(1773,1,'2011-11-03 08:40:54','2011-11-03 15:40:54','<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">My wife and I were married in March 2007.  In the months and years leading up to the wedding, one subject was discussed more frequently than money, personality quirks, or food preferences.  Parenting.  We knew that if we weren’t on the same page when it came to parenting a blended family, our relationship both as parents and spouses would suffer.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At the time we were married, my daughters were 11 and 8, and her son was 5.  During the time we were dating, our relationship with the kids was, outside of normal parenting issues, relatively stress free.  However, once we were married, my daughters turned on Charlotte.  All of a sudden she and Jake were permanent members of the family and the girls realized that they would not have Dad all to themselves anymore.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This change in their behavior caught us completely off-guard.  We thought we had prepared them well for this change and included all three children as part of the wedding service to emphasize that this wedding wasn’t just about us, but them as well.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Fortunately, Charlotte and I had spent many months talking about parenting styles, expectations, and even discipline standards, which lessened the chaos that ensued following the wedding.  Over the last 4+ years people have asked us for advice about parenting stepchildren and we’ve managed to distill it down into a few simple rules:</p>\r\n1. Get On The Same Page\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Nothing will create stress in a marriage than two parents who are not on the same page.  Disagreements over parenting styles, discipline standards, etc., will eventually become full-blown arguments when mixed with the stress of parenting.  Be sure the two of you work out any differences before you decide to get married and become a family.</p>\r\n2. Stay United\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Children love to play one parent off the other.  This is often taken to a whole other level when either the parents are divorced or in blended families.  It is vitally important to stay united in the face of the inevitable cries of “You’re not my <em>real</em> Mom/Dad”.</p>\r\n3. Respect Is Non-Negotiable\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">When parents remarry, children will automatically assume that the new adult is attempting to take the place of the other parent.  This generates a natural level of animosity between stepparent and stepchild(ren).  In our house, I’ve explained this to my girls, telling them that they don’t have to love Charlotte, they don’t even have to like her, but as the other adult in the house, they do have to respect her.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"> 4. Avoid Even The Appearance Of Favoritism</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"> It is only natural that, at times, the stepparent will favor their natural child, even unintentionally.  When these situations arise, be sure to communicate your observations in a non‑confrontational manner.  Whatever you do, <strong>do not discuss this in front of the other child(ren).</strong>  Find a time to discuss the issue later or, if this is impractical, ask the other parent to speak to you behind closed doors.  Just the appearance of favoritism can lead to resentment, not only between the stepchild(ren) and the stepparent, but between husband and wife as well.</p>\r\n5. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Above all else, keep the lines of communication open.  Give the stepchild(ren) a safe place to come and talk, respectfully, about their feelings about the stepparent.  Talk with your spouse often and ask if there’s anything that you need to discuss with your natural children.  But most of all, keep talking to each other and to the children.</p>\r\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Parenting in a blended family presents its own unique set of challenges.  These five simple rules are not intended to be all-inclusive, and each blended family is unique.  They are simply intended to provide a simple, stable, consistent foundation for developing healthy parent-child and parent-parent relationships.</p>','5 Simple Rules For Parenting Blended Families','','inherit','open','open','','1685-revision-4','','','2011-11-03 08:40:54','2011-11-03 15:40:54','',1685,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1685-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1774,1,'2011-11-03 08:37:49','2011-11-03 15:37:49','Recently I had coffee with a young, new mom.  She told me that she quit her full-time job to be with her baby.  I listened to her talk glowingly about the bonding they were doing and how “right” this decision felt to her.  She said she would go back to work “one day” but “for now” she was doing exactly what she should.  Then, in the same breath, she admitted that she was not without<em> some</em> doubt, whispering sheepishly that she couldn\'t think of <em>one</em> woman that she admired as a role model, who was a stay-at-home mother.  (Ouch, I tried not to take it personally because this was her story and not about me.)\r\n\r\nAs I listened, I was happy for her because <em>there is nothing like</em> that first year of a parent and child’s life together, spent connecting and bonding.  The yeasty baby smells on your clothes and being present for the first belly laughs.  As they grow a little older, hearing their first word.  Eventually seeing their first steps.\r\n\r\nI know how meaningful they are because I missed many of those firsts.\r\n\r\nI was working fifty to sixty hour weeks, through three pregnancies in four years, when each of my kids were born.  And, other than the six weeks allotted I was right back to work again, <em>by choice</em>.  Yes, I electric-pumped in the bathroom at work, between meetings.  I double padded for the crazy moments a baby cries and I might leak or nearly exploded, because a meeting went over and I needed to pump! <em> I did all that and I don’t regret one minute of it, </em>even though I cannot remember my daughter’s first word or whether I saw her first steps.  If I didn’t write it down, I cannot remember much about those years but I don’t mind because I loved working!\r\n\r\nWhen I quit my job I didn’t know an S.A.H.M. from an M.O.P.S. and certainly didn’t understand why <em>any</em><em>one</em> with an interesting career would quit for kids.  In fact I did <em>not</em> quit for <em>any</em> of the reasons many stay-at-home moms do and I never aspired to be one.  I was just fed up with certain aspects of my job and what I perceived as a glass ceiling.  <em>And I was plumb exhausted</em> – so exhausted that I had become irritable and dissatisfied with much of life.  My faith was suffering.  When I walked away from my career I just wanted to take a long, uninterrupted nap!\r\n\r\n<strong>You know what I wanted to say to my young friend at coffee?  <em>Don’t do it!!!!  </em></strong>\r\n\r\nYes, the secret is out.\r\n\r\nI became a <em>reluctant</em> SAHM to get away from my job <em>and to rest.</em>  Additionally, as we looked at the idea of one of us being with our kids, or a Nanny doing it, my husband and I did the math and it just made sense.  Though I was making 40K+, by the time we paid our Nanny a living wage, paid the taxes, I purchased a wardrobe of work clothing and dry cleaned those clothes, ate the inevitable lattes and lunches out, and then ordering take out because both of us were too tired to cook, it added up close to zero dollars left over.   The other thing we considered was the fact that my husband’s job was more lucrative long-term than mine was at a non-profit.\r\n\r\nBut when I was thinking and praying about making a change, I should have thought through<em> other</em> career options perhaps even a shared job. I grew up in the organization that I worked for and though I had been quickly promoted up through the organization I was there my entire thirteen year career.  I lacked the confidence to go out a find another job.  I thought quitting was my only option at the time.\r\n\r\nAnd now that my kids are older and I’m <em>oh so ready</em> to work outside the home, I’m running into the prejudice of having spent all this time, it’s been more than ten years, at home with kids.   Katie Read, a writer at Salon.com, <a title=\"Wish I Hadn\'t Opted Out\" href=\"http://www.salon.com/2011/01/06/wish_i_hadnt_opted_out/\" target=\"_blank\">wrote</a>:\r\n<div>\r\n<blockquote>\"Research shows that mothers earn <a href=\"http://www.asanet.org/press/motherhood_penalty.cfm\" target=\"_blank\">4 to 15 percent less</a> than non-mothers with comparable jobs and qualifications, that as job candidates, mothers are perceived as <a href=\"http://www.unc.edu/courses/2006spring/geog/203/001/motherhoodpenalty.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">less competent and committed</a> than non-mothers (fathers, in contrast, rate higher than men without kids).  Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress, <a href=\"http://www.brainchildmag.com/essays/winter2010_read.asp\" target=\"_blank\">told me last year</a> that the outlook for an at-home mother returning to work in this economy “kind of makes my stomach drop a little bit.” I know the feeling.\"</blockquote>\r\n</div>\r\nI know the feeling too.  Unlike Read, who is a single divorced mother of two, I don’t<em> need</em> to work I just <em>want</em> to work.\r\n\r\nI recently interviewed for an entry-level job, very part-time, that honestly I could have done in my sleep.  I was hoping to ease myself into an organization that I liked and would like to work for long-term.  But I knew that I was doomed when I was asked to describe <em>one specific project</em> that I had managed beginning to end.  I honestly tried to but my job was managing multiple people, programs, ideas, and nearly half a million dollar budget.  When I was told I was \"overqualified\" I suppose I was just shocked that they had the gall to say so even thought they said it differently.  \"This job wasn\'t in my sweet spot of gifting.\"  Huh, I started my working life as an entry-level office person.\r\n\r\nAn insider later told me, “You are a stallion.  What we needed in that job is a pony.” Implication, you don\'t want this job.  Horse metaphors aside, I applied for the job so I\'m sure I wanted it and I was surprised to be rejected.  I had led and managed people, multiple departments, and had tons of responsibility.  Why<em> would anyone NOT want me?</em>\r\n\r\nThe fact is that I have joined the ranks of other stay-at-home moms who are marginalize and looked down upon, just as I did when I was working outside of home.  I can remember asking my boss who was a woman with incredulity and some derision, “Why would anyone want to be a stay-at-home Mom?” <em>Why indeed?</em>\r\n\r\n<strong>What God did in me.</strong>\r\n\r\nWhat remains true now is the knowledge of what I have learned by quitting my job and being at home.  It actually has little to do with my children and all to do with what God wanted to <em>do inside me</em>.\r\n\r\nMy identity had been too wrapped up in my work and when I left, everything fell apart.  It took more than a year, but eventually I dropped into a deep depression.  (I tell that story in <a title=\"Not Alone\" href=\"http://civitaspress.com/not-alone-stories-of-living-with-depression/\" target=\"_blank\">Not Alone: Stories of Living with Depression</a> and in various places on my blog.)  I needed to go through the experiences that I did.  Why?  Because I never knew I was a beloved child <em>of</em> God, no matter what I could do <em>for</em> God, until I fell down into that pit.\r\n\r\n<strong>Being a stay-at-home mom it is an incredibly complicated personal decision. </strong>\r\n\r\nWe must respect the difficult place women (so much more than men) are in. No one can make this choice for a woman or explain away her doubts and fears, the dreams and aspirations, the personal goals, or our need and desire for “accomplishments.”   And no one can understand, after making a choice to go back to work, why a woman may regret or is torn by her decision.  <em>And I cannot choose for my young friend.  She will have to walk that path and sort it out herself.</em>\r\n\r\nAt times I look back over the last decade of my life with huge regrets, but also with gratitude because <em>I am still learning!</em>  My experiences have opened me up to a new life.  Christ’s broken body for me is meaningful in a way that I never understood until my experience with depression and addiction.  And gratefully I can say, all of this drove me to my knees.\r\n\r\nI went from someone who felt competent, powerful, and knowledgeable -- quite puffed up with my own importance, to a <a title=\"bruised reed\" href=\"http://bible.cc/matthew/12-20.htm\" target=\"_blank\">broken and bruised reed</a>, hardly knowing up from down.   I am humbled by my husband\'s love and the fact that my children adore me and I do them.  And gratefully, I know what a gift this time at home has been to me.  Yes, I rested (not physically as anyone with babies, small children or middle school kids knows.)  <strong>But I rested in Yahweh and became more human.  </strong>As I consider what the future holds for me, admittedly I still want a productive and vigorous career.  However as I look back at the last decade of being at home, I am glad for what I have learned.  And I would not trade it in for a more lucrative career.  (Okay some days I would, I honestly would!)  But the investment in my children is an honorable one and a privilege at this point.\r\n\r\nYes, I was an accidental (and in some ways very unhappy) SAHM.  By the power of the cross I am being constantly renewed and I continue to hope in it!  I know that even beyond being the mother of four beautiful children, which is gratifying in and of itself, I have a contribution to make<em>!</em>\r\n\r\n<strong>My advice, finally, to my young friend?  <em>Th<em>ere</em> is no perfect plan.</em> You must trust while serving, not knowing the future.  Believe that you have a contribution to make in your children\'s lives, in your own career and in all the people God brings into your life. </strong>\r\n\r\nI hope and pray that I will <em>continue</em> to be grateful that I am a child of God.  That this simple truth is enough.\r\n\r\n(Most days.)','The Accidental Stay-at-Home Mom','','inherit','open','open','','1592-revision-12','','','2011-11-03 08:37:49','2011-11-03 15:37:49','',1592,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1592-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(1775,1,'2011-11-03 08:43:11','2011-11-03 15:43:11','<strong>Hello, my name is Sarah, and I\'m a picky eater.