I'm a sloth, you're a sloth, we're all sloth's, Hey!

Growing up Independent, Fundamental Baptist I heard very little about the 7 Deadly Sins, except in relation to Catholicism, which we were taught were anti-Christ Mary worshippers. But one cannot deny that the 7 sins listed in the 7 Deadly Sins are mentioned often in the Bible, and therefore one cannot deny the importance of recognizing these sins and abstaining from them as much as possible. I do not believe that Catholics are anti-Christ Mary worshippers, but I don't necessarily agree with the church as a whole. I do think their insistence on giving an understanding of these 7 sins that infect our lives in various ways is something to admire. Without knowing what a sin is we cannot know how to ask the Holy Spirit to help us to overcome said sin in as much as we can do so in this fallen world.

The list of sins, if you don't already know, is:
1. Lust
2. Gluttony
3. Greed
4. Sloth
5. Wrath
6. Envy
7. Pride

The thing I like about this list is that it encompasses something everyone struggles with in different capacities. I can say I have struggled with each one at certain points, pride mainly, but the others usually have stemmed from that. The thing I've always felt more guilty for struggling with because I never cared to try and fix it was my slothfulness. I can be a pretty lazy person. I know growing up I never woke up before noon if I didn't have to, and I still frequently sleep in, though not nearly as late. I could sit and watch TV or movies or noodle around on the internet for hours upon hours. I prefer to feed my mind than move my body. So it was interesting when I learned the true meaning, the original meaning behind slothfulness in terms of the 7 deadly sins.

In the Latin, sloth is translated as Acedia. It had various meanings, all surrounded by a general apathy, but the one the struck me the most was Dante Alighieri's (Author of The Divine Comedy- which includes Inferno). Dante believed it to not only be a general apathy towards life, but "the failure to love God with all one's heart, all one's mind and all one's soul."Dante's interpretation of this sin means we've misinterpreted sloth to simply mean couch potato, although that does play a part in it, it is a much deeper, much graver and of much more importance than simply getting off your ass and doing something. Dante is basically saying that slothfulness is our lack of seeking God.

Once I heard this I couldn't help but think about America and how this could be our most heinous sin. Yes America is full of pride and gluttony and a slew of the others, but it's more afraid of loving God and seeking Him. I am more afraid of that myself. So many Americans attend church, we're a very "religious" nation, but we go to church for ourselves, we go to church for the community, we go to church because it's societally expected or we grew up going or we think that makes us better people. It's all surface and no heart.

The problem is, we can't even talk about Acedia in America because it's offensive. I'm not saying that we need to "Bring God back to America" or anything. So many people think just because a teacher doesn't pray for the entire class at the beginning of the day or because the Bible isn't taught in public schools, that God has been taken out of America. These are outward things that honestly I feel we place too much importance on. People don't become Christians because they were forced to pray or forced to learn about the Bible, they become Christians because they realized they couldn't survive without God. Their desire for God outshined every other desire in their lives. We cannot legislate morality, we can only seek God for ourselves, and show people what has happened through our finding God and hope they can see that He loves them through what He has done for us and many others throughout history because we sought Him.

God is described in the Bible as a jealous God, and to some this comes across as a petty attribute to apply to God. But God's jealousy isn't like the jealousy of a teenage girl over her best friend dating the guy she has a crush on, or a boys jealousy over some other guy getting the starting spot on the football team. God's jealousy is that of a husband's who loves his wife with all his heart and only desires to give her what is best, give her all he can, and she cheats on him constantly. The jealousy isn't from the husband thinking, "she is mine, not yours, I own her!" but instead, he is hurt because he knows what he is offering her and it's so much more than these affairs. He is offering her a lifetime of love and commitment, or in God's case an eternity of love and commitment.

Acedia is offensive in our churches because we come to build ourselves up rather than build God up. People go to church and we learn what to do. We learn that you shouldn't do these things and you should do these other things. But do we learn to seek God? Can a desire to seek God be taught?

I believe when someone is truly seeking God, the other things come more naturally. This isn't to say one doesn't mess up and lose sight of their seeking God, but when someone is seeking God they aren't thinking lustfully or pridefully. When you're truly seeking God your thoughts are aligned on that.

In my life, whenever I have sought a girl, my mind can hardly think of anything else. This happened when I began to seek Tasha. She became all my mind could think about. There was something to that because before she entered my thoughts in such a way, I thought often about beating a certain video game, watching movies, hanging out with friends for the weekend, but once my heart was filled with love for her, I thought only about her. Every time I was doing any of those other things, I might have been enjoying them to a degree but there was always a peak I would reach to where I would be wondering how much more fun I would be having if I were with Tasha right now. We should do this very same thing with God. Seeking God doesn't mean you must become a monk and give your entire life to prayer, in fact, I think that is wasting a lot of what God would have you do for others. Seeking God, to me, means that in every other thing that you do, you always yearn for God. If our hearts are always set on God, we would more readily serve others because we would be thinking of God and we would realize that Christ would act a certain way in a certain situation and then go on to act that way. It's easier said than done, but that is why this is such an important thing to realize.

In thinking about Acedia I can't help but think about us Americans and how we have squandered the desire in our hearts to seek God. Seeking God would mean to serve others; we serve ourselves. How about we stop going to church to fill up ourselves and then going home to watch TV and never allow any life change to happen. You can keep your eyes clear of all the rated R movies, your ears clear of all the dirtiest rap music, your tongue clear of all the liquor and your mouth clear of all the dirty jokes you can but if you're not serving others you're not serving God and therefore being a sloth.

Let's kill the sloth in each of us and begin serving others as Christ served us. 

To Hell With It...

Guilt is a rope. I follow the rope, hoping it leads to somewhere. At the end of the rope is a noose called fear. I stick my head inside. I jump over the edge. Fear has won.

