Strict Integration VS. Strict Separation

      Hey guys so I am working on my response to the Separation of Church and State research paper I just
 wrote. I have the first half done and would like some opinions. I am currently working on the second half
 which is the response that I believe the church should take. BUT I would really appreciate some feedback as I bring it all together and turn it in tomorrow. So PLEASE comment or fbook me your response.

       So much of the research that I have done ends with books calling for the strict integration of biblical standards in all Americans lives through Law. I have a serious problem with this. While we were a nation founded on Christian morals we were also a nation founded on freedom. When freedom and Christian morals are put up to each other freedom wins out. We cannot integrate beliefs into people’s lives when we put laws and regulations in place that allows freedom to ring. Now I do recognize that allowing “freedom to ring” for the founding fathers meant they could find freedom in practicing whichever view of Christian morality they saw fit. This view has changed severely with the change in the multitude of moralities available. Allowing “freedom to ring” now involves individuals to proclaim and live out whichever view of morality they see fit. Under this current view of freedom strictly integrating Christian morals into law projects the rejection of freedom.  While the freedoms that are allowing abortion, gay marriage and other sinful acts are against Christian morals they should not be viewed as persecution. They are simply the corrupted side of a good thing. Secular freedom is the flipside of Christian based freedom. Living in the fallen world there are corrupted sides to most everything. Until the laws are forcing people to sin or for people to act in hatred towards Christians they cannot be viewed as persecution. While life would be easier for the Christian individual if the nation was strictly integrated with Christian laws, is that living the Christian life?  Running away from legal persecution is not fulfilling the call of “going into all the world.” Sometimes going into all the world means staying where you are.

Strict integration also gives the nuance that Christians do not tolerate sinful people.  The issue with that statement is that a lot of the time it is true.  This creates the issue that implementing strict integration, which is the problem of Christians hating the sinful person and not the sinful act. Politics and the issue of separation of church and state is a very personal battle. Attacking the moral code of an individual or people group goes beyond legal formalities and straight to the heart. Attacking the person does not love the enemy. Loving the enemy looks like loving the person through their struggles and past. Thus strict integration goes against the freedoms that have been instituted and the call to love even our enemies.

If strict integration is not the appropriate response for the church than maybe we should just back off. Maybe we should remove our political voice. Is strict separation the answer? I really only have one problem with strict separation and it is this: you cannot separate your moral code from your political position. Politics is just the fleshing out of one’s moral code. The Law and its system for Israel was the means by which they functioned in the moral code God set before them. However one believes they should live is the code by which they vote. So in all actuality strict separation is just strict integration of secular morals and programming. Thus we cannot simply choose strict separation or else we are choosing to live under a secular moral code. While it is not right to forsake religious freedoms and enforce Christian code it is also not right to forsake the moral code by which we are called to live.

When Sleep Seems Like A Dream

I have not blogged in a while because my fingers have been tired you see. It isn't that I haven't had anything to say but that I have had too much. But tonight I find myself restless to the point of insanity. I have been laying in bed for 42 minutes now trying to fall asleep. Too tired to start another paper to wound up to just stop so I have decided to write and try to understand myself. I do believe this might be an impossible task for one to understand herself but I also believe I have become an impossible girl.

I have been so restless. It is 11:16 and I feel like I could run 100 miles. I could run 100 miles but I don't have the energy for even one step. I would like a glass of milk right now but not even that is going to happen. I want to be finishing this word study on love but my love for learning has shut down. I want to read but I want to shut my eyes. I am living in a state of exhausted restlessness. What do I do with that? I am too tired to function and sleep seems like a dream. I want to be home, I want to be studying, I want to be in South Carolina, I want to be ministering to broken women and children, I want to be in class, I want to study, I want to create, I want to build, I want to write the book that God has laid on my heart, I want to scratch my sisters back, I want to watch NCIS with my dad, I want to talk to my mom, I want to process through the 11 different working thesis's I have in my mind, I want to talk to professors, I want to figure it all out. I want and I am exhausted.

Sleep seems like a silly concept to me but I yearn for it. My body is demanding sleep. Sweet precious sleep. Yet my mind is begging for one more hour. One more hour to question. One more hour to listen. One more hour to absorb God. One more hour to learn. One more hour of fighting off exhaustion. You see my mind knows that the 6 hours of sleep that my body of demanding isn't going to do much for me. My mind thinks that I will gain more from one more hour of thoughts than one hour of sleep. I think I agree with my mind but my body is making a pretty strong case. Honestly I would like for my body to win.

Like I said I am impossible. It is impossible for me to understand myself besides the fact that I understand that I am impossible. I pray God will use my impossibility to teach me and maybe others. So as I lie here in this exhausted restless tension I pray the prayer I pray every night. Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love for I have put my trust in you, show me the way I should go for to you I lift my soul.

Scrumpedelicious Cookie Recipe

This week I decided to perfect my basic cookie dough recipe. Tuesdays batch came out a little odd and then the I was taking care of a little boy tantrum so they burnt. It just gave me another chance to try something a little different. I tweaked a few things and am VERY happy with this recipe. This cookie dough is the base for pretty much every cookie I make. This week I am making butterscotch chip but you could do chocolate or whatever floats your boat.

