What Gets Me Riled Up...

This morning I was at osteotherapy being relentlessly abused by my therapist and we ended up having this intense discussion about right and wrong and faith and the whole shebang. Quite interesting. I love having philosophical discussions and debates with people who can actually have an intelligent, respectful conversation, whether we agree or not.

I don't know about you guys, but I see things in black and white, not shades of grey. For me, there is a right, and there is a wrong. There is such a thing as absolute Truth and His name is Jesus. Take it or leave it. Your pick.

And you're right, sometimes Truth doesn't make sense. At least not to us. But then again, I never claimed that it did. Neither did Jesus, for that matter (Isaiah 55:8-9). Isn't that the essence of faith? "Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see." (Hebrews 11) That's not to say that faith is about blindly flinging yourself into something illogical and ridiculous. I'm not saying that in the slightest. And I am certainly not suggesting, even remotely, that Christianity is about a whole bunch of crazy people believing in something off the charts. But I do believe that faith is looking at the Big Picture and, despite realizing that sometimes you just can't logically figure it out or concretely, empirically prove it, there is something that rings True in your deepest soul and you take that leap of faith anyways. And I can only speak from experience when I say this, but people ask me how I can be so sure that God exists.... Well, just go ask God to rock your world and see what happens. I tried it and trust me, He's real. I'll tell you all about it too if you ask me (because as you know, I love to talk!)

I am not an "ignorant" person. I am not an "uneducated" person. I am not (usually) a foolish person. I am logical and analytical. I process life through both my head and my heart. I know all about The Crusades and yes, the Westboro Baptist Church makes me want to throw up too. But hey, I guess that's just not how I do life.

I realized last year that sometimes I am ashamed to admit that I am a Christian. Not because I am ashamed in ANY way of being a Christian, because I am certainly NOT ashamed of my faith. But because I am ashamed of the way Christianity is portrayed in our world - this crazy, irrational, fundamentalist thing where people picket funerals and spout off hypocritical madness left right and centre. But even though this makes me sad, I am only responsible for my own actions. I am accountable to Christ. And for me, that means one thing - loving people.

Which is awesome, because I am already in love with people. Intensely so. I thrive off of people and being around them, interracting with them, talking to them, debating with them, just hanging out with them. I have met so many unique and interesting people and each and every one of them has helped shape the person that I am, whether or not I agreed with them on whatever controversial topic I stirred up. If you know me, you know that I love to stir up controversial topics. I guess part of it is that I just love to argue. The other side of it is that it helps me - it helps me define what exactly I believe about important stuff and it helps me articulate that to myself. Anyways, back to my point... sometimes I think that us Christians are our own worse enemy. In my opnion, we need to learn to recognize when we are shooting ourselves in the foot and shut the heck up. It's about time that we stop being lukewarm about our faith. And above all, for goodness freaking sake, can we please just get over ourselves and start loving people like we were supposed to do in the first place?

Ok, I'm done my rant now. :)

Guess what!! 23 days until I come home!
Love y'all to pieces!!!