The Change We Really Need

"Surely I am more stupid than any man, and do not have the understanding of a man." (Proverbs 30:2) His wife Shirley probably agreed with him. Okay, so I can relate to this passage more than I care to admit. When ever I make a mistake I invoke the word, "Idiot!" Now I really don't think that I'm an idiot, though I'm certainly not a genius--a word I infrequently use for my brilliant moments. One of my teachers used to say, "Mistakes are wonderful." I concluded that I must be a wonderful person then. The point she was making was that we have a wonderful opportunity to learn from our mistakes. Stupidity is making the same mistake over and over again but expecting a different result. I can assure you this plan doesn't work!

In the past I have taken the road of least resistance too often in order to avoid over taxing my brain, and have done it so well that if stupidity was a legitimate career I would be a millionaire. Learning new ideas and concepts isn't the problem; applying them has been a demanding process involving concentration and consistency, two qualities I'm unfamiliar with. I actually had to look them up in the dictionary. Then I had to look them up again two minutes later.

Suffering from ADD all of my life, (Attention Deficit Disorder) has caused me little in the way of "add-ing" much. They should have come up with an acronym for SUBTRACT, like, "Slow Useless Brainless Too Random And Can't Think." I really don't know how I was able to graduate from school without being held back or smothered to death by the Nuns in my Catholic school. The only thing that saved me was my ability to outrun them. I acted out so much I should have received an Oscar for my performances.

Though I believed in God it wasn't until I was twenty-eight years old that I decided to put my trust in God. I began doing things I never thought I could or was capable of doing. I was able to end a fifteen year relationship with cigarettes and drunkeness. I entered Theological College, read more books, and earned a degree. I was still not a genius, nor would I ever become one.

With the Christianity that I came in contact with it seemed to me that their agenda was to form pews of robots, politically bent to the right, willing to die for God and country at the bequest of any republican president, push morals and ethics with a twist of Jesus, and throw anyone out who threatened their vision. This is the reason I ultimately walked away from Christianity. I knew that it was God who gave life meaning and therefore my purpose in life was to serve Him. I learned the hard way the churches that I attended were work-oriented and not Spirit led. The church was organized by puppet masters who manipulated the strings from a basis of fear, guilt and ridicule. There was no room for spiritual growth in that environment.

We are not called to give our life meaning by pursuing life with passion and sincerity, though that may sound noble. We are called to pursue God passionately and sincerely, allowing Him to work in and through us according to His will. We are to emulate His character and not the world whose desire is to hold us captive it their will. That is accomplished by humility and through death of our own interests. This calls for constant change in our life, for this is a growing experience. It means we don't salute the flag and send our children off to fight wars in the name of God. We pledge our allegiance to God only for He is our banner and strength. The Emperor Constantine, and not God, set the course for Christians to fight bloody battles in this physical world. The believers world is fought in the spiritual realm, with spiritual weapons of mass destruction against Satan, for our citizenship is in the heavenly places; whereupon we patiently await for our redemption to materialize. Shalom.