Please excuse any bad grammer, spelling mistakes and so forth .

Ok, I went on a prayer retreat about a week ago and while on it a thought occurred to me and I have been mulling it over in my mind some.

My main premise in the Christian walk is this “balance.” You need to balance everything in your Christian walk except for you love of God. God states that He wants your love for Him to be so great that it makes your love for you relatives look like hate (Luke 14:26). Most people would call that type of person “unbalanced”. However a good example of where balance is needed is in your salvation. You are saved by faith and not by works yet the book of James makes it clear that if you have faith you will have good works. There are those who think that all you need is faith and there are those who think that you only need good works to get into heaven when in reality you need to have a faith that produces good works in order to get to heaven. Anyway, I keep hearing people say something to the effect of “Theology doesn’t matter what matters is your heart” or “As long as your heart is right with God you don’t need to know all that much theology.” I have even heard a person say, “Well I don’t know about that, but I know I love God.” This has always bothered me. It’s bothered me a lot, and I have finally figured out why!

First off lets start with the word Theoology. What does theology mean?

Etymology: Middle English theo-, from Latin, from Greek the-, theo-, from theos
: god : God <theism> <theocentric> (Theo means “God”)

Etymology: Middle English -logie, from Old French, from Latin -logia, from Greek, from logos word ( -ology means “word” or “knowledge”)

( Definitions from Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary)

So Theology means God Word or God Knowledge. It is said “To know God is to love God”. Prov 9:10 says “The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” How can you love and fear something that you do not know? Do you know God? How often have you heard the saying “hated that person until I got to know them better” or “I loved that person until I got to know them.”

Clearly knowledge of something is directly linked to the love of it. Can you remember your first instance of a school crush or puppy love? Remember when you saw that one girl or guy and wanted to meet them? What did you do? I for one, started asking around, trying to get as much info (knowledge) about them as I could. One of my pet peeves with most (as opposed to all) Bible study groups that I have seen is that they become a support group that might as well be called Sinners Anonymous. “Hi, everyone, could you all pray for me as I am struggling with (insert sin here).” And by the time you get through pray requests and praying for Sally “who is having evil thought about her ex-boyfriend” which might as well be called “prayer group therapy” you have run out of time to study the Bible and it is now time for fellowship. Or you have someone who says “I am learning about Sanctification” and everyone else says “Oh! That theology stuff, I just figure that if I love God I don’t need to know that, besides it’s the hypocrites who are proud and don’t care about living for God that study that.” Well, I ask how can you know you are “living for God” if you don’t know who He is? How can you serve someone if you don’t know who they are and what they are like? The Pharisees got in trouble for keeping the law but did not know God they knew His law but they failed to study Him. I would conjecture that if the Pharisees did study God’s plan for justifying us and sanctifying us they might not have missed the Messiah. But I am sure that they were just “living for God.” by keeping His law. If we had more people studying the seriousness of sin, and the way God wants to be worshipped, and the ins and outs of Salvation through faith, we would have fewer problems with rampant immorality in the Church, less tolerance for sin, more people able to defend the faith, and better church discipline and respect for church authority and how it should act. Bottom line. Do you love God and want to live for Him? How well do you know God and what efforts are you making to know more about Him and His character? A good solid growing Christian is one that is delving into the word and searching out the truths of God so that they can please Him better.

Now, I am aware that there are people who are all knowledge and get into fights over petty things like were the Nephilim angels or demons and did they really breed with humans and create giants (Gen 6:4). However don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. And don’t walk your Christian in fear of abuse and fear of man. When you say you don’t want to do something because that’s what hypocrites would do, that means you are either lazy, or have the fear of man. Remember hypocrites are what they are because they do one thing and say another. But if you say one thing and do it you are not a hypocrite. If you are walking with God and truly trying to please Him you will leave it up to Him as to how other view you. Besides it doesn’t matter how people view you only God. SO if you LOVE God get to KNOW God so you can please him.

Here is a list of Theological issues that have a big bearing on your walk with God or how you view God.

Sanctification

Justification

Baptism

Poly-Theism

Mono-Theism

The Trinity

Agnosticism

The Divinity of Christ

Heaven and Hell

Creationism

And the list could go on. All these issues and many more when you get into them help give you a better view and appreciation of who God is. Many of these I look at and delve into the logic involved and say “God you are a wonderful and awesome God,”

Paul says in Phil 2:12

“Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.”

I believe this means we should delve into the word and see how exactly God has made our salvation come about. Thanks you for reading my thought on this matter.

Here is a post from my xanga that I did a few weeks back. I thought it would be nice to post here as well.

Happiness, Joy, Movies and Holiness

The other day I watched Hitch. It was a pretty good movie but it had enough of Hollywood’s morality or I should say immorality in it that it kept me from enjoying it as much as I could have and I by no means suggest that anyone watch it. However there was a point made in the movie which is how I have often felt and how I believe C. S. Lewis pictures true Joy. In the movie near the end a character named Albert makes a comment something to the effect that he feels really down but at the same time he is happy and that he has been waiting to find a girl he could love and be happy with even if she left him and made him miserable. Later the character Hitch makes the same or similar comment to the character Sarah.

