Accumulation of Inconsistencies

We interrupt the noise with this breaking silence:

Justin Edwards, a very talented and skilled friend from my days in Bowling Green, OH, is on his way to Africa - Kenya, to be precise. He will be working with a ministry already in-country, as well as starting a fantastic, God-breathed adventure - World Story Organization, Inc. (WSO): Changing the World One Story at a Time.

WSO is dedicated to providing a storytelling and film production education for marginalized communities around the world.

WSO is a registered nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization and is recognized by the IRS of the United States of America.

Links to WSO and JustInKenya are in this post and in the sidebar.  Read ‘em, get all excited about the work God’s going to do with Justin in Kenya (and beyond), and who knows?  Maybe even support it.  After that shameless plug, I’m going to go find out if I have a PayPal account, and do so myself…

This is an essay that I started on October 19, 2005, while completing my degree at George Mason University.  I find myself intrigued, inspired, and energized by the thoughts presented, and hope it provides much food for thought for all of us. Shalom, my friends.

 So, I’m in the middle of my first semester at Mason, and researching the emergent church movement for a paper for my sociology of religion class. It’s early; I’m not quite sure what to do with all the information I’m accumulating, but it’s got me thinking about some things. Among them is the fact that I’m 26 and still working on my bachelor’s degree, when by all previously constructed versions of my life I would have been so finished with this by now, and quite successful at whatever profession I thought important at the time.

Of course, to date, all my ideas of success have been dismantled and thrown out with the bathwater, leaving me with only a few things that don’t seem like much, yet matter far more than they appear to at first glance. I’ve learned a lot about God in the past couple of years; mainly, that God is a whole heck of a lot bigger and more dangerous than I thought. And what I thought I knew about Him wasn’t really accurate, either. I’ve also learned that what I think of as success in life, with God, doesn’t really look or feel like success at all. It feels more like failure. Compassion? Don’t got it. Honesty? I pick up a lot of things on the street, but not that. Doing the right thing? Nobody else does it; why should I? Yet, He asks me to manifest in my life compassion, and honesty, and mercy, and doing right, and expects my success in accomplishing what He asks. Impossible.

I think about the church I grew up in, a stringently denominational and separatist church, and how, if I’d tried to talk about these issues with someone there, I would have heard something about getting my heart right with Him, and just trying harder. There probably would have been some Bible verses thrown in for good measure, then a quick and pious prayer before sending me off to feel even worse and more guilty than I had going in. (Of course, when I was growing up, all I cared about was getting as far away from church and God as I possibly could, so I’m just making an educated guess about what would have been said.) (more…)