Do we love our enemy if we don’t stop him from committing evil acts (such as raping, assaulting or killing others)? Do you think Jesus and His disciples would have stood by – pleading – while molesters attacked the children nearby? 

The question is, ”Do we really love our enemy if we don’t stop him or her from committing evil acts, such as raping, assaulting, or killing others?” 
I know that sometimes it’s hard to grasp this idea with what we’ve often been taught about pacifism, but the word “pacifism” does not imply doing nothing at all. It is just a word for those who believe in the philosophy of nonviolence. With that said, I do believe we should “stop” the person from committing those evil acts, I just don’t believe in continuing the never-ending circle of violence by attacking the attacker.

The question is how… the absolute truth is, we can’t live our lives asking ourselves, “What if?” We Christians are called to be bold and to be different from the rest of the world. If we attack our attackers, how are we showing the enormous faith we have? How are we showing that we know a better way to live?
…Now back to the “how?”
Fight or flight is our natural defense. And there is nothing wrong with flight if you need to get out of a dangerous situation, however, if your family, your friends, a complete stranger, or whomever is getting attacked in any way, it is our best option to step in. It is our duty to present ourselves as the human target, putting away our human nature, and presenting ourselves as a new creation in Christ. Christians get in harm’s way for the greater good, which is for the love of the attacked, the love of the attacker, and the love of God. It’s our great consequence for being different from the world. This, I believe, is our best option.

I also think that pleading can be good… and not just pleading, either… I believe that we should ask the attacker what the deal is, and give them whatever it is they want. If they want my family’s house, let him have it. If it’s money, he can have that too… If he wants my car, he can take it! If he just wants to watch me suffer, I am suffering in the name of Christ, and I will be blessed. This is why we are a body… when some of us suffer, other believers can step in and provide us with a place to stay, finances, transportation, and whatever else we may need.

Rape is a strange situation if your a pacifist… But there are still many ways to get around that. There is nothing wrong with restraining an individual… there is no real physical harm there. And there are many more ways to avoid this too. We just need to be trained to love. Of course, I am still learning how to handle these situations… One thing I think of is this:
Just because it’s quicker to use violence in a conflict, doesn’t mean that violence is the right answer to the conflict.
I’ve heard it said that those who resort to violence can’t figure out a way to communicate… I say help them communicate.

I think we all too often forget how powerful God is… and He will come and restore a terrible situation. I believe that it is very possible for Him to help us through the circumstance… is it likely? Who knows… but if we all relied on God’s power rather than our own, wouldn’t you agree that we all would be better off? We like to think he won’t intervene for some reason… But He is there and He will always be faithful to those who love him… No matter the outcome.

So, in short, No… we can’t love these people if we do nothing… but that is not the Christian Pacifist’s stance. Do I believe that Jesus and his disciples would stand there and plead with a child molester attacking children? Nope. But I do believe that they would know other ways to stop that from happening… Heck, Jesus, the master communicator, would have probably said a simple sentence and the man would have stopped!

… of course, I highly doubt a man would try to molest a child around 13 herculean men.

Do you really see the poor calling out to you from the streets? Do you care that they are there?

I’m from a small town… it’s kind of difficult to care when this doesn’t exactly happen in your back yard…
… And unfortunately, when it is in your back yard, you see it so much that you start to ignore it…

You start justifying your lack of giving by saying things like, “He put himself in this situation!” or, “If I give her this money, she will just go buy more crack with it.” or even, “I can’t give this man any money! I have to buy myself lunch today!”

Sometimes we don’t give because we think we are doing it for the greater good. For example, we don’t give because we know that a certain homeless person will spend the money on booze or drugs… Is this an excuse to not give? I’m inclined to believe that this is just a poor excuse for us to keep our money in our pockets.

When I’m giving, I don’t want to restrict the person, but give them the freedom that God gives to every human being… the right to choose to do right or wrong. After all, what I give is a gift. It belongs to the person I’m giving it to… not me.

I could see the problem when we start giving an alcoholic whiskey… or if we’d give a drug addict heroine.. But that isn’t what we are doing… we are giving an opportunity… if a homeless person would choose whiskey over food for the day, that’s his own choice, but at least we did our part to help!

Sometimes, we don’t have money to give.. in this situation we can give our time (in my opinion, the best option).

I went to the National Youth Worker’s Convention in Cincinnati a few months ago… I was there with a group of youth workers from my church and we were walking down the streets of the city. We were making plans to go get some ice cream and just hang out in the ice cream shop and talk about what we’ve picked up on that we could bring back to the church with us. At this time we noticed that our friend, Jairus had left.
Jairus is a guy who is kind of big and intimidating, with a manly beard… He’s not very articulate, smelly, and messy. For the previous 15 months, he’d been unemployed (that was back in October… he’s still jobless today!) … in fact, he could pass off as a homeless man in Cinci, but regardless, he’s got one of the biggest hearts in the world.
Well after a very short time of searching, we found Jarius down the street sitting with a homeless man, just talking with him… It was very sweet. He called over to us, saying that he’ll catch up. Jairus didn’t really have anything to offer this man, but his time… and the man was grateful. Jairus caught up with us at the ice cream shop and (because his mom gave him money for doing chores around the house) got the man some ice cream. However, Jairus didn’t know that the man was diabetic, so the man shared his ice cream with another homeless man… and they were so happy and thankful.

