For the Love of God!

Over the past couple weeks I've been reading a book called "Embracing the Love of God" by James Bryan Smith. It's an incredibly good book that gets at the heart of learning to let yourself be loved, which seems to be increasingly difficult as we grow older, sustain more emotional wounds, and become more cynical. It's also an easy, short read.

As I read through it again (it's my second time; the first was about two years ago), I find that I've had a view of God that wasn't very loving at all. I thought of a tolerant, but disappointed and somewhat annoyed God. You know, it was kind of the idea of an irritated customer who just got some machine or something that didn't work. It was like God was saying, "Are you kidding? I paid good blood for this little Christian, and it's not even working right."

So, now I'm kind of wondering what got that idea into me in the first place. I've heard that non-Christians only know as much about Jesus as they can see in His followers. I think that's true, and I also think that a lot of Christians get their ideas of God from the way their brothers and sisters live.

For example, here's something I heard a lot as I grew up:
"I love them, of course, but I just really don't like them."
That doesn't make any sense. I know loves and likings are two different things, but you can't love someone and also dislike them! I think this idea comes from some legalistic view of love that is mainly a duty. "I love you" doesn't really mean "I enjoy being with you and I like who you are". It's more like "You're a ministry to me, and I'm willing to sacrifice my time to be with you because I can tell that you need it."

And I think that's what gave me this idea of a God. In my mind, when I would ask for forgiveness for my sins, it was kind of a "Well, because of Jesus, I guess I kind of have to. But that doesn't mean I like you." And then I would become critical and unforgiving towards others because I felt like that was God's posture toward me.

After all that, learning to accept God's love for me has been a process of reconfiguring my view of God into someone who actually wants to be with me, who both loves me and likes me, and who acts like the father in the story of the prodigal son: not interested in saving face or making sure I "learned my lesson", but running from afar to embrace me. It's the hardest thing to learn to accept, but I'm looking forward to reaching the point where I've really internalized that.

I realize this ran sort of long, but I can't find anything to cut out. Thanks for reading. Here's a quote from Pastor David Choi when he was here at Wheaton a while back:

"Every time you sin and ask Jesus for forgiveness, He smiles."

It's only cheesy if you don't think about it.

PHIL 101: Intro to the Philippines

Intro

Hey guys, I've been in the Philippines for almost a week now. I'm here with my mom visiting relatives and doing ministry work. It's a very different place, and I'm always seeing new things that are sad, happy, beautiful, funny, etc. Sometimes they're contrasted very starkly, like the shack-houses made of cement and rusty aluminum against the backdrop of palm trees, a blue sky, and the Mayon volcano. I've been journaling a lot of this stuff in order to record it, but I figured someone out there would be mildly interested in how I'm doing or what the Philippines is like, so I'll be writing some stuff on the blog too. Check out my Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/danielsonpaul, although you're probably all my friends there anyway) for additional photos, which are probably more interesting than my blog.

Family

People are the most important things in the world.
That sentence has been echoing in my head for the past month or so. I don't know where I heard it, but it's not phrased very eloquently, so I probably made it up myself and forgot I did. The idea has been supported quite a bit by my experiences here in the Philippines. Today I had this conversation with my Mom:
Me: It seems to me like most of the people in the Province [the rural areas, generally very poverty-stricken] don't seem to really... live for anything.
Mom: Yeah, that's pretty much true.
Me: Don't they have any goals or things that they want to do with their lives?
Mom: I suppose they do, but they all know that those goals will never be realized.
Me: What keeps them going then?
Mom: Their children. They provide for their kids and hope they end up luckier than them.
[End conversation]

People are the most important things in the world.

Wow. That's not something I've heard of very much. I'm not going to bash America, because that's a bit predictable and you can all just imagine the typical rant from any activist non-conservative college kid worth his salt. So I'll just talk about family some more.

In America, people call their parents "Mom" and "Dad". It's more than a title, it's a name, an addition to a person's identity. Here in the Philippines, it's like that, but bigger. People call their older brothers "Kuya" (KOO-yah) and their older sisters "Ate' (AH-tay), and they also use those titles as a sign of respect to those a little older than them (if one is a lot older, they usually use the words for Uncle and Aunt).