Ok here's what you will need:
1 cup brown sugar (packed)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup butter (chilled but soft)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp baking soda
3 cups flour
2 large eggs
dash of salt
dash of cinnamon
2 cups butterscotch chips (or whatever you want)


Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 degress
In a large mixing bowl cream the butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, vanilla, and almond.

Then add the baking soda, flour, salt, and cinnamon (make sure it is a small dash of cinnamon, don't go crazy). Start mixing that then add the eggs one at a time.

Blend really well. It will look all pretty and smooth.... then when you add the eggs....

It will be nice and firm and chunky. Just mix in your chips.

Grease a cookie sheet. I really like to use the spray that has flour in it. Roll the dough into palm size little balls and kinda smash it so that it is a little flat. Bake for 7-8 minutes.

Yum! Because they are a soft cookie you need to be careful to let them cool flat or else they will break.

Happy Henry!

Have a great day guys!

College Isn't About School

I am approaching the end of my third year of college. That seems so crazy to me. I remember being 17 and making that long drive for the first time to OCC. I was so worried that I was going to fail all my classes. That seems silly to me now. It seems silly to me because I have learned something about college. College is not about school. At least it isn’t here at Ozark. When I get a 100 on a test, that is not what college is about. It isn’t about making the dean’s list. College isn’t about getting an A in a Mark Moore class or passing my Kenny Boles Greek final. It isn’t about 7 am classes and how many times I can skip it. College isn’t about school. College is about growth. It is about growing our body, mind, spirit. 

Body. I was in Issues of Interpretation with Doug Aldridge last year and our topic for the day was on whether or not certain drugs should be legalized and whether or not Christians should use them. We got off onto some tangent that covered a much broader spectrum than just drugs. This was the moment that my view of “growing” our bodies came to be. I personally feel like doing anything that will shorten the lifespan of my time to minister is wrong of me.  That can look like not getting high or not smoking or not eating a big mac. As a Christian I can’t be training and growing my heart and mind and ignore my body. I am not going to devote 5 years of my life to get two degrees so that I can possibly love and minister to people but throw it all away in 30 years because I have heart disease. So college students we need to take this time to stop destroying our bodies and start growing them.

Spirit.  This one might be the hardest for some of us. I am not generally a “feely” person so it is easy for me to be out of touch with my spiritual side. Until last year I thought growing spiritually meant praying at the crack of dawn, fasting once a month, and having a cliché daily devo. My view of growing spiritually is probably why I didn’t feel spiritual. It is so easy to get lost in either the cliché view or the studious view. I flip flopped between the two for some time. I was either trying to be spiritual or was lost in my school work. But college isn’t about school it is about growing, even growing my spirit. I have had to learn what makes me most feel in touch with God. And I feel pretty lucky because it is studying. What I have to work on is taking my studies and finding the spirituality in it. I think I am not supposed to just complete an assignment but pray over it so that God will reveal himself personally with in my daily studies. Make sure you are not just going to class, church, and serving; find what it is that helps you feel God and do it. Grow your spirit.

Mind.  Grow your mind. This one seems like a given but growing your mind does not mean going to school. We can go to class all we want, take test after test, write paper after paper, and not be growing. Are we passionate about we are learning? Or are we apathetic? Do we realize that growing our minds means possibly having the words and the reasoning capabilities to help people in the future? Growing our minds means taking the words of our profs and have them interact in our lives. Take what we are learning out of the classroom and expound upon it and apply it. Growing our minds means learning more than just what is being told to us. Have a real conversation. Ask questions that don’t involve the next assignment. Read a book. And for that matter read a book that isn’t assigned. 

Yes sometimes we need to pick up our favorite Twilight or Harry Potter but not all the time. I went a little crazy in cali and picked up 21 new books :) Read something that will deepen your understanding of humanity, God, and the cultures we live in. Growing our minds does not mean growing our transcripts. 

I don’t want to spend my next two years at OCC getting a’s, marking 60 more hours off my matriculation form, just so I can graduate with two degrees. I want to spend my next two years of college growing. Because college isn’t about school.

Beautiful Dorm

     There is something beautiful about dorm life. The constant flow of learning, loving, and growing is beautiful. Living with 90 girls means the emotions are high, the feelings are raw, and our hearts learn to live not individually but as a whole. The dorm is beautiful. Radios are loud, laughter is vibrant, and the smell of perfume can be overwhelming. The dorm is beautiful. The girls next door are fighting, someone is crying over a boy, and freshmen are having breakdowns over exegeticals.  The dorm is beautiful. We don’t just live together. We love together. We break together. We fight together and then we grow together. The dorm is beautiful. 

