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First!
This is way personal stuff but thought I would share anyway.
I have been thinking a lot, remembering life before marriage. All the interests and aspirations I had. One of them was Christian music. I was a super Christian back then, so I leaned towards Christian music, even when all my friends were into other things. So I have been taking a trip down memory lane. Stryper popped up in my Facebook news feed as if the app knows what I am thinking. They are still around, doing their 40th anniversary tour right now.
I remembered how bands/music like that made me feel, like I could still be cool and be a Christian. I don’t know exactly why, but I feel drawn to that time in my life. There was an innocence. It goes without saying, it was a simpler time.
I didn’t like my parents angry God, but I liked the Stryper God. I was able to draw comparisons of the two, and decide which one I wanted to have in my life. Fast forward, I feel like that again. I don’t want the punishment God, I want the fun God. It’s a wonder I want anything to do with God at all, but something snapped when she died, and I saw another God than the one I learned and preached.
Like I was saying in another thread, the God that tries to be known now is the God who provides a cigarette from nowhere when I felt like I needed one. The God who provides seemingly random sources of food when I was hungry.
I guess I am trying to say that it feels like God is trying to reintroduce himself these days. I am not sure I hold the same aversions my anti-theist self did. I am willing to know God as God wants to be known. It’s comforting.
Second.
(I haven’t seen any first in a long time)
I remember when I was in rehab that one of the technicians was into Stryper. he was the only technician that smoked with us. It was listening to Stryper that I actually thought that I needed to reconsider my own version of who God is. I wasn’t a huge fan. I didn’t have any money to buy CDs or anything like that, but they did get some Air Play on the Christian radio station that I would sometimes listen to.
I remember when it used to be a competition to be first in open blogging!
lol!!!!
I remember those days as well. I think we can blame Bob Sweat for starting all of that. 😎
Reuben – I am encouraged to hear of your spiritual journey. When my world blew up a couple years ago, my faith completely fell apart two. Over the past couple years I’ve had surprising moments where I felt like god was reaching out to me in unexpected ways. Now I’m back to just flailing and seeing no direction.
After all the tension of this election cycle, I’m settling into a strange calm. There’s nothing I can do about this, and my own vote won’t move the needle. As much as I try to seem smart about policies, deep in my heart maybe I just haven’t wanted Christian Nationalism to win. This election won’t magically change that situation, regardless of the final electoral map.
There are smarter people than I who don’t like Trump, but are excited about the change Vance, Musk and RFK Jr would bring. We’ve been living through a slow motion revolution for 40 years, which they would simply reverse in one term. Impossible? Not at all. Super easy, barely an inconvenience (sarcasm).
Well that stressed me out.
This is to make up for my downer post this morning:
https://youtu.be/9qI0LTmSr38?si=TCOLeLSc1wObVAPk
(It’s from The Onion, a send-up of the electoral map)