Not really.

"SECULAR MEDIA FOCUSES ON THOSE WHO TRY BUT FAIL"

"So Mel Gibson's getting flack for having an affair — something that never happens in Hollywood, but newsworthy because he's hardcore Catholic. Meanwhile, Carrie Prejean continues to be crucified — she's a Christian who posed topless to get work. And of course, there's Bristol Palin — unwed with a baby, talking abstinence."

This is a clip from an article I read this morning. The jist of the article you can get from the title. The secular media is busy destroying Christians, because we're trying and failing, while them ol' sinners in Hollywood never have to take this crap because they never even try to be good.

I disagree with that analysis. I think that the media focuses on people who judge others for crimes that they themselves commit. People don't hate Christians because we fail, they hate us because we pretend we aren't failing, and tell everyone around us what to do.

Christians say an awful lot that "we aren't perfect, just forgiven!" So stop pretending to be perfect, then, stop telling other people to be perfect (my old [slighty fire and brimstony] pastor used to say "the job of a Christian is not to make the world behave better on its way to hell"), and start extending the grace of he who has been forgiven much. 

Love

Thinking about love again. Been trying to do the "love your enemy" thing.  Loving people that are difficult to love. Loving people that don't love you back. Loving people that hurt you, or loving people that are bottomless pits of love, or loving people that you'd rather just bash into the ground.

My love doesn't change them. They don't notice my love, or they don't care, or they try to use it to take advantage of me, or it seems to just bounce off of them.

Love can turn into self-righteousness (if you think your love is "helping" someone), or turn into dependence (when what you call love is really neediness of your own) or become hurtful (when "love" becomes a word for "being nice" and niceness isn't what is best).

How do you love someone that doesn't love you? How do you love without it becoming false love?

You're left with a paradox. Maybe love doesn't change other people (or at least, doesn't guaranty a change). But loving other people definitely, and always, changes me. By loving others, I am transformed.

If I am loving because other people need to be loved, than it will turn into self-righteousness, and dependence, and emotional greed. I will let myself be abused in relationships because I need to "love" the person who is hurting me. I will let myself be obsessed with someone, because they "need" me to be "happy" as much as I need them. I will pat myself on the back, because I am lifting up the lonely and the hurt - I, I am their savior.

But if I am loving because God has called me to be a person who loves, then I center my eyes on God, and love away, regardless of the consequences, knowing that I will possibly never see "results" and it may not make anyone "happier", but I will absolutely become stronger, more compassionate, and more capable of love. My capacity for love will expand, and it will stop mattering if my love "changes" the people I meet.

Humanism, Deism, Jesusism?

Adapted from a reflection paper for my Nietzsche and Secularization class. Good stuff in that class.

No one wants to talk about Jesus!

This includes, to differing extents: Nietzsche, Taylor, my Christian friends, my Buddhist friends, my atheist friends, my favorite Christian rock band growing up, and... me. It’s always about God. Or maybe about “Jesus as Teacher.” Jesus as God is either awkwardly ignored (the theological elephant in the room) or outwardly dismissed.

But the central tenant of Christianity is that God became a human being, which is insane, and that this human being lived in time, under the constraints of time, was documented by historical sources (including secular sources such as Josephus, the non-Christian, Jewish historian of the time), died and was documented as such, and then, with grand mythological flare, came alive again and somehow because of this, humans are capable of being freed from being purely human and can be remade as something greater than human. WTF?!? What kind of an odd compilation of mythology, history, and enchantment is that? But it’s what every Christian church service rests on, what every Christian theology has to bend around, and what every Christian life acknowledges. So why does everyone – me included – want to keep the story to just God? Why, even amongst Christians, is it never about Jesus? Is it because it’s such an inherently awkward story, particularly for the 21st century? (“Yeah, so, like, this Jewish guy was God and he came back to life! Like, sweet, right?”). Instead, we talk about God, and when we talk about Jesus, he is stripped of his status as a God-man (if not in theology, than in casual discussion) and turned into a cross between Gandhi and Kant – wandering around Galilee spreading peace and wisdom.

But as awkward a concept as God becoming man, dying, and coming back to life is, it’s absolutely essential to Christianity. The loss of the divinity of Christ is absolutely the central turning point towards secularization.