When I go to Chicago or Cincinnati, I am normally “too busy” to sit and talk with homeless people… but Jairus made a sacrifice. He cut out his time to spend it with a homeless man… just to say, “Hey! What’s up?”

I’m trying to be like that… I’m trying to be more sacrificial with my time, my money, and my belongings… after all, none of it really matters… Here today, gone tomorrow… and I can’t take any of it to heaven with me anyway…

What do you have to give?

I’m on a quest to make myself a better person. Actually, I am trying to allow God to recreate me. After all, being a saint, I am a new creation in Christ. I’m not exactly human anymore… because I’m trying to not give in to many of my natural desires. Instead, I’m trying to feed the desires that my spirit craves… after all, the spirit of God dwells in my body, which is a shell for my spirit. Since I’m sharing my body with God, himself, I figure I would be a hospitable host, and make God fully comfortable, intending not to offend my guest.

Since I am no longer (exactly) human, and instead, a new creation in which God is recreating every day, God requires me to be loving, joyous, peaceful, patient, kind, good, gentle, faithful, and acting in self-control. This is part of being holy. My journey is taking me on a path to be unlike typical humankind. I’m not sure if the result is reachable, but my goal is to be perfect, as my Father in Heaven is perfect.

I’m here to show what humankind was intended to be from the beginning, before sin entered the world. This is why I don’t lie. This is why I need to be slow to anger. This is why I won’t fight back in any circumstance. This is why I worship my Creator. I’m here to help bring heaven to earth… showing the world the God who created them and loves them.

I’m not here to offend, but I am here to be strange… I’m different, that’s for sure. I’m not here to tell you what to believe or how to live your life. I’m here to show you God. If you don’t see Him in me, then I’m not doing a good enough job. I’ll try harder.

I don’t want to settle on the things this world has to offer… I won’t call you names to make myself feel better. I won’t harm you in any way. I just want to show you the God who is making me a better person. That’s all I want to do. After all, I love you… and I’d like to see you know the God that I know.

I’m not perfect… but there’s a part of me that wants to be. The other part is lazy… it’s my flesh.. and it loves the things that are temporal… But my spirit cries out for something eternal… something that replaces my need to rely on those things that make me feel good for a certain amount of time. It’s how I’m supposed to be. My spirit cries out for God.

My church is going through a series called “One Month to Live”. It is based off of a book by Kerry and Chris Shook. As the title suggests, it is about living your life as if you only had one month to live.

So I want to know, if you knew you had one month to live, how would your life be different? I think it’s a pretty difficult question to answer. I mean, it’s hard to put yourself in that situation. Most of us expect to live to about 80 or so and we like to say, “Someday, I’ll go to Africa and feed hungry kids” or “Someday I’ll get around to reading the entire bible.” “Someday I’ll forgive that person.”

But I want to pose this question: What if “Someday” never comes?

As horrible as it sounds, we aren’t all meant to live to be 80… some of us will die older, but some of us may die younger too… it’s a reality no one likes to think about. But realistically speaking, very few people know their exact date and time of their death.

Truth be told, we are dying. Every single one of us… but that doesn’t mean we can’t live. Imagine that you knew you only had one month to live… That is a short amount of time to prepare for your death, but I’m sure you’d want to do those things you’ve been wanting to do “someday”. Instead of planning for the future, you’d start to live your life one day at a time, right? I know I would.

Jesus once said, “Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has troubles of its own.” Here, he tells us to live one day at a time… How many of us actually do that? Don’t get me wrong… it’s good to have goals… but what if we stopped putting everything off for “someday” and did everything today? I think our lives would change dramatically.

I don’t believe enough people really live. We are too busy to live. We have things that need to be done… it’s no wonder we get aggravated when things don’t happen our way… We put so much stock in what is about to happen and we stop thinking about what is happening now. Tomorrow never comes… if we are living our lives for tomorrow, we aren’t living our lives for anything, so why not start living day to day?

We aren’t meant to sit back and just let life happen. We need to cause things to happen. We need to not be afraid to take risks… because without risks… life is boring.

I want to share a story about taking risks from Matthew 4:
“As Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon called Peter and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. ‘Come, follow me,’ Jesus said, ‘and I will make you fishers of men.’ At once they left their nets and followed him.

Going on from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John. They were in a boat with their father Zebedee, preparing their nets. Jesus called them, and immediately they left the boat and their father and followed him.”

These men in this story had so much to lose. They were fishermen. They were making a living. They had families to feed. They probably had bills to pay too, but when Jesus came to them, wanting them to follow Him, they dropped everything they were doing and left everything behind to follow Him. They didn’t think about their busy schedule. They just took a risk. They made a decision in that moment to follow Jesus, they left everything behind and it changed their lives.