</strong>\n\nI grew up in a family of picky eaters. Our standard menu included: frozen pizza, tacos, pasta, and occasionally some form of fast food. All processed, store bought food filled our plates. Occasionally, the garden salad graced our plates too. We received the admonishment to give thanks despite out distaste for the watery lettuce and bland tomato. My mother coupled guilt and shame when we pushed our dinner around on the plate, trying to make it appear as if we had eaten a great deal more than we had. Dutifully, my mother reminded us: “there are starving children all over Africa and Asia who would be happy to eat what you are turning your noses up at.”\n\n<strong>Even as an adult, my ideology surrounding food remained consistent—be grateful, clean your plate.</strong>\n\n<strong></strong> As a Christian, I believed we must thankful for our food. Questioning God\'s provisions stemmed from an ungrateful, thankless heart. Who was I to say the that grocery stores piled high all year with tomatoes, apples, meats, cheeses wasn\'t how God chose to provide for my needs? God truly blessed us with a bounty of available food but was all this food really a sign of God\'s blessing? Beneath the colorful description of the produce and meats, the signs stated where the food came. Produce delivered from South America. Meats trucked in from large processing plants. What I counted as God\'s gifts were wrecking havoc on the sustainability of our global climate and its resources.\n\n<strong> Perhaps, parenthood jolted me out of my complacency.</strong>\n\nI no longer had the luxury of making all the food decisions, and these decisions only affecting myself. Two children expected me to make healthier choices for them than they would make for themselves. Healthier choices meant learning about how our food comes to the store. Through my research, I learned two things. First, food should be local sourced. Local food is fresher, and it doesn\'t require the amount of resources expended in bringing food from farther away. Secondly, food should be seasonal. Nothing tastes better than a summer garden tomato. When we learn to eat seasonally, we experience food at its nutritional peak.\n\n<strong>I decided I wanted my children to be picky eaters.</strong>\n\nNot the kind of picky eater whose diet subsists of chicken nuggets and apple slices. But the kind of picky eater focused upon the sustainability of their food and its impact upon the global communities. As a parent, I want to teach my children not simply to be thankful for their food but mindful of the how the food came to their plates. This is not an easy task. When I grow to the grocery store, the fruits and vegetables are beautiful compounded by my children\'s desire to have apples in the winter or tomatoes in the fall. It\'s hard to say no when they are asking for healthy foods, but I use this opportunity to discuss sustainability and eating seasonally. We plant gardens and watch out food grow. Slowly, my children are learning that the food grown in our garden tastes better than store bought. They are becoming picky eaters.\n\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-pf/536096926/sizes/l/in/photostream/\">Photo by: J-P-F</a>','Raising Picky Eaters','','inherit','open','open','','1690-autosave','','','2011-11-03 08:43:11','2011-11-03 15:43:11','',1690,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1690-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(1776,1,'2011-11-01 15:12:09','2011-11-01 22:12:09','<strong>Hello, my name is Sarah, and I\'m a picky eater.</strong>\r\n\r\nI grew up in a family of picky eaters. Our standard menu included: frozen pizza, tacos, pasta, and occasionally some form of fast food. All processed, store bought food filled our plates. Occasionally, the garden salad graced our plates too. We received the admonishment to give thanks despite out distaste for the watery lettuce and bland tomato. My mother coupled guilt and shame when we pushed our dinner around on the plate, trying to make it appear as if we had eaten a great deal more than we had. Dutifully, my mother reminded us: “there are starving children all over Africa and Asia who would be happy to eat what you are turning your noses up at.”\r\n\r\n<strong>Even as an adult, my ideology surrounding food remained consistent—be grateful, clean your plate.</strong>\r\n\r\n<strong></strong> As a Christian, I believed we must thankful for our food. Questioning God\'s provisions stemmed from an ungrateful, thankless heart. Who was I to say the that grocery stores piled high all year with tomatoes, apples, meats, cheeses wasn\'t how God chose to provide for my needs? God truly blessed us with a bounty of available food but was all this food really a sign of God\'s blessing? Beneath the colorful description of the produce and meats, the signs stated where the food came. Produce delivered from South America. Meats trucked in from large processing plants. What I counted as God\'s gifts were wrecking havoc on the sustainability of our global climate and its resources.\r\n\r\n<strong> Perhaps, parenthood jolted me out of my complacency.</strong>\r\n\r\nI no longer had the luxury of making all the food decisions, and these decisions only affecting myself. Two children expected me to make healthier choices for them than they would make for themselves. Healthier choices meant learning about how our food comes to the store. Through my research, I learned two things. First, food should be local sourced. Local food is fresher, and it doesn\'t require the amount of resources expended in bringing food from farther away. Secondly, food should be seasonal. Nothing tastes better than a summer garden tomato. When we learn to eat seasonally, we experience food at its nutritional peak.\r\n\r\n<strong>I decided I wanted my children to be picky eaters.</strong>\r\n\r\nNot the kind of picky eater whose diet subsists of chicken nuggets and apple slices. But the kind of picky eater focused upon the sustainability of their food and its impact upon the global communities. As a parent, I want to teach my children not simply to be thankful for their food but mindful of the how the food came to their plates. This is not an easy task. When I grow to the grocery store, the fruits and vegetables are beautiful compounded by my children\'s desire to have apples in the winter or tomatoes in the fall. It\'s hard to say no when they are asking for healthy foods, but I use this opportunity to discuss sustainability and eating seasonally. We plant gardens and watch out food grow. Slowly, my children are learning that the food grown in our garden tastes better than store bought. They are becoming picky eaters.\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/j-pf/536096926/sizes/l/in/photostream/\">Photo by: J-P-F</a>','Raising Picky Eaters','','inherit','open','open','','1690-revision-9','','','2011-11-01 15:12:09','2011-11-01 22:12:09','',1690,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/01/1690-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(1777,1,'2011-11-03 08:44:56','2011-11-03 15:44:56','My husband, an educator and fierce advocate for students, recently suggested we apply No Child Left Behind principles to other professions.  We ended up jokingly deciding that perhaps pastors should measure their success not by number of congregants but by whether or not they had achieved zero percent sin rate among their membership.  Sadly, some Christians already seem to be taking this idea seriously.\n\nIt never ceases to amaze me the rampant legalism among conservative Christians.  I certainly don\'t doubt their sincerity of belief; but I question whether, for many people, believing means much more than \"not sinning.\"  Too often I hear people trying to equate loving our neighbors as no more than being polite when people irritate us.  Purity (in word and deed) trumps all else as the measure of holiness.  Reaching out is achieved by talking to anyone and everyone about our faith (the hairdresser, the grocery clerk, the nurse in the doctor\'s office).  Helping those in need becomes little other than participating in holiday food and gift basket collections.\n\nNone of those things are bad.  But they fall a little flat.  I wonder if we\'ve forgotten that being a faithful Christian is more than a list of things we\'re no longer supposed to do, a Personal Purity Inventory of sorts.  In order to show the world that you are a true disciple of Christ, you make regular tick marks on your PPI, thus demonstrating how far you\'ve come from your days as a depraved sinner.\n\nThe result of that is a bunch of people who freak out over trick-or-treating, Santa Claus, and sex, (not necessarily in that order), while failing to see the very real horrors all around us.  For example, on Halloween this year, Mark Hall of Casting Crowns posted a picture of <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150463031618793&amp;set=a.432381688792.209583.48842713792&amp;type=1\">himself in an Incredible Hulk Costume</a>.  The end result was miles and miles of comments, attacking Mark for his costume, attacking others for attacking him, and supporting Mark.  I think my favorite response to it was his own: \"Last night, I learned everyone has a whale to save.\"  Why not put that same effort into achieving peace between nations, ending poverty, and preserving our natural world?\n\nMaybe it\'s time all of us put more of ourselves into what really matters.  Because when we do, we will almost certainly achieve No Sinner Left Behind.','No Sinner Left Behind','','inherit','open','open','','1719-autosave','','','2011-11-03 08:44:56','2011-11-03 15:44:56','',1719,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1719-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(1778,1,'2011-11-02 13:05:59','2011-11-02 20:05:59','My husband, an educator and fierce advocate for students, recently suggested we apply No Child Left Behind principles to other professions.  We ended up jokingly deciding that perhaps pastors should measure their success not by number of congregants but by whether or not they had achieved zero percent sin rate among their membership.  Sadly, some Christians already seem to be taking this idea seriously.\r\n\r\nIt never ceases to amaze me the rampant legalism among conservative Christians.  I certainly don\'t doubt their sincerity of belief; but I question whether, for many people, believing means much more than \"not sinning.\"  Too often I hear people trying to equate loving our neighbors as no more than being polite when people irritate us.  Purity (in word and deed) trumps all else as the measure of holiness.  Reaching out is achieved by talking to anyone and everyone about our faith (the hairdresser, the grocery clerk, the nurse in the doctor\'s office).  Helping those in need becomes little other than participating in holiday food and gift basket collections.\r\n\r\nNone of those things are bad.  But they fall a little flat.  I wonder if we\'ve forgotten that being a faithful Christian is more than a list of things we\'re no longer supposed to do, a Personal Purity Inventory of sorts.  In order to show the world that you are a true disciple of Christ, you make regular tick marks on your PPI, thus demonstrating how far you\'ve come from your days as a depraved sinner.\r\n\r\nThe result of that is a bunch of people who freak out over trick-or-treating, Santa Claus, and sex, (not necessarily in that order), while failing to see the very real horrors all around us.  For example, on Halloween this year, Mark Hall of Casting Crowns posted a picture of <a href=\"http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150463031618793&amp;set=a.432381688792.209583.48842713792&amp;type=1\">himself in an Incredible Hulk Costume</a>.  The end result was miles and miles of comments, attacking Mark for his costume, attacking others for attacking him, and supporting Mark.  I think my favorite response to it was his own: \"Last night, I learned everyone has a whale to save.\"  Why not put that same effort into achieving peace between nations, ending poverty, and preserving our natural world?\r\n\r\nMaybe it\'s time all of us put more of ourselves into what really matters.  Because when we do, we will almost certainly achieve No Sinner Left Behind.','No Sinner Left Behind','','inherit','open','open','','1719-revision-6','','','2011-11-02 13:05:59','2011-11-02 20:05:59','',1719,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/02/1719-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(1779,1,'2011-11-02 13:09:42','2011-11-02 20:09:42','When did we develop and idolatrous relationship with work?  Now, don\'t misunderstand me.  I\'m not talking about productivity over laziness.  What I mean is that we tend to place value on people based on how hard we believe they are working.  Besides simply being thinly veiled judgmentalism (and possibly several other -isms as well), we don\'t even seem to agree on a proper definition for \"hard work.\"\r\n\r\nIs it earning wages?  Is it a function of the number of hours one puts in?  Is it the kind of work one does?  It seems to have been reduced to \"I know it when I see it.\"  The problem with that is that no one actually operates on that principle.  the number of times my husband or I have heard that teachers earn too much, people on welfare are lazy, or that I ought to think about getting a \"real\" job is rapidly approaching nausea-inducing levels.\r\n\r\nAt this point in my life, I\'m still a stay-at-home mom.  For now, that pretty much means that I homeschool our six-year-old (most days), keep the house tidy (more or less), take care of the dishes and the laundry (usually), and make meals (fairly often).  It also means that I have some spare time to blog about our failed science experiments, teach Sunday school, and play with an amateur orchestra.  I also have an unpaid job as Family Chauffeur.  Am I working hard?  That\'s difficult to say.  On a good day (most of them), it doesn\'t even feel like work.  So maybe I\'m just living it up, mooching off my husband\'s salary.  After all, I\'m not contributing to the family income.\r\n\r\nI have several friends and family members receiving public benefits.  They may not be working, or working many hours, at a paid job.  But every single one of them is contributing to family and society in a variety of ways.  And each is receiving benefits for different reasons.  When I mention this to the Frown on Welfare Brigade, they are hasty to say, \"Well we don\'t mean <em>them</em>, really.  We\'re talking about those <em>other</em> people.\"  (Incidentally, we get the same answer when we ask if they believe my teacher husband\'s salary should be cut.)  And of course, someone always has to bring in the Big Guns.  Someone always claims to know of someone who uses food stamps to buy nothing but junk, or uses welfare to pay for cable and lets the kids starve.\r\n\r\nIs this what we\'re reduced to?  Arguing over whether a person is valuable to society because he or she isn\'t \"working\"?  Work is not what should define us.  It\'s not an ideal to aspire to, in terms of hours logged.  And if it were about actual toil, construction workers and farmers would be at the top, with business managers and technical specialists at the bottom.\r\n\r\nInstead of misunderstanding and resenting one another based on something so meaningless as working for work\'s sake, why not put our efforts to better use?  