There is this story in the gospel of Luke about Jesus visiting the home of Martha and Mary. The whole point of the story is to explain how sinful cleaning your house is. Jesus clearly sides with Mary after Martha gets upset that Mary is listening to Jesus instead of sweeping the floors. Luke 10:38-42

Ok, it's really that easy to get the bible to say what you want it to say. Once during my freshmen year of college i was in an english class and we were having debates about random topics. One of them ended up being public prayer in school, so there would be two teams and each would be assigned a position, either for or against the issue. During the debate one of the members for the anti prayer side quoted Jesus when he said "But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father in heaven, who is unseen." Matthew 6:6, he thus made the argument that even Jesus did not want public prayer in school ( I think it was Joel Olsteen now that i think about it).

Ummm, clearly this has nothing to do with prayer in school, to be honest i personally don't care about the subject, we have bigger issues than forcing people who dont know Chist to pray to him in public while we sit back and let the poor and hungry and hurt and addicted and lost fend for themselves cause how dare we actually fulfill the role of Jesus while he's gone. Jesus, in Matthew 6, was talking about the issue of pride and how the Pharisees used prayer as an ego trip. In short, Jesus was ticked cause prayer was being used to glorify people instead of himself, God.

So all this to say is be careful what you take as truth, check it with the scriptures. Just because something sounds catching or makes you feel good doesnt mean it has anything to do with the truth ( politicians, pastors, people, everyone). One more thing, have you ever noticed that people claim truth when they agree with what it says, but it's an agenda or a conspiracy theory when they don't. For example, the guy making the point about school prayer in our debate, took this Jesus quote as a statement of truth, but i wonder about the part where Jesus dies on the cross to save us from this broken system of a world and to unite us with him the way it was always planned since before the beginning of the beginning, i wonder if he claims that as truth too? I wonder if very many of us do as well, i think if more of us did, this place might look a little different.

So be critical, be open minded, have integrity, consider all viewpoints, try to relate with people. Yes, i think you can do all of those and still claim Christ as the one real and ultimate truth, which is why it is so important to know what you believe and why, otherwise you will fall for this trap of the world telling you unless you believe everything (except Christ) then you are a backward, redneck, uneducated meatball. And since i going completely random tonight, i was thinking the other day how usually people who have a problem with God subscribe to the darwin theory (theory= maybe there is a chance that this idea could possibly be something close to what actually might be true). Darwin says that the strongest survive, basically, right? Then those same people are the ones who cry and scream about some bird who's home is being torn down by humans right? I just think thats funny cause at least christians aren't the only ones who dont know how to live what they believe, but we sure do get blasted for it. I wish we would get blasted for telling someone about Christ, or selling all of our stuff to help out the less fortunate, or adopting kids whose have no parents cause they died of AIDS or at least giving an insignificant amount of money ($32 a month) and some prayer and a few letters, which means food, hope and an education for someone somewhere, or something so radical like that, that Jesus might have suggested it. I for one, will say that i fail when it comes to this, but i working on being more like him.

This was not at all what i intended to write but the tangents just came out.

Also, i want to say that i am not at all claiming to know how to be a christian better than anyone else, or to have it figured out. I just know the One who does. I just have ideas which i test with scripture but if you ever see something that doesnt fit with what the gospel says, call me out, please. I just like to think about these kind of things so i started writing them down.

sorry for the endless runons. they happen.

if you are like me and want to do something to help children, i suggest compassion international. Fantastic ministry that feeds kids, gives them educations, hope, and shares Christ with them all over the world. 32 dollars, a few letters, prayer is all it takes to help someone out.