"They just mean!"

Bare with me

Yesterday afternoon I was riding around the Houston area fixing peoples cable issues (yes I work for the cable company I am not a rouge fix it guy like Robert De Nero in "Brazil" you should check it out (the movie that is)) Where was I?

Oh yea I was out working on people's cable issues and we pulled into this lower income area. Knock on the door, work on this nice lady's phone issue well we figured out we had to run a new cable from the tap (where your cable comes from)in her neighbors back yard because the one in her back yard is broken. She was very concerned about our safety entering the neighbors back yard (even though we have a right to be there). She also asked if the tap in her back yard was tampered with. I asked her why would that have happened? She said, "well my neighbors, they just mean!" she was concerned about the neighbors coming home and pulling a gun on us!

This morning (yes I am writing this at 0530 hours and woke up from a bad dream at 0300 hours) I am thinking to myself, "when we go out into the world what do our neighbors think about us?" Today are our neighbors thinking "I love how that person is always helping me out when I need it, I wonder why they offer to do that?" or are they thinking "well my neighbors, they just mean!" She thought that the neighbor would have cut her line or destroyed her tap out of spite!

Jesus said, To love our neighbor as yourself and then described to the Jewish people the lowest people they could imagine as their neighbor (the Samaritan).

Now I don't know the full story of this woman, she could just be paranoid or having a dispute with her neighbor.

I do know that as a christian I sometimes find myself making others meet my standards to be saved by the grace of God. I find myself cutting the lines to Jesus without even realizing it. Am I like the people that made my so unhappy at my childhood church that I left the church for 15 years? Do my neighbors say don't go into that yard! "They just mean!"?

From the ramblings of an insomniac.... I hope it makes sense tomorrow!

Here is the reason I believe that you can find God in any religion. (coming from a Christian perspective)

In Acts 17:22-25 Paul states to the Athens "Areopagus" (a council of elders in Athens) "As I wondered your places of worship, I even found an alter with this inscription "To an unknown god" There for you worship without knowing it, this I proclaim to you The Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as if he needs anything, because he himself gives life and breath and everything to everyone."

if the God you worship is the God that teaches the following, then we are in love with the same God and brothers / sisters and that should rejoicing together.

And if you are an Atheist or Agnostic and you feel love for your fellow man, and the sting of injustice for all your human brothers, we should break bread together as well.

Thomas (a disciple of Jesus) John 20:24-29 did not believe until he examined the wounds of Jesus, after his death. If someone who knew Jesus, a walking miracle worker, didn't believe the good news until he touched the wounds, then how can we hold it again people who have a hard time believing 2000 years later?

I Corinthians 13: 1-8 Paul again...

"If I speak in the tounges of men and of angels, but I do not love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.
And if I have prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith so I can remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away everything I own, and if I give over my body in order to boast, but have not loved, I recieved no benefit.
Love is patient, Love is kind, Love does not brag,
it is not puffed up It is not rude, It is not self serving,
It is not easily angered or resentful.
It is not glad about injustice, but rejoices in the truth.
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never ends.

I Corinthians 13:13

"And now these three remain faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love."

http://lovedyouare.yuku.com

Getting "Saved"

"People use to term "get saved" a lot. But what do you believe you are saved from? Do you believe there is a difference in being saved and being born again?"

This question was asked recently on the forum I frequent (Revolutionnyc)

I used to think that I was saved from hell, this was fire insurance for the hereafter, something just in case. I was living a very miserable life and leaving the church altogether after awhile seeing the way "even sinners behave this way" that the Christians treat each other.

Now I believe something amazing....


I am saved not in the after life but the here and now. I feel the after life is a bonus to the life that God has now shown to me.

I am saved from the self hate, life I was living.

I am saved from the resentments of life I felt I feel a warm, bracing love surrounding me through all things God whispering "I got you, be calm, I got this, I love you, you will be OK."
I feel this love and now I am push to serve my fellow man, where he is at not where he needs to be.
I want other to feel the joy that I feel. (this being said people around me don't want to listen to the Good News and I do get frustrated on where God wants me to be)

I believe others will be shown the love of God either before they die or after they die. I choose to believe God has no limits .... time and death can't keep him from his children whom he loves unconditionally.

People will spend time in hell until they come to believe that all people can be shown the grace of God. To your left will be the person that caused you the most harm and to the rights will be the person that you hurt them most at the feast Jesus has prepared.

War

War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it. Leo Tolstoy

Do we want peace as much as they want war?

WTF?

OK so Israel lashes out at Gaza basically saying we have had enough of the rockets coming into our homes, schools, and parks, I get that people have the right to defend their home land blah blah blah. What I don’t understand is the double standard the always seams to happen when we want to strike back. Yes there are small numbers of militants in the Gaza Strip and yes the people they are killing are innocent women children and men this makes it a terrorist act (I guess). So something has to be done agreed. Why is the only thing left to them (Israel) is violence? Killing even more women, children, and men… This makes Israel a terrorist nation. These attacks aren't justice they are vengeance.

