Pray for me

I haven't much to say on this thing, but I think it'll be good anyway to at least write something. So here's a little something for you, friends and stalkers alike.

I went to bed right when I got home from school yesterday afternoon, at about three. Woke up at two in the morning, and in the next several hours stayed up and watched four movies (illegally, I might add).

I later went over to David's house to help him and Richard and Samuel and Ben clean and set up for their show, to be starting at 6 (It actually started at about 8).

Animal Sounds was awesome, as were Jamie Randolph and his boys. Yep, both bands had me dancin' the entire time.

And then something I wasn't expecting.... Richard had just driven me home and we were sitting in the car, and he said to me, "I don't think you're a Christian." He wasn't judgmental about it, he was just being honest, as my friend.

It was weird because I thought he of all people would be the one to be saying, "JP's just going through a period of doubt. He's definitely the Lord's." But no. He told me he thinks I'm not a Christian, and while this thought has been in his head for the last three months, it just "solidified" tonight. I asked him why he felt this way and all these other questions... I was so shocked. I don't think I've ever been so caught off guard in my life...

He told me why. I won't go into details. But basically, he thinks I want to live in sin, and that while I'm looking and searching and all that, I have this agenda, that I am seeking to justify my sin...

Now I want to be a Christian, but I think I only want to be one so that I can be assured I'm not going to suffer eternally in hell when I die, and I think that's the wrong reason. Richard told me to ask myself if I really want to know God, or if I ever have... But I just don't know if that's possible. I can only read about him, and think about him, and cry to him, and yell at him, and pray to him... But can I know him? I don't know... Richard says he knows him, but I just don't know... I just don't know...

Please, please pray for me. If what you, Christian, follower of Christ, believe is true, pray for me. Because I don't want to suffer. I don't want to suffer.

To God, if you are the God of the Bible, and you are good as you say, prove it to me. Prove to me you're not to blame. If I am to blame God, prove that to me. And I will repent! I will repent! I will lay my life down and leave the hideous things of this world and I will follow you.

late at night
my brain doesn't treat me right
and so
what I have written below
makes perfect sense:

blowing inside my room is the wind. rinse.

(sorry. had to make it rhyme somehow)

OW!

Thinking About Then and Now

The first time I met you, I thought to myself,

“What a pretentious, sad little thing,”

except, I probably had no idea at the time

what “pretentious” meant.

Looking back,

I was the pretentious one.

I loved myself

and you were everything I wasn’t,

and I didn’t like what you were

because you were different from me.

But I only felt that way

for…maybe a day?

Soon we were friends and talking all the time,

and walking all the time to class and lunch,

and eating all the time, and arguing all the time,

and discussing our views on Christians and politics.

By this time,

I was very infatuated with you.

I remember one night

we talked for hours on the phone,

or rather, I listened for hours

to you sleepily go on and on about everything.

And by this time, I was a different kid,

thanks to you and your weird point of view.

You were the first girl I ever asked to a dance,

and I wasn’t your first boy to ask you to a dance,

and we danced at that dance, actually we grinded,

and it was also my first time to grind.

One day you became a Christian,

and all the sudden you were hardcore for Jesus.

And you were still very liberal, and you still drank,

and you still cussed and still had mom probs…

But you also became so much nicer,

and told me you loved your mom.

And while I had told you before that I was a Christian,

I don’t think I actually loved Jesus.

But that soon changed when I met some people

and sang “It was my sin that held him there…”

and cried like a baby and started living

like Jesus was by best friend, and like I loved everybody.

But somewhere in there,

we stopped walking and talking together.

It got to the point where we weren’t friends anymore,

just fake friends who said “hi” in passing,

and I’ll never know why

and neither will you probably.

For awhile I guess we just

did our own thing.

And then a year later we start hanging out again,

and we both are obsessed with beauty and God,

and we both are goofy, and we both are there for each other

and soon we are best friends again.

And now we’re at this point,

and you’ll be going away soon,

and I just want to spend every day with you,

and go to little “guy and his guitar” shows with you

and go get coffee and listen to the bad music that come on,

and make fun of it with you and share a cookie that you bought.

And I just want to spend these last few months

Just spending my time with you.

