Have you ever woken up in a dream and realized that you're still asleep? Have you ever been convinced that you were awake only to find that were still in a dream? Have you dreamt of a future that never existed? What about about a past that never happened?
Last night I looked up at the moon in the dark night sky and I was utterly shocked when it came into my mind that I'm on a floating ball in space being circled by a moon that I can see only from the light of the sun reflecting off of it. Maybe we don't look up enough?
Sometimes I need to be reminded just how massive this whole thing is. When I'm scrambling to get to work, driving along, or paying for a soda at the gas station I can often get stuck into my own little tunnel vision life. Do this, do that. Insert laundry, repeat. Buy food, cook food, let the dog out. It's so monotonous at times.
We feel our way through life, don't you think? We collect conceptions, perceptions, relations, and emotional reactions. Sometimes ugly things happen and we get crusted burnt edges on the emotions and opinions. I've got lots of burnt edges. That's what happens when you live for a season on the edge of the darkness, toeing the edge, toying with the nightmare. You get a few burnt edges. Reminds me of Zechariah 3:1-4 (NIV):
Then he showed me Joshua the high priest standing before the angel of the Lord, and Satan standing at his right side to accuse him. 2 The Lord said to Satan, “The Lord rebuke you, Satan! The Lord, who has chosen Jerusalem, rebuke you! Is not this man a burning stick snatched from the fire?”
3 Now Joshua was dressed in filthy clothes as he stood before the angel. 4 The angel said to those who were standing before him, “Take off his filthy clothes.”
Then he said to Joshua, “See, I have taken away your sin, and I will put fine garments on you.”
I was just that burning stick, snatched from the fire. Burnt edges and all. Who is awake and who is asleep today? Can I see through the lies, the illusions of this world, this society? Can you?
And are you expecting to wake up, in another place? Is this life the dream? If so, it is a beautiful dream indeed. Who else but the Divine Architect could paint such beautiful pictures along the skyline day and night, and have so many children barely able to catch a glimpse?
I live in the wilderness of northern Wisconsin. The lands are flat from the glaciers, and the forests are endless. It is truly wondrous, and beautiful. The winters are awe inspiring. The sky during the winter months at night is often a blackness offset with shades of orange. The beauty and isolation is simply stunning. I recall frequently walking on the nights, allowing the sense of beauty, cold, and isolation overcome my very soul. Such a mystery. Such an enchanting feeling.
Is this world the dream? Perhaps in it's present state. But if so, it is indeed a beautiful dream. A few times I've tried to wake up, and found myself still awake in another dream.
I have not lost the wonder. I almost did though. Once by the reigns of addiction. And again by renouncement of joy.
I sought to enhance my wonder and joy with chemicals. It certainly did enhance and distort the feelings. When I took walks I could feel like I was in a different realm. I could see things in my mind. And it was fascinating, for a time. Then the merry path down the yellow brick road turned dark. The things I saw became more demented, more shades of grays and reds. I started to feel destruction. I started to get the sense of dark spirits.
Then the second time, after the gift of Jesus Christ had been received in my heart... I found myself in an interesting civilization indeed, what they call "evangelicalism." And oh my, oh my. I thought I had to renounce my wonder and my joy. No fun allowed, right? For a season I became fearful of what I might say. The desperate fear of making a theologically incorrect statement. It's similar to the liberal "politically correct" stuff. You can say this, you can't say that or we will punish you. Theologically correct bullies you might call them. But I have refused to be intimidated by these bullies, while at the same time remaining Biblically dedicated. There's middle roads somewhere around here.
Encountering Jesus Christ, for me, was much like waking up from a long nightmare. That feeling of relief, knowing that it's finally over is a gift I will cherish for all time.
Lately I dream of walking through mysterious forests. Not like the pine woods of Wisconsin, but lush green woods. Sometimes I'm jogging through dark woods, but I'm not afraid. I seem to run faster, and faster, and I'm filled with joy, overwhelmed with the eclipsing power of the journey. The beauty is incredible. Other times I'm walking across lakes, or swimming through bogs. Still other times I'm searching through old, mysterious churches, exploring the victorian passages, creaking open ancient doors, enraptured by the designs, the fixtures, the massive ballrooms, and steeple steps. And there are darker dreams as well, scarier things that I see. But I see no reason to explore those images at this moment.