Why not create common goals and labor for those together?','Working Hard or Hardly Working','','inherit','open','open','','1717-revision-3','','','2011-11-02 13:09:42','2011-11-02 20:09:42','',1717,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/02/1717-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(1783,1,'2011-11-03 15:09:33','2011-11-03 22:09:33','&nbsp;\r\n\r\nby Joy Wilson\r\n\r\nHe sat in a red chair and watched while I was raped.  I was only four, but I knew who he was.  Jesus didn’t do anything but speak into my mind, over and over, “I’m right here.  I’m not going anywhere.  You’re going to be OK.”  And I believed him as I slid into darkness from pain and suffocation.\r\n\r\nThe incest went on for years, and Jesus stayed with me, more like a stray dog than God.  He followed me into bars and hotel rooms with strangers, in and out of church, through three divorce hearings, into alcoholic blackouts.  Sometimes I appreciated his company; sometimes I just wished he would leave me alone.  Often I took him for granted, but I always knew he was there, as real as I was.\r\n\r\nAlong the way, our relationship got messed up when church told me that Jesus did things for those who believed, for those who asked in faith, for those who followed him.  I couldn’t figure out the “follow” part because we always traveled side by side.  But what about “faith”?  I had believed Jesus from the very beginning.  He did what he said he’d do:  never leave.  But what about everything else in my life?  He hadn’t stopped the rapes, kept me out of trouble, helped me get sober.  Whose fault was that?  Apparently mine.  I didn’t have enough faith or pray right or behave enough or or or.\r\n\r\nThen I heard that “All things are possible with God.”  Except for me.  It seemed like my Stray Dog God shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Sure, I can do anything, but for you?”  Silence.  I knew I could never go to All Saints Academy.  If I got into heaven, which was questionable, my crown would come from Burger King with painted paper jewels.  And the crucifixion story – all that gore and torture made me shudder.  I’d had too much abuse for too long.  Instead of making me feel connected with a fellow sufferer, I fled in revulsion.  If being “washed in the blood of the Lamb” was required for salvation, well…..I couldn’t do that or go there.  I was already lost.  Now I had to stay lost.\r\n\r\nSo what did that make Jesus for me?  A partner in crime, like the guy at the wheel in the getaway car while I robbed the bank?  Or was he my little friend who let me play with his toys until it was time for him to go home to his Daddy?  Was Jesus on loan to me until I died and went…….where?  I didn’t know, but I was getting really pissed off.  I had a useless God on my hands whom I loved and hated at the same time, and I didn’t know what to do with him.\r\n\r\nThe day came when my years of compressed pain and anger erupted all over Jesus.  I screamed at him, wanting to hurt him as badly as I hurt, and to my complete shock, he screamed back – his love.  And that’s how I learned to pray.  We began talking, and I let him have it, trying to be as blasphemous as possible, and he just laughed and said, “Finally!  You’re being honest with me.  Come on, let’s get in the mud and fight dirty.  I love to wrestle.”  And we did, and I didn’t always win, but I always wanted another round.\r\n\r\nYou see, he wouldn’t give up on me.  What I didn’t realize was I hadn’t ever given up on him, either.  No matter what had gone wrong in my life, I was never alone, never abandoned by my God like so many other people had.  I discovered I couldn’t offend him – he hadn’t ever run off screaming or struck me by lightning, right?  And come to think of it, Jesus had done a lot for me.  I wasn’t in prison from killing someone while driving drunk.  I wasn’t dead, though I should have been.  Jesus had been working his ass off protecting me.  Why?  Because he loved me just as I was.  In fact, he made me just like I was, knowing how I’d turn out, which is totally insane.\r\n\r\nAnd then lightning really did strike – in my brain:  Jesus had been saving me all my life.  I didn’t have to get saved – I already was.  We shared a deep, personal relationship like I had with no one else.  I was loved and accepted unconditionally, which meant I didn’t have to pray right, have enough faith, act like Mother Teresa, or be someone I wasn’t.  Then lightning struck twice, and I realized it had been awhile since I’d done something self-destructive.  I was getting better at telling the truth, being kind, stuff like that.  I was starting to act like…..him.\r\n\r\nLast night we were talking outside in the carport, and I said, “I love you so much.  But what about the crucifixion?”  And Jesus said, “Don’t worry about it.  I’ve got you covered.”','What If Jesus Didn\'t Die For Me?','','inherit','open','open','','1760-revision-5','','','2011-11-03 15:09:33','2011-11-03 22:09:33','',1760,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1760-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(1784,38,'2011-11-05 18:54:23','2011-11-06 01:54:23','For those of you who don’t live with gamers or who have not heard of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_effect_2\" target=\"_blank\">Mass Effect 2</a>, it’s an action role-playing space epic video game. As any good space epic goes, there is a species that is the cause of full colonies disappearing overnight. Commander Shepherd, the main character, is tasked with stopping this relatively unknown destructive force by taking his eclectic team planet-hopping to save the galaxy. The graphics in the game are absolutely stunning, the dialogue between species is thoughtful and well done (which I learned to appreciate from my love of the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Redwall-Book-1-Brian-Jacques/dp/0142302376/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320295383&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Redwall</a> books growing up), and your in-game actions and dialogue choices impact the characters around you and your relationships with them (and even carry through into the next game).  Some of you might even recognize one of the characters as Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Sarah Walker in the TV show “Chuck”.\n\nSo, now that I’ve outed myself as a nerd, or at the very least the wife of a gamer, what does this have anything to do with blame?\n\nOne of Shepherd’s team members is a woman named Jack. Jack was experimented on as a child by an elitist organization called Cerebus. She somehow managed to escape and ever since has been a very hard individual. She keeps to her quarters away from the main traffic areas of the ship. She is suspicious the moment anyone asks anything close to a personal question.\n\nFor those of you who might play the game, I don’t want spoil anything so I won’t tell you how this situation arises, but at some point in the game Jack runs into a friend, Aresh, who was another child who had been experimented during same time she was. They talk for a minute, re-establishing a connection and they start to talk about what happens when the conversation gets weird. As the conversation continues, Aresh reveals that he is trying to <em>rebuild</em> the set of experiments that were performed on him.\n\nWait, what? That’s crazy. Why would anyone try to duplicate the awful experimentation performed on him as an innocent, defenseless child?\n\n“I’m rebuilding [the experiments]. What they were looking for… It must have been important. So I’m going to try to find it myself. They must have had good reasons for what they did!”\n\nI was only half paying attention to what was happening on the TV screen until this moment. It struck me: what a fascinating take on how people process traumatic events. Aresh wasn’t trying to harm other people; he was only trying to find meaning in what happened.\n\nYou see two people who experienced the same situation growing up and it produced two different effects. One is inked from head to toe, is a loner out in the universe and keeps to herself. Another, haunted by what happened, seeks to try to find the good intentions from the perpetrators, even if they are buried deep. There must have been a good reason that they found it okay to experiment on kids. It must have been a case of sacrificing for the greater good. He was trying to discover the greater good so he could finally put his past to bed.\n\nI am aware that this is a very extreme analogy for people like you and me. We aren’t on a spaceship bringing justice to the universe, but the one thing we all have in common is that bad things happen to us and we all have to find a way to deal with it.\n\nSome people (like me) shove it way down into a jar inside and shut the lid. They keep filling the jar until it explodes. Some people deal with it head on and are abrasive to everyone around them until they can work it out. Some people give the past its space but keep everyone at a distance for the rest of their lives. Some people, like in the case of Aresh, go back to the scene of the crime and try to find evidence of a heart or conscience somewhere—anywhere!—even if there are only tiny scraps of it left.\n\nFrom the outside we all can see that Aresh has a few screws loose, but he can’t see that. To him, having lived through that, the only way he can come to terms with what happened is if he suffered for a greater cause. He is dealing with his lifelong pain the only way he knows how.\n\nWhat about you? Do you have a coping mechanism that you go back to in times of need? How does that mechanism affect you and the people around you in the long run? How do you come to terms with your memories?\n\nA lot of people I know would tell me to “give it to God.” But what does that really mean? How do I actually just give it to God? There is a measure of pain I need to work through on my own. Giving it to someone else so it can magically disappear feels like I’m giving up and letting the other party win. It feels like a cop-out and like I’m not strong enough to slay my own dragons. Sometimes I can’t tell if that’s a pride thing or a human thing.\n\nI can identify with Aresh on a level because I like to think that people carry around the same heart and brain that I do. So when people commit crimes without batting an eyelash or, as one of my friends said, “sit over their Wheaties in the morning trying to figure out ways to screw people,” I have no way of processing it. It’s outside of my understanding of how the universe is supposed to work.\n\nThankfully, there is no right or wrong way to handle grief or pain. Can you identify with Aresh? How do you process painful events? How do you put your past to rest and find peace?\n\n<em>Photo credit: JaseCu</em>','Finding Meaning In Our Trauma','','inherit','open','open','','1747-autosave','','','2011-11-05 18:54:23','2011-11-06 01:54:23','',1747,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1747-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(1785,1,'2011-11-02 21:46:53','2011-11-03 04:46:53','For those of you who don’t live with gamers or who have not heard of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_effect_2\" target=\"_blank\">Mass Effect 2</a>, it’s an action role-playing space epic video game. As any good space epic goes, there is a species that is the cause of full colonies disappearing overnight. Commander Shepherd, the main character, is tasked with stopping this relatively unknown destructive force by taking his eclectic team planet-hopping to save the galaxy. The graphics in the game are absolutely stunning, the dialogue between species is thoughtful and well done (which I learned to appreciate from my love of the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Redwall-Book-1-Brian-Jacques/dp/0142302376/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320295383&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Redwall</a> books growing up), and your in-game actions and dialogue choices impact the characters around you and your relationships with them (and even carry through into the next game).  Some of you might even recognize one of the characters as Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Sarah Walker in the TV show “Chuck”.\r\n\r\nSo, now that I’ve outed myself as a nerd, or at the very least the wife of a gamer, what does this have anything to do with blame?\r\n\r\nOne of Shepherd’s team members is a woman named Jack. Jack was experimented on as a child by an elitist organization called Cerebus. She somehow managed to escape and ever since has been a very hard individual. She keeps to her quarters away from the main traffic areas of the ship. She is suspicious the moment anyone asks anything close to a personal question.\r\n\r\nFor those of you who might play the game, I don’t want spoil anything so I won’t tell you how this situation arises, but at some point in the game Jack runs into a friend, Aresh, who was another child who had been experimented during same time she was. They talk for a minute, re-establishing a connection and they start to talk about what happens when the conversation gets weird. As the conversation continues, Aresh reveals that he is trying to <em>rebuild</em> the set of experiments that were performed on him.\r\n\r\nWait, what? That’s crazy. Why would anyone try to duplicate the awful experimentation performed on him as an innocent, defenseless child?\r\n\r\n“I’m rebuilding [the experiments]. What they were looking for… It must have been important. So I’m going to try to find it myself. They must have had good reasons for what they did!”\r\n\r\nI was only half paying attention to what was happening on the TV screen until this moment. It struck me: what a fascinating take on how people process traumatic events. Aresh wasn’t trying to harm other people; he was only trying to find meaning in what happened.\r\n\r\nYou see two people who experienced the same situation growing up and it produced two different effects. One is inked from head to toe, is a loner out in the universe and keeps to herself. Another, haunted by what happened, seeks to try to find the good intentions from the perpetrators, even if they are buried deep. There must have been a good reason that they found it okay to experiment on kids. It must have been a case of sacrificing for the greater good. He was trying to discover the greater good so he could finally put his past to bed.\r\n\r\nI am aware that this is a very extreme analogy for people like you and me. We aren’t on a spaceship bringing justice to the universe, but the one thing we all have in common is that bad things happen to us and we all have to find a way to deal with it.\r\n\r\nSome people (like me) shove it way down into a jar inside and shut the lid. They keep filling the jar until it explodes. Some people deal with it head on and are abrasive to everyone around them until they can work it out. Some people give the past its space but keep everyone at a distance for the rest of their lives. Some people, like in the case of Aresh, go back to the scene of the crime and try to find evidence of a heart or conscience somewhere—anywhere!—even if there are only tiny scraps of it left.