This is my life. I do this daily. When Paul wrote, "I die daily" I'm pretty sure he didn't mean suicide by way  of fear but that is my daily death. Fear is the savior I cling to. What has this savior given me? It has made me into nothing more than an asshole. Asshole is the only appropriate word that can describe it. Most other words aren't strong enough. When I think of the requirements of an asshole, I find in that the very thing I do with my life. This is why fear is bad, because it makes you do nothing but continue to acquire crap.

To hell with my fear! To hell with my guilt! Grace is the bed I'm sleeping in. Mercy is the water I'm bathing in. Hope is the air I'm breathing. Fear is a mistress I will no longer be sleeping with.

"Lord I believe, help my unbelief."

In Fyodor Dostoevsky's masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov he wrote, "It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt." I have lived that statement out the last few years. It seems I place it on myself, because I don't want to blindly accept something, especially something as big and important as God. I desire strong faith, but often when I see faith lived out without doubt I see it as a weakness, a deficiency in accounting for all possible alternatives. Sometimes we want so badly to believe in something that we don't really believe in anything, we believe in our belief. If looking at belief from this angle, can it be an idol? I guess it can, but I'm not sure i would categorize it as such. The closer I grow towards God, the more fearful I am of what or who exactly God is- yet I still find an irresistible comfort in my belief. 

Is it really such a weakness to believe wholeheartedly in something...anything? Is it Satan allowing me to maintain my doubt? Is it God? Is it rationality? Is it because of my upbringing, or because of my resentment for authority? I can't answer any of these questions, but I am afraid of my doubts. I fear them because in my imagination, they hinder me from fulfilling my purpose, from fulfilling who God has created me to be. 

Despite my doubts, I rely heavily on my faith. I have experiences that seem to prove God, but have doubts that it is only my intense desire to have God be real, and be who I believe He is. But God isn't who I believe He is. God is God. "I Am" is what He calls Himself. Yet, my fear is that we have misunderstood the simple complexity of that statement. It's a beautiful story. Father creates a perfect world for His children. Father gives children the ability to mess everything up, because He wants their love to be genuine. The ability to choose. The children really screw it all up. They are punished by their own selfishness. God desires to allow free will to continue. He sends a payment for the selfishness of His children. This payment is said to fulfill who accepts it as their own payment. Love. Restoration. Sacrifice. These are the elements of a beautiful story. 

These are the elements of a beautiful life as well. If I live a life of love; of restoration; of sacrifice, beautiful things happen. It can be argued that that is because God works that way, so life must. But it can also be argued that life works that way, so we've made God work the same way. I can't ever really say. 

In an effort to be right, I retain my doubt and my faith. I attempt to have them measured out equally, to keep myself in check at all times. I think this is healthy, in a sense, but has become unhealthy, because it has caused me to fear. Fear is the complete opposite of love. My life has been written by fear. Fear of everything. Failure. Other people. Myself. God. 

Throughout it all, there has been something pulling me, nudging me closer to a purpose. I call this nudging God. Or the Holy Spirit. This Easter, I intend to celebrate Christ's sacrifice on the cross. It's a lot of craziness that I believe, but sometimes, truth is crazy. I cannot sit down and systematically prove every detail of the Bible's truth, or every piece of minutia proving God's existence, but I can say that whatever is propelling me towards God, despite my unbelief, is something bigger than myself. Something bigger than my ego, my self conscious desire for there to be something out there holding the cosmos together. God is real. I said it. I have said it to myself a million times, always followed by an ellipsis and a question mark. 

Am I ignorant? Yes, completely and totally ignorant. But so is everyone else on the planet. I won't be so arrogant to hold my belief in the absolute Truth of God over anyone else's head. My belief holds just as much weight as theirs. That isn't some sort of wishy washy statement saying there is no truth. There's only so much we can know. We each have our faith. Belief in God always seems to bare the need for proof, while atheism is allowed to merely accuse. My doubt is slightly dwindling, but it has a long way to go. Like the boy in Matthew cried, "Lord I believe, help my unbelief."

It's The End of The World As We Know It, and No One Cares

With my thoughts and prayers on the recent natural disaster in Japan I can't help but be deeply saddened. This broken world is forcefully beaten in again. Sometimes I wonder if it can just end today, because it's only a matter of time before it happens to you and I. We try to stay safe but sooner or later the earthquake strikes and we look around and see those we love die before our eyes. It's tragedy. 

Why, then, is it so hard for us to relate? We are bombarded with these images of disaster daily. Hollywood makes money off of them, it's only a matter of time before a Haiti movie is released to critical acclaim. It'll probably star Don Cheadle. 

When I look at the cities and countries feeling devastation, I think, it's hard for us to relate because we are all our own cities. Each individual is a little city walking around. There are hurricanes and earthquakes happening in each of us. We can't see outside of our own city because we're trying to deal with the tragedy within each of us. The tragedy that bends and breaks our will. We must feel something to relate to something and this is the only way I can personally relate to those in Japan right now. Although they are facing outer unrest due to the tragedy caused to their country, each Japanese person is facing an inner unrest. 

Imagine, we're all walking down the street and the earth is shaking inside of us. The wind is destroying deep within us, and the waves are crashing down. 

I don't want to dwell on Japan or any other disaster ridden country (Haiti is nowhere near back to "normal"). I am my own disaster ridden country. I am my own city, flooded and desecrated. 

But I must realize that the only way out of the inner unrest, the inner brokenness; is to attempt to sacrifice my unrest for someone elses. Though the unrest in me is growing, that doesn't separate me from the entirety of humanity. My own disaster filled city is not an excuse. We like to dwell on our inner unrest but the only way to fix it is to step outside of it.