The Illusion of Change
Well here we are again in a new year, with plenty of resolutions to violate by next Monday. Get better grades, lose weight, get organized, etc., etc. The fact is we all want to do better this year than the last. I guess that’s what makes us human. As a pastor I’m supposed to deliver the New Years impetus to change in an inspiring message to provoke it, but of course I rebelled, and preached out of John instead.
Evolution says we’re changing rapidly, but I question if this is true or not? Sure technology changes, and ideas morph, but has humanity changed much in the past, oh say, 10,000 years? I’m not sure. We still fight wars, murder one another, tell horrible stories about people we hate, and we love to make ourselves look good by putting others down, just check out any election year. We talk about tolerance and love, only to denigrate to hate and disdain for people that don’t think like we do.
Well anyway, I don’t suspect that the world will change in a day, but how about a decade or millennium? My prayer is that Christians would all walk away from organized religion and fall in to the arms of their savior who taught us that we all need saving, not just those “evil pagans” out there! Maybe then His people would love more, and hate less, and devote themselves to the reality of the gospel, and become less devoted to the world they allegedly hate. Just a thought!
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Jenn and I, because of the turmoil our lives have been through the last three years, have found the whole conventional notion of New Year’s celebrations completely meaningless. From our perspective, it appears that New Year’s resolutions and such are essentially instutionalized catastrophes.
What I mean by that is this: they are artificial and annual means to get people to examine their lives, their purpose, and their priorities. When REAL catastrophes come along, all those things get sorted out automatically. When you live with a series of catastrophes, God has you by the throat or the balls, or both, and something like New Year’s Day is just another day.
The upshot is this: We ought to celebrate Thanksgiving on New Year’s Day. ‘Cause if you’re not living with catastrophes, you ought to thank God. And if you are — well, you ought to thank God, too.
Thanks Greg! So true!
My perspective on new year’s resolutions has changed since…. well…. since I don’t know when, but it changed somewhere along the way. It was sometime after I became a parent and the little leech grew into his own separate person. He has grown so much over the years and I am not speaking physically (although WOW what a weed he has been the past couple of months!). It is easy for me to get frustrated with some things that he does if I look at who he is in the “now” of his character. But when I hold it up to who he was several years ago I can’t help but marvel at how much progress he has made. Through seeing him this way, God taught me to look at myself the same way. New Year’s resolutions??? who the bleep cares! Am I making progress in my character compared to a year or two ago? If that answer is ever no then there is something wrong. But that answer is always yes. I say this in confidence not because I hold myself in such high regard, but because I hold the community in which I have placed myself in high regard. I am confident that my truth-based community would give me the necessary butt whoopin if it is needed! I love you guys!
Truly, truly Jalene. Thanks!
Mike