Once Jesus loses his divinity, two things happen. First, Christianity becomes a moral system based around following a moral teacher. Moral systems are wonderful, but the loss of enchantment, grace, and the supernatural means that it is only one step more to eliminating God altogether (Charles Taylor is big on this - the loss of enchantment, post-Medieval life, is the beginning of the loss of all religion). Once religion is simply moral rules, then why have a God at all? Why can’t we be moral people, living a flourishing life, without God?  If Jesus is a teacher, and not a supernatural savior, then the focus is on rationality, on human ability to “follow rules,” and on human capability to achieve perfection apart from any outside help. All of these things are completely possible without a God-man.

The second thing that happens is that the moral rules that Jesus himself gave become irrelevant and impossible. How are the commands of Jesus to “give all you have to the poor and follow me,” his promises that his followers would have “no place to lay their heads,” that the poor are “blessed,” sustainable with the kind of Deism that reduces God's plan for humans to having them “ realize the order in their lives which he had planned for their happiness and well being”? (Some more Charles Taylor). When Jefferson removed the divinity of Jesus from him, what he did was make Jesus absurd (how could he make such radical and impossible demands on people?) and irrelevant (since his actual demands are so high, it is impossible that we follow them in reality, so we can admire Jesus from a distance while being entirely off the hook for any real life-change). Jesus’ actual teachings are so insane if taken literally that it seems that the only way to deal with him is to place him in a specific historical context, “mummify” him as a “good teacher” (even while we do not take his commandments literally) and proceed to live a life that “flourishes”.

 If Christianity is just deism and religious humanism, then its lifestyle demands are too radical. But if Jesus was divine, then his commands aren’t just “do this” into a void of human inability, but empowered by him. If Christianity is actually supernatural, then maybe we can become beings that are capable of immense sacrifice, immense love, and immense freedom. Without supernatural help, however, Jesus was a naive 1st century radical who failed to comprehend humanity. Charles Taylor talks a lot about “transcending flourishing": Living a life that's more than just "the good life." This sort of life is impossible without a reality of Jesus as divine.

Goddamn Existentialists

I am caught in an Enlightenment puzzle of predestination.

Charles Taylor, Catholic theologian, sums up the paradox of Christianity and sin nature: it is “why, in spite of knowing we are born to the highest, we sometimes not only inexplicably choose against it, but even feel that we cannot do otherwise. The symmetrical mystery is that God can act to overcome this incapacity – the doctrine of grace.”

“Double-mystery” – we are unable to save ourselves. Only God can save us. And yet some people remain unsaved.

Therefore...

God damns people to hell just because. He can chose to save everyone, and yet some people are not saved, so therefore those people are chosen arbitrarily by God to be damned.

It makes sense.
It also stands in direct opposition to all of our human inclinations and feelings.

Many Christians are okay with that. Armenianism, Calvinism, and Jonathan Edwards sacrificed human inclinations of fellowship to the alter of reason.

“If God says it is right, then it is right. My sympathy for my fellow man is sin, because I am unaligned with God’s Reason. I do not understand it, but it must be right, because it is rational. If God wants to damn anyone to hell, it is right that he should do so, and I will stifle my sympathy for souls damned to hell because reason dictates I must”.

God gave us reason, and Kant says that means that He is reasonable.

But God also gave us sympathy.

So why assume that our sympathy is tainted by sin (and must go) but our reason is untainted?

Why follow our logic at the expense of our sympathies, instead of following our sympathies at the expense of logic? Who says that reason must always win? What if our reason is corrupt, just like our sympathies? Is the decision to choose logic over sympathy simply... arbitrary?

What if there is logic that we cannot understand because it is God’s, and our sympathies are all we have to guide us at this standstill?

Taylor sees that Calvinists and Arminianists and Jonathan Edwards followed the “logic through to the most counter-intuitive.” Logic lead to a place that didn’t even make sense. The conclusion of Logic produced a God that was entirely different from the God of Logic’s premise.

Taylor’s solution – multiculturalism.

“This wasn’t the only way that the double mystery could be articulated. Eastern fathers, like Gregory of Nyssa, put things differently.”

The elevation of logic over sympathy may not be arbitrary – it may be cultural.

Western conceptions of “truth” – enlightenment conceptions of “reason” – vs. Eastern traditions.

Is the fact that “logic leads to truth” a Western bias?

Can something besides logic lead to truth?

Can our sympathy and logic conflict, and sympathy wins?

But... isn’t that a dangerous idea if one has immoral sympathies?

