flawed people

This may not come out as a complete and tidy thought but I wanted to put it down on the page to share. 
We are all human, we are flawed, and weak, and we screw things up.  The hope is that as we get older we learn and we make less mistakes and do a better job of staying on the path that we laid out for ourselves, but in reality often we just make newer and bigger mistakes and make bigger messes and failures.
In the Bible, David was notorious for his failures.  He would get his eyes off God and wander in his own selfishness and lusts until God reminded him who he was and what he was created for.  And he would always turn from his mistakes and failures and amazing progress would be made for the nation he led.
**Spoiler Alert - If you have not seen the greatest showman and would like to stop reading now, I am about to give away most of the movie.
An easy example to see of this type of behaviour is illustrated in the recently released movie The Greatest Showman.  Phineas Tailor Barnum was a man of vision, a dreamer.  As the storyline goes (the movie storyline, not necessarily the real life story) he had a dream from a young age, a dream of greatness, a dream that from a reasonable mind was outside his reach.  He had an anchor in Charity, the girl who would become his wife, she was his reason to fight, the prize he needed to win.  His life though as an orphan was fraught with failure, but each time life got him down something would be a catalyst of focus.  First it was the kindness of an outcast, a deformed girl who gave him an apple and also planted the seeds for his the larger part of the fruition of his dream.  That kindness fought back the depression and rekindled the will to fight for his impossible dream.  And when the fight to survive seemed once again hopeless an opportunity to work for the railroad once again put him back on the path to success.  Having had success with the railroad and changing his status in life he finally won the prize and was able to marry Charity.  But being the dreamer winning the prize only makes the dream bigger.  Now he needed to become a great success so he could give Charity the life he believes she deserves.  At this point the dream often blinds him from blessings he has and he keeps striving for more and it often becomes about him proving that he is better than he is.  Every time he fails though something stirs him onto even more greatness.  He loses his job and begins to fall into the mindset of failure when his wife reminds him of the "magic" that they created in their little family.  That encouragement stirs him onto his next big adventure.  When his wax museum ideas fail and he is on the brink of bankruptcy the dreams he has planted in his daughters remind him that he needs to think outside the box do something sensational and he is reminded of the disfigured girl who turned his perspective around  so many years before.  When he starts to recruit his troupe of "freaks" he immediately falls flat on his face and a toy soldier reminds him that people respond better to encouragement and flattery rather than ridicule.  The next big failure in his life he was the last one to see and so he did not respond to all the signals he was given to avoid and ultimately lost him everything.  BUT......... (and in our lives this is where we insert the BUT GOD because until we are dead and shed our earthly bodies God is not done with us and will always give us a chance to continue His work)  But, sitting in the bar wallowing in self pity and despair Barnum's family of "freaks" that he created came to remind him of the great things he has made and calls him out of his self pity and reminds him that the dream is worth fighting for.  This is my favorite part of the movie because it shows us how repentance and redemption works.
We all screw up, most of us do it on a regular basis.  We are going to fail, what matters is that in times like that we look to God and let him set our focus on His path for our lives.  God is always faithful, he will always point you in the right direction, but we have to learn to look past ourselves.

With a capital c

I have struggled for years using a capital C in the word Christian.  I guess my struggle stems from why we use a capital C.  Presumably it is because the capital C stands for Christ, but so often christians do not.
The faces of christianity that are often seen by the world are self-righteous, judgmental, angry, and hateful.  Jesus was none of those things.  Christians will often site the scripture where Jesus got angry and drove the merchants out of the temple as an excuse for their own "righteous anger" towards sin over things that it is unlikely that Jesus is even angry about.  When in fact Jesus' "righteous anger" is directed towards the very ones who are using His name to judge and be hateful.
I read a post the other day on Facebook that struck me odd.  It took me a minute to figure out what bothered me but I finally did.  The post was about an actor who basically cursed Jesus in front of the world at an awards ceremony. The writer of the post stated they were offended and called for christians to be angry and respond by not watching anything this actor was a part of.  It went on to ask that the post be shared so more people could be angry.  The more I thought about it the more I began to realize it was unlikely that Jesus was angry at this actor or the things they said and much more likely that He was sad.  Not sad that the person hurt His feelings, but that they were hurting.  And on another front Jesus is likely sad and hurt that the people who hurt this actor are people who claim to be for Jesus.
W.W.J.D, This was a popular movement around the turn of the century.  And while asking what would Jesus do is a really good way of questioning our own actions, either most christians missed the point and just did what the wanted to do feeling justified that they wore a silly bracelet or they just really do not know Jesus well enough to answer the question.  The call to boycott Disney, the call to boycott Starbucks, the movement to shame and condemn homosexuals, these are not the things Jesus would do they are the actions of self-righteous, judgmental, angry, and hateful people (or people blindly following those people).  Jesus would not have turned his back on people because they believed differently.  Jesus did not call people who were not following God out on their sin, he went to dinner with them. When Jesus met Zacchaeus he did not call him out on his immoral tax practices, He asked him to share a meal together, to spend time getting to know each other. Jesus did not need to get to know Zacchaeus, He knew him better than Zacchaeus knew himself.  But Zacchaeus NEEDED to know Jesus!
I have often heard christians being critical of people do not appear to have need taking advantage of services and ministries offered by the church sometimes going as far as confronting them.  If we look again at the example of Jesus with Zacchaeus maybe we would realize instead of judging them we should be getting to know them because God used the ministry to get them to a place where you could introduce them to Him.