I firmly believe God communicates to us through our dreams. But maybe not in the way you might be thinking. I don't mean by the seeing of visions of the future (though prophecy is biblical), or by him trying to tell us specific things to do or see (though he does communicate His will in special ways at times). But maybe in a more mysterious way, God is simply nudging us, reminding us of the mystery of his character. Maybe he is reminding us of the hidden spiritual realities sometimes lost in the dull drive to work, picking up the kids, processing claims, taking someones order, filing paperwork, and paying bills. Perhaps in our dreams, God reminds us that our lives are about more than the physical world; money, sex, time management, work, retirement savings; perhaps through the window of our dreams God awakens our hearts to ideas like wonder, beauty, awe, emotion, forgiveness, love, and the overarching themes of His view of reality.
I'll close this piece with a poem I wrote in 2011, before I became a Christian while I was in the throws of my own spiritual journey:
Like a snap back blow to the back of the head
It reeled me in and took me somewhere
I'd been forgetting for years maybe
Maybe I've never known at all.
Woke up in some strange society
Raised in the ashes of those behind me
So many places I knew places but what are places
People all these people but what are people who are people
A blue sky above like some quiet mystery
Picked up a thought and started building on a theory
Lost rebuilt and caught up in times that seemed to fly by like twisting leaves
It fell to the waste side somewhere, a quiet corner somewhere
A place that could remember itself and I'd remember
Years on and on learning lessons and burning bridges
Quiet farries tossing passengers overboard in the rivers of the life
Making quiet twisting pools of rainbow colors meshing into the fabric,
The fabric of our multidimensional existence
That we could never quite understand
We did try, I did try
It took us places we'd never thought we'd go
Dark and stranger than anyone knew
But the darkness taught us things that made us smile bright
“How could it be?” We would shout and ask.
This strange mystery, twisting in our hands.
We know not where it comes from or where it goes.
No frame of reference to refer,
No place or time that could be defined as real,
But that's ok, we did love it so,
The real truth came to us in dreams we had in our sleep
Of parallels and passages and labrinths that lead
To underground caverns where the messiah did dwell
The circles of existence came and went and manifested in physical form
So the most true seekers of us all, could, in our dreams see the faces of our makers
And the roots of all the complex twists that make up the fabric of destiny
The origins backwards flowing forward through our minds like magic
That put smiles on our faces as we sleep at night, and quiet looks of contemplation
As we seek through the endless synchronized spellbinding days.
Always in awe.
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Can you still wonder?
Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The first verse of the Bible says in the beginning God created. And the last verse of the Bible says:
Revelation 22:21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.
From the very beginning of time, space, reality itself in which we exist God the designer, the grand architect of energy and matter foresaw all that would happen. He knew before his voice called the stars and planets into existence that a redeemer would be needed for a wayward mankind.
Does that mean that God forced man into sin so he would need a redeemer? Most certainly not. God paradoxically gave 100% free will, yet could also foreknow every decision that would be made. Foreknowledge doesn't take away choice, why would it? Just because my architect knows the choices I'll freely choose to make, doesn't mean that I'm any less free to make them.
"Sin" is a taboo word, of course. It conjures pictures of angry religious people condemning homosexuals to the hell fires. But what is "sin"? What does it mean? Sin, the word, in it's simplest form would be a choice that hurts someone or something, instead of helping or being a neutral action. A father raping his daughter would be a sin. The girl will be traumatized for the rest of her life. The "sin" will most likely have long term effects on that girl as she grows up. She may become a prostitute or stripper, subconsciously concluding that her worth is found only and entirely in her sexual ability. She may become a shadow of a person, lapse into depression and later commit suicide. She might become a drug addict and overdose at age 37 in a crack house. And as the Bible says, the sins of the father are passed on to the son. People misinterpret that to think that a mean, cruel God punishes children for their parents mistakes. Of course that's not the case. What that verse does mean, is that when a father sins, very often his son will pick up on that behavior, start to duplicate it. Consider the example of cigarette smoking. Children of smoking parents are extremely likely to smoke later in life. Thus it's passed on, generation to generation. In the example of the girl raped by her father, she may in turn pass on that abuse to her children, and her children may then pass it on to their children. Do you see how destructive "sin" is?
So then, if we're to be frank and honest and let the emotion behind the word "sin" wash away, we can start to see that our planet, our home of 7 billion people or so has a serious problem that can be summed up in one word: sin.
