Interview with Donald Miller.

I was the guest on a radio show recently that was broadcast on a secular station, one of those conservative shows that paints Democrats as terrorists. The interviewer asked what I thought about homosexuals who were trying to take over the country. I confess I was taken aback. I hadn't realized that homosexuals were trying to take over the country.
"Which homosexuals are trying to take over the country?" I asked.
"You know," the interviewer began, "the ones who want to take over Congress and the Senate."
I paused for a while. "Well," I said, "I've never met those guys and I don't know who they are. The only homosexuals I've ever met are very kind people, some of whom have been beat up and spit on and harassed and, in fact, feel threatened by the religious right." Think about it. If you watch CNN all day and see extreme Muslims in the Middle East declaring war on America because they see us as immoral, and then you read the paper the next day to find the same exact words spoken by evangelical leaders against the culture here in America, you'd be pretty scared. I've never heard of a homosexual group trying to take over the world, or for that matter the House or Senate, but I can point you to about fifty evangelical organizations who are trying to do exactly that. I don't know why. In my opinion, we should just tell people about Jesus, not try to build some kind of temporary moral civilization here on earth. If you want that, move to Salt Lake City. "And what is the name of the homosexual group that is trying to take over America?" I asked the host, somewhat angry at his ignorant misuse of war rhetoric.
"Well, I hear about them all the time," he said, rather frustrated with me.
"If you hear about them all the time, what is the name of the organization?"
"Well, I don't know right now. But they are there."
"Can I list for you ten or so Christian organizations who are working to try to get more Christians in the House and the Senate?" I said to the host.
"Listen, I get your point," he said.
"But I don't think you do. Here is my position: As a Christian, I believe that Jesus wants to reach out to people who are lost and, yes, immoral-immoral just like you and I are immoral; and declaring war against them and stirring up your listeners to the point of anger and giving them the feeling that thier country, their families, and their lifestyles are being threatened is only hurting what Jesus is trying to do. This isn't rocket science. If you declare war on somebody, you have to either handcuff them or kill them. That's the only way to win. But if you want them to be forgiven by Christ, if you want them to live eternally in heaven with Jesus, then you have to love them. The choice is yours and my suspicion is you will be held responsible by God, a Judge who will know your motives. So go ahead and declare war in the name of a conservative agenda, but don't do it in the name of God. That's what militant Muslims are doing in the Middle East, and we don't want that here."

This was something that showed me the conservative movement from an angle previously unavailabe to me. Not that I think those political people are evil or anything but there really are other things we can be spending our energy on!

God/Sex...

I was just thinking how God, Sex, Relationships and Religion are in every way intertwined. Think about the relationships we have with everyone we come in contact with. Whether that's a friend or the person we love, or think we love. We all in most cases, one way or another are in it for what WE can get from it. There is the rare occasion to where we're in it for the right reasons, but most the time that's not the case. We want to get so much from that person, we want them to want us, we want them to serve us, we want them to have sex with us, WE WANT, and no matter how much we do, at the end of the day it's really about what we're gonna get out of the relationship. We also start doing those things for that person in hopes of getting things in return. What we want in our eyes, is sometimes measured by how much we've put in. This is a HUGE problem that has got to be the reason for so many bad and failed relationships. We are not in love with that person. We're in love with the gifts, instead of the giver behind the gifts. Is being served by the one your with a great thing? Sure it is. Is having sex with the one your with (in the right setting) a great thing? Sure it is. God designed all of it. But is that what it's about?

What has been missed (that we're all guilty of) is the fact that any gift any friend or any lover can ever offer has got to be secondary to knowing and loving them for who they are, and for who their not, not for what they can give. We're stripping them of who they are, by taking from them their God given gifts. We're sending an unintentional message that unless they give to us what we want, then they alone are not enough. I mean think about it, whenever we go about living this out in our relationships with other people, we are finding a temporary fix to an endless cycle.

Without getting off the subject, whenever we do anything in life, we are trying to fill a void that we are all created with that needs filling, whether that's doing drugs, drinking in excess, spending money, killing yourself with food, sex, playing sports, going camping, whatever it is that we use to fix that void that we all have. The problem is that when we do that in everyday life with everyday things, we are still empty when it's over. I mean I can go out right now and get drunk and have a wonderful time, but when it's over, I'm empty all over again. I can go out and find someone to have sex with or have sex with someone I love and it will be very nice at the time, but when it's over, there I am all empty again trying to find something to fill it again. What happens with sex, drugs, drinking, food, and every other thing that offers us a fix, is when we do get it, it does temporarily fix us, but then we're left empty again and again and so we just continue to go out and live out the endless cycle of getting temporary fixes. Its with every relationship we have.

If we ever try to have a relationship with God its the same thing. We take God for everything we can. "We are in it for the sex" if you will. It's what WE can get from church, what we can get whether that be good health, good finances, forgiveness, heaven, you name it, its what we can get out of having a relationship from Him. Forget the incredible awesomeness of God, and the crazy amount of love He has for us, we want we want we want. We go to church on sunday and it "feels good", but then we leave and we're still empty. It's a relationship, not a religion, but since we live our life raping everyone of who they are to get something, we do the same thing to God. We are not in it to love him and for who He is, we're in it to get what we can out of the deal.

So here we are, on this earth with something that God has put in our lives, and all we can do is take take take to fill it up. We must change how we do things, we must change how we go about having a relationship with people, but most importantly God. We have got to start looking deep into the heart of God, into the hearts of the people we love so that we start loving the One behind the gifts, instead of the gifts it self.

Ironically we look everywhere for all this happiness, but the greatest happiness is being able to wake up in the morning and know without a doubt, that you love someone, or you love God for everything they are, good and bad, and you can actually spend time with them, without expecting anything in return. When we're there, when we can start loving people for everything they are, good and bad, we can finally say we know what it means to love, and to LOVE big..

Thanks for reading my blog, don't think for 1 second that I have this all figured out, I'm journeying through this just like everyone else in the world, I just wanted to write down my thoughts, and to possibly shed some light on a problem that not too many of us know the fix for.

Until next time,

your wanna be writer,
SB