would answer no, because firstly I leave the decision of life and death to God. The one time I can think of suicide in the bible is Judas Iscariot hanging himself after betraying Jesus.

Then when Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he changed his mind and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself." And throwing down the pieces of silver into the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself. (Matthew 27:3-4)

Now the issue in the article is about assisted suicide, which is even worse since the sin and immorality is spread. Now I realize that watching a loved one suffer in their last days and months or even years can be tough, I myself watched a close family member go through terrible pain in his last days. But in such suffering I also saw the true depths of devotion, a man whose body had withered away to almost nothing, yet his faith and trust in the Lord, even in the grips of death and horrendous agony, moves me deeply to this day. As I looked upon him on his deathbed I saw a man who even as he yearned for the pain to end keep his trust that the Lord was watching over him and that the Lord would never abandon him. I had known for a long time that he had been a true disciple of Christ, but in the last time I saw him I became acutely aware that I should be as well.

This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I am suffering for you, which is your glory. (Ephesians 3:11-13)

That said, my goal is not to exploit one man's suffering to prove my point, but to caution against the argument that life has no meaning if we cannot "experience" it, in whatever subjective way people mean. For if you really believe in God then your life never ceases to be meaningful, even when things seem horrible and hopeless and bleak. Surely even the people in Somalia as i write, under terrible and seemingly hopeless duress  find meaning even as death surrounds them? Additionally, no one wants suffering, but it is a part of life and can in fact be as important to the collective and individual human experience as any other feeling or sensation. Certainly if suffering was so wrong then why would Christ allow himself to be crucified?

And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15: 34)

Therefore, the decision by one person, directly or indirectly, to decide on the life of any other is one where more restrictions should be considered then less. The dangers of a morally ambiguous society losing its way of the issue seem too great to allow for the issue to be opened up. Consider financial issues of both cost of end of life care and possible inheritances to be gained, both issues which are very real even now sometimes, and probably exacerbated by allowing assisted suicide. As well, the state would be required to regulate this heavy to prevent what I stated from the sentence before and to ensure that people are actually incurable and likely to suffer greatly, which removed true freedom from the individual to a variety of stakeholders, all with likely different aims and objectives that may or may not align for the person's actual best interest.

To conclude, I do not doubt that this is a tough issue and if faced personally with the issue, it would be very hard to not entertain such thoughts. However, if life has meaning intrinsic to itself and my own understanding of God's plans for us is incomplete, I cannot act in such a way that condemns myself or others to throw away the precious gift that is life. Therefore, I must put faith that through all circumstances the Lord is with me and shall not forsaken me, just as he did not forsake those before me.

Can Jesus really be Divine?

Almost everyone can agree that Jesus said many wise and moral things and was a good person. The problem most non-Christians have with Jesus is denying that He is God and more simply that he has supernatural powers. Thomas Jefferson even wrote his own version of the New Testament (Jefferson Bible), which removed any supernatural occurances, events such as the resurrection. While most secularist would not feel it necessary to rewrite the bible, I believe many hold Jesus was just a man that was made into far more after His death, or Jesus was crazy in thinking He was God, but he still said some good things.

As i see it any Christians that deny the divinity of Christ deny Christ and deny salvation. This is because what defines Christianity as different from Judaism and all other moral codes is the salvation through Christ freeing us of sin, which can only happen if he is in fact divine. For only if He is divine is the Resurrection possible. The liberal Christians that believe the bible to be alterable to fit with "modern" standards (such as rejecting divinity), the obvious question of why not use any and all texts, from other religions and secular thinkers? Why even call oneself a Christian, for really why all the fuss about the apocalyptic Jew? Denying Christ as divine and denying the supernatural as possible, even now, means saying the bible is a helpful tool in growing one's own personal, unique philosophy and morality rather than abiding by the dictates of an almighty and ever-living God and His eternal plan for us.

What people will often say about Jesus is that he was a man made into God by his believers in the decades proceeding His death. However, in my bible study yesterday we were discussing the issue of the Gospel of John and how it portrays a more "mystical" version of Jesus than the synoptic gospels (the other 3 canonical gospels), but how in fact it perhaps goes out of its way to denounce the Gnostic (entirely spiritual and esoteric) view of Christ, with such lines as John 1:14 "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us...". In fact, according to my bible study teacher (who I would call a trustworthy source on the topic), what distinguishes the four canonical gospels from the slew of apocryphal (doubtful authenticity) gospels is the fact that they portray a much more human Christ, one who is undoubtedly God, but is also fully manifested into human flesh, or else how could he save us from the flesh? Ancient apocryphal gospels tend to make Jesus a purely spiritual entity according to my teacher, or at least downplay his humanity.

Certainly the early church could have accepted the other gospels if they had wanted people to believe in a purely spiritual entity, since it makes much more intuitive sense for Jesus to have been one or the other, and not of two states simultaneously. As well, considering authorship of Matthew is associated with the apostle Matthew and Mark is associated at least partially with the teaching of Peter (See Here), and John with the apostle John, the likelihood is that first hand knowledge of Jesus would be trustworthy, certainty more so than the largely unsubstantiated speculations of "causal" philosophers who cannot reconcile their worldview with a supernatural one. The issue is not whether the laws of nature apply to our lives so much as can God act within and around that framework. In a simpler sense, If Christ is not divine, Christianity is a sham and find a new belief, or if it is valid then the path to salvation has been revealed. Its as simple and complex as that.