twenty one pilots: Trees (Audio)

I recently realized how much this song goes with my blog post below on Jonah & Elijah.

Self-Pity & Apathy: The Personal Space of God, Elijah and Jonah

We all have our personal space.  These zones or boundaries, as Edward Hall in 1966 observed, measured personal space to be anything less than 1.5ft.  The zones vary from culture to culture and personal experience.  I'm sure an introvert like me has a different length of personal space than an extrovert.

I say all this because something made me think about the personal space we tend to give God or not give God.  What zone is God in our lives.  For an atheist it will be different than for a theist or Christian.  However, even for a Christian who has the Holy Spirit in his or her heart, do we at times try to push away or even run away from God and seek seclusion from Him?  From the story of one such as Jonah that seems to be true.  As a believer there are times we can run away from God or seek to fill our lives with things of the world and/or the flesh  to push God  to the fringes of not just our intimate space where He is foremost in our thoughts, prayers, worship, and love, but the fringes of personal space and even social space.  A Christian can be like the atheist and seek to push God into just the "public space" of church or the general public.  Even then the Christian or run away believer who has become more theist or agnostic may seek to push away or run away from God than the atheist or agnostic who has never believed and be more open to the things of God.

In the stories of both Elijah and Jonah, both men at some point in their story and walk with God run into a moment of severe self-pity and apathy about their situation and God's heart for others.  It is in this moment that they either are given or find the solace of God and a shaded tree.  To me a shade can be something that isn't just a covering, but the shadow of a tree is a salve for the skin against a sometimes harsh sun.  Something so large casts a shadow that touches the intimacy of our space, our skin, our thoughts and our well-being.  Even in scripture the shadow of His wing (Psalm 91:4) is symbolic of His protection and care. Elijah and Jonah both have become apathetic toward God's people, frustrated with their situation, and both seek death from God.  It is in this that they both seek shelter and recluse from the city.  Elijah finds a tree to sleep under and God through His angel provides and takes care of Elijah.  Jonah builds himself a shelter, but God gives him more shade through a miraculous tree to give Jonah.  God goes to where they are at, their low point and seeks to comfort them.  The Holy Spirit does the same for us everyday.  Seeking to comfort.  Jesus did the same to Peter in seeking to minister and talk to Peter after his bitter betrayal toward Jesus.  Yet, Elijah enters into this care and rest with a self-pity and apathy that still sorrowed for the people who rejected God.  Jonah enters into this care and rest with self-pity and apathy that gives no sorrow for the people who do not know God, but sorrow for himself.  It is self-focused, but yet God still seeks to reach out to Jonah, to teach Jonah, to love upon and comfort Jonah like a spoiled child who doesn't see the greater picture beyond his own nose.  Is it in this where God seeks to both teach each men about His nature.



God sought to enter and be with them to comfort them in that very personal space.  Elijah sought to let him in by not seeking his own flesh, but mourning the faithlessness of others and allowing God to teach him.  Jonah while seeking to flee from God to the point of death still sits and pushes God from the intimacy of his heart by seeking to fill his heart of selfish flesh and possibly not listening to what God is trying to teach him.  Bill LaClair states that God's presence is the cure for spiritual apathy.  I believe this to be true, but of the Christian continues to push out God from his or her personal space, then God's presence cannot be utilized by that believer.  The Holy Spirit continues to mourn over the sin and allow the believer to go further astray if that is what he or she seeks.

I have felt a certain dose of self-pity and apathy this last month.  It has been a mixed bag of both being in the flesh and selfish and pushing God further out and also seeking His close intimacy to learn about His nature, to allow Him to heal me, to comfort me, and to guide me.  Many times I have overlooked His comfort in its many forms or taken it for granted.   Then I may cry about my situation when that comfort or "shade" is gone like Jonah and go into more self-pity rather than acknowledging His goodness of gifts and mourning for those who reject the Gifts He brings and offers freely.

Ana, Mia, & North Korea (revisited)

A friend of mine wanted to read this blog post I posted many moons ago.  So here it is:

This is what I get for surfing through xanga.  I was just looking at some of my blogrings Books, Books,&More Books and I checked out one of the blogs that seemed interesting called "Tear in ur eyes".  I was looking through her blogrings and I saw an interesting blogring called "Korean Anas."  Ok, I'm not a complete idiot, but I seriously didn't know what this blogring was about for like the first 5 minutes.  Then a word kept coming up in names and descriptions: "skinny."  Then it dawned on me and I was a little sickened.  I was sad just as I am always sad when I come upon a woman/girls blog specifically accounting their desire to be skinny and readily affirming their Anorexiaand/or Bulimia.  I was aware of the nick name Ana, but Mia was a new one to me.  What cute ways of describing such a sick act to afflict upon ones self.  As I looked through a few of the blogs and commented on one of them I started to think about this issue.

My ex g/f is Korean-American.  She was a very skinny girl at one time, but through college she did take on some weight.  I remember she would tell me how her Korean mother would say such rude remarks concerning her weight that would hurt her feelings deeply.  She struggled with her weight and body image issues, but it was never something that concerned me and my attraction to her.  She was not fat, but she was not skinny.  I would do my best to help her in that area and encourage her.  My primary concern was that she was "healthy" and the weight issue is secondary.  They are not necessarily the same thing.  A person can eat very well,  not go to the gym, and be "healthy."  Health is something that when you lose it, it is very difficult or impossible to gain back.  Weight can come and go. 

