Evil

January 31, 2006 @ 11:40 pm by Pressed

This post was originally written on September 21, 2004, reposted on January 15, 2005 and once again I am reposting it today as a reminder to myself. I find that this is a battle that never ends, one I was facing two years ago, a year ago and one that I still face today. I am comforted at the reminder of such a promise we have in Christ.

Evil: an influential force dwelling in the deepest part of my being seeking the right time to overcome me and the people around me. It lurks within my own heart, quietly waiting for its chance to softly whisper it’s trickery into my ear. The darkness is wise beyond my years, it knows me. It understands what I like, what I dislike, what tempts me, what moves me, and it knows exactly how to break me. Like a disease it lies dormant within me waiting for the perfect chance to use my weaknesses against me. The things that I do for good, my frail attempts at righteousness end in something vile and wicked, all my good deeds are like filthy rags. I am wicked; a vile creature running far from what I was created to be. Though I drown in a sea of good intentions, they pave for me a path to destruction as each objective is overtaken by the evil desires of my heart, seeking only to bring me to ruin. My life is chaos, a constant battle between two forces with strength beyond any measure of a man. When will this battle be over? When, oh Lord, will you rescue me from this turmoil? My desire is to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord, and yet my body is too weak to carry out such a monumental task. There is only one who could perform such a task. There is only one who is strong enough to overcome the devastating power of darkness in my life by taking my place. It was Christ who was able to be obedient even unto death, and it was Christ who remained sinless. Christ has imparted His righteousness upon those he came to save, making such a vile and frail soul vibrant with the power of God, seeking what sin it might devour in our lives. Praise be to the God of the universe who rescues His chosen people from a fate worse than death, an eternity apart from His presence. For God’s elect, eternity is but a breadth away, complete freedom from evil is at our doorstep. For now I endure the battle that is waging a war I often lose against the parts of my body, with the great hope that I am fighting a war that is already won. I long for that day when the battle finally ends and there is no more darkness lurking within me. It’s only a matter of time.

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January 25, 1979

January 27, 2006 @ 9:28 am by Pressed

I’m a bit late on this, but better late than never. My birthday was on Wednesday. I turned 27 this year and so I want to take a look at what was going on in the world 27 years ago!

Yesterday In The News (1979)

1. The first Sony Walkman TPS-L2 was released - Portable music players are so cheap and ubiquitous today that it’s hard to remember when they were luxury items, widely coveted and often stolen. But when the blue and silver Walkman debuted in 1979, no one had ever seen anything quite like it. The $200 player virtually invented the concept of “personal electronics.” The first Walkman (also branded as the Stowaway, the Soundabout, and the Freestyle before the current name stuck) featured a cassette player and the world’s first lightweight headphones. Apparently fearful that consumers would consider the Walkman too antisocial, Sony built the first units with two headphone jacks so you could share music with a friend. The company later dropped this feature. Now, more than 25 years and some 330 million units later, nobody wonders why you’re walking down the street with headphones on.

2. The Iran hostage crisis - Iran hostage crisis, in U.S. history, events following the seizure of the American embassy in Tehran by Iranian students on Nov. 4, 1979. The overthrow of Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlevi of Iran by an Islamic revolutionary government earlier in the year had led to a steady deterioration in Iran-U.S. relations. In response to the exiled shah’s admission (Sept., 1979) to the United States for medical treatment, a crowd of about 500 seized the embassy. Of the approximately 90 people inside the embassy, 52 remained in captivity until the end of the crisis.

3. The World Population In 1979 the world population was 4.378 Billion people. 27 years later the world population is over 6 billion.

4. Nuclear Power Plant Accident - On March 28, Three Mile Island, nr. Harrisburg, Pa.: one of two reactors lost its coolant, which caused overheating and partial meltdown of its uranium core. Some radioactive water and gases were released. This was the worst accident in U.S. nuclear-reactor history.

5. U.S. Statistics

President: James Earl Carter, Jr.
Vice President: Walter F. Mondale
Population: 225,055,487
Life expectancy: 73.9 years
Violent Crime Rate (per 1,000): 55.7
Property Crime Rate (per 1,000): 50.2

6. Cost of a First Class Stamp: Only $.15 compared to $.39 today. The median household income in 1979 was only $16,000.

7. Sports: - In 1979 Pittsburgh beat Dallas 35 to 31 in the SuperBowl. Pittsburgh beat Baltimore in the World Series and Spectacular Bid was the Kentucky Derby Champion.