Now I am going to make a few conjectures here and I don’t have a whole lot of scripture to back it up (see the next post for some scriptures) but I think it should ring true without a whole lot of verses after all, all truth is God’s truth and I believe that if you are in the scripture daily that God gives you some internal sense of discernment. Anyways back to happiness, (I will be using a happiness and joy interchangeably, some people make distinction and it needs to be made sometimes, but in this case unless I say false joy or happiness I mean true joy and happiness) Happiness, is very hard to define, in fact my favorite talk show host Dennis Prager doesn’t define it. He believes that happiness is indefinable but yet everybody knows what it is. I as a former debater think that in by at least trying to define it we can reach a clearer view of what happiness actually is and thereby make it easier to be happier and more joyful.

C. S. Lewis spent most of his life looking for true joy, and he found it in various unusual places. A garden made in a tin lid, Wagner’s Ride of the Valkries, ancient mythology. Lewis says in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, “(Joy) It might almost equally well be called a particular kind of un-happiness or grief. But then it is a kind we want.” Lewis then later writes in is autobiography, “Inexorably Joy proclaimed, “You want - I myself am your want or – something other, outside, not you nor any state of you.” So Lewis describes joy as desire. I am now going to go on and make some further extensions of this concept of happiness and joy. I believe that 1. Happiness involves time, past present and future, and 2. Happiness is not so much a single emotion but the combination of all healthy emotions. (I sat healthy because some emotions are not healthy, like rage, hatred, and lust) Now, this is where Holiness comes in. Unlike happiness and joy, holiness is easy to define. Holiness is to be set apart due to uniqueness. Now in the Bible if you want to add intensity to a word you repeat it like “verily, verily,” “truly, truly,” there are only two things in the Bible that get intensified to the third degree. Holiness, when the Seraphim and Cherubim say “holy, holy, holy,” and in Revelation when an angel flies across the sky and proclaims “woe, woe, woe.” So if anyone was to say God is any one attribute it would have to be holy, merely because He is so separate and unique from us. But what makes this separation? His perfection in all other attributes such as love, justice, mercy, righteousness. The term “holy” is really a summary of all of God’s character in an attribute form. It would be proper to say the reason God has the attribute of holiness is because of all the other attributes of love, justice, mercy, and righteousness. It is a summary attribute. This is now where we get back to happiness; I believe that happiness is a summary emotion after a good experience. Why else would we say that if I have to be unhappy to be happy I will.

I am looking very much forward to getting married, but what I am looking forward to is all of the marriage from the blissful romantic time of courtship, the rough hard times that may and generally come in the middle, the times when I have to hold and comfort my wife, to near the end when you look back at the rest of the marriage and hopefully see how good it is, and I am even looking forward to time where if I outlive my wife, I breakdown and cry remembering her. Again I refer to Lewis, Lewis said that looking back he realized that the bliss or euphoria he felt after reading mythology or hearing Wagner’s music, was merely the footprint left by happiness after the happiness and come and gone, a reminder if you will.

I believe happiness is the culmination or the summary of a wholesome experience. Most people seek pleasure in place of happiness. Pleasure is like eating junk food and happiness is like a long Thanksgiving dinner. Sure junk food tastes good for a very brief moment but that’s all it is, it is a brief moment of satisfaction. Happiness is being full after a thanksgiving dinner, sure you had to eat some of aunt Edna’s raspberry casserole, but you have to do that every year in order to make her happy and thanksgiving just wouldn’t be the same without her bringing that nasty stuff. Thanksgiving dinner lasts longer and is a wholesome experience; eating junk food is short and doesn’t really add to your health. Happiness is the desire and looking forward to good things to come, the bliss of the current moment, the fond remembering of good things past. It is the summary feeling of a wholesome experience wherein all wholesome emotions were experienced and the desire for another such experience.

If you have made this far congratulations!!! Below are a couple questions that were asked about the post and my replies.

"Just curious on your holiness definition of "Holiness is to be set apart due to uniqueness" and what reasoning and scriptures support this statement?"

Here are a couple verses on holiness.

Lev 20:26

And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.

As you can see Holiness means separation!

1 Sam 2:2

There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.

Holiness as uniqueness. Different and separated due to uniqueness of character and attributes!

"What does Uniqueness mean on a daily practical basis? What are we to be seperate from? Forgive the questions, just wanted to see your heart in the matter."

No problem! The uniqueness on a daily practical basis comes from us exhibiting Christ's character and being separate from the world. The world represents a corrupt and fallen man, however we have been saved and no longer are subject to sin In the world we live in the brightest light we have to shine is good character especially if we let it shine in small areas, like taking change back if we are given to much, being on time, being dependable, being sober minded or not a partier. If we are faithful in the small things we wil tend to be faithful in the big areas. Of course you have already heard much of this but it is good to remind ourselves. A few very practical verses tied into Holiness would be

1 Pet 1:13-17 Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; 14 As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: 15 But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; 16 Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.

Rom 12:1-3 1 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. 2 Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. 3 For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.

I Jn 2:15-16 15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world.

Titus 2:12-13 12 Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; 13 Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ;

John 15:19 19 If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

Here are a couple verses on holiness.

Lev 20:26

And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine.

As you can see Holiness means separation!

1 Sam 2:2

There is none holy as the LORD: for there is none beside thee: neither is there any rock like our God.

Holiness as uniqueness. Different and separated due to uniqueness of character and attributes!

You have made it this far your are one amazing person!

Here is my first ever post! I am not going to say much because I want to concentrate on making my blog look good!