New Look

No big surprise unless you’re a new visitor that I just changed the look of the blog. Let me know what you think of the new look compared to the old one.

Also, have the usual pair of Two-fer Tuesday posts today and part 2 of my “F-Word” discussion, which were posted earlier today.

Tomorrow will likely see another installment of my Cleansed By Fire novel.

Update – 09-24-2008

OK, scratch the new look. I like a lot of things about it, but some things I’m seeing now don’t please me too much, and too many posts have been designed around this format and color scheme to go back and fix ’em.

Advertisement

Two-fer Tuesday: Living by Deacon Blue

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. Book of Romans, chapter 12, verse 2

One of the foundational concepts of being a child of God and a follower of Christ is to be in the world but not of the world.

In other words, we have to live here until we cash out. So, we have to be able to function. Have healthy relationships. Do productive work. Support our friends and family. Help those who need help. All that stuff and more.

But we aren’t supposed to get caught up in trying to master this world. Some of us will be great successes, but not all of us. And it shouldn’t be something that we get bent out of shape trying to pursue. This world is temporary and to worry about only the matters of the flesh leaves our souls highly vulnerable. In fact, it can put our salvation in jeaopardy because if we focus only on the world and never on the spirit, we will not seek connect to God, and that is how we as humans become born again and secure our salvation. Those who don’t worry about their spirits are not all that likely to become born again in the first place.

And once you are born again? What do you do then? Cut off the world?

Please. Have fun trying.

I don’t advocate retreating from the civilized world and living in a cabin. I don’t advocate living in a fantasy land that says we shouldn’t worry about anything in this world like our damage to the environment because that’s God job. I don’t recommend getting so preachy with folks that you cannot carry on a simple conversation about work or world events or the football game on Sunday.

Being born again means staying aware of your spriritual side and never letting the affairs of the world swallow that up. This is, of course, a silly thought to someone who doesn’t believe in a spiritual realm because to them, all there is to life is living in this world. They want to make the most of the time they have.

To some extent, those of us in the spirit also should relish our time here and make the years we have good ones. We have to make the most of our time too. But we can’t make it our sole concern. Also, making the most of our times means spending time on things related to the flesh when necessary but also spending time on matters of the spirit.

And if that makes us look silly or crazy to the non-believers around us, so be it. It’s not them we need to answer to in the end. It’s not them we should devote ourselves to pleasing.

Two-fer Tuesday: Living by Miz Pink

Livin’ large. Isn’t that what the TV shows and music videos and self-help gurus tell us we need to be doing? Whether emotionally or intellectually or financially or however else?

Achieve achieve achieve. Strive strive strive.

More more more.

Wow! Is that really what life is about? Always trying to keep up with the Jonses or the Smiths or the Duchovnies or the Nguyens?

Did we lose the ability to stop and smell the roses from time to time or are we too busy trying to grow the perfect rose garden to impress our neighbors.

I’m not against sucess ya know…don’t get me wrong. Success is cool.

But if we aren’t living for others alot of time are we living a life to be proud of?

The F-Word, Part 2

So, having gotten things started with The F-Word Prologue and The F-Word, Part 1, where are we now? Oh, yeah.

What can you do? What should you do? Why does God give a crap?

Let’s start with that last one.

I can’t speak for God, obviously, but here’s the thing: Sex—and I’m talking full-on sweaty penetration-oriented penis/vagina sex, preferably with lots of fun foreplay beforehand—is serious. Yeah, it’s fun. It’s pleasurable. But it’s also serious.

This is, first and foremost, an act that has the capability of creating someone who can potentially become a child of God; the ability to create a living, breathing, thinking, feeling, spirit-filled human. But aside from that, it is an act that can connect two people like nothing else can.

I can only speak from my own experience, but when I have sex with my wife, I don’t just have fun and get to blast off at some point. I become one being with my wife. At a certain point, there is no beginning or end to us; just a circle of being. There are lots of kinds of sexual contact we engage in, some of which I actually enjoy more from a physical gratification standpoint, but it is traditional sexual intercourse—where I enter my wife and she surrounds me (and not just physically)—that is a spiritual event. We stay together mostly because we connect intellectually, verbally, emotionally and in other non-sexual ways. But when we start drifting apart, nothing heals the growing rift like sex does. It jumpstarts us. It glues us back together.

Now, if Mrs. Blue kills me for sharing that, so be it. But it is important for me to say because it underscores to me that sexual intercourse is not simply physical, not even physical/emotional—but spiritual as well. I think God considers it a waste and an insult to perform that act with someone to whom you are not absolutely and completely committed. You might as well be pouring diamonds down a sewer or champagne down a pig’s throat.

Now, I say this from a position of experience. Mrs. Blue is the only woman I’ve really ever had sex with (there was only one other woman before her with whom I tried to have sex, and the less said about that encounter, the better for my self-esteem), and obviously, I married her. True, I fornicated with her for a while before that point. And that was, truly, sinful behavior. The fact I married her doesn’t erase the fact that I fornicated with her first, and used full-on sex for gratification and not spiritual connection as well. That said, there was certainly a point at which in our relationship I was not longer simply fornicating but connecting with the woman I was already married to in spirit. But that was a small portion—and a late portion—in our premarital period.

Truth be told, I kind of regret not having waited longer to have sex with Mrs. Blue. I feel like I squandered something for nearly two years and that I let God and myself down.

Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t have had sexual contact before going down the aisle and heading for our honeymoon. To be honest, in a day and age when marriages are no longer arranged for us, I think it is impractical and even dangerous to know nothing about how to please your partner. I just don’t think you should go all the way, at least not for a good long time. And I realize that to suggest that is silly, because 95% of people or more will have sex before marriage and the few that don’t probably weren’t inclined to do so anyway, even before I opened my big mouth about this.

So what am I saying is “acceptable,” or at least what seems to me to be acceptable for premarital nookie? Well, some of you may recall my Covering the Bases posts in May (click here for part 1 and click here for part 2). I suspect my thoughts there will give you a good idea of where I’m going with this. The closer you become and the closer you get to being engaged, the farther I think you should go.

In my ideal worldview, here is what you should do when you’re dating: Try to stay on “first base” as long as you can hold out. Which, frankly, probably won’t be very long. From there, move on to “second base” for a while and try to hold out as long as you can there. I mean, folks, if you’re serious about someone and not just screwing around, the more time you spend getting to know that person and stoking the fires, the better. Most of us are weak, but I would like to think that we can be stronger; I just wish I had been. When second base can no longer hold you over, move on to “third base.” Folks, there is an awful lot of fun to be had on third base. Seriously. We should be content to sit our asses there for a while in relationships.

About the time the two of you are seriously considering that you are a match for marriage, you ought to get engaged. Once you’re engaged, as far as I’m concerned, it’s probably time to stop worrying about whether it’s a sin to go to home plate. Yeah, if you can hold out until the honeymoon, great, but at this point in the game, if you’re truly serious and truly committed and truly in prayer about it all, you might as well make sure y’all know what you’re doing before you exchange rings.

Again, just my humble opinion. God may very well disagree with me on this. But the way society works these days and the way relationships go, it probably isn’t a great idea to surprise each other on the wedding night, because some surprises aren’t pleasant.