Sin is doing the wrong thing when we know the right thing to do. We're all guilty, every single one of us are guilty of adding to the problems of our home rather than helping. Sometimes we do try to help. But more often we've hurt people. We've hurt family, friends, girlfriends, boyfriends, and ourselves. It's frank, it's bare, it's not a fun truth, but I never said it would be easy. But it is the truth.
The media, the companies, foundations, organizations, political parties are always in such a frenzied search: Why is our world so troubled? How can we solve it? What's the problem? Who is the enemy? How do we deal with this financial crisis? How do we deal with militants in the middle east? How do we end such institutional corruption? What about poverty? How can we stop AIDS? Is everything really getting better despite the evidence?
How often do we stop to see not the problems surrounding us, but the problems within us? Forgive me for so many questions. But often questions help us open up within our own assumptions.
In the history of Earth found in Genesis we see the beginning of the problem in the temptation and fall of the first humans. From there we can look to the historical texts of the Old Testament or to the written history of the world outside the Bible for evidence of the problem. Oppressive power structures a plenty, wars and genocides. One might expect these tragedies would become less and less frequent over the years, but as humanity began to gather into larger tribes and nations the wars only became that much more violent and brutal.
The problem was clear. Even under God's guidance and laws, the nation of Israel was unable to sustain a healthy love for truth and mercy. One generation would return to the Lord, another would depart. One can read through the histories of Chronicles, Kings, Samuel and see the problem very clearly. One generation follows the laws, another generation does a 180 and worships idols. Reminds me of 2 Chronicles 34:14-21:
14 While they were bringing out the money that had been taken into the temple of the Lord, Hilkiah the priest found the Book of the Law of the Lord that had been given through Moses. 15 Hilkiah said to Shaphan the secretary, “I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the Lord.” He gave it to Shaphan.
16 Then
Shaphan took the book to the king and reported to him: “Your officials
are doing everything that has been committed to them. 17 They have paid out the money that was in the temple of the Lord and have entrusted it to the supervisors and workers.” 18 Then
Shaphan the secretary informed the king, “Hilkiah the priest has given
me a book.” And Shaphan read from it in the presence of the king.
19 When the king heard the words of the Law, he tore his robes. 20 He gave these orders to Hilkiah, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Abdon son of Micah, Shaphan the secretary and Asaiah the king’s attendant: 21 “Go and inquire of the Lord for me and for the remnant in Israel and Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the Lord’s anger that is poured out on us because those who have gone before us have not kept the word of the Lord; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written in this book.”
The previous generation had gone so far from God that they had lost even the writings inspired by God! When Josiah became King his men had to search for it and found it in the rubble! This was God's nation on Earth, Israel, to be an example to the nations! Incredible, truly incredible.
To understand the big picture of the Bible, the Book, the multifaceted message of Christianity one must first understand the need for redemption.
God made man perfect. Man chose a path of self-deification. Man wanted to play god. Today, 2014, is the resulting culmination of that disastrous choice. The sin pile built up slowly from 6000 years ago, and now it's at it's height.
The Bible beginning in Genesis describes God introducing man to the problem: trying to live outside of god.
Early in the book of Job, the story of a man's suffering, Job prophetically spoke these words: "I know that my redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand on the earth" (Job 19:25).
During the story, the Old Testament God raised up his nation, Israel among the other nations to be his people. If they would trust in him, have faith in him, and live by his laws, all would be well. Israel could not do that however. God foreknew that as well.
We see the theme running through every book of the OT, of the need for a savior, a redeemer. In books like Isaiah and Joel the coming savior was prophesized as coming to redeem Israel. And he did.
The name of that savior is Jesus Christ. In the New Testament are the four gospels, the eye witness accounts of the life, death, and resurrection of God himself, Jesus Christ, come to redeem his people.
The cure for sin, for the woes of planet Earth is Jesus Christ. Why?
John 3:3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.”
On an individual, one on one basis, Jesus Christ redeems man. Let's say Joe Trouble, our exibit A reads my blog and decides he wants to accept Jesus Christ as savior. He's lived a normal human life, hurt some people, helped a few, but now he's found himself in a bit of a mess because life seems meaningless. He welcomes Jesus Christ into his heart, his life, and as a result he is born again. Assuming this is a legitimate conversion experience, at the moment he truly trusts and believes in Jesus he receives the Holy Spirit within and declared "sinless" in the eyes of God the Father. He has his ticket in hand. Regeneration is triggered by the presence of the Spirit and he begins to experience and embrace new motivations. The Spirit works in his heart to begin the process of sanctification and he begins to be a blessing to the same world he was once a curse to.