\r\n\r\nFrom the outside we all can see that Aresh has a few screws loose, but he can’t see that. To him, having lived through that, the only way he can come to terms with what happened is if he suffered for a greater cause. He is dealing with his lifelong pain the only way he knows how.\r\n\r\nWhat about you? Do you have a coping mechanism that you go back to in times of need? How does that mechanism affect you and the people around you in the long run? How do you come to terms with your memories?\r\n\r\nA lot of people I know would tell me to “give it to God.” But what does that really mean? How do I actually just give it to God? There is a measure of pain I need to work through on my own. Giving it to someone else so it can magically disappear feels like I’m giving up and letting the other party win. It feels like a cop-out and like I’m not strong enough to slay my own dragons. Sometimes I can’t tell if that’s a pride thing or a human thing.\r\n\r\nI can identify with Aresh on a level because I like to think that people carry around the same heart and brain that I do. So when people commit crimes without batting an eyelash or, as one of my friends said, “sit over their Wheaties in the morning trying to figure out ways to screw people,” I have no way of processing it. It’s outside of my understanding of how the universe is supposed to work.\r\n\r\nThankfully, there is no right or wrong way to handle grief or pain. Can you identify with Aresh? How do you process painful events? How do you put your past to rest and find peace?\r\n\r\n<em>Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/annakie/4431762093/\" target=\"_blank\">Annakie</a></em>','The Blame Game and Mass Effect','','inherit','open','open','','1747-revision-11','','','2011-11-02 21:46:53','2011-11-03 04:46:53','',1747,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/02/1747-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0),(1786,1,'2011-11-03 15:17:44','2011-11-03 22:17:44','For those of you who don’t live with gamers or who have not heard of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_effect_2\" target=\"_blank\">Mass Effect 2</a>, it’s an action role-playing space epic video game. As any good space epic goes, there is a species that is the cause of full colonies disappearing overnight. Commander Shepherd, the main character, is tasked with stopping this relatively unknown destructive force by taking his eclectic team planet-hopping to save the galaxy. The graphics in the game are absolutely stunning, the dialogue between species is thoughtful and well done (which I learned to appreciate from my love of the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Redwall-Book-1-Brian-Jacques/dp/0142302376/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320295383&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Redwall</a> books growing up), and your in-game actions and dialogue choices impact the characters around you and your relationships with them (and even carry through into the next game).  Some of you might even recognize one of the characters as Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Sarah Walker in the TV show “Chuck”.\r\n\r\nSo, now that I’ve outed myself as a nerd, or at the very least the wife of a gamer, what does this have anything to do with blame?\r\n\r\nOne of Shepherd’s team members is a woman named Jack. Jack was experimented on as a child by an elitist organization called Cerebus. She somehow managed to escape and ever since has been a very hard individual. She keeps to her quarters away from the main traffic areas of the ship. She is suspicious the moment anyone asks anything close to a personal question.\r\n\r\nFor those of you who might play the game, I don’t want spoil anything so I won’t tell you how this situation arises, but at some point in the game Jack runs into a friend, Aresh, who was another child who had been experimented during same time she was. They talk for a minute, re-establishing a connection and they start to talk about what happens when the conversation gets weird. As the conversation continues, Aresh reveals that he is trying to <em>rebuild</em> the set of experiments that were performed on him.\r\n\r\nWait, what? That’s crazy. Why would anyone try to duplicate the awful experimentation performed on him as an innocent, defenseless child?\r\n\r\n“I’m rebuilding [the experiments]. What they were looking for… It must have been important. So I’m going to try to find it myself. They must have had good reasons for what they did!”\r\n\r\nI was only half paying attention to what was happening on the TV screen until this moment. It struck me: what a fascinating take on how people process traumatic events. Aresh wasn’t trying to harm other people; he was only trying to find meaning in what happened.\r\n\r\nYou see two people who experienced the same situation growing up and it produced two different effects. One is inked from head to toe, is a loner out in the universe and keeps to herself. Another, haunted by what happened, seeks to try to find the good intentions from the perpetrators, even if they are buried deep. There must have been a good reason that they found it okay to experiment on kids. It must have been a case of sacrificing for the greater good. He was trying to discover the greater good so he could finally put his past to bed.\r\n\r\nI am aware that this is a very extreme analogy for people like you and me. We aren’t on a spaceship bringing justice to the universe, but the one thing we all have in common is that bad things happen to us and we all have to find a way to deal with it.\r\n\r\nSome people (like me) shove it way down into a jar inside and shut the lid. They keep filling the jar until it explodes. Some people deal with it head on and are abrasive to everyone around them until they can work it out. Some people give the past its space but keep everyone at a distance for the rest of their lives. Some people, like in the case of Aresh, go back to the scene of the crime and try to find evidence of a heart or conscience somewhere—anywhere!—even if there are only tiny scraps of it left.\r\n\r\nFrom the outside we all can see that Aresh has a few screws loose, but he can’t see that. To him, having lived through that, the only way he can come to terms with what happened is if he suffered for a greater cause. He is dealing with his lifelong pain the only way he knows how.\r\n\r\nWhat about you? Do you have a coping mechanism that you go back to in times of need? How does that mechanism affect you and the people around you in the long run? How do you come to terms with your memories?\r\n\r\nA lot of people I know would tell me to “give it to God.” But what does that really mean? How do I actually just give it to God? There is a measure of pain I need to work through on my own. Giving it to someone else so it can magically disappear feels like I’m giving up and letting the other party win. It feels like a cop-out and like I’m not strong enough to slay my own dragons. Sometimes I can’t tell if that’s a pride thing or a human thing.\r\n\r\nI can identify with Aresh on a level because I like to think that people carry around the same heart and brain that I do. So when people commit crimes without batting an eyelash or, as one of my friends said, “sit over their Wheaties in the morning trying to figure out ways to screw people,” I have no way of processing it. It’s outside of my understanding of how the universe is supposed to work.\r\n\r\nThankfully, there is no right or wrong way to handle grief or pain. Can you identify with Aresh? How do you process painful events? How do you put your past to rest and find peace?\r\n\r\n<em>Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/annakie/4431762093/\" target=\"_blank\">Annakie</a></em>','Finding Meaning In Our Trauma','','inherit','open','open','','1747-revision-12','','','2011-11-03 15:17:44','2011-11-03 22:17:44','',1747,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1747-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(1787,1,'2011-11-03 15:18:15','2011-11-03 22:18:15','For those of you who don’t live with gamers or who have not heard of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_effect_2\" target=\"_blank\">Mass Effect 2</a>, it’s an action role-playing space epic video game. As any good space epic goes, there is a species that is the cause of full colonies disappearing overnight. Commander Shepherd, the main character, is tasked with stopping this relatively unknown destructive force by taking his eclectic team planet-hopping to save the galaxy. The graphics in the game are absolutely stunning, the dialogue between species is thoughtful and well done (which I learned to appreciate from my love of the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Redwall-Book-1-Brian-Jacques/dp/0142302376/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320295383&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Redwall</a> books growing up), and your in-game actions and dialogue choices impact the characters around you and your relationships with them (and even carry through into the next game).  Some of you might even recognize one of the characters as Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Sarah Walker in the TV show “Chuck”.\r\n\r\nSo, now that I’ve outed myself as a nerd, or at the very least the wife of a gamer, what does this have anything to do with blame?\r\n\r\nOne of Shepherd’s team members is a woman named Jack. Jack was experimented on as a child by an elitist organization called Cerebus. She somehow managed to escape and ever since has been a very hard individual. She keeps to her quarters away from the main traffic areas of the ship. She is suspicious the moment anyone asks anything close to a personal question.\r\n\r\nFor those of you who might play the game, I don’t want spoil anything so I won’t tell you how this situation arises, but at some point in the game Jack runs into a friend, Aresh, who was another child who had been experimented during same time she was. They talk for a minute, re-establishing a connection and they start to talk about what happens when the conversation gets weird. As the conversation continues, Aresh reveals that he is trying to <em>rebuild</em> the set of experiments that were performed on him.\r\n\r\nWait, what? That’s crazy. Why would anyone try to duplicate the awful experimentation performed on him as an innocent, defenseless child?\r\n\r\n“I’m rebuilding [the experiments]. What they were looking for… It must have been important. So I’m going to try to find it myself. They must have had good reasons for what they did!”\r\n\r\nI was only half paying attention to what was happening on the TV screen until this moment. It struck me: what a fascinating take on how people process traumatic events. Aresh wasn’t trying to harm other people; he was only trying to find meaning in what happened.\r\n\r\nYou see two people who experienced the same situation growing up and it produced two different effects. One is inked from head to toe, is a loner out in the universe and keeps to herself. Another, haunted by what happened, seeks to try to find the good intentions from the perpetrators, even if they are buried deep. There must have been a good reason that they found it okay to experiment on kids. It must have been a case of sacrificing for the greater good. He was trying to discover the greater good so he could finally put his past to bed.\r\n\r\nI am aware that this is a very extreme analogy for people like you and me. We aren’t on a spaceship bringing justice to the universe, but the one thing we all have in common is that bad things happen to us and we all have to find a way to deal with it.\r\n\r\nSome people (like me) shove it way down into a jar inside and shut the lid. They keep filling the jar until it explodes. Some people deal with it head on and are abrasive to everyone around them until they can work it out. Some people give the past its space but keep everyone at a distance for the rest of their lives. Some people, like in the case of Aresh, go back to the scene of the crime and try to find evidence of a heart or conscience somewhere—anywhere!—even if there are only tiny scraps of it left.\r\n\r\nFrom the outside we all can see that Aresh has a few screws loose, but he can’t see that. To him, having lived through that, the only way he can come to terms with what happened is if he suffered for a greater cause. He is dealing with his lifelong pain the only way he knows how.\r\n\r\nWhat about you? Do you have a coping mechanism that you go back to in times of need? How does that mechanism affect you and the people around you in the long run? How do you come to terms with your memories?\r\n\r\nA lot of people I know would tell me to “give it to God.” But what does that really mean? How do I actually just give it to God? There is a measure of pain I need to work through on my own. Giving it to someone else so it can magically disappear feels like I’m giving up and letting the other party win. It feels like a cop-out and like I’m not strong enough to slay my own dragons. Sometimes I can’t tell if that’s a pride thing or a human thing.\r\n\r\nI can identify with Aresh on a level because I like to think that people carry around the same heart and brain that I do. So when people commit crimes without batting an eyelash or, as one of my friends said, “sit over their Wheaties in the morning trying to figure out ways to screw people,” I have no way of processing it. It’s outside of my understanding of how the universe is supposed to work.\r\n\r\nThankfully, there is no right or wrong way to handle grief or pain. Can you identify with Aresh? How do you process painful events? How do you put your past to rest and find peace?\r\n\r\n<em>Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/annakie/4431762093/\" target=\"_blank\">Annakie</a></em>','Finding Meaning In Our Trauma','','inherit','open','open','','1747-revision-13','','','2011-11-03 15:18:15','2011-11-03 22:18:15','',1747,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1747-revision-13/',0,'revision','',0),(1839,38,'2011-11-05 18:54:58','2011-11-06 01:54:58','','mass-effect-2','','inherit','open','open','','mass-effect-2','','','2011-11-05 18:54:58','2011-11-06 01:54:58','',1747,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/mass-effect-2.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(1788,1,'2011-11-03 15:24:57','2011-11-03 22:24:57','','Mass_effect','','inherit','open','open','','mass_effect','','','2011-11-03 15:24:57','2011-11-03 22:24:57','',1747,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Mass_effect.