The perspective of scale

In today's fast paced society the world has become a much smaller place than it was in Biblical times.  That is not to say that the world has actually decreased in size but our perspective has changed and the scale at which we measure things has changed.  Having studied geology in college I tend to have a different perspective on time than many people.  Most people think of 4000 years, roughly the commonly recognized time people have existed on earth, as a very long time.  When you compare it to the average lifespan of a person it is a long time, but if you compare it to the billions of years that there are of geological records of time 4000 years is just a short time.

"as far as the east is from the west, so far He has removed our transgressions from us" Psalms 103:12
From the frame of reference of the people at that time the distance from the east to the west was likely only a few thousand miles, but that is a distance that would take weeks or even months to traverse and would cost so much that it was an inconceivable distance to travel.  Today we have an airplane that can circumnavigate the globe in under 2 hours.  Than kind of makes the distance from the east to the west seem insignificant.  We must remember though God was using a scale that was significant to them to say "when I forgive you your sins are gone and beyond anyone's reach to bring them back to you".  Perhaps we should even consider rewriting this scripture to say "as far as from here to Alpha Centauri A so far He has removed our transgressions from us"

"For all the animals of the forest are Mine, and I own the cattle on a thousand hills." Psalms 50:10

This one I have always struggled with.  Growing up in farming communities the cattle on a thousand hills is a lot, but it is a conceivable number.  Lets say there are 100 cows on a hill, so God owns 100,000 cows?  At roughly $2000 a cow in today's market that is $200 million.  Yeah, that's a bunch of money, but when you compare it to the net worth of someone like Bill Gates whose net worth is something like $81 billion that is an insignificant number.  So to understand this we need to understand from the perspective of those who were around in bible times 100,000 cows might as well have been a gazillion it was so much. God was not saying I only own 100,000 cows, he was saying ALL things are Mine and I am not in need.

Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven. Matthew 18:21-22

70X7=490  That was easy, did it in my head, that's a math problem we expect 12 year olds to be able to solve with ease.  And forgive someone 490 times? Okay, I know people that would only take 2 weeks to achieve.  I thought this being a christian thing was going to be a challenge.  Yup, I missed the point again.  I really doubt Jesus was saying "No, 7 times is not enough but you can stop forgiving at 490 times".  I think instead he was throwing out a large difficult to reach number in order to say do not keep a record of forgiveness keep forgiving.  But mathematical concepts have advanced to the point that 70 times 7 is not a difficult enough concept for us, perhaps we should think 7 to the 70th power when we read this scripture....

The dual nature of love.

Most of this comes from a Facebook post I wrote some time ago, but I felt the need to brush it off and update it.

To me the most significant part of wedding vows is “I commit to love you”. The important thing to understand about love is it is both a wave and a particle, no wait, that is light. Love is both an emotion and a commitment. They work in tandem and become stronger together when you lead with commitment.
As an emotion Love defines how we feel but often times how we feel is not completely in our control. Emotions are fickle and can be easily swayed by simple things; a song, a look, a place, a smell, all of these things can easily change our emotions. And being easily swayed this is one of the most effective ways Satan can affect our lives. Emotional love often times is selfish, it is jealous, and self seeking, it is easily turned to anger, and often keeps score. This is what I like to think of as lust. Lust is often thought of as bad, but I believe lusting after your spouse can be a good thing….
Love as a commitment however is an entirely different thing and is where the power in love resides. Love as a commitment says I will remain faithful, I will protect you and place your needs and desires before my own regardless of how I feel. Love as a commitment is described well in the scripture 1st Corinthians 13:4-8 "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away."  It is important to understand when you say your vows that this is the commitment you are making.
These words are easy to say especially when you are young and starry eyed blinded by the emotions that love brings. But in real life when you are tired and the reality that your spouse is a real person who is not perfect but in fact is sometimes a real jerk and your kids won't shut up and give you just 2 seconds of peace and you cannot figure out what it was that made you have any sort of emotional love for this person who is only concerned with their own selfish needs, it is hard to walk out the commitment love. Love is hard, sometimes you are going to feel love sometimes you are going to feel anger, maybe even hate. But if you continue to lead your heart with the commitment of love even when you do not feel it eventually your heart will follow and the reward will be great.