Joe now regularly donates to charity. Joe helps his neighbor lady take out her garbage and recyclables. Joe starts encouraging his coworkers. Joe starts calling his mother once a week to see how shes doing.
Do you see how one by one, person by person, the world changes through the transforming power of Jesus Christ? No other religion can offer that. All the others, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism are all about pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps "just try harder" mentality. "You've got to outweigh your bad deeds with good deeds" kind of life. We've seen how well that works. It simply doesn't.
It is solely in Christ that the world is made better. Of course the world doesn't want to hear that. They can't hear that. To be told "you are a sinner" is something no one wants to hear, no one. Who can love the truth when it is so difficult? It's a hard question to answer. But God won't force anyone into his loving embrace. He loves us too much. He gives us the choice. The gift of choice is so profound, so expansive, that there is no way we can understand it, because there is no way to comprehend not having a choice. Without choice, one might as well be a computer, a calculator, or a bologna sandwich. Even my dog has choices! Though sometimes I wish he didn't.
Do you understand? Can you comprehend?
I know I couldn't. My ears closed at the word "sin" or "Jesus." I could not face the truth. I couldn't come to Jesus until I had nowhere else to go. So be it. The only thing that matters to me is that I came. But only to Jesus. No one other name answered.
In the word of John Calvin: "We see that our whole salvation and all its parts are comprehended in
Christ (Acts 4:12). We should therefore take care not to derive the
least portion of it from anywhere else. It we seek salvation, we are
taught by the very name of Jesus that it is "of him" (1 Cor. 1:30). If
we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in his
annointing... if purity in his conception; if gentleness, it appears in
his birth... if newness of life, in his resurrection... In short, since
rich store of every kind of good abounds in him, let us drink our fill
from this fountain, and from no other."
The message of the Bible is first, the need for redemption from an internal brokeness, emptiness, lostness, and yes, sinfulness. The message of the Bible is second, and most importantly, the free gift of justification, regeneration, sanctification offered in the perfect life, perfect death, and perfect resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.
The answer to sin is not an idea, or a concept, but a person named Jesus Christ. The key to completion is Jesus Christ. The key to the endless problems of planet Earth is none other than Jesus Christ himself. Because the key to solving the problems on Earth is not a problem outside ourselves, but a problem within ourselves. The problem within is solved by Jesus Christ eternally, and the Holy Spirit presently. The problem of the physical world, the environment, the political and economic chaos is found in the renewing of the universe itself by God the Father described in the last book of the Bible called Revelation (Rev. 22:1-5). It is described like this:
Revelation 22:1-5 Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, as clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 down the middle of the great street of the city. On each side of the river stood the tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, yielding its fruit every month. And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will serve him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever.
Now this is not conceptual, or allegorical, but real. It's actual, and it will physically, actually take place. That is the great hope. That is the great reality. But God will not force anyone to take part in the renewing of our planet. Those who through their lives choose to ignore and reject God's offer of community with him, will then be disconnected from God. Admit it, it's the same thing you would do. If you had a friend living in your house for 90 years, constantly mocking you, ignoring you, telling you that they don't need you or want you, disobeying all your house rules, hurting your kids, your wife, your husband, the other people in the house, that person would be gone way before 90 years was up. I'd throw that person outside into the dark after about a week, probably less! It's not so "mean spirited and judgmental" when we think about it from his perspective, is it?
From Genesis to Revelation, the Bible helps us identify the problem with ourselves, the illness, and then provides the free gift of the cure, the cure being Jesus Christ and his work. If you don't know him, please begin to seek him out. Pray to him, ask him to reveal himself. If you do know him, congratulations! That is a wonderful thing. Choose happiness, despite the troubles you see around you. Because you are greatly blessed and awaiting the renewal of all things in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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Picture from the International Space Station over Great Britain, also catching a view of the Northern Lights on the horizon.
What about wonder? We can talk truth and philosophy all we want, but wonder is the backdrop that draws us. It binds us into the search. Don't you think? I am not primarily a logician, but I love logic. I'm not primarily a rationalist, but I love rational.