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(1789,1,'2011-11-03 15:18:34','2011-11-03 22:18:34','For those of you who don’t live with gamers or who have not heard of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_effect_2\" target=\"_blank\">Mass Effect 2</a>, it’s an action role-playing space epic video game. As any good space epic goes, there is a species that is the cause of full colonies disappearing overnight. Commander Shepherd, the main character, is tasked with stopping this relatively unknown destructive force by taking his eclectic team planet-hopping to save the galaxy. The graphics in the game are absolutely stunning, the dialogue between species is thoughtful and well done (which I learned to appreciate from my love of the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Redwall-Book-1-Brian-Jacques/dp/0142302376/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320295383&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Redwall</a> books growing up), and your in-game actions and dialogue choices impact the characters around you and your relationships with them (and even carry through into the next game).  Some of you might even recognize one of the characters as Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Sarah Walker in the TV show “Chuck”.\r\n\r\nSo, now that I’ve outed myself as a nerd, or at the very least the wife of a gamer, what does this have anything to do with blame?\r\n\r\nOne of Shepherd’s team members is a woman named Jack. Jack was experimented on as a child by an elitist organization called Cerebus. She somehow managed to escape and ever since has been a very hard individual. She keeps to her quarters away from the main traffic areas of the ship. She is suspicious the moment anyone asks anything close to a personal question.\r\n\r\nFor those of you who might play the game, I don’t want spoil anything so I won’t tell you how this situation arises, but at some point in the game Jack runs into a friend, Aresh, who was another child who had been experimented during same time she was. They talk for a minute, re-establishing a connection and they start to talk about what happens when the conversation gets weird. As the conversation continues, Aresh reveals that he is trying to <em>rebuild</em> the set of experiments that were performed on him.\r\n\r\nWait, what? That’s crazy. Why would anyone try to duplicate the awful experimentation performed on him as an innocent, defenseless child?\r\n\r\n“I’m rebuilding [the experiments]. What they were looking for… It must have been important. So I’m going to try to find it myself. They must have had good reasons for what they did!”\r\n\r\nI was only half paying attention to what was happening on the TV screen until this moment. It struck me: what a fascinating take on how people process traumatic events. Aresh wasn’t trying to harm other people; he was only trying to find meaning in what happened.\r\n\r\nYou see two people who experienced the same situation growing up and it produced two different effects. One is inked from head to toe, is a loner out in the universe and keeps to herself. Another, haunted by what happened, seeks to try to find the good intentions from the perpetrators, even if they are buried deep. There must have been a good reason that they found it okay to experiment on kids. It must have been a case of sacrificing for the greater good. He was trying to discover the greater good so he could finally put his past to bed.\r\n\r\nI am aware that this is a very extreme analogy for people like you and me. We aren’t on a spaceship bringing justice to the universe, but the one thing we all have in common is that bad things happen to us and we all have to find a way to deal with it.\r\n\r\nSome people (like me) shove it way down into a jar inside and shut the lid. They keep filling the jar until it explodes. Some people deal with it head on and are abrasive to everyone around them until they can work it out. Some people give the past its space but keep everyone at a distance for the rest of their lives. Some people, like in the case of Aresh, go back to the scene of the crime and try to find evidence of a heart or conscience somewhere—anywhere!—even if there are only tiny scraps of it left.\r\n\r\nFrom the outside we all can see that Aresh has a few screws loose, but he can’t see that. To him, having lived through that, the only way he can come to terms with what happened is if he suffered for a greater cause. He is dealing with his lifelong pain the only way he knows how.\r\n\r\nWhat about you? Do you have a coping mechanism that you go back to in times of need? How does that mechanism affect you and the people around you in the long run? How do you come to terms with your memories?\r\n\r\nA lot of people I know would tell me to “give it to God.” But what does that really mean? How do I actually just give it to God? There is a measure of pain I need to work through on my own. Giving it to someone else so it can magically disappear feels like I’m giving up and letting the other party win. It feels like a cop-out and like I’m not strong enough to slay my own dragons. Sometimes I can’t tell if that’s a pride thing or a human thing.\r\n\r\nI can identify with Aresh on a level because I like to think that people carry around the same heart and brain that I do. So when people commit crimes without batting an eyelash or, as one of my friends said, “sit over their Wheaties in the morning trying to figure out ways to screw people,” I have no way of processing it. It’s outside of my understanding of how the universe is supposed to work.\r\n\r\nThankfully, there is no right or wrong way to handle grief or pain. Can you identify with Aresh? How do you process painful events? How do you put your past to rest and find peace?\r\n\r\n<em>Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/annakie/4431762093/\" target=\"_blank\">Annakie</a></em>','Finding Meaning In Our Trauma','','inherit','open','open','','1747-revision-14','','','2011-11-03 15:18:34','2011-11-03 22:18:34','',1747,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1747-revision-14/',0,'revision','',0),(1790,0,'2011-11-03 15:28:29','2011-11-03 22:28:29','Ron, your post is live on Provoketive, but you haven\'t connected your \r\nGravatar yet.  Please do so as soon as possible.  Thanks.\r\n\r\nJonathan\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Jonathan Brink\nAUTHOR EMAIL: jb@thriven.org\nAUTHOR URL: http://jonathanbrink.com\nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Finding Life Beyond Religion...Is There A Way Forward\nIP: 75.44.207.238\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Jonathan Brink\n    [Email] =&gt; jb@thriven.org\n    [Website] =&gt; http://jonathanbrink.com\n    [Message] =&gt; Ron, your post is live on Provoketive, but you haven\'t connected your \r\nGravatar yet.  Please do so as soon as possible.  Thanks.\r\n\r\nJonathan\n)\n','Jonathan Brink - 2011-11-03 15:28:29','','publish','open','open','','87130169cc47047486b8a796c4d1e91d','','','2011-11-03 15:28:29','2011-11-03 22:28:29','',1621,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=1790',0,'feedback','',0),(1793,77,'2011-11-03 19:26:01','2011-11-04 02:26:01','','YinYang1','','inherit','open','open','','yinyang1','','','2011-11-03 19:26:01','2011-11-04 02:26:01','',1792,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/YinYang1.gif',0,'attachment','image/gif',0),(1794,77,'2011-11-03 19:24:33','2011-11-04 02:24:33','As a teenager, I was one of those kids who hadn\'t a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. My twenties came and life just kind of happened.  I had opportunities.  I took advantage of them.  I gave it my all.  And life unfolded from there. By the time I was 23 I was in a mid-level retail management position overseeing about 20 employees. And I thought to myself that by the time I was in my thirties I wanted to be a senior level manager in my company with a big profit sharing portfolio on a trajectory toward retirement by my mid-forties.\n\nAfter learning of the disproportionate number of those managers who ended up dead early of heart attacks or divorced, I opted for a move into another industry in my thirties. As life continued to unfold I looked ahead to my forties with a desire to be successfully self-employed and financially independent.\n\nI entered my forties nearly over years ago and today I am neither successfully self-employed nor financially independent.  And with another decade of life well underway I am once again looking ahead to the next milestone, the age of 50, and thinking about where I want to be, where I feel I need to be, when I arrive at that number which at the moment scares the hell out of me.  Fifty?  Me?  No way.\n\nI am learning something valuable in my forties that I didn’t grasp in the first few decades of life.  And that is the necessity of finding balance and forward momentum in the midst that which is less desirable while longing for my preferred future.  The Chinese call a similar tension in life the Yin Yang.  It is the interconnectedness and interdependence between seemingly polar opposite forces.  Light. Dark. Positive. Negative. Happy. Sad. Difficult. Easy. Complex. Simple.\n\nTranslated into the Zen of work, it looks something like this.  You know what you were created to do, but circumstances seem to prevent you from doing it.  You know what you are great at.  But real life demands that you devote a lot of time and energy to other things that you aren’t so great at.  You have your dreams.  Yet reality always seems to get in the way causing your dreams to be deferred for perhaps another decade or two, or three, or five.\n\nSounds frustrating doesn’t it?  It can be.  After a couple of decades, I think most people simply give up.  The ones who do surrender are the ones who misunderstand the nature of Yin Yang.  It isn’t a battle in which negative overcomes positive, or positive overcomes negative.  To the contrary, one is dependent upon and gives rise to the other in turn.  Both are required.  Both are unavoidable.  And the person who finds fulfillment in life and work is the person who learns to cooperate with the negative to bring about the positive and in the midst of the positive is strengthened, prepared, and emboldened to endure the negative that will come in turn.  The Yin Yang symbol demonstrates this interdependence. White on one side (representing light, positive, happy, easy and simple with black on the other representing dark, negative, sad, difficult, and complex.  Yet there is the presence of a black circle in the midst of the white side and the presence of a white circle on the black side.\n\nSo here you are in the midst of living and working and dreaming about the future.  You may have a very good job with a great company, surrounded by positive, talented people. But you still dream about someday finding that career “sweet spot” wherein it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between work and play.  You have a vision for the thing you’d love to be doing.  But you aren’t there.  You don’t know how to get there.  You keep waiting for all of the stars and planets to align perfectly so you wake up one morning and all you’ve dreamed about is right outside your door waiting for you to step onto the scene.  But life doesn’t happen that way.  Yin. Yang. Tick. Tock.\n\nLook again at the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_and_Yang.svg\">taijitu symbol</a>.  In the forward portion of the dark side is a circle of light. And herein lies the secret of maintaining forward momentum toward your dream career. Hidden in plain sight within your present reality are daily moments of preparation for the future you dream about.  Remember, the Yin Yang concept does not teach us that one force or one reality conquers the other.  Dark doesn’t conquer light.  Light doesn’t conquer dark.  They interplay and give rise to one another.  Your goal is not to find a means of escape from your present reality to enter the career of your dreams.  Your goal is to undergo hands-on training for the career of your dreams in the midst of your present reality.\n\nEven if the work you dream about doing bears little resemblance to what you do today, there are basic fundamentals that are common across the entire spectrum of the Zen of work.  And mastering those fundamentals is a prerequisite to successfully entering your preferred future.\n\nWhat will you need to know about people in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\n\nWhat will you need to know about business in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\n\nWhat will you need to know about marketing in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\n\nWhat will you need to know about finance in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\n\nWhat will you need to know about leadership in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job even if leadership isn’t a formal part of your job description.\n\nAll of these things are common themes in work and business.  Every day that you wake up to do the work that you have to do while waiting to do the work you’d love to do you are presented with  and surrounded by moment after moment, opportunity after opportunity, to prepare for the work of your dreams.  Recognizing those moments and seizing those opportunities will keep your heart and mind in balance with life today as you maintain forward momentum toward what you were created to contribute to this world.','Here Today; Where Tomorrow?','','inherit','open','open','','1792-revision','','','2011-11-03 19:24:33','2011-11-04 02:24:33','',1792,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1792-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(1795,77,'2011-11-03 19:26:22','2011-11-04 02:26:22','As a teenager, I was one of those kids who hadn\'t a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. My twenties came and life just kind of happened.  I had opportunities.  I took advantage of them.  I gave it my all.  And life unfolded from there. By the time I was 23 I was in a mid-level retail management position overseeing about 20 employees. And I thought to myself that by the time I was in my thirties I wanted to be a senior level manager in my company with a big profit sharing portfolio on a trajectory toward retirement by my mid-forties.\r\n\r\nAfter learning of the disproportionate number of those managers who ended up dead early of heart attacks or divorced, I opted for a move into another industry in my thirties. As life continued to unfold I looked ahead to my forties with a desire to be successfully self-employed and financially independent.\r\n\r\nI entered my forties nearly over years ago and today I am neither successfully self-employed nor financially independent.  And with another decade of life well underway I am once again looking ahead to the next milestone, the age of 50, and thinking about where I want to be, where I feel I need to be, when I arrive at that number which at the moment scares the hell out of me.  Fifty?  Me?  No way.\r\n\r\nI am learning something valuable in my forties that I didn’t grasp in the first few decades of life.  And that is the necessity of finding balance and forward momentum in the midst that which is less desirable while longing for my preferred future.  The Chinese call a similar tension in life the Yin Yang.  It is the interconnectedness and interdependence between seemingly polar opposite forces.  Light. Dark. Positive. Negative. Happy. Sad. Difficult. Easy. Complex. Simple.\r\n\r\nTranslated into the Zen of work, it looks something like this.  You know what you were created to do, but circumstances seem to prevent you from doing it.  You know what you are great at.  