You and I can do the same. Our busy culture is an illusion… We prepare for something that, in the whole scheme of things, doesn’t even matter…

The earthquake in Haiti… how many people need desperate help there? How often do you think about that? How often do you think about the millions and millions of children who die every day from diseases that could be prevented if they would just have clean water to drink? I know I’m guilty. I have my own schedule to worry about… and too much to do… What a selfish, lame excuse…

So I challenge you to live as if you were dying in a month. Is this a call to do something easy? Definitely not. But what fun is life if it’s easy? Everything good in life is worth your hard work and dedication. We don’t have a lot of time on this earth… and each second that goes by is one second that you can never have back, so make it count!

Here are some things to think about if you knew you would be dying in just a few short weeks:

How would today look any different than any other day?
What would be your biggest regret?
What are 3 things you would change about your life and the way you live?

My wedding is in 50 days… I’ve been so busy, I haven’t been able to post recently… I also haven’t been able to read others posts… In fact, I’ve hardly been on Xanga for like 2.5 weeks!

Hopefully I’ll get out of my blogging funk…

But here is something you can do to help me:

My fiance and I sat down to talk about what we expect from each other… The only things I was able to come up with are, I want to sit and take care of our bills together (I really suck at math…) and I want to go to bed together every night. I don’t want to stay up if she is in bed and if I’m going to bed, I’d like her to come with me.

You see, I’ve lived with my dad for so many years… and unfortunately, he got divorced twice… and I don’t really know what to expect from a marriage. Not from a marriage that works anyway…

So if you could help me out with what to expect in my marriage, it would help me a ton! The more feedback I get, the better… Even if you aren’t married (or aren’t getting married anytime soon) your opinions still matter to me!

Thank you!
-Jimmy

One thing is for sure… what happened in Haiti could happen here. We will never know when a giant force of nature will come and destroy our families, our homes, and anything we hold important to us. The only difference is, we have the money and the means to pick ourselves back up.

If you aren’t thinking about it at all, I beg you, please please please help these people in the best way you know how!

A spokesman from the Salvation Army said that right now, they don’t need clothes or food (although that time will come), instead, what they need now is money and labor.

If you can help in any way, please do so. We all would want others to help us if we went through the same thing.

 

…That is all.

I suck at being passionate.

Well… not really. I suck at showing my passion. I always have. I just show my excitement in different ways, I guess… which is horrible because it causes me to remain stale and stagnant- leaving my passion at just what it is- passion. Normally, nothing comes from it…

I say a lot of good things… but I don’t do a lot about it- which is such a problem for Christianity as a whole… I mean… We claim that we want a better world… We say we can’t destroy the sanctity of marriage, but we get divorces… We say abortion is murder, but we are justified when we hate the convicted pedophile down the street… We say it’s important to love our enemies, but when they fly planes into our buildings, it’s right to declare war.

And hypocrisy is only the beginning… My concern right now is laziness within Christianity. Of course, there are a lot of people out there living out what they believe… but the majority of us… it’s just a bunch of empty passion…

One of my favorite quotes by Shane Claiborne is, “Most good things have been said far too many times and just need to be lived.”

For crying out loud, we see it when we go to church! THE CHURCH! The sacred place we gather to fellowship with the body of Christ! I know at my church (and I assume it’s safe to say ‘most churches’) the majority of the people there simply sit in a pew and come, simply to listen to a sermon and maybe sing a couple songs……………………

I agree that there is a certain importance to chilling in church “sometimes”… But still… the church is not for lazy people! We are here to show a better way of living, we are here to point to the way of salvation, and we are here as visitors to this world, showing what Heaven is all about. Where is our passion in our congregations?

In Heaven, there is no hate- everyone loves unconditionally. In Heaven, no one sits in a pew- everyone participates. In Heaven, there is no chaos- everything is in harmony, as God has made a way for man to be in harmony with Him again. That’s the way we need to be- in harmony with God. If we claim to be one in the Lord, we are claiming harmony with Him… It’s complete passion. And my belief is that we should strive to live as if we are in heaven.

You want a better world? Well get up and do something! Be the change! It’s like that quote by Leo Tolstoy, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but nobody thinks of changing himself” or as the late great Michael Jackson (respect) said, “If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.”

So… that is what I’m doing. My New Year’s Resolution is this:

To Love as God loves. To Live as Christ lives. To move as the Spirit moves. I can’t be stagnant anymore. I can’t be part of the problem anymore.

So, I woke up this morning at 6:00am vomiting… Turns out I have the flu. I’ve been laying down all day. I was supposed to have a New Year’s eve party tonight, with the annual 1:00am trip to Waffle House… I guess that won’t be happening

In Short, I hope you all have a happy and healthy New Year!

I think my New Year’s Resolution will be to post more on Xanga.
What is your New Year’s Resolution?

Here are some of the pictures that I promised…

I just picked out some of my favorites, but you can see more in my album.

Well, there you go… Let me know what you think!