I'm primarily an intuitive. I subconsciously reel in toward the conscious clues of time, space, reality, nature, society, people, all into a cohesive band of thoughts and perceptions, systematizing into my prefrontal cortex, as a worldview. Is that you?
Modern Christianity has been described as dogmatic. Fair enough. Perhaps it has become that. R.C. Sproul wrote a book on the importance of the arts to Christianity, which suggests to me that perhaps we have abandoned the arts? Listen to some Christian rock and you'll be in full agreement with me on that one. Blah!
In addition, Ravi Zacharias wrote a book titled "Recapture the Wonder." To recapture something must mean, in the general sense of a movement, that it has somehow been lost.
I can see why. The theological bullies out there are pretty intense. The orthodoxy. The fear in my mind as I write sometimes, wondering if I might get pinned as a heretic if I don't phrase something in just the correct theological way. It damages the ability of the believer to creatively and wondrously interpret the scriptures.
Have you ever noticed how hard it is to put together a systematic theology that isn't at least somewhat contradictory or very often it doesn't seem quite, quite right? Do you know why?
I think I know why. Point one, maybe it was never meant to be systematized. Point two, the startling coalescence of contrarieties, the mystery of the wide, deep depths and finely tuned breadths of the message of the Bible, the cross, the gospels, is so powerful, so mysterious, so groundbreaking, so variable, so multifaceted, and multidimensional; and so truly the revelation of the divine architect of the universe that it cannot be understood fully on a purely rational systematic level. It must be invibed on an intuitive level. That takes wonder, and imagination.
So here are two videos that may just capture some of the wonder of the world we live in. Enjoy.
(Click play on the video, and then in the lower right corner you can make the video full screen if you'd like)
1. The North Lights
2. Fly on wings like Eagles
3. Time Lapses of Natural World
4. Formation of a Snowflake
5. Time Lapse of our Home from Orbit at International Space Station
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In five days I'll be celebrating two years clean and sober, in the care of Jesus Christ. It's been an amazing and challenging ride thus far. I'm sure it'll be constantly changing, as it has been since day 1 of hope.
There are so many memories over my life. Yet they fade, slowly, until I can hardly remember any of my life. I live in the present. Yet I tend to project myself into the future. Is that you as well? I tend to imagine and write about who I'd like to be, and without even realizing it, I tend to project my ideal self into the future and see it come to fruition. I live by my core values, and try to see them translated into the physical world around me to my satisfaction. That is the core of being a dreamer-idealist (INFP).
I remember a book my mother read me as a child. It was called "Owl Moon." It was the story of a father and son traveling out into a winter night, into the woods, to spot owls. The Owl Moon story captured my curiosity in describing emotion through writing. It captured my imagination. Later I began writing, putting together novels and studying the classics.
Fast forward fifteen years, and I was dreaming of chasing an owl into a dark forest. I was searching for a meadow of golden sunlight. The peace I felt there in the dream was the most real sensation of my life. I've always had the clearest dreams. Often I'd write about the dreams I had. This time I wrote an entire book about that journey, into a beautiful, dangerous forest. I called it Jacob and the Meadow. Perhaps the forest in that dream was drug addiction. Or simply a description of my own inward spiritual journey. Or maybe something else. It's hard to say.
Naturalists think all reality can be described in purely physical terms. But that is not what I've seen. That is not what corresponds with reality. Instead I see a world rich with symbolism. We live in a world filled with allegory, metaphor, and foreshadowing.
So it's been nearly two years. It's also been a constant struggle. But no one said it would be easy, least of all, Jesus himself. Jesus said count the cost. Because it ain't easy. But wow, is it worth it.
Transformation! Power! Intense, gritty, real struggle! Moments sublime with intervals hilarious. Can we make it? I believe we can. I can, with some divine charity. Perhaps the first story has ended, of Jacob and his search for the Meadow. If so, has the second story now begun? I wrote three books in those delusion-filled, sleepy times of my life. I was lost on the road, asking questions like "Where do I go from here?" and "What is the meaning of all this?"
The second story began in a floating city in the clouds. Certainly indicative of the mind caught up in the altered states of dissociative hypnotics. The first chapter climaxed with the main character leaping from the city in the clouds and breaking his shoulder landing on a broken wasteland below. Below an angel appeared and healed his shoulder. The barren wasteland below, was, as Morpheus from the Matrix movies might put it "the desert of the real." Inevitably when the drug addict comes clean of the drugs, he must face the reality of what has happened to his own life and his own self. Entire sections of the mind have been ignored. Others have grown out of control. Chemicals are off balance, and the outworking is a terrible sight to behold.