But real life demands that you devote a lot of time and energy to other things that you aren’t so great at.  You have your dreams.  Yet reality always seems to get in the way causing your dreams to be deferred for perhaps another decade or two, or three, or five.\r\n\r\nSounds frustrating doesn’t it?  It can be.  After a couple of decades, I think most people simply give up.  The ones who do surrender are the ones who misunderstand the nature of Yin Yang.  It isn’t a battle in which negative overcomes positive, or positive overcomes negative.  To the contrary, one is dependent upon and gives rise to the other in turn.  Both are required.  Both are unavoidable.  And the person who finds fulfillment in life and work is the person who learns to cooperate with the negative to bring about the positive and in the midst of the positive is strengthened, prepared, and emboldened to endure the negative that will come in turn.  The Yin Yang symbol demonstrates this interdependence. White on one side (representing light, positive, happy, easy and simple with black on the other representing dark, negative, sad, difficult, and complex.  Yet there is the presence of a black circle in the midst of the white side and the presence of a white circle on the black side.\r\n\r\nSo here you are in the midst of living and working and dreaming about the future.  You may have a very good job with a great company, surrounded by positive, talented people. But you still dream about someday finding that career “sweet spot” wherein it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between work and play.  You have a vision for the thing you’d love to be doing.  But you aren’t there.  You don’t know how to get there.  You keep waiting for all of the stars and planets to align perfectly so you wake up one morning and all you’ve dreamed about is right outside your door waiting for you to step onto the scene.  But life doesn’t happen that way.  Yin. Yang. Tick. Tock.\r\n\r\nLook again at the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_and_Yang.svg\">taijitu symbol</a>.  In the forward portion of the dark side is a circle of light. And herein lies the secret of maintaining forward momentum toward your dream career. Hidden in plain sight within your present reality are daily moments of preparation for the future you dream about.  Remember, the Yin Yang concept does not teach us that one force or one reality conquers the other.  Dark doesn’t conquer light.  Light doesn’t conquer dark.  They interplay and give rise to one another.  Your goal is not to find a means of escape from your present reality to enter the career of your dreams.  Your goal is to undergo hands-on training for the career of your dreams in the midst of your present reality.\r\n\r\nEven if the work you dream about doing bears little resemblance to what you do today, there are basic fundamentals that are common across the entire spectrum of the Zen of work.  And mastering those fundamentals is a prerequisite to successfully entering your preferred future.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about people in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about business in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about marketing in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about finance in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about leadership in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job even if leadership isn’t a formal part of your job description.\r\n\r\nAll of these things are common themes in work and business.  Every day that you wake up to do the work that you have to do while waiting to do the work you’d love to do you are presented with  and surrounded by moment after moment, opportunity after opportunity, to prepare for the work of your dreams.  Recognizing those moments and seizing those opportunities will keep your heart and mind in balance with life today as you maintain forward momentum toward what you were created to contribute to this world.','Here Today; Where Tomorrow?','','inherit','open','open','','1792-revision-2','','','2011-11-03 19:26:22','2011-11-04 02:26:22','',1792,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1792-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1796,77,'2011-11-03 19:27:41','2011-11-04 02:27:41','As a teenager, I was one of those kids who hadn\'t a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. My twenties came and life just kind of happened.  I had opportunities.  I took advantage of them.  I gave it my all.  And life unfolded from there. By the time I was 23 I was in a mid-level retail management position overseeing about 20 employees. And I thought to myself that by the time I was in my thirties I wanted to be a senior level manager in my company with a big profit sharing portfolio on a trajectory toward retirement by my mid-forties.\r\n\r\nAfter learning of the disproportionate number of those managers who ended up dead early of heart attacks or divorced, I opted for a move into another industry in my thirties. As life continued to unfold I looked ahead to my forties with a desire to be successfully self-employed and financially independent.\r\n\r\nI entered my forties nearly over years ago and today I am neither successfully self-employed nor financially independent.  And with another decade of life well underway I am once again looking ahead to the next milestone, the age of 50, and thinking about where I want to be, where I feel I need to be, when I arrive at that number which at the moment scares the hell out of me.  Fifty?  Me?  No way.\r\n\r\nI am learning something valuable in my forties that I didn’t grasp in the first few decades of life.  And that is the necessity of finding balance and forward momentum in the midst that which is less desirable while longing for my preferred future.  The Chinese call a similar tension in life the Yin Yang.  It is the interconnectedness and interdependence between seemingly polar opposite forces.  Light. Dark. Positive. Negative. Happy. Sad. Difficult. Easy. Complex. Simple.\r\n\r\nTranslated into the Zen of work, it looks something like this.  You know what you were created to do, but circumstances seem to prevent you from doing it.  You know what you are great at.  But real life demands that you devote a lot of time and energy to other things that you aren’t so great at.  You have your dreams.  Yet reality always seems to get in the way causing your dreams to be deferred for perhaps another decade or two, or three, or five.\r\n\r\nSounds frustrating doesn’t it?  It can be.  After a couple of decades, I think most people simply give up.  The ones who do surrender are the ones who misunderstand the nature of Yin Yang.  It isn’t a battle in which negative overcomes positive, or positive overcomes negative.  To the contrary, one is dependent upon and gives rise to the other in turn.  Both are required.  Both are unavoidable.  And the person who finds fulfillment in life and work is the person who learns to cooperate with the negative to bring about the positive and in the midst of the positive is strengthened, prepared, and emboldened to endure the negative that will come in turn.  The Yin Yang symbol demonstrates this interdependence. White on one side (representing light, positive, happy, easy and simple with black on the other representing dark, negative, sad, difficult, and complex.  Yet there is the presence of a black circle in the midst of the white side and the presence of a white circle on the black side.\r\n\r\nSo here you are in the midst of living and working and dreaming about the future.  You may have a very good job with a great company, surrounded by positive, talented people. But you still dream about someday finding that career “sweet spot” wherein it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between work and play.  You have a vision for the thing you’d love to be doing.  But you aren’t there.  You don’t know how to get there.  You keep waiting for all of the stars and planets to align perfectly so you wake up one morning and all you’ve dreamed about is right outside your door waiting for you to step onto the scene.  But life doesn’t happen that way.  Yin. Yang. Tick. Tock.\r\n\r\nLook again at the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_and_Yang.svg\">taijitu symbol</a>.  In the forward portion of the dark side is a circle of light. And herein lies the secret of maintaining forward momentum toward your dream career. Hidden in plain sight within your present reality are daily moments of preparation for the future you dream about.  Remember, the Yin Yang concept does not teach us that one force or one reality conquers the other.  Dark doesn’t conquer light.  Light doesn’t conquer dark.  They interplay and give rise to one another.  Your goal is not to find a means of escape from your present reality to enter the career of your dreams.  Your goal is to undergo hands-on training for the career of your dreams in the midst of your present reality.\r\n\r\nEven if the work you dream about doing bears little resemblance to what you do today, there are basic fundamentals that are common across the entire spectrum of the Zen of work.  And mastering those fundamentals is a prerequisite to successfully entering your preferred future.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about people in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about business in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about marketing in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about finance in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about leadership in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job even if leadership isn’t a formal part of your job description.\r\n\r\nAll of these things are common themes in work and business.  Every day that you wake up to do the work that you have to do while waiting to do the work you’d love to do you are presented with  and surrounded by moment after moment, opportunity after opportunity, to prepare for the work of your dreams.  Recognizing those moments and seizing those opportunities will keep your heart and mind in balance with life today as you maintain forward momentum toward what you were created to contribute to this world.','Here Today; Where Tomorrow?','','inherit','open','open','','1792-revision-3','','','2011-11-03 19:27:41','2011-11-04 02:27:41','',1792,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1792-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(1797,0,'2011-11-03 20:42:03','2011-11-04 03:42:03','楼主很有才华！\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: elliptical review\nAUTHOR EMAIL: usaarron@gmx.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://www.bestellipticalreviews.org/\nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Moses and Oral-B\nIP: 109.230.216.20\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; elliptical review\n    [Email] =&gt; usaarron@gmx.com\n    [Website] =&gt; http://www.bestellipticalreviews.org/\n    [Message] =&gt; 楼主很有才华！\n)\n','elliptical review - 2011-11-03 20:42:03','','publish','open','open','','e59f2d600df83cc435f1248ec58a21d6','','','2011-11-03 20:42:03','2011-11-04 03:42:03','',959,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=1797',0,'feedback','',0),(1799,1,'2011-11-04 07:30:12','2011-11-04 14:30:12','','perception','','inherit','open','open','','perception','','','2011-11-04 07:30:12','2011-11-04 14:30:12','',1798,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/perception.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(1800,1,'2011-11-04 07:30:33','2011-11-04 14:30:33','<a href=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/perception.jpg\"><img class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-1799\" title=\"perception\" src=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/perception.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"720\" height=\"535\" /></a>','F','','inherit','open','open','','1798-revision','','','2011-11-04 07:30:33','2011-11-04 14:30:33','',1798,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1798-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(1801,1,'2011-11-03 08:33:55','2011-11-03 15:33:55','I was just listening to an interview with <a href=\"http://dougpagitt.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Pagitt</a> on the <a href=\"http://homebrewedchristianity.com\" target=\"_blank\">Homebrewed Christianity podcast</a>, and he was talking about how the dominant narrative for Christendom prior to recent decades was one of moving from “being lost” to “being found.”  This is illustrated well by the extensive familiarly you find in the West with songs like “Amazing Grace”… “I once was blind by now I see.”  This idea was, and for many perhaps still is, the dominant thinking about religion in general and Christianity in particular.\r\n\r\nWhat Pagitt suggests is that in today\'s cultural climate, which he calls “the inventive age” (see his latest books with this phrase in the title <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Church-Inventive-Age-Christianity-Now/dp/1451400853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320097483&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>), people in North America are more likely to have conversions for “aha” to “uh-oh” than from “I don’t know” to “aha.”  Pagitt is not saying, however, that these people are all saying goodbye to their Christian faith.  He makes a distinction between the current context as a post-Christian era vs. post-Church era, arguing for the latter more so than the former.\r\n\r\nIn many ways, I find this to be true in my own experience.  It’s not a new story; I hear it frequently.  Like Pagitt, my faith background is largely that of conservative evangelicalism.  For those who can relate, what’s funny about the way this story usually goes for people is that we started singing “Amazing Grace” so early, it\'s hard to remember a time when we were ever “lost.”  I didn\'t have time to get lost!  By my baptism at age ten, I don’t even know how many times I had already prayed for Jesus to come into my heart.  During high school and most of college, if I did any reading related to difficult theological questions, it was usually to seek out confirmation for what were already my solidified doctrinal presuppositions.\r\n\r\nAfter college and partly during seminary though, I went through a challenging season of having many of my assumptions questioned . . . in some ways I may have been too open-minded for my own good.  Nonetheless, I experienced what I guess could be called a second-conversion – a conversion to <em>not</em> knowing.  It\'s a conversion to a place of frustration with preconceived boundaries and filters.  I don’t think I would ever have called myself agnostic; nor would I fit into the popular category of “spiritual but not religious.”  But a fundamental paradigm shift definitely took place, and it has deeply affected my worldview. It wasn\'t just about the creeds of orthodoxy.  My transformation touched the political, economic and cultural.  Nor was it about left and right - while there may have been implication there.  