Why does that seem more dangerous than if one has immoral rationality?

If logic can be as corrupted as sympathy, how else can we reach Truth?

Enter existentialism.

Sheftu isn't coming?!?

I always used to ask, "is this it?" in a horrified, unbelieving tone - getting up, going to work, getting paid, buying what you need, going to church, making friends, shopping for clothes and on and on and on. I read Mara, Daughter of the Nile too many times and honestly could not believe that life would ever be anything other than an epic adventure story where not only does the girl save the day, but she gets the guy at the end.

Then I started to wonder - "is this it?" really? Can't we all go and be missionaries and die for Christ and do wild and wonderful things on the edge of a precipice? Can't I escape reality through my religion? Is this really it? Can't there be more?

And God's answer keeps being - until you do this, here, I will never entrust you with that, there. Until you are faithful with few, I will not give you many. Until you can go home graciously to your parents at night, until you can work industriously at writing papers that you hate, until you can keep your room clean, until you can learn what I want you to learn in this little universe that I have given you, I will never let you loose on to the large and grand and wonderful universe that perhaps one day I will let you play in. Be patient.

Is this it? Well... yeah. Today it is.

Existentialism Class

"Kierkegaard is widely considered to be the father of existentialism, and within Fear and Trembling we see him propounding a 'philosophy of existence', self-conscious thinking about human existence itself. He writes not dialectically, but personal, novelistically, and using pseudonyms..."

im tired. i cant believe its raining on my deerfield fair party. that kid looks like jess from gilmore girls - hes even got the wacky hair going. i hate this sweatshirt, why am i wearing it? nice dreads, i wish i

"... and so we begin to see the split in the five distinct ways of seeing philosophy: speculative vs. practical, objective vs. subjective, universal vs. particular, human nature vs. individuality, and cognition vs. will and emotion. What existentialism will do..."

i cant believe i didnt study for my german test yesterday. i cant believe that i actually forgot the feminine personal pronoun. actually, i should believe it because obviously i didnt study. i should study for my religion test today. i dont want to. why am i not studying for classes? is this just junioritis or

"...but Kierkegaard doesn't want us to 'hold the world at arms length in order to understand it." He is practical, subjective - what is it to experience human life rather than to examine it? Most particularly, is it our reason and cognition that makes us human or our will and emotions? Socrates, and down through Descartes and Kant, would all claim that...

oh god, i am so tired. 'i can't focus. 'how can a young person stay pure? by obeying your word'. what is purity? kierkegaard's book - 'purity of heart is to will one thing' -what does it mean to will one thing? purity beyond sexuality - to be fixated on just one thing - to not be distracted - intellectual purity and purity of focus and purity of soul before god - indistractability

"... Hegel's dialect implies that for every thesis and antithesis, there is a synthesis, and that this will continue until the Truth is reached - an examining, rejecting, moving forward pattern is established..."

not to be pure, not to get pure, to stay pure. to set up your tent there. no, a foundation, build a house. to stay - to be steady - becoming pure isnt the problem, finding purity isnt the problem, staying there is the problem

"... but here Kierkegaard is implying that a synthesis is impossible. The choice between ethical duty and the demands of God is paradoxical. You cannot synthesis the two because they are ultimately incompatible. The ethical can become..."

but this is silly, this doesn't make sense. the questions is how to stay pure, the answer is "by obeying your word" - that doesnt answer the question. the problem with staying pure is the inability to obey. hes given a definition, not a solution. "how do i stay pure? obey your word. what is obedience to your word? staying pure." its a circle, it never ends, there is no solution

"...so in this sense Kierkegaard is rejecting the tradition that says there is an ultimate compatibility between faith and reason and that faith and reason are two different ways of arriving at the same point. Faith, Kierkegaard claims, is a paradox and its requirements are not humanly possible. What is humanly possible? An ethical life, and aesthetic life, even a life of religious resignation. But true faith is an absurdity and therefore supernatural...."

i should be taking notes on this lecture, i'm writing a research paper on kierkegaard this is IMPORTANT purity how can a young person stay build a house live in the house not just today its not a hotel but live in tomorrow and forever staying there paradox faith as the absurd how can a young person build a house if

"... the religious duty cannot be reduced to the ethical duty..."

how can a young person

"... and if the absurdity of faith's requirements cannot be accomplished through human power..."

how? by

"...because it is often independent of reason, and Kierkegaard would claim, beyond reason..."

for it is by

"...faith..."

you have been saved, not through

"... the ethical demands..."

so that no one can boast.