The second story really cataloged the story of an estranged man from a different place discovering a tattered, broken land full of chaos and trouble. The land itself with a sickness upon it, the various settlements and cities broken and corrupted, divided and leaderless. Add to that, also facing an inevitable onslaught from the powers behind the floating city, a kingdom called "Rem."
It was really a double allegory similar to Tolkien's middle earth books. The city in the clouds and the broken land below represented the shattered mind of a drug addict, my own, and the journey to escape that. Yet it also represented an external situation I was beginning to perceive in the world around me, a powerful elite across the Earth keeping populations in a dumbed down state of servitude, whether directly or indirectly. Yet in a third sort of "inverse allegory" the main character was in the city in the clouds dreaming about the real world below. That is another reference to drug addiction, in that once a drug addict is securely placed within the world of delusion and lie (the tripping, high state), the previous life of sobriety and normalcy becomes the far away dream world that doesn't seem real any longer. And once far enough within, hard to even remember.
The second story chronicles the journey of David aka Jacob (in each of the three stories the same character receives a new name) as he stumbles about from city to city, encountering people and places he half remembers from his dreams. The main character works to improve the settlements, instill hope in them, and help them to unite together. Ironically this is similar to the journey of one lost in drugs and delusion, to put together his life again.
In the past two years I've slowly rediscovered who I am, traveling from area to area of my own interests and goals, beliefs and ideals, gathering them together to recreate who I am. The toll of drug addiction and alcoholism is unspeakably terrible. One might wish for pity sake that you just let the poor addict have a quick death from the start.
Because the addict loses everything, slowly, painstakingly, himself divided, part of him wanting to stop and try to recover, but the greater majority insisting on more drug, more drug, more drug. It's like slowly losing a war. Piece by piece your outer life is destroyed. Car gone, on probation, off probation, in jail, new charges, lost job, family starts slowly backing away, one by one friends disappear, 1, then another, two more, and soon all. People start to hate you for your behavior. Especially when they loved you deeply. Piece by piece, life itself slips away.
One by one, I saw myself violate my own deepest held convictions. I saw my own strength fail time and again. I would be able to quit for a month, relapse. I would quit for another week, relapse. I would get into recovery for 4 months, relapse. Then even a full year, relapse. Probably the worst part was wanting to quit, but at the same time not wanting to quit. Or put another way, wanting to quit but not quite enough to convince myself to take an action or make a change. And knowing, painstakingly knowing that there was no way out. Expecting and even looking forward to death. Then when death wouldn't come through the addiction, attempting suicide through more direct means. And failing. Ending up in a mental hospital. Watching your own dad testify against your ability to take care of yourself in a court room. Being raped by a drug addict. The insults and injuries never ended. The icing on the cake of course, is the look in the eyes of counselors, nurses, doctors, family, and friends. The look that says "you're bad, you're evil. just stop already." I remember a nice Catholic lady once said "damn you" as I pleaded for mercy from a grocery store owner who had caught me shoplifting.
But occasionally there were people like Father Marion, displaying the love of Christ. You could search his eyes and there was not even a hint of judgment. Just love. And they reminded you, pointed you directly to Jesus Christ himself.
I had tried so many times on my own power and my own strength. I had failed. I had wanted to show God I didn't need him. But the truth is, I need God. Just as much today two years later as the first day of my new life. When I finally called out to Jesus Christ, in earnest, brutally crying out for help, at the bottom, he suddenly made the impossible possible.
At the outset of the 3rd story, the main character was given a new name, Joshua, and the angel who was protecting him and guiding him through the wastelands gave him a suit of armor, shield, and sword. Much like a Christian receives the imputed righteousness of Christ at his moment of believing. So the third book began the story of a redeemed young man, with united armies to take on the evil he saw around him. (Side note: If you want to read any of those three stories click here, but I can't vouch for how coherent that reading experience will be.)
And so in my own life, in the past two years I've seen myself grow and change, from a broken, lost, hopeless young man, to a soldier of Christ, encouraging a world to love Christ with a radical love and defend the truth that we can so admire in the books of the Bible. That is the literal, substantive transformational power of Jesus Christ, who is really, truly, God.
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