     I love being an RA. Being a part of the dorm as a leader has brought so much beauty to my life. The dorm is beautiful and I now see that all the time. This year has been hard, challenging, upsetting, but nonetheless  that has made it beautiful. Every difficult conversation has led to beauty. Things do not stay hard but we grow. As an RA I have tried to help the girls grow, but as an RA I think I am the one who has grown the most. It has tested me in so many ways, but the many different tests’ lead to many different blessings. I simply love it. Leading conversations for devos, sharing life with girls, staying up until wee hours of the morning with girls who pour their hearts out; it is beautiful. I pray that I will get another year to be so blessed by a beautiful dorm full of beautiful girls. 

Why?

Why God? We… (I am generously including all humanity in this “we”) We seem to ask God why a lot. We hurt, we suffer, we die, we are confused and we ask why. Today in Psalms we were studying the communal lament psalms. I noticed something; when we are suffering we ask God why. Over and over again, psalm after psalm, WHY?  We want God to answer and we want Him to answer the right way. I don’t think any of us would ask God why we were hurting and want the answer to be “suck it up” or “you deserved it” or even “because I can.” We ask why but we want the right answer. 

I am going to get nerdy here for a moment… but this nerdy moment will lead to a devotional moment. Hang in there with me ok? You see a portion of these lament psalms were post-exilic. This means that they were written after Babylon had come, captured and exiled Judah along with destroying the temple. You see these psalms were written after a pretty important milestone in Israel’s history. But in the midst of studying these post-exilic corporate lament psalms and feeling their “why” I remembered that God already answered them. You see I am also studying Habakkuk and studying Habakkuk makes a lot of stuff click. Habakkuk asked God why the nation was corrupted and God answered him. But God put a disclaimer on the answer, Habakkuk was going to be shocked and the people would be utterly astounded. The answer got down to the fact that Babylon and exile was coming. You see when God answered it just meant more why’s. The “why?” of the post-exilic corporate lament psalms had already been answered. God answered but He knew it wasn’t going to be understood. 

So now I will get devotional. We ask why and we want the right answer. We don’t just want the right answer but we want the right resolution. Sometimes we are frustrated and need God to fix things. Sometimes we are honestly a wreck and need God to pick us up. But when we ask why God might answer. He might not simply put our life back in order, He might not soothe our aching hearts, and He might REALLY ANSWER us. We might be shocked and utterly amazed and there is a good chance we will keep asking why.

The Dissolving Jesus

I have one more hour of being 15,000 feet in the air. Hues of pink, yellow, and purple illuminate the soft white blanket below this tiny plane. The orange sun is shining through the window across from me and lights my face while casting an annoying glare on my computer. After waiting 5 hours at DFW airport I am finally on a plane back to reality and peace surrounds. I feel peace but I also feel the gnawing of an unforgotten realization. My mind has summoned it and my heart has processed it. For whoever reads this silly little blog here is my realization of the Dissolving Jesus. 

It was last Sunday, I was at Real Life Christian Church in Santa Clarita and communion was taking place. My fingers fidgeted with the little plastic cup of juice sealed with a wafer on top. I went through my usual routine of praying and thanking God for the amazing act of justice and love brought forth by the cross. I remembered the body that was broken through those acts and placed the wafer in my mouth. It was thin and barren of flavor. It stuck to my tongue and then to the roof of my mouth. It effortlessly dissolved and was gone. I lifted the cup to my mouth and swallowed the few drops of juice. The sweetness coated my mouth just enough to wash away the flavorless disintegration of the “body.” I sat there done with communion, done with reflection, done with the moment of Jesus.

I was suddenly hit with the gripping reality that for some of us Jesus in our daily life is just like that wafer and juice. Easily distributed, easily consumed, and easily dissolved from our life. At one moment my heart went from an easy tradition to a difficult realization.  My heart and mind became allies in painting me a portrait of what communion should be. 

For starts it should not be easy. By placing that silly little wafer in our mouth we are recognizing the destruction of God. It was more than a broken body. The broken bread was a broken deity, a broken father, a broken son, a broken community. Relationship over.  In this portrait of communion the bread, that thin disintegrating wafer, was taken with trembling hands. It was not easily consumed but slowly placed in my mouth as I recognized the cost of this bread. It was not from a cheap loaf of bread but a heavy burden. It filled my mouth as my heart filled with remorse. It did not dissolve. I had to chew away at the acceptance that Christ broke everything. The muscles of my mouth tired and I remembered the tired body of my dying savior. The chewed bread did not dissolve on my tongue but slid down my dry throat and I recognized the dryness of my soul. That dry agonizing lengthened act of swallowing created a need, a need for his blood. The painting turned to a cup. 

Before me was not a half ounce plastic disposable cup of juice. There was a golden goblet, the type seen at a king’s table, the King’s table.  Inscribed on the outside was a love note from God to Christ. As I looked inside I saw a love note from Christ to man. The wine filled right up to the top line. The shedding of his blood was not a gift but a love note written between us three. I lifted the goblet to my mouth and drank the wine. I did not take one sip but desperately gulped away. It was not sweet, it stung. It was not thin and sheer flavor, but thick and deep in meaning. As I consumed the liquid I recognized my part of the story of the crucifixion. If Jesus did not continue the love note with me I would not be recognizing the shedding of His blood. His blood was His love for me.