Close Your Eyes and See... (And a Nice Long Spiel About God)

[So this is something I wrote awhile back after, well, spending some time to myself with my "eyes wide shut." And, well, I kinda like it. Hope you do as well.]

"There is an alternate universe inside every one of us. Just go outside and lie down and look up into the sun and close your eyes...

Do you see it? The red mist, the dancing shapes and specks of colors...the pulsing shadows...the calmness... And if you keep your eyes shut long enough, the red mist may slowly transform into a light green... If you gently massage your eyeballs, on either side may appear silent explosions of color, a dark and hazy blue... It's little things like this that make me wonder at the mind of God, how brilliantly beautiful and beautifully brilliant His mind really is! I don't so much marvel at the things visible and obvious (though, who am I kidding? Orchids...very visible. VERY COOL. And how bout that milky smoke from a cigarette? Oh yeah...), but the things no one else necessarily sees but me...? I love that. The thought that we all, to some degree, do see things differently. We all access things so uniquely to the rest... Amazing really. That's all I have to say. Time to get back to the universe inside me..."


So I wrote that awhile back. When I was on fire for my existence and God and all that jazz.

But things aren't the same anymore. While still I marvel at the things of this world, and do see a creation, and therefore an Artist... I see no goodness in the artist. In fact I see God now as this mad (daft, crazy, loony, psycho, maniacal) puppet master up in the sky, a genius inventor, a disturbed painter of all things beautiful (and all things twisted) whose objective is to torment the world. The atheists, the agnostics, the Christians, the Buddhists, the Jews, the Nihilists, the Existentialists, the Muslims, the Hindus, the whites and the blacks and the yellows and the spades and the homosexuals and the straights....all who ultimately, I believe (or do I? do I in actuality only want to believe in this fantasy, so that I no longer will have to adhere to the "moral code," the "Law," etc?) are deserving of heaven (or maybe a better term would be eternal happiness, or rest), contrary to the Bible on which I've been raised all my life, which teaches all men are by default totally depraved and totally helpless and totally deserving of hell. And these people, us, the humans, were created by an all-knowing, all-powerful, sovereign, "good" God who put a tree in a garden to "test" us, a test he knew we ultimately would fail. And so we did, ultimately, fall. And thus sin entered the world. For which we were held responsible. For which was created as a result a place of eternal anguish, a place called hell, as punishment. And so God made hell. And then God, to entertain himself and make himself seem good (as if it mattered what we thought) sent his Son to die for us. And then we could, upon physical death, be in heaven with God forever... Do you see my problem? Do you possibly see THE problem with this? It's all God's fault, yet we have been brainwashed, in a sense, or rather "conditioned," to believe it's our fault and we are deserving of hell. But people, right now I am struggling very much with this concept. I look at Jesus, and love him. Indeed I talk about him as if he is alive. I cry when I sing songs about the man...but I have a hard time believing in GOD. The powerful entity "to whom and from whom are all things..."

I have dealt with much embarrassing sins in my life which I cannot name because I am not at peace with myself and the world and therefore am too weak to name them specifically. But all I can say is during all these trials I tried and tried and tried to remain in dialogue with God, and I asked and asked and asked that he take away all of this. And he remained silent. He did not act. The God I believed in, the One who could do anything, "because he IS God," seemed incapable of stopping me. And still he has not taken away my sufferings. My disgusting, enslaving tendencies.
He has only seemed to say, "Quit whining about your problems and do something about it. I'm not going to just stop the order of things for YOU, JP. I work miracles for cancer. But come on, seriously? Get a grip, JP. This is something YOU can help."

"But God!! I can't!! I need help!!"

Silence.

Still, I love Jesus. But I hate God. And anyone who knows theology and about the Triune God, the Three in One...would no that statement doesn't make sense. But that's really the only way I can describe it.