The product is unfinished, and there’s a combined sense of both liberty and estrangement as a result.\r\n\r\nIn some respects I still confess the faith of my upbringing, but its significance for me has evolved substantially.  I sometimes wonder how this fits into the rubric for discipleship.  Maybe I’m off course a bit? Maybe I’ve learned how to be a little more honest and gracious toward myself and other people.  Most importantly perhaps, the journey doesn’t have to end at this point, and having conversation with others about it might be the doorway to the next chapter.\r\n\r\nDespite my resonance with Pagitt’s thesis, I do have some doubts about its soundness insofar as it’s superimposed on American culture writ large.  To what extent do others really relate to this, and to what extent is it more of a sub-cultural, Bible-belt phenomenon as a result of things like the information revolution, hipster Christian trends, and environmental changes in the burgeoning stages of young adulthood?  In addition, this narrative might also just nicely follow the typical stages of faith development - rules, doctrine, doubt, mature belief (or second naiveté) - but for some reason I\'m not sure.  Maybe I just want to feel more special than that :)  The <a href=\"http://www.emergentvillage.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergent Church movement</a> (with which Pagitt is associated) has sometimes been accused of being too ethnically and culturally insular, of being composed primarily of middle-class folks.  Whether this is fair, would it necessarily take away from the legitimacy of this testimony for a portion of North American Christians like myself?\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://peterrollins.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Rollins </a>talks a lot about a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fidelity-Betrayal-Towards-Church-Beyond/dp/1557255601\" target=\"_blank\">church “beyond belief”</a>.  We have our differences, but what Pete proposes seems to me to be striking a chord with a lot disenchanted would-be Jesus followers.  In order to do or be much of anything, a community certainly needs belief.  Going beyond belief doesn’t mean doing away with it or even changing it – though change might happen.  Moving beyond belief means changing <em>how</em> we believe.  Do we believe primarily with epistemology (knowledge) or ontology (being)? Do we lead with confession or action?  Do our beliefs first comfort or direct us?  Which kind of belief did Jesus embrace?  Maybe it\'s not always either/or.  Dark days require consolation.  But what does belief look like for privileged citizens in the land of plenty and power?  This is one of the main questions I hope to explore here, especially with regard to the responsibility that churches have in light of this belief.','From \"Aha\" To \"Uh-Oh,\" And Then What?','','inherit','open','open','','1627-revision-9','','','2011-11-03 08:33:55','2011-11-03 15:33:55','',1627,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1627-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(1803,20,'2011-11-04 07:40:40','2011-11-04 14:40:40','I was just listening to an interview with <a href=\"http://dougpagitt.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Pagitt</a> on the <a href=\"http://homebrewedchristianity.com\" target=\"_blank\">Homebrewed Christianity podcast</a>, and he was talking about how the dominant narrative for Christendom prior to recent decades was one of moving from “being lost” to “being found.”  This is illustrated well by the extensive familiarly you find in the West with songs like “Amazing Grace”… “I once was blind by now I see.”  This idea was, and for many perhaps still is, the dominant thinking about religion in general and Christianity in particular.\r\n\r\nWhat Pagitt suggests is that in today\'s cultural climate, which he calls “the inventive age” (see his latest books with this phrase in the title <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Church-Inventive-Age-Christianity-Now/dp/1451400853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320097483&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>), people in North America are more likely to have conversions for “aha” to “uh-oh” than from “I don’t know” to “aha.”  Pagitt is not saying, however, that these people are all saying goodbye to their Christian faith.  He makes a distinction between the current context as a post-Christian era vs. post-Church era, arguing for the latter more so than the former.\r\n\r\nIn many ways, I find this to be true in my own experience.  It’s not a new story; I hear it frequently.  Like Pagitt, my faith background is largely that of conservative evangelicalism.  For those who can relate, what’s funny about the way this story usually goes for people is that we started singing “Amazing Grace” so early, it\'s hard to remember a time when we were ever “lost.”  I didn\'t have time to get lost!  By my baptism at age ten, I don’t even know how many times I had already prayed for Jesus to come into my heart.  During high school and most of college, if I did any reading related to difficult theological questions, it was usually to seek out confirmation for what were already my solidified doctrinal presuppositions.\r\n\r\nAfter college and partly during seminary though, I went through a challenging season of having many of my assumptions questioned . . . in some ways I may have been too open-minded for my own good.  Nonetheless, I experienced what I guess could be called a second-conversion – a conversion to <em>not</em> knowing.  It\'s a conversion to a place of frustration with preconceived boundaries and filters.  I don’t think I would ever have called myself agnostic; nor would I fit into the popular category of “spiritual but not religious.”  But a fundamental paradigm shift definitely took place, and it has deeply affected my worldview. It wasn\'t just about the creeds of orthodoxy.  My transformation touched the political, economic and cultural.  Nor was it about left and right - while there may have been implication there.  The product is unfinished, and there’s a combined sense of both liberty and estrangement as a result.\r\n\r\nIn some respects I still confess the faith of my upbringing, but its significance for me has evolved substantially.  I sometimes wonder how this fits into the rubric for discipleship.  Maybe I’m off course a bit? Maybe I’ve learned how to be a little more honest and gracious toward myself and other people.  Most importantly perhaps, the journey doesn’t have to end at this point, and having conversation with others about it might be the doorway to the next chapter.\r\n\r\nDespite my resonance with Pagitt’s thesis, I do have some doubts about its soundness insofar as it’s superimposed on American culture writ large.  To what extent do others really relate to this, and to what extent is it more of a sub-cultural, Bible-belt phenomenon as a result of things like the information revolution, hipster Christian trends, and environmental changes in the burgeoning stages of young adulthood?  In addition, this narrative might also just nicely follow the typical stages of faith development - rules, doctrine, doubt, mature belief (or second naiveté) - but for some reason I\'m not sure.  Maybe I just want to feel more special than that :)  The <a href=\"http://www.emergentvillage.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergent Church movement</a> (with which Pagitt is associated) has sometimes been accused of being too ethnically and culturally insular, of being composed primarily of middle-class folks.  Whether this is fair, would it necessarily take away from the legitimacy of this testimony for a portion of North American Christians like myself?\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://peterrollins.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Rollins </a>talks a lot about a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fidelity-Betrayal-Towards-Church-Beyond/dp/1557255601\" target=\"_blank\">church “beyond belief”</a>.  We have our differences, but what Pete proposes seems to me to be striking a chord with a lot disenchanted would-be Jesus followers.  In order to do or be much of anything, a community certainly needs belief.  Going beyond belief doesn’t mean doing away with it or even changing it – though change might happen.  Moving beyond belief means changing <em>how</em> we believe.  Do we believe primarily with epistemology (knowledge) or ontology (being)? Do we lead with confession or action?  Do our beliefs first comfort or direct us?  Which kind of belief did Jesus embrace?  Maybe it\'s not always either/or.  Dark days require consolation.  But what does belief look like for privileged citizens in the land of plenty and power?  This is one of the main questions I hope to explore here, especially with regard to the responsibility that churches have in light of this belief.','From \"Aha\" To \"Uh-Oh,\" And Then What?','','inherit','open','open','','1627-revision-10','','','2011-11-04 07:40:40','2011-11-04 14:40:40','',1627,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1627-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(1804,20,'2011-11-04 16:24:58','2011-11-04 23:24:58','I was just listening to an interview with <a href=\"http://dougpagitt.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Pagitt</a> on the <a href=\"http://homebrewedchristianity.com\" target=\"_blank\">Homebrewed Christianity podcast</a>, and he was talking about how the dominant narrative for Christendom prior to recent decades was one of moving from “being lost” to “being found.”  This is illustrated well by the extensive familiarly you find in the West with songs like “Amazing Grace”… “I once was blind by now I see.”  This idea was, and for many perhaps still is, the dominant thinking about religion in general and Christianity in particular.\r\n\r\nWhat Pagitt suggests is that in today\'s cultural climate, which he calls “the inventive age” (see his latest books with this phrase in the title <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Church-Inventive-Age-Christianity-Now/dp/1451400853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320097483&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>), people in North America are more likely to have conversions for “aha” to “uh-oh” than from “I don’t know” to “aha.”  Pagitt is not implying, however, that these people are all saying goodbye to their Christian faith.  He makes a distinction between the current context as a post-Christian era vs. post-Church era, arguing for the latter more so than the former.\r\n\r\nIn many ways, I find this to be true in my own experience.  It’s not a new story; I hear it frequently.  Like Pagitt, my faith background was significantly influenced by conservative evangelicalism.  For those who can relate, what’s funny about the way this story usually goes for people is that we started singing “Amazing Grace” so early, it\'s hard to remember a time when we were ever “lost.”  I didn\'t have time to get lost!  By my baptism at age ten, I don’t even know how many times I had already prayed for Jesus to come into my heart.  During high school and most of college, if I did any reading related to difficult theological questions, it was usually to seek out confirmation for what were already my solidified doctrinal presuppositions.\r\n\r\nAfter college and partly during seminary though, I went through a challenging season of having many of my assumptions questioned . . . in some ways I may have been too open-minded for my own good.  Nonetheless, I experienced what I guess could be called a second-conversion – a conversion to <em>not</em> knowing.  It was a conversion to a place of frustration with preconceived boundaries and filters.  I don’t think I would ever have called myself agnostic; nor would I fit into the popular category of “spiritual but not religious.”  But a fundamental paradigm shift definitely took place, and it has deeply affected my worldview. It wasn\'t just about the creeds of orthodoxy.  My transformation touched the political, economic and cultural.  Nor was it about left and right - while there may have been implication there.  The product is unfinished, and there’s a combined sense of both liberty and estrangement as a result.\r\n\r\nIn most respects I still confess the faith of my upbringing, but its significance for me has evolved substantially.  I sometimes wonder how this fits into the rubric for discipleship.  Maybe I’m off course a bit? Maybe I’ve learned how to be a little more honest and gracious toward myself and other people.  Most importantly perhaps, the journey doesn’t have to end at this point, and having conversation with others about it might be the doorway to the next chapter.\r\n\r\nDespite my resonance with Pagitt’s thesis, I do have some doubts about its soundness insofar as it’s superimposed on American culture writ large.  To what extent do others really relate to this, and to what extent is it more of a sub-cultural, Bible-belt phenomenon as a result of things like the information revolution, hipster Christian trends, and environmental changes in the burgeoning stages of young adulthood?  In addition, this narrative might also just nicely follow the typical stages of faith development - rules, doctrine, doubt, mature belief (or second naiveté) - but for some reason I\'m not sure.  Maybe I just want to feel more special than that :)  The <a href=\"http://www.emergentvillage.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergent Church movement</a> (with which Pagitt is associated) has sometimes been accused of being too ethnically and culturally insular, of being composed primarily of middle-class folks.  Whether this is fair, would it necessarily take away from the legitimacy of this testimony for a portion of North American Christians like myself?\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://peterrollins.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Rollins </a>talks a lot about a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fidelity-Betrayal-Towards-Church-Beyond/dp/1557255601\" target=\"_blank\">church “beyond belief”</a>.  We have our differences, but what Pete proposes seems to me to be striking a chord with a lot disenchanted would-be Jesus followers.  In order to do or be much of anything, a community certainly needs belief.  Going beyond belief doesn’t mean doing away with it or even changing it – though change might happen.  Moving beyond belief means changing <em>how</em> we believe.  Do we believe primarily with epistemology (knowledge) or ontology (being)? Do we lead with confession or action?  Do our beliefs first comfort or direct us?  Which kind of belief did Jesus embrace?  Maybe it\'s not always either/or.  Dark days require consolation.  But what does belief look like for privileged citizens in the land of plenty and power?  