[this is an "artistic compilation", if you will, of the actual notes (both kinds- academic and personal) that i took this morning during my existentialism class.]

Unanticipated Factors

It's so hard to plan for anything when the factors keep changing.

Which is the point, I guess.

There is no magic equation for "being good" or "doing good"  because no matter how well you plan, or no matter how many variables you factor in, everything can change in a second. I can't plan a "righteous day" out and make a roadmap of how I'll respond to every situation because I just can't possibly know what situations will throw themselves across my poorly lit, overgrown path.

But all this planning and preparation is just horribly misplaced anyway, because I'm just using it to try and be "good," not trying to get to know God.

Why can't I remember that the point is not to be good?!?!? 

Love Those...

But I tell you who hear me:

Love your enemies,

do good to those who hate you,

bless those who curse you,

pray for those who mistreat you.

If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also.

If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic.

Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them.

And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that.

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full.

But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.

- Jesus

This verse defines "love." According to the above, love is what you do to your enemies, not what we do to our friends. When we care for our friends, it's nice, but it can be lazy and easy, or even selfish and centered on insecurities and fear. Friend-love keeps us safe. You know - I like him, he likes me, we like each other, no one risks looking stupid, no one will judge, no one will get hurt. Practically risk free.

But Jesus says that love is what we do when we risk everything. Even "pagans" like people who have something to offer them. Even "pagans" like people that won't potentially hurt them or humiliate them. But to love someone with no net to catch you? Real love, that goes out to people that will never be able to love us back?

Jesus didn't hand out Precious Moments figurines on sidewalks. This is hard as nails. What kind of person would demand that  we risk everything emotionally for people who don't have our best interests at heart? Who would ask for 100% emotional investment where we might never reap the benefits? Who asks us to sacrifice it all for jackasses, snobs, and gossips?

Religion ain't for the faint of heart.

Three Days Left and Nothing to Say

I only have three days left of this blog challenge and I have absolutely nothing to say. Well, I have lots to say. I shan't say it all.

Half of it's repetitive.  I don't usually think about "new things", I just dwell on the old things in different ways for weeks and weeks until somehow it starts to make sense to me, or starts to actually affect my life. There is nothing new under the sun. Or in my brain.

A third of it is entirely inappropriate for a public blog. You know the drill - 14 year old girls sobbing their emotive, enraged, heartbroken, depressed, hyper selves over cyberspace... No, I'm not heartbroken, enraged and depressed, but sometimes my moods go there and there's really no sense or propriety in blogging when in that state of mind.

The rest? Undeveloped, too lazy to think about thoughts and poems that I've never taken the time to think about sufficiently and probably never will.

Three days to go and I can't spit out a blog post?!?? I made it 27 days and I can't go on for three more??!?

Well, if I did write a blog post, here's what it would probably be.

"Sin is what makes us love Jesus, so even though we'll never reach the end of the road, we should relinquish all control and learn that it's not the end result but the process of knowing him that is important. SOB SOB I'M SO IMPERFECT I'LL NEVER BE LIKE JEEEESUS!!!"

Happy? (Thanksgiving!)

Treadmill Morality

Isn't it interesting that we either spend our life cultivating goodness or badness? There is no in between. Either we're getting better or worse - there's really no such thing as moral stagnation.

I've Been Thinking, Overthinking...

All your friends will laugh at you if you switch majors... again.

The reason that I left Humanities was because smart people made fun of me and looked down on me because humanities isn't a "real" major.

You're only quitting the major because you're lazy and don't want to work hard or think hard.

I only switched into philosophy because I was looking for an "identity" as a philosophy major, not because of philosophy itself at all.

You don't like the responsibility of running Socratic Society, you don't like the pressure of professors knowing you and expecting you to succeed, you don't like having to have relationships with your peers in the department, so you're running away.

I hate every single one of my philosophy classes this semester!

You are just bored of thinking hard - the novelty of college has worn of and you're getting intellectually lazy. Start doing the homework and maybe the classes will be more interesting.

I have been sitting in my existentialism class all semester listening in on the poetry class next door wishing that I was in it instead.

And you spent your first semester wishing you were in English classes, your second wishing for History classes, your third wishing for Humanities classes, and your fourth wishing for Philosophy classes. So what else is new?