And then something else happens. On my birthday, on prom night, on the way to meet up with our group at Brooklyn Bridge, we wreck. We're driving along Raleigh-Lagrange out in Eads, and it has just rained, the road is wet and slippery...distraction...we wreck. The car, my car, wraps around a pole (telephone pole?) and into a ditch. And after the bumping around and shattering of glass and world spinning madly around... I've never been so scared in my life. I was prepared to look over at Anna and see her face faceless and bloody and call out to her, "Anna!" and get nothing out of her. I was afraid that I had killed my dearest friend. And when I looked over to her, I saw she was fine. Not even a scratch. Still beautiful and untouched...her dress was not even wrinkled. And we got out fine... But I was furious (You'd think I'd be happy to be alive and happy for her as well, but I'm selfish and foolish and just an all-around awful person), with God, myself, the sight of my car....I was furious for not having died on impact, furious for still being trapped in this mysterious world that offers no answer...

"WHAT THE FUCK GOD!!!" I cried. Anna and Tim and Jessica (my two precious friends who, bless their hearts, stopped and waited with us) walked away quickly from me. I desperately whined, a whisper, looking straight up into the clouds as if I might actually seem him there, "Are you just trying to get me, God? Huh? Is that it God?" I clenched my teeth, "You just wanna fuck with me? ..... FUCK!!!" (I swear I don't normally swear so much.) I put a nice dent in the side of my already-banged-up car with my nice white shiny dance shoe.

Anyway, eventually the ambulance came (no need for that, but thanks anyway, pizza delivery boy). Then the parents came. They were all cool, just glad both me and Anna were okay. Then the Sheriff and his boys got there. And we ended up waiting around (and blah blah blah). We eventually ended up going to Prom anyway. And we sorta had fun. But that's not the point.

People keep saying we're blessed to be alive. And I say to myself, "whatever." God cause that wreck to happen and God kept us alive and for what? So I could keep screaming at him? Because that's all I ever do. I honestly wish he wasn't here, but He is. And I'm forced to deal with that. I'm a sinner. But I don't love God in the slightest.

I'll be reading Bertrand Russel's Why I'm Not a Christian soon, hopefully I'll get some answers from that guy. Hopefully I'll come to the conclusion that God is a superstition and prayer and the mentioning of Christian terms is just a bad habit that I'll have to break... I hope that's the case. But if it's not the case, well, I'd like to not go to hell.

I dunno, if you who are reading are a Christian, pray for me please.

L'abri Conference 'n Thangs

WELL I MADE SOME CHANGES SO THAT THE WEBSITE LINKS WOULD WORK THIS TIME.....................

What's a "L'abri?"

I'll use the description L'abri itself gives:

L'Abri is a French word that means shelter. The first L'Abri community was founded in Switzerland in 1955 by Dr. Francis Schaeffer and his wife, Edith. Dr. Schaeffer was a Christian theologian and philosopher who also authored a number of books on theology, philosophy, general culture and the arts.

The L'Abri communities are study centers in Europe, Asia and America where individuals have the opportunity to seek answers to honest questions about God and the significance of human life. L'Abri believes that Christianity speaks to all aspects of life.

So that's what L'abri is.

L'abri Conference is affiliated then with, of course, L'abri, as well as with several different churches and Christian organizations. And a bunch of different speakers, pastors, professors, etc., come and lecture on different things, such as "cynicism in Christians" or "echoes of redemption in film" or "instrumental faith: why it's wrong"....

And it was incredible. I learned so much, particularly from Edith Reitsema and Denis Haack. Edith Reitsema offered a workshop, "Help for Cynical Christians," and Denis Haack gave a plenary lecture (where everybody at the conference gathered to listen) on film, and "echoes of redemption" in many, many movies. Of course he used Shawshank Redemption. But then he also talked about American Beauty, which I was psyched about. I got to talk more to him later in one of his workshops in which he and his film-maker friend, Toddy Burton, discussed different things about film and culture with the audience/class.

Toddy Burton is really cool, a good filmmaker and a solid follower of Jesus. We got to watch her short film "The Aviatrix." It's really good. I suggest you go watch it here.

Anyway, I got to stay and talk to Denis Haack for about fifteen minutes after his workshop. After talking to him further and discussing film with him, and hearing his views on the subject, which uncannily matched my own views, I told him that I wished I could talk to him for hours...And I will probably get to do just that next year, because Mr. Hodges told me I would be able to if I really wanted to, next year, when he and I and the other students of the Center for Western Studies come up to L'abri for two weeks.

