Forgiveness was Radical

I have been Reading Peter Rollins Book "The Orthodox Heretic", for awhile now. I have just been reading bits and pieces at a time. The passage below really challenged me and encouraged me to love in a transforming way.

"Jesus' understanding of Forgiveness was so radical because he did not need people to repent before he would accept them. He did not require a change in their behavior before he loved, respected, and related to them. Yet, it was precisely this unconditional love and forgiveness that seemed so potent and transformative, often being the very act that drew people to repentance (a word that means to have a change of heart)." - Peter Rollins, The Orthodox Heretic

I agree with Rollins on the point above. I really believe that he is speaking the heart of Christ. Jesus did not look into the eyes of a "Prostitute" and see a prostitute, but he looked into her eyes and saw one of God's children that he dearly loved. Jesus showed people how much he loved them and accepted them despite their sins and failures. Christ never said, "Change your life and I will love you." The love that Christ showed to others was so transformative that people desired to change their lives to be like him.

As a believer in Christ, why do we want everyone to believe exactly what we believe before we accept them? Why do we indoctrinate people? Why do we try to conform people to our beliefs and standards of living? Why don't we love people no matter what their beliefs are, or no matter how they live their lives? Why don't we stop trying to transform people ourselves? If you want to transform someone's life, love them, and let the love of Christ do the transforming work.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this quote from Rollins Book and on anything else said here on this post.

American Dream

What is the American Dream? The American Dream is to work hard in order to make a lot of money, so that you can purchase a nice house, a nice car, and eventually retire and reap the benefits of your hard work. The American Dream can be very appealing. Since I got married and started working full time, I feel a deep urgency to provide for "My Family", meaning my wife. As a Husband you want to make choices that benefit your family and help bring security to your lives. Its almost as if my instinct turned toward pursuit of the "American Dream". I want to work harder in order to make more money, so that my family might be more "comfortable". When I took a moment to reflect on my life, I thought, why am I in pursuit of this vanity? This is not going to make me happier, make my marriage happier, or even make my life better. This pursuit to accumulate will drain me of my happiness. Lets set something straight, I am not saying that work is bad, or working to save for a house is bad. My mindset was off, and my focus was off. I work in order to pay for necessities, and I work hard because of the pride that I have in how I represent myself. These are not bad things, but if they become my goal and my aim, then I am just running no where on treadmill. My Dream is that my life might be a representation of love. The way I work might be a representation of love. The way that I use my money might be a representation of love. I want my life to be a whole lot less about me, and more about others.

So I ask you, have you ever found yourself pursuing the "American Dream"? How do you personally keep a balance in life, without losing focus on goals that you might have?

Unloving

Do you ever have moments in your life when you could care less about acting in love towards someone? I have times in my life where I am so in the moment of something going on within me, that nothing could get me to love. I guess it is my stubborn nature, or selfishness. My selfishness tells me that I do not need to love in that moment, because what I feel about a situation is more important. I hate to love when I am pissed off, or not at all in the mood. Love is the last thing on my mind. You might be thinking that I am heartless or how could someone not want to love, but the truth of the matter is, we all have these moments. We all are selfish and can become consumed by moments of anger, hatred, stubbornness, and selfishness. The way that I am wired is I need time away from a situation to recollect my thoughts. I need a moment alone to be contemplative. The other night I had a moment where I walked outside and I looked up and saw the stars. I stopped in the street and realized that the world was bigger than these small moments of frustration or selfishness. So what if I don't get my way or people don't act the way I want them to. For some reason it took the stars that night to bring my life into reality. The reality of this world full of hurt and pain much greater than my arguments. The reality of a great need to share love with others and be love to others. So tonight I thank the stars for reminding me of the world greater than my own. Thanks for letting me reflect with you.

Marriage

If Marriage does not teach you what love is, I do not know what will. Marriage and my relationship with my wife has taught me more about love than any other relationship. Marriage has brought my own understanding of love full circle. The intimacy of telling your spouse that you are going to spend the rest of your life together is transforming. You have chosen to love that person no matter what mood you are in or what they have done for you. I experience love more and more with Ashley each day, because I know that she chose to love me with all my flaws and imperfections. She loves me for my quirky ways and weird personality. There is so much comfort in life when you know your wife is committed to who you are. I too am committed to Ashley and love her for the same reasons. Sure we argue and I am still a stubborn human being, but being able to work through our differences together draws you closer together.

