Thoughts I think (I think).

Something to think about while wishing you could get the six months back.

But instead, on to my parenthetical ramblings...

I find certain worship songs that put the singer at the center of the meaning. For instance: the worship song "Came to my Rescue" is a great example of this "me-first" ideology I've noticed recently. Chorus goes something like this (and keep in mind this is talking about salvation) :

I called, you answered,

and you came to my rescue, and I

I want to be where you are.

I literally cannot bring myself to sing that first line, it's so flagrantly, theologically wrong. Romans 5:8 shows very disputably that it is "while we were yet sinners," that's when Christ died for us. When we look at the example of Lazarus, we are supposed to see ourselves mirrored; the same is true with the army of dry bones in Ezek 37. While we are in sin, we are dead. Not "sort of alive" or "spiritually disadvantaged" or something equally ridiculous. We were DEAD in our transgressions, and as far as I know, dead men cannot make the the choice to do anything: They're dead. Similarly, we cannot "Call" to God to rescue us. Granted, to us in our personal experience, that is what it feels like happened, because the Holy Spirit has moved in our hearts, and actually already imputed Christ's salvific blood to our account, as it were. That is the only way we would even be moved to "call out" to Jesus, and any detailed study of historic theology *should* make this apparent (though sadly, any detailed study of theology seems an anathema to the modern Christian, which is a travesty indeed). The other sad part is that this entire chorus could be fixed by just one word change! Just switch "I called, you answered" to "You called, I answered," and viola! You have a perfectly, harmoniously theological statement that still fits into your uplifting hillsong stylizing.... but I digress. This may seem like semantics, but please look at it for what it is: A brief example of a bigger, more general issue, that is the problem of "me-first" ideology of modern worship, as well as just the simple imputing of bad or even apostate theology into common worship. This reaches deeper to the core of Christians not really wanting to "know their faith"...but I'll save that for another time.

Meanwhile, a whole lot of nothing has passed since last night, other than my peculiar musings. So, to more of them:

One of the professors gave a talk in chapel today about how we should be looking at every day we live as a miracle, instead of looking for "miracles" in the usually preconceived sense of the word. In other words, we should live every day knowing that God may use us to perform what could be considered a miracle in someone else's life today, having in view that God does not always work in the ways we look for him to but instead chooses to use normal human events to work his means. I rather liked what the professor was getting at about this, namely that to go around trying to find or produce "miracles" in the way that Jesus performed them is really quite counterproductive and often not even what is most likely in view. What is in view, as my Contemporary Christian Belief professor would say, is reconciling relationships. God doesn't always use us in the ways we expect or want.

On an unrelated note. I am constantly having ideas that I think should make their way into a story or something, but I cannot ever see myself getting around to writing it. I've got such a backlog of "material" that I can barely imagine getting through the surface of it, seeing as I've been trying to get the first 3-4 major ones done for about 5 years now and am about a shuffle step closer to completing them than I was in third grade (I have ideas, and a sentence or two written about them...). It's mildly frustrating. If only I were an author, visual artist, musician, historian, cartographer and publicist! But alas, there is only so much of me and too many careers of interest to go around (and I have chosen none of the above-mentioned anyway).

Until next time, have fun feeding the cat-pet.