yeah fusion, those three were the big three that I greatly appreciated, too. I was really wary at first, because it really
does seem like he's just telling people what they want to hear.... but he held his ground when the politicians came several years ago and refused to let them use his church that way, and kept preaching the same message even when 1/5 (I think it was?) of the church left in the middle of a fundraising thing. So I
know he's not telling people what they want to hear solely because they want to hear it.
This one still sketches me out a little bit, though. I felt like he straw-manned the theology he was arguing against (saying over and over again that it made the Father look like a brute, when John 3:16 clearly says "God
loved the world so much he sent his Son"... but ignoring the fact that I would still think it a pretty loving thing to send essentially kill yourself rather than your other creatures), and I still can't deny that the substitutionary-sacrifice thing sure seems to be throughout Scripture... starting with the treaty made in Gen. 15 (look up Suzerainty treaties between kings at the time), maintained throughout the sacrifices of the OT, and everything.
Every once in a while he says something else that makes me uneasy too, like that "God is the love that exists between the three persons of the trinity." He might be right... but I'm not even sure how to think about beginning to check up on a claim like that.
But yeah... on "how to think about/serve people", separating politics and Christianity (that cross & sword series was
epic), and curbing this judgmental attitude, his words are like verbal gold. And
this essay completely uprooted the way I think. I've never seen such a good counter-argument for Calvinism.
hmm... new in my life? I just had the hardest semester of school yet, with all my upper-level physics classes (4 of them, plus 2 comp sci ones on the side--but one turned out to be the CS "weed out" course) at once. It was brutal and miserable... but next semester I only have 1, and Sr. Fall I only have 2... so I don't have any problem cranking through and finishing up my degree
.
I also got really randomly into computers. Wisp taught me loads about linux, and I'm now using Arch, which is a fairly bare-bones distribution that you have to put together piece-by-piece when installing. It took ~9 hours, but if anything goes wrong, my mind can spit out 2 or 3 places where the problem might be. The users put together a fantastic
wiki with all the common errors & fixes anyway... so it's really been awesome so far. It runs
so fast!
My family has been... really nothing but awesome, recently. They've left me alone, haven't bugged me about stuff when it's not important, and we seem to have just hit an equilibrium where nobody mentions snail at all. It doesn't even feel tense. We're not exactly growing any closer together (they mishandled that situation so badly that I don't think I'll ever go to them for advice or anything like that again, unless it's about the logistics of how to live on your own, or something value-neutral like that. I just don't trust their judgment on these matters because they're
bad at it), but we're definitely not growing farther apart either.
Snail and I have been fighting a lot, recently, and we were effectively broken up for ~a week or so... but I
think we've finally got things under control and started growing back together again. That INFP mindset is tough to work with sometimes... but she's done everything she can to make it abundantly clear what she needs out of me. I just have a hard time recognizing the situations when they come up. And if I hurt her by mishandling her feelings, or disagreed with something she thought important, she would lash back in unhealthy/damaging ways too... so things just disintegrated really fast. I am/will continue to try my best to respond well when she's having problems with other people, though, and she recognized/agreed with me about/apologized for her nasty responses, so there's no real harm done there either.
I don't know why, but as soon as someone apologizes for something, or sometimes even suspects that they might have a problem with something, there's just like instantly no problem, in my mind. So I think we're ok again... just will need some time to build back up trust in each other again.
I guess similar to how you've been flooded with revelations since attending woodland hills, I've been flooded with
experiences since I've started listening to the sermons/archives and taking them seriously. I haven't actually been taking count, by my estimate I've crossed paths with what I think (by my best discernment) were 2 angels, ~6-7 demons (probably only 2-3 different ones, though. Most of them are similar in nature), and what I think was Jesus twice (once in dream, once in vision).
There's definitely
something going on, but I'm not sure what it is. The demons were the reason I was skipping off religious discussions for a while and sort of abandoned you guys some 7-8 months ago, because I thought they might be bugging me because I was turning nastily-judgmental towards nia (sorry nia!) at the time. I couldn't decide whether it was more likely that they swarm around people doing evil things, or people doing good ones. I eventually realized how stupid it was to let something that was clearly out to harm me (in truth, I'm more sure of their ill-intentions than I am that they're demons. I just sort of attach that name to them because it's what I'm used to) affect what I do, so I learned to ignore them, and their activity trailed off considerably... after that short burst of like 3-4 within a month. Now I'm almost just amused by them instead of afraid
. It's not like they can do anything God couldn't protect me from anyway.
*whew*... I guess more's been going on than I thought
. How' about you, how've you been doing?