The marriage relationship and the commitment level is similar to our relationship with God. I feel as if I have a taste of the same intimacy that God wants to have with me. To be honest there is a fulfillment that comes from knowing that someone else has chosen to be with you for the rest of their life. I am proud to say that Ashley is my wife and I love her for the fact that she wants to be my wife. To know that no matter what happens to us in life, I know that she loves me.

So I ask you, What have relationships or marriage taught you about love? Have they taught you more about love or less?

Health

This Month Ashley and I have started to become more "Health Conscious". We both just decided we would like to eat better foods, fresh foods and less processed foods. I think is it pretty amazing how your body tells you what it likes and what it does not like. If you eat a lot of sweets in one night you sometimes get a stomach ache, because your body might not be able to handle all the sugars. My body loves oranges, blueberries, granola, yogurt, salad, chicken, rice, and etc. It is not that we are trying to lose weight, but more we want to give our bodies the nutrients that our bodies rely on to function better.

Exercise is another way that we bring health to our bodies. Every Sunday night Ashley and I go to a Free Beginner Yoga class. It is 75 minutes of free yoga. I cannot tell you how much I love Sunday nights now. I walk away feeling relaxed, stronger, more flexible, healthy, and I even feel a clarity of mind. I feel as if I can use that time to reflect on my life, my spirituality, my relationships, and find a peace and comfort. I was a skeptic of Yoga, but it really does challenge your body and let me tell you, beads of sweat rain off my body.

Last week Ash and I ran to the beach and back, and it was so nice to be outside and enjoy the beautiful ocean setting. A healthy and active life not only brings health physically, but also psychologically, relationally, and spiritually. Running to the beach to see the sunset can be a spiritual experience. Running to the beach can be a time of meditation and clearing the stress out of your life. Running to the beach with your wife can strengthen each others bond as you share experiences together.

So I ask you all, what are those things that you practice to bring health to your body, or your life? Do you try to drink more teas with high antioxidants? Do you take time to paint each day to help yourself relax and let go? Whatever it is you do, I hope that we all can find some ways to enjoy the simpler, more Health-Full ways of life.

Purposeful Community

I hope you all had a great holiday season. Over the break I got the opportunity to spend a couple weeks with Ashley's Family and my family. I also got the opportunity to spend time with close friends. It was so nice to connect with people and just relax, watch movies, play games, and just enjoy each others company.

In reflection I want to make sure that I make opportunities to spend time with people. Whether Ashley and I open our home to people to have dinner together, or we just meet friends for a drink. I find that my most enjoyable nights or days are full of friends spending time together. Talking about life or just acting stupid, I love when those times end up in discussions about life and you walk away challenged.

These moments cannot be created or fabricated. I believe we must purposefully position our lives to open up our homes to others, and allow for opportunities to spend time with people. I will admit that I do not always do a good job of this. I am selfish and want "My Time", and do not want to be bothered by others. When you have had a long day of work, the last thing that you want to do is come home and "host" people at your house.

I want to ask you all, should there be a balance of purposeful community, or should we always be open to commune with each other? I want to say that we should always open our home to one another, but at the same time you wonder if there needs to be some sort of balance. I would love to hear your thoughts.

My own challenge is to open my life up to others more often, and not become so settled in my own status of Life.

PF KICK!!!

I am currently on a Personal Finance Kick right now! The "kick/obsession" began out of my desire to get out of credit card debt. I would read MSN Money articles all the time and try to figure out new ways to get out of debt. I wanted to be smart with my money, but up until this point in my life I have made one too many impulse buys.
One day about a month ago I decided to play tennis with a boyfriend of one of my wife's friends, whom I have been acquaintances with for about two years. We had always told each other that we should play tennis, and so two years later we played tennis. I was asking about his hobbies and he said that he was into blogging and personal finance. I said "Oh that's sweet! I am trying to get into blogging myself," (obviously not doing a very good job at that) and then asked what his blog address was. He said "Punch Debt in the Face."
I immediately went home and began reading these random, but informative blogs about personal finance. My curiosity went crazy and I began to ask "Ninja" (what he calls himself in his blog) all sorts of questions. He inquired about my current financial situation and then figured out a game plan. My biggest lesson so far has been, Why do we think that Debt is suppose to be a part of life? When did we learn to spend more than we have? It almost like we are trained for instant gratification and trained to go into credit card debt.
Once I am out of this current debt that I am in, I never want to go into debt again, besides a home mortgage, and I want to learn to save money and pay cash for things. Buying stuff becomes more meaningful when you save up for them or set a goal with your spouse.
So what about you, what sort of lies have you bought into about money? Were you taught about debt growing up, or is debt just something that you assume everyone was suppose to have?