8. Rap Hits The Scene - The Sugar Hill Gang releases the first commercial rap hit, “Rapper’s Delight,” bringing rap off the New York streets and into the popular music scene.

9. Movies - New movies in 1979 included Apocalypse Now, All That Jazz, Kramer vs. Kramer, Breaking Away, and The Deer Hunter won pest picture at the Oscars.

10. Anthrax Accident - The accidental release of anthrax spores at a Soviet bioweapons facility in Sverdlovsk kills several hundred.

11. First man-powered aircraft to fly across the English Channel. - The Kremer Prize for the Channel crossing was won by Bryan Allen, who flew the Gossamer Albatross from Folkestone, England, to Cap Gris-Nez, France, in 2 hr., 55 min. (June 12).

12. Deaths in 1979 - John Wayne and Nelson A. Rockefeller are two notable people who passed away that year.

13. Notable Births: Me

It is amazing that all of those things took place only 27 years ago. Of course the vietnam war was only 35 years ago and WW II was only 60 years ago. I’ve been watching the history channel and they have had several documentaries on the vietnam war and world war II. It is amazing to me how much technology and the world has changed in such a very short period of time. That is what we’ve come from and who knows where we are headed…

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Youthful Passions

January 25, 2006 @ 9:59 am by Pressed

In my prayer meeting I’ve been reading out of 2 Timothy each Wednesday. This morning I was finishing up chapter 2 and came across this verse: 2Ti 2:22 - Flee from youthful passions, and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, along with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart.

The part that really caught my eye was ‘flee from youthful passions’. The reason this stood out to me when I heard it has to do with a book I’ve been reading that contains some personal thoughts by Augustine on youthful fascination with sin. He spoke of his own youth and how sin corrupted him and he enjoyed it. Here is a short excerpt from his writings:

“There was a pear tree close to our own vineyard, heavily laden with fruit, which was not tempting either for its color or for its flavor. Late one night–having prolonged our games in the streets until then, as our bad habit was–a group of young scoundrels, and I among them, went to shake and rob this tree. We carried off a huge load of pears, not to eat ourselves, but to dump out to the hogs, after barely tasting some of them ourselves. Doing this pleased us all the more because it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart–which thou didst pity even in that bottomless pit. Behold, now let my heart confess to thee what it was seeking there, when I was being gratuitously wanton, having no inducement to evil but the evil itself. it was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own undoing. I loved my error–not that for which I erred but the error itself. A depraved soul, falling away from security in thee to destruction in itself, seeking nothing from the shameful deed but shame itself.” - Augustine

“Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart.” I think back to my own youthful extravaganzas and remember spray painting my neighbors fence, stealing and getting away with it, breaking the windows out of a city tractor, and several other experiences that I became involved in and I remember enjoying these things. Not the acts in themselves, but the sheer evil of it. Such was my heart too, a depraved heart so distant from God.

Ps 25:7 - Do not remember the sins of my youth
or my acts of rebellion;
in keeping with Your faithful love, remember me
because of Your goodness, Lord.

This naturally brings me into a discussion on Youth in general. Just listening to Augustine’s writings about his own life reminds me so much of my own youth and the youth that are in my own youth group. I hear people say that ‘in our day and age’ the teenagers have so many issues to contend with and overcome, and yet I don’t think that is the case only in ‘our day and age’ but I think that has always been the case. Granted our sins may seem to be more technologically advanced, it is still the same sins that we deal with, lust, greed, envy, and so on. There seems to be a correlation between sinful passions and youthfulness.

Youth ministry is caught in the middle of this. It seemed to me that youth ministry was created to give youth something to do, it was a way for the church to reach teenagers who really didn’t have much else going on. As time has past, a change has occurred. The amount of extracurricular activities offered by the schools has grown at an exponential rate and the amount of things for teenagers to be involved in has increased so much so that it becomes difficult for teens to fit the youth group into their insanely busy schedules. It was at this point that I questioned the effectiveness of youth ministry as it now is, which led me to become so frustrated with youth ministry that I thought it had become wholly ineffective and worthless. But then I realized that the effectiveness of youth ministry is not based on the number of students you can get to come to your group meetings at any one time, but more so on the students you can reach with the truth of the Word of God so that as they grow they begin to experience freedom and victory over the youthful passions and sinful desires that entangle them.

Pr 22:6 - Teach a youth about the way he should go;
even when he is old he will not depart from it.