If you want to find out more about Denis Haack, you can go to his blog here, or you check out his ministry's (Ransom Fellowship) website here.

That's all I got today. I'm tired from the twelve-hour drive back home.

i'm a selfish human being

it is two-thirty and i am tired. too tired to care about capitalization. to tired to care about a good title. too tired to even attempt to read brave new world chapter ten. too tired to text. too tired to talk. too tired to eat. too tired to think about what i'm going to draw tomorrow after school. too tired to think about what work i'll have to make up for school when i return from l'abri conference. too tired to brush my teeth. too tired to take my jacket off. or my pants. or my ecs parker polo. or my socks. or my glasses. too tired to get up and walk to my bed. to tired to turn off the computer. too tired to go back and see if i misspelled anything. too tired to care. about anything. except this blog. because i'll always care about myself and writing about me because i'm a selfish human being. and i am too tired to rest my fingers from all this typing nonsense because of inertia. a body at rest stays at rest and a body in motion stays in motion and i am just way too in motion right now but if i don't get off this soon my eyelids will drop all the way to the floor and i might even cease to exist so i better get off now or so help me

Doubt

Lately I have been doubting whether or not it is really possible to have a relationship with God. Lately in prayer I have felt like a fool, like I have been talking to air all the time. Like a crazy person.

So I count it a blessing that today in class my Bible teacher, Mr. Brink, tackled the topic of "doubt." He submitted to his students that, for the Christian, to struggle with doubt is a good thing, that for the Christian to doubt his salvation, his faith in Christ, is a mark of a true Christian and that it shows that he "cares" about what he believes. Struggling with doubt implies a certain desperation and reverence. Struggles are good.

I know that deep in my heart I believe that, that to struggle with doubt is a good thing.

But I still feel like everything I have been living for, everything I have been taught since birth, everything I have ever loved, all my "prayers," all the times I have tried to witness to people...is all rubbish! And I am scared! I hate it! I feel like my "skeptic" friends may have it down when they say there is no difference really between people saying "I hope...etc" and "I pray...etc." I know without a doubt that there is a God. But I feel as though He is impersonal... I long to be able to say, "I have a relationship with God. I know the King of the Universe." And I know without a doubt that Jesus Christ of Nazareth did literally, bodily and spiritually, resurrect Himself from the dead. I know that He is God the Son. I am just doubting whether I really do know Him, or whether or not it is even possible to really know Him.

What does it even mean to know Jesus? Does it mean that through denying yourself and living humbly and loving your neighbors and seeking righteousness...through doing these things do you begin to know Jesus? Because that's how Jesus lived? Wouldn't that then mean that to know him just means to try to feel for Him? I want to feel like so many have seemed to feel, as though He is right there with me, holding my hand, talking to me. But no! I feel like I just feel good by trying to live like Him and it's not a relationship at all! I feel like it is completely one-sided. Like I'm doing everything, and "prayers answered" are just by chance. As if nonbelievers who merely "hope" and believers who "pray" are really no different. I want so bad to have a real relationship with Jesus, with God. And I want so bad to know that my prayers really are not just me venting to the air.

I just want Him. And I want to understand and know Him. Not just try to empathize with Him, but really to know Him. Like I know my friends Richard, and Seth, and Anna, etc. I want to know Him better than I know them, like the Bible says I can. It's just not happening with me and I don't know what's up.

I just want to know Him. I just want to walk and talk with Him, and hold his hand, and see His face.

Perhaps they are right when they say that people pray to "work things out." To vent. That it's a healthy way to understand yourself. I'm just not sure, to be honest. Like I said, I'm in such doubt. And though it may be a good thing for me to be wrestling with this, it sure as hell doesn't feel like it.

I'm supposed to face suffering with joy--with the "presence of Christ." How do I face doubting my relationship with Christ with His presence, when I'm not even sure if He is present?

I'm sorry, I know this must be hard to read. It must be really depressing. Just pray for me I guess. And if you know something I don't, about having a real personal relationship with Christ that doesn't involve sharing all your feelings out loud to yourself or just reading the Bible or loving others--or if I'm just doing all these things the wrong way-- please help me.

I want to know you

I want to hear your voice...

I want to touch you

I want to see your face...