What it boils down to is when a child is killed does the child really care why he / she was killed? Does the mother of that child care the political standing of the person shooting the rockets or dropping the bomb?

Do YOU know that the people building these weapons reside in the U.S. condoned by your government?

Now I know we have a new president (thank God that is over) but his stance on this issue is the same as the one before.

Now Israel decides from the day the new president in elected to the day BEFORE he is inaugurated to start blowing shit up. Then just stop. Because the old pres. won’t do anything and the new pres. can’t do anything.

I had some pictures on here my wife said people didn't want to see so I removed them. But I couldn't leave this one off.

The Kingdom of Heaven is here but we as a people don't want to see it I guess.

Oppressed by Religion

Why do we oppress each other? Isn’t life hard enough without us grinding our fellow men or woman into the dust? Why do we as “Christians” feel superior in general ways if we can keep someone down?

We didn’t vote for civil rights; our government had to pass a bill! Why is that? Are we so small to have to oppress others to feel superior?

Jesus thought we were because he left the parables on how we should treat each other; he saw it happening then in his day and it is still happening today. Most of the parables I read are on how we treat each other, how we should live in community with one other. If he didn’t have to tell us to behave like a loving parent what else could we have learned from him?

Jesus even had mercy on his most “hated” things! Don’t believe me? Look it up here Matthew 8:28-34. Jesus took mercy upon the demons and instead of destroying them he took mercy and sent them in to the herd of pigs (the pigs then jumped off a cliff but I think that was better than the destruction the demons where afraid of)

Why do Christians feel it is the correct thing to do, oppressing others?

I am looking at ideas for a new tattoo right now and I came across this piece. It is about this guy who had the crucifixion of Jesus tatted on his back. The writer wrote well but then came the responses – “it is a sin according to Leviticus 19:26-31,” and "You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD."

Now, not even considering this is believed by the scholars to be a warning to the Jewish people about a pagan practice at funerals and that the other verses in this chapter are overlooked completely (no rare meat, only wearing certain hair cuts, and my favorite over looked verse 33 and 34 “treat a stranger (alien as in illegal) in your land as your own countrymen and love him as yourself (paraphrased).”

Instead of expressing love for the person with the tattoo, damnation and disdain were generally passed around. I put up the verse Galatians 6:17 "let no one make trouble for me; for I carry the marks of Jesus branded on my body." And people where shocked that I took it out of context. (It is a verse about circumcision BTW). As if we haven’t been doing that for years!

But back to my point - “Where is the love?” that Jesus talked about over and over and over again.

- “The Good Samaritan” the other people on the road where too concerned for the rules of the Bible to even see if the robbed man was even alive.
- The story of the bad servant oppressing the other servants while taking care of their own whims.
- John 13:34-35 "new commandment, love one another as I have loved you, this is how you will be recognized."

Now it does also say that God will forgive the people that don’t know any better. So I hope I will be forgiven as they (the people running down tattooed followers) for judging others.

This is another distraction from praising God, like no cussing, no smoking, etc, etc. I am not saying smoking won’t kill you (ex-smoker here) and cussing will make people think twice about hiring you. What I am saying is that I think God would like the people who cuss, smoke, and drink to praise him.

“God comes to you just as you are”
-? –

“Don’t tell me about your religion, show me how you live and I might follow”

Stigandi

Blog Description

I grew up following the teaching of the Holy Bible. I was taught as my father, who was taught by his grandfather (and great grandfather most likely going back no telling how far) that there was the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who while wanting me to go to heaven, would send me to hell if I didn’t follow the laws set down by the Bible. Well I just couldn’t live up to those standards (hell who could?) and while I was told that Jesus saved us when he died on the cross to wash those sins away. I didn’t understand the grace that went with it.

Maybe I was not in a place to listen or hear that message. I didn’t see the love of Jesus from the other children I was in Sunday school with (I was at church Sunday morning, evening, and Wednesday evening until I was 16 when I got my driver license) I was an outcast there. I got to the point where I dreaded going church. I thought I was in hell already, getting in fights, going home feeling worse than when I got up in the morning.

I did blame my folks for this for a long time, but if I didn’t go through what I went through I wouldn’t be in the place I am now! Now I thank them with all my heart! They where God’s tools that showed me another way. I have found another way to look at this book we call the Bible. Now I am not the founder of these thoughts. If you look at the links in this blog you will find the people that showed me this. My folks might have known this, and even tried to show me this but I wasn’t ready to see it!

The thing I missed as a child and young adult was the concept of Grace. The grace of God/ Jesus this is the true power of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Grace, Grace, Grace. Without the love and grace of the Jesus all would be lost.

I would like you, the reader, to engage me, to say, “Stigandi, I think you are way off on that point and here is why….” The only thing I ask you to leave behind is the legalisms, and the biased point of view that the “religion” of Christianity have taught us. Then we can open ourselves up to the true love and grace of Jesus.

“Don’t tell me of your religion, show me how you live and I might follow”
-me-
Grace to you.