Regardless of what stage of life they are in, what kind of sinful passions are overtaking them, or what is going on inside of them, they need to be taught in the way they should go and youth ministry is about the business of teaching teenagers the way, the truth, and the life. I’ve come to fully expect their youthful passions to be a strong force to contend with and many will fall to their inherent sinfulness and yet there are so many who have grown to overcome their passions and experience victory over many of these sins. I am glad that I can say there are teenagers who can look back at their youth to say “In Christ I overcame my sins.” This makes my relationship with teenagers all the more important to me, that I might be able to reach some with the Word of Truth that wholly effects and changes their lives, if only a few.

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Just Think About It (Passion ‘06 Part II)

January 24, 2006 @ 11:20 am by Pressed

I wrote a post on Passion a while back and it seems that several people have taken offense to the fact that I would dare criticize Passion. This post, for the most part, is taken from one of my comments to that post and is meant as a response to those who take offense. There is really no need to take it personally. If you read the post then you will noticed that I have said Passion is good for several reasons including the fact that college students can come together without Alcohol, drugs, cursing and the like. Though I wouldn’t be so quick to say that out of 18,000 people there were not any of those things present during the week. You will also notice in the post that I sing the praise of Passion over and over again. I think it is a good thing, it changes lives, there is some Godly influence, however like anything else and everything else it is not perfect.

One of the commenters made this statement, “I don’t think we should be so quick to criticize anything that is Christ-like, promoting Godly values and the like” but I guess I have a different opinion. I think we should constantly be exercising critical thought when it comes to anything that is Christ-like in order to make it even more so. I take 1 Thess. 5:15 literally to mean that “we should always pursue what is good for one another and for all” and that we should “test all things, hold on to what is good, and avoid every kind of evil.” I enjoyed Passion and found it to be a powerful experience, however I do wonder about its ultimate effectiveness in worship and its ability to give all glory to God when it has to work so hard at marketing itself. I think it gets a lot of students fired up about worship, about God, and to doing Godly things, but in all things there are some down sides too and it is foolish to ignore the down side to anything just because it has a lot of positive influence as well.

Another big issue was the fact that I compared Passion with a Creed concert. I guess it is time for a short history lesson about myself: In my “younger days” I have been to two Creed concerts and at one of them some dude spilled beer all over my back, I’ve held my breath as the pot smoke traveled past my face. I’ve also been to a Pearl Jam concert where I stood there while some big drunk guy whipped out his little ‘friend’ and took a pee on two of my friends legs and I’ve been to another concert and stood next to two drunk guys who cussed each other out and then proceeded to start a huge fight. So when I compare Passion to a rock concert it is out of my own personal experience and I have already said that the environment of the two different shows was completely different, but the music, lights, and crowd reaction was very much the same. I think it is important to discuss the elements of worship and the intricacies involved in glorifying God and loving him forever.

There is no one who is perfect. In fact none of us will ever be perfect and thus we rely on the righteousness of Christ imparted to us to make us whole before our Father in heaven. We need to constantly be aware of ourselves each day in order to remove those things in us and in our lives that cause us to be imperfect so that we might become more like Christ. This involves looking at our lives, seeing what is good and holding on to it and seeing what is bad and removing it. The organization “Passion” is made up of imperfect humans who need the same thing. I think you would agree that Passion itself is not perfect and needs to do the same maintenance.

I have no doubt that Passion is doing its very best, but even our very best is never perfect. All I ask is that we don’t just accept every experience, every word we hear spoken, and every organization labeled as Christian without clearly thinking through their message, their impact, and which elements are good or bad. There is no one person and no one organization that you will find that doesn’t have an issue, but the problem comes when Christians simply ignore the bad (let it fester and grow) instead of thinking about it and dealing with it. Then when someone comes along who points at a few issues or thoughts, we take it as a personal attack and get defensive. There is no need for you to take it personally and get defensive about Passion. Its a good organization that does some amazing things with Godly results, but we would be remiss to think that it is perfect, it reaches everyone, or that it doesn’t cause some problems as well.

So, if you take offense to the Passion post then I am sorry that it offends you, however I am not sorry for writing it. It is good that we can think about these things and dialog about it as well.

**update**
I think I should take a moment to note the difference between being critical and critical thinking since it seems to be something that many people get confused about. Critical Thinking is the mental process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information to reach an answer or conclusion. Being critical is being inclined to judge severely and find fault

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A Lesson On Predestination

January 23, 2006 @ 4:43 pm by Pressed

Over at He Lives David is currently posting several lessons on Predestination that I have been following. Very good posts and some interesting discussion on the subject. If you have time or if you are interested go take a look in the January 2006 archives to find Lesson 4 on Predestination parts 1, 2, and 3. There is also some interesting dialogue in the comments.

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