I really love thinking about important things, but philosophy doesn't do that like I thought it would. I thought we would talk about meaning and truth and beauty and instead we are talking about analytic vs. synthetic and a priori knowledge and bullcrap techno-jargon.

This has nothing to do with philosophy or humanities or anything - you are just perpetually unsatisfied with everything you do, and you always will be, and until you hunker down and stick with something through the good and bad time, you will always be an eternally bored, flighty student of nothingness.

I don't want to spend 4,000 dollars a semester to take classes that I hate.

You really don't want to spend 4000 dollars a semester to reinforce unhealthy attitudes and work ethics that you'll spend the rest of your life trying to unmake.

Doesn't God want me to be happy?

Don't you believe that God knows what will make you happy better than you do?

I want to write a thesis on Dostoevsky, not on theistic existentialism.

Quitter!

I feel intellectually raped in these classes, I am overthinking everything, these philosophy classes encourage and reward the most unhealthy tendency in my life - thinking without conclusion.

GOD SAYS STAY!

Excuse me...you are very loud and all...but how do I know that you are God?

Oh, the Places You'll Go...

Courtesy of Dr. Seuss.

You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they're darked.
A place you could sprain both you elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?

And IF you go in, should you turn left or right...
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it's not, I'm afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.

You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.

What William Wallace Never Told Us...

Freedom is responsibility.

Us

Isn't it weird that what we call "us" and our "personality" is so dependant on sufficient sleep, proper vitamins, lots of sunlight, exercise, and a perfect deluge of other factors?

Or is it weird that we only like to call "us" what we are, all other factors being perfect? ("This isn't really me - I didn't get enough sleep last night... I'm not usually ___, it's just winter.... Sorry I'm so cranky, it's that time of month") 

The state of "all other factors being perfect" is a rare one. I think I'll have to resign myself to the fact that who I am when I'm malnourished, sleep deprived, November living and PMSing is just as much "me" as the me that wakes up on a sunny June morning after 10 hours of sleep.

FYI - I don't like November.

Love is Not A Pretty Feeling

I get home from school. Had a longish day. Some good, some nasty, some lazy, some whatever. I left school frustrated, feeling very overwhelmed for my campus and the church and feeling so useless and sinful but wanting to do something, to be part of God's movement, to serve Him in a big way right here on campus but seeing no way, no place to do it. I prayed for open doors, to see what He wants, to do what He wants - there is somewhere, something that I should be doing here and I can't see it.

So with all these desires to pursue God and be God's and serve God and be holy and all that messing around in my brain...

My mom gets home. And says, "I listened to R.C. Sproul on the radio. He was talking about capitalism and how God says..."

And I blew up at her!

Bam!

"Butdon'tyouseethatthechurchneedstogetoutofthepoliticalrealmandwhoarewetomakethesepolicydecisionswhenwe'resupposedtobefollowingjesusandinsteadwe'relookingforpowerandwhataboutmaterialismthiscountryisacesspoolandiamdisgustedbytheculturethatclaimsthat..."

I am a self-righteous, conceited, condescending idealistic snotty Jesus freak!

God says to serve Him here. So, OK, I want that to mean "go door to door to frats; preach the word outside of the library; pray for revival". But what it really means is "Love your neighbor as yourself."

"But who is my neighbor?"

Your mother. Love your mother. For pities sake. If you can't love your wonderful, Godly mother who you sometimes disagree with about politics and the church and a Christian life but who you ultimately share Jesus Christ with - who the hell do you plan on loving?!?

Get serious, Laura.

At the Sink

Tonight I had the most meaningful experience that I've had all month.

I washed the dishes.

It felt real and right and yes it's silly because some people have to wash the dishes three times a day and chores are normal and it's like when duchesses used to have little gardens to play in so that they could pretend to be the laity for an hour because it was so "quaint." Well, it wasn't really that. It was just real. I was doing something. The dishes needed to be washed. My mom cooked dinner and I was home for the first time in a long time for dinner, and so I did the dishes and my mom got to play piano and my dad watched the end of whatever football game was on.

I don't remember the last time I felt so useful and busy and happy. Perhaps this is a little too Heideggerian, infusing everyday life with meaning... but every day life has meaning.

