pharisees

Mat 3:7–10
But when he [John the Baptist] saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father,' for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”

It’s easy enough for us to dismiss this as a warning against the Pharisees and Sadducees (religious authorities) of that day, or to think that this warning only applies for the Jews who believe that as God’s chosen people, they are the only ones who will be saved. Have you ever pondered about its application to modern Christians today? We have whole families whose generations are all Christians, from the grandparents to grandchildren (or more). We call them 2nd, 3rd or 4th generation Christians, etc. Churchianity is on the rise, evidenced by modern exhortations that ‘being born in a Christian family doesn’t make you a Christian as much as being born in MacDonald’s doesn’t make you a burger’ (or garage / car, you get the drift).

Think about it.

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, “We are faithful church-goers,” for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up followers of Christ. Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

blah and balderdash

I don't know how to explain where I am right now, though Ben would say that I do know and I just don't want to say it.

Fine, if it makes it any clearer, I am at a place where I want to strike out on my own and do the things I have always told myself that I wanted to do, and YET I am in a conviction where I know I am supposed to stay.

And maybe all the things I should be letting go is the things that I've always said I wanted to do; the drama, the dance, the self-seeking glorification muddled up in words that paint it all for the glory of God.

The question that presents itself then is: what am I staying FOR?

And there lies my weakness. Because I want a reason for staying. Because I want someone to tell me, if I stay, what I will get out of it. Will I be able to build? Will I be able to find love? Will I be able to grow and nurture the things I have a passion for? Will I be truly be doing God's will?

And I need to know this because if I leave, I know why I am leaving. I know that in going, there are things that I will be able to do. I will be closer to my network of friends, I will be purposefully and intentionally seeking to put myself in a position to hone my skills. Skills that people tell me I have, that I have erratic faith in, and in which I hardly know what to do with, and yet skills that I firmly believe are good and useful but which people often ignore and put down.

It doesn't help that you talk about job merits and job environment and job prospects and job this and that, because that REALLY ISN'T the factor at all.

It's difficult for me to put this in words, because I tend to gloss over the things that really need to be said. There's this thing in me that argues about pursuing God's will and how overly super-spiritual that sounds and how tacky and how it doesn't do anything to help in the discussion BECAUSE every time you use that phrase "GOD'S WILL" people will just go "okay" and you NEVER EVER get to anything more useful, like maybe, "why am I covering up this thing in pretending that I heard from God?" or even "how do I even know it's God or if it's me?"

If you get what I mean.

Which, if you've been in the same position, all you will tell me is to pray, and to which I will tell you, pray to what purpose? Pray to what end? It all comes back to the same thing, which in effect is, I am running away. And yet there is a dissatisfaction to the conclusion as if maybe there is something wrong in my lines of thinking. Maybe there is a fault line in this world view of mine that I just can't see. And it doesn't help that you give me vague answers and vague advice because all it does is add to the confusion. It doesn't help when you say to let go of everything because I don't know what there is to let go anymore. I don't know what there is left to say. I've gone from knowing to not knowing to knowing to not knowing to coming to the conclusion that it doesn't really matter and still I need a conclusion. I need a closure. I need a definitive solution which is not coming.

And which, if you've never been in the same position, would just write it off as super spiritual blathering.

Maybe I am afraid of having any passion at all. Or having too many. Because nothing ever works out for me.

indecision

Indecision paralyses you.
More often than not, it's the waiting for a decision, or waiting for a clue or answer to make a decision that kills you and demotivates you more than if you just decided on the spur of the moment.

I've been playing the waiting game, wondering if there is a right or wrong decision, a better or worse one. And frankly, this over-thinking and over-analysing is driving me nuts.

I need downtime. Desperately.