I have two little cousins: Ian, who is about 5, and Ethan, who is about 3, and they both call me "Kuya Paul". When Ethan was born, Ian's name was effectively changed to "Kuya". Not "Kuya Ian", just "Kuya". Even Ian's parents call him that. I think it's a subtle, yet telling mark of how important family is out here. When Ian is addressed, he hears "Older brother", not as a title, but as a name. Even at age 5, he acts as though he is responsible for Ethan and displays a lot of leadership. He doesn't just tell Ethan what to do, but he even picks up the mess he makes and always keeps his eyes open to make sure Ethan's not getting himself into trouble. It's incredible, really. I'm learning leadership from a 5-year-old.

This post is too long. Most people probably skipped it as soon as they saw how tiny the scrollbar on the side was. So I won't reflect any more, but chew on that for a little while and let me know what you think.

People are the most important things in the world.

With Love,
Paul

Walking the Line

Alright, I finally got some time to write on this blog! I've got a lot of writing below, but you can skip it and go straight to the question at the end if you want.

I've been thinking lately about balancing. Activities, sure, but also beliefs. After coming to Wheaton, I've been getting my mind opened way up. It is incredible how much you realize you've been assuming things until you get challenged. It is also extremely frightening to be forced to throw out one of these assumptions. I bet a lot of people know the panic that ensues when you're like, "Holy crap. If that was wrong, how the heck can I be sure that anything I know is right?"

The reason this is a balancing act is because once I throw out an idea, I tend to veer to the other extreme. It usually takes a while for me to get to the "happy medium". And even now, there may be "happy mediums" I've found that are only gonna get thrown out too.

The most recent example of this is a time that I was playing cards with some friends, including my extremely patriotic friend Sam Randles. I myself do not consider myself a patriotic person, but maybe I'll talk about that later. Anyway, someone was telling me that some mail service was hiring and that I should look into that. Sam threw up a fist for me to punch and said, "Government jobs dude. Work for America."

I instantly recoiled at this idea, thinking, "Sam's saying something great about America. I probably disagree." Since then, I've thought about it and I realized that in my non-patriotism, I had become straight Anti-American, which I never intended to do. Since then, I've learned to be a lot more grateful for my country, and proud of it in a sense.

Comments on balancing activities or beliefs is welcome, but asking a question about balance would be boring, so instead, here's this:

Do you see yourself as a Patriot, an Antipatriot (as it were), or somewhere in between? Why?

Looking for: Inspiration

I'm so bad at updating this! I remember doing Xanga before and how much it helped to always get my ideas written out, so here I go.

I'm currently listening to Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. This is really good music. I'm trying to broaden my musical horizons a little bit, but I can't seem to find much music that's not either straight pop/rock or weird new classical music. Suggestions?

While I'm asking about music, I should ask about reading too. I've had these ideas running around my head about a sci-fi fantasy type of book that I'm thinking of developing. To get prepared, I'm doing some general reading. Just got done with The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson, which I liked, and The Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka, which I hated, but after thinking about them for a day, they don't seem quite so bad. So, any books you really like would be good suggestions, but sci-fi and fantasy especially. I'd like to get a little more familiar with the genres. Are the Star Wars books any good?

This is kind of a disjointed post, but I'm probably just used to journaling all my random thoughts in no particular order. I'm sure the rust will come off soon. Anyway, one last thing: My dad has been talking about two contrasting ideas.

1) Christians are still sinners and will be until the resurrection, therefore they are fighting against their sin nature their whole lives.

2) Christians are no longer sinners, and are acting against their nature when they do sin.

Those are severely simplified summaries, but it's mostly just to get the conversations going. Which of those ideas do you subscribe to?

Prelude

This is my second blog. The first one was a Xanga account I had about 5 years ago, which I eventually abandoned for Facebook. Recently I've been thinking about how nice it was to have "social networking", as people say, be based on discussion rather than the small talk that you find on Facebook and Twitter. So I started this back up.

I recently read through Ron Paul's book The Revolution: A Manifesto. It speaks about the many things Big Government has done that are unconstitutional and immoral, and some things that are simply not the best policies. You may remember the signs that Ron Paul supporters used to have that said "Ron Paul cured my apathy." Well, he cured mine during his presidential campaign, and he's done it again through this book. The message of freedom and of the people being superior to the government is an inspiring one.

After reading this, I've decided to get a little more involved/aware of what's happening in politics, and part of that - well, the majority of it, actually - means discussing it.

What do you think about the United States Government acting as the World Police? Meaning: How do you think the international policies of the government should look, especially concerning war?

"When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

God bless you,

Paul