It also made me think of this western culture.  We create some of the worse food to eat that causes so much weight and then we worship thin.  It is a self-deprecation and self-worship to the point of uber-narcissim.  We love our "bad eating habits" and we "love being thin."  The sad part is we are exporting not only our bad eating habits, but our western narcissism to the East. 

The picture on the right above is from this article:

http://www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/varsity/9603/eat.htm Hong Kong

Also these articles:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2978216.stm Inidia

Anorexia Growing in Asia

For me, my main concern has been about the plight of North Koreans and specifically those starving in North Korea.  The picture on the left and especially the one picture in the middle shows a starving North Korean woman and her emaciated body.  This is in stark contrast to the picture on the right where we in the West can "chose" to emaciate ourselves for body image reasons (no matter the health problems later or then).  I don't have to point out the irony. 

The brain is a powerful thing.  I should know as someone who once struggled with anxiety attacks.  If you tell yourself something and believe it to a certian extent it is a huge struggle to confront those "natural thoughts" with logic that contradicts your way of thinking.  There are people who have a fear of many things that are irrational, but it is rational in their mind.  It is a process of unhinging that.  But on top of confronting your irrational thoughts, you need rational thoughts to replace them.  Faith (although some will say another irrational thought) in Christ helped me overcome my anxiety attacks by seeing a true prespective of who I am in Christ and what I can confront in Him.  I pray for these girls that put themselves through such horrible things, but really how far are any of us from them?

Originally posted January 29, 2008

I Don't Like Bullies

Who is the bigger bully? That is the question.  Life is not cut across simple lines that separate good and evil or bully and victim.  It is not that good or evil doesn't exist nor is it true that a bully or a victim does not exist in pure form.  However, human nature corrupted as it is can at one moment make the victim into the bully.  

Thus, in self reflecting upon the world news and national and international stories I often wonder why I pick one side over the other.  It's not always clear cut.  For example, the recent stories about the protests in Turkey.  You have the ruling prime minister of Turkey, Erdogan who at once is a very conservative Muslim and free market capitalist.  As Doug Saunders states in his opinion article, "A New Middle East Can be Seen Through the Tear Gas of Istanbul," that Erdogan and his supporters are "Islamic Calvinists" in the sense of being deeply conservative, but very capitalist as well.  The old opposition being both nationalist, ethnocentric and supporters of the military.  The new opposition is a mishmash of smaller groups from anarchists, but also includes a new middle class that is protesting against new laws that are masked sharia and authoritarian actions against the freedom of the press.  So just by my writing you can see I lean more in support of the protest movement which looks a bit more like the "U.S. Occupy Movement" and stand against a capitalist like Erdogan who has helped Turkey's economy open up and grow.  Why is this so? 

On a basic level, the protesters in Turkey are not like the Occupy movement in the sense that they are fighting for basic rights of life and liberty.  For freedom of speech and press.  Additionally, Edrogan's Islamic conservatism is parallel, but not the same as Christian or Republican conservatism as it's basis is Sharia Law. 

However, deeper than this for myself is the core of my Libertarian and Natural Law ideology where I see bullies.  So lets define a bully at least what I define as a bully. Bully generally defined is the use of force or coercion to physically hurt or intimidate one person or a group by one person, small group or mob through harassment, threat, assault, or coercion. I will add that it's goal is to impose power to gain influence, to obtain something, to control others, and/or to gain a strategic advantage that hinders a persons  or a groups God given basic rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Without my additional definition you could almost make any group a bully.  You could make the 1960 Civil Rights Movement bullies or the U.S. during the Revolutionary War.    Those sought to gain the freedom natural to them of religious and human rights and not to gain or create more rights.  To decrees the abuse of government on peoples lives.  To stop one bully from controlling the life of another or basically taking that life away at whim.

This doesn't mean that today's victim cannot become tomorrows bully.  The U.S. of today is not innocent and has trampled on peoples rights since the Revolutionary War and the Civil Rights Movement has indirectly created reverse discrimination.  This also does not mean that it will always be clear cut who is the bully and who is the victim in any one situation.  Communists fighting against fascists means the winner is a lose, lose situation for those who fall under the control of the winner.  Also a state of nature or anarchy is not the answer toward authoritarianism or bullies.  Humans, while made in the image of God and exhibits those attributes, is also inherently a bully.  As the Stanford Prison Experiment, Abu Ghraib,  and the Rwandan Genocide has shown that men and women can be corrupted by power, control and violence. Human's sin and act like bullies.

Thus, watching the movie Captain America a few years ago, the young Steve Rogers played by Chris Evans said something that hit home with me, "I don't like bullies.  I don't care where they're from."  This simple quote from a film helped me understand and explain my world view better than just saying I'm a libertarian, I'm an American, I'm a Republican, or even saying I'm a Christian as all of those mean so many different things to so many different people.  Not that those things don't define me and my views, but just adding those adjectives to myself does not explain or define why I tend to support one group over another or have mixed feelings about some stories or situations.

So then the next question becomes, "Is God a cosmic bully and if so why am I a Christian?"  That is a question best looked at by another blog post on another day.