Maybe academia is just too removed from reality. Maybe it's too far removed from being human, which is doing and acting and fixing and folding laundry (eugh, yes, i need to do that after I finish this post... we'll see how meaningful that is...) and painting the house and making your own clothes and bringing casseroles to the lady next door and growing your own food and making things and needing to make things to survive.

Maybe it's not just academia that is too far removed from reality. Computers and supermarkets and malls and eBay and Pandora and cars and hairdressers mean that none of us ever have to do anything. Ever. We just buy things. And sit. We don't need to make our own music or cook our own food or even go anywhere on our own two feet.

It's easier, sure. But the easier something is, the less it matters. And so life gets easier and easier, and matters less and less.

But Jesus, I LIKE Arbor Mist...

Jesus, I don't understand.

You call me away from small and weak and silly things to love big and beautiful things.

But I don't have a taste for your things yet.

I like Oreos and Arbor Mist and McDonald's.

You're offering me gourmet - European chocolate, $100 dollar wine, caviar - but Jesus -

I don't really like it that much.

I know it's better.

It just tastes nasty.

So how am I supposed to survive in the interim?

You are calling me away from my cheap substitutes.

But I don't like the real things yet.

So here, now, will nothing satisfy?

Will nothing make me happy?

Will I just have to wait here, McDonald's forbidden but caviar repugnant?

I know that eventually, your food will satisfy me much deeper than anything I've ever eaten.

But if I can’t eat what delights me now, and what I ought to eat doesn’t delight me yet, then there's nothing left to delight in - and how can I do this without delight?

It's the Process, Stupid

A + B = C
Turn L on Route 16, second house on R
Laundry washed and folded.
Completed papers due on my desk at the beginning of class.
"Welcome to the 4000fter club"
complete, finish, end, finale, wrap up, destination, goal, final, conclusion, purpose meaning reason

Everything I do is so that I can be done. Everything I do is so that I will win. So that I will have accomplished something. Everything is centered on the finish line, on the completed product, on success, on what will happen at the end.

The end doesn't matter.

"I am not leading you to An End, I am leading you to Me."

Maybe I will never be "successful" or "complete" important things. Maybe I will not see the "finish line" that I want to imagine. Maybe all that He is calling me to is Himself. And right here, right now, halfway up the trail, the research incomplete, with the "end result" nowhere in sight, He is telling me that he is here.

And since He is here, then I need to be here, as well.

Jesus Looked on Him... and Loved Him

You know the passage where Christ meets the "rich young ruler"? What we remember is that Christ tells him to give up everything that he had. What we forget is that at first, when the rich young ruler asked how to get into heaven, Christ didn't even mention money or lifestyle. He just told him to follow the commandments - and only after the man said that he already followed all the commandments did Christ add one final, purifying command.

Was the young man hypocritical? Was he lying when he said he followed all the commandments?

I don't think so, because right after the man claims this massive accomplishment, it says that "Jesus looked on him and loved him." Jesus wasn't dissatisfied with the man's claim that he had obeyed all the commandments since he was a boy. He looked at him - and loved him.

Are we skipping a step? We want to serve God in massive ways that involve us giving up everything we have and following Him, but we are only listening to the final words of Christ to the rich man. We have never heard the beginning of the conversation. 

I think that before I start talking about giving up all my money and moving to Africa, I need to listen to Christ about the every day things.

"You shall not murder ('and whoever is angry at a brother or sister is guilty of murder'), you shall not commit adultery ('and whoever looks at a woman lustfully with his eyes is guilty of adultery'), you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your mother and father."

And may I one day be able to say, "Teacher - all these I have kept since I was a child." And hear Christ say, finally - "One thing you lack - give all you have to the poor and follow Me."

The Blind Man Said..

Then they came to Jericho. As Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (that is, the Son of Timaeus), was sitting by the roadside begging. When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, "Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!"

Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"

Jesus stopped and said, "Call him." So they called to the blind man, "Cheer up! On your feet! He's calling you." Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus.

"What do you want me to do for you?" Jesus asked him.

The blind man said, "Rabbi, I want to see."

"Go," said Jesus, "your faith has healed you." Immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus along the road.

Why does Christ ask the blind man what he wants?

Why is it "faith" for the blind man to state the obvious?

What am I refusing to ask Jesus to cure because I can't imagine life without it?

When Jesus asks me "what do you want me to do for you?" - what is my answer?

And when He cures me - do I regret asking him because life was at least predictable before?

What does faith even mean in this verse?

Faith is wanting to be healed.