This is one of the main questions I hope to explore here, especially with regard to the responsibility that churches have in light of this belief.','From \"Aha\" To \"Uh-Oh,\" And Then What?','','inherit','open','open','','1627-revision-11','','','2011-11-04 16:24:58','2011-11-04 23:24:58','',1627,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1627-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0),(1805,20,'2011-11-04 16:35:18','2011-11-04 23:35:18','I was just listening to an interview with <a href=\"http://dougpagitt.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Pagitt</a> (who I really like and whose book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Preaching-Re-Imagined-Sermon-Communities-Faith/dp/0310263638\" target=\"_blank\">Preaching Re-imagined</a>, among others, was a huge eye-opener for me in seminary) on the <a href=\"http://homebrewedchristianity.com\" target=\"_blank\">Homebrewed Christianity podcast</a>, and he was talking about how the dominant narrative for Christendom prior to recent decades was one of moving from “being lost” to “being found.”  This is illustrated well by the extensive familiarly you find in the West with songs like “Amazing Grace”… “I once was blind by now I see.”  This idea was, and for many perhaps still is, the dominant thinking about religion in general and Christianity in particular.\r\n\r\nWhat Pagitt suggests is that in today\'s cultural climate, which he calls “the inventive age” (see his latest books with this phrase in the title <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Church-Inventive-Age-Christianity-Now/dp/1451400853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320097483&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>), people in North America are more likely to have conversions for “aha” to “uh-oh” than from “I don’t know” to “aha.”  Pagitt is not implying, however, that these people are all saying goodbye to their Christian faith.  He makes a distinction between the current context as a post-Christian era vs. post-Church era, arguing for the latter more so than the former.\r\n\r\nIn many ways, I find this to be true in my own experience.  It’s not a new story; I hear it frequently.  Like Pagitt, my faith background was significantly influenced by conservative evangelicalism.  For those who can relate, what’s funny about the way this story usually goes for people is that we started singing “Amazing Grace” so early, it\'s hard to remember a time when we were ever “lost.”  I didn\'t have time to get lost!  By my baptism at age ten, I don’t even know how many times I had already prayed for Jesus to come into my heart.  During high school and most of college, if I did any reading related to difficult theological questions, it was usually to seek out confirmation for what were already my solidified doctrinal presuppositions.\r\n\r\nAfter college and partly during seminary though, I went through a challenging season of having many of my assumptions questioned . . . in some ways I may have been too open-minded for my own good.  Nonetheless, I experienced what I guess could be called a second-conversion – a conversion to <em>not</em> knowing.  It was a conversion to a place of frustration with preconceived boundaries and filters.  I don’t think I would ever have called myself agnostic; nor would I fit into the popular category of “spiritual but not religious.”  But a fundamental paradigm shift definitely took place, and it has deeply affected my worldview. It wasn\'t just about the creeds of orthodoxy.  My transformation touched the political, economic and cultural.  Nor was it about left and right - while there may have been implication there.  The product is unfinished, and there’s a combined sense of both liberty and estrangement as a result.\r\n\r\nIn most respects I still confess the faith of my upbringing, but its significance for me has evolved substantially.  I sometimes wonder how this fits into the rubric for discipleship.  Maybe I’m off course a bit? Maybe I’ve learned how to be a little more honest and gracious toward myself and other people.  Most importantly perhaps, the journey doesn’t have to end at this point, and having conversation with others about it might be the doorway to the next chapter.\r\n\r\nDespite my resonance with Pagitt’s thesis, I do have some doubts about its soundness insofar as it’s superimposed on American culture writ large.  To what extent do others really relate to this, and to what extent is it more of a sub-cultural, Bible-belt phenomenon as a result of things like the information revolution, hipster Christian trends, and environmental changes in the burgeoning stages of young adulthood?  In addition, this narrative might also just nicely follow the typical stages of faith development - rules, doctrine, doubt, mature belief (or second naiveté) - but for some reason I\'m not sure.  Maybe I just want to feel more special than that :)  The <a href=\"http://www.emergentvillage.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergent Church movement</a> (with which Pagitt is associated) has sometimes been accused of being too ethnically and culturally insular, of being composed primarily of middle-class folks.  Whether this is fair, would it necessarily take away from the legitimacy of this testimony for a portion of North American Christians like myself?\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://peterrollins.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Rollins </a>talks a lot about a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fidelity-Betrayal-Towards-Church-Beyond/dp/1557255601\" target=\"_blank\">church “beyond belief”</a>.  We have our differences, but what Pete proposes seems to me to be striking a chord with a lot disenchanted would-be Jesus followers.  In order to do or be much of anything, a community certainly needs belief.  Going beyond belief doesn’t mean doing away with it or even changing it – though change might happen.  Moving beyond belief means changing <em>how</em> we believe.  Do we believe primarily with epistemology (knowledge) or ontology (being)? Do we lead with confession or action?  Do our beliefs first comfort or direct us?  Which kind of belief did Jesus embrace?  Maybe it\'s not always either/or.  Dark days require consolation.  But what does belief look like for privileged citizens in the land of plenty and power?  This is one of the main questions I hope to explore here, especially with regard to the responsibility that churches have in light of this belief.','From \"Aha\" To \"Uh-Oh,\" And Then What?','','inherit','open','open','','1627-revision-12','','','2011-11-04 16:35:18','2011-11-04 23:35:18','',1627,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1627-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(1806,20,'2011-11-04 16:35:33','2011-11-04 23:35:33','I was just listening to an interview with <a href=\"http://dougpagitt.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Pagitt</a> (whose book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Preaching-Re-Imagined-Sermon-Communities-Faith/dp/0310263638\" target=\"_blank\">Preaching Re-imagined</a>, among others, was a huge eye-opener for me in seminary) on the <a href=\"http://homebrewedchristianity.com\" target=\"_blank\">Homebrewed Christianity podcast</a>, and he was talking about how the dominant narrative for Christendom prior to recent decades was one of moving from “being lost” to “being found.”  This is illustrated well by the extensive familiarly you find in the West with songs like “Amazing Grace”… “I once was blind by now I see.”  This idea was, and for many perhaps still is, the dominant thinking about religion in general and Christianity in particular.\r\n\r\nWhat Pagitt suggests is that in today\'s cultural climate, which he calls “the inventive age” (see his latest books with this phrase in the title <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Church-Inventive-Age-Christianity-Now/dp/1451400853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320097483&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>), people in North America are more likely to have conversions for “aha” to “uh-oh” than from “I don’t know” to “aha.”  Pagitt is not implying, however, that these people are all saying goodbye to their Christian faith.  He makes a distinction between the current context as a post-Christian era vs. post-Church era, arguing for the latter more so than the former.\r\n\r\nIn many ways, I find this to be true in my own experience.  It’s not a new story; I hear it frequently.  Like Pagitt, my faith background was significantly influenced by conservative evangelicalism.  For those who can relate, what’s funny about the way this story usually goes for people is that we started singing “Amazing Grace” so early, it\'s hard to remember a time when we were ever “lost.”  I didn\'t have time to get lost!  By my baptism at age ten, I don’t even know how many times I had already prayed for Jesus to come into my heart.  During high school and most of college, if I did any reading related to difficult theological questions, it was usually to seek out confirmation for what were already my solidified doctrinal presuppositions.\r\n\r\nAfter college and partly during seminary though, I went through a challenging season of having many of my assumptions questioned . . . in some ways I may have been too open-minded for my own good.  Nonetheless, I experienced what I guess could be called a second-conversion – a conversion to <em>not</em> knowing.  It was a conversion to a place of frustration with preconceived boundaries and filters.  I don’t think I would ever have called myself agnostic; nor would I fit into the popular category of “spiritual but not religious.”  But a fundamental paradigm shift definitely took place, and it has deeply affected my worldview. It wasn\'t just about the creeds of orthodoxy.  My transformation touched the political, economic and cultural.  Nor was it about left and right - while there may have been implication there.  The product is unfinished, and there’s a combined sense of both liberty and estrangement as a result.\r\n\r\nIn most respects I still confess the faith of my upbringing, but its significance for me has evolved substantially.  I sometimes wonder how this fits into the rubric for discipleship.  Maybe I’m off course a bit? Maybe I’ve learned how to be a little more honest and gracious toward myself and other people.  Most importantly perhaps, the journey doesn’t have to end at this point, and having conversation with others about it might be the doorway to the next chapter.\r\n\r\nDespite my resonance with Pagitt’s thesis, I do have some doubts about its soundness insofar as it’s superimposed on American culture writ large.  To what extent do others really relate to this, and to what extent is it more of a sub-cultural, Bible-belt phenomenon as a result of things like the information revolution, hipster Christian trends, and environmental changes in the burgeoning stages of young adulthood?  In addition, this narrative might also just nicely follow the typical stages of faith development - rules, doctrine, doubt, mature belief (or second naiveté) - but for some reason I\'m not sure.  Maybe I just want to feel more special than that :)  The <a href=\"http://www.emergentvillage.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergent Church movement</a> (with which Pagitt is associated) has sometimes been accused of being too ethnically and culturally insular, of being composed primarily of middle-class folks.  Whether this is fair, would it necessarily take away from the legitimacy of this testimony for a portion of North American Christians like myself?\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://peterrollins.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Rollins </a>talks a lot about a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fidelity-Betrayal-Towards-Church-Beyond/dp/1557255601\" target=\"_blank\">church “beyond belief”</a>.  We have our differences, but what Pete proposes seems to me to be striking a chord with a lot disenchanted would-be Jesus followers.  In order to do or be much of anything, a community certainly needs belief.  Going beyond belief doesn’t mean doing away with it or even changing it – though change might happen.  Moving beyond belief means changing <em>how</em> we believe.  Do we believe primarily with epistemology (knowledge) or ontology (being)? Do we lead with confession or action?  Do our beliefs first comfort or direct us?  Which kind of belief did Jesus embrace?  Maybe it\'s not always either/or.  Dark days require consolation.  But what does belief look like for privileged citizens in the land of plenty and power?  This is one of the main questions I hope to explore here, especially with regard to the responsibility that churches have in light of this belief.','From \"Aha\" To \"Uh-Oh,\" And Then What?','','inherit','open','open','','1627-revision-13','','','2011-11-04 16:35:33','2011-11-04 23:35:33','',1627,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1627-revision-13/',0,'revision','',0),(1807,20,'2011-11-04 16:36:11','2011-11-04 23:36:11','I was just listening to an interview with <a href=\"http://dougpagitt.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Pagitt</a> (whose book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Preaching-Re-Imagined-Sermon-Communities-Faith/dp/0310263638\" target=\"_blank\">Preaching Re-imagined</a>, among others, was a huge eye-opener for me in seminary) on the <a href=\"http://homebrewedchristianity.com\" target=\"_blank\">Homebrewed Christianity podcast</a>, and he was talking about how the dominant narrative for Christendom prior to recent decades was one of moving from “being lost” to “being found.”  This is illustrated well by the extensive familiarly you find in the West with songs like “Amazing Grace”… “I once was blind by now I see.”  This idea was, and for many perhaps still is, the dominant thinking about religion in general and Christianity in particular.\r\n\r\nWhat Pagitt suggests is that in today\'s cultural climate, which he calls “the inventive age” (see his latest books with this phrase in the title <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Church-Inventive-Age-Christianity-Now/dp/1451400853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320097483&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>), people in North America are more likely to have conversions for “aha” to “uh-oh” than from “I don’t know” to “aha.”  Pagitt is not implying, however, that these people are all saying goodbye to their Christian faith.  He makes a distinction between the current context as a post-Christian era vs. post-Church era, arguing for the latter more so than the former.\r\n\r\nIn many ways, I find this to be true in my own experience.  It’s not a new story; I hear it frequently.  Like Pagitt, my faith background was significantly influenced by conservative evangelicalism.  For those who can relate, what’s funny about the way this story usually goes for people is that we started singing “Amazing Grace” so early, it\'s hard to remember a time when we were ever “lost.”  I didn\'t have time to get lost!  By my baptism at age ten, I don’t even know how many times I had already prayed for Jesus to come into my heart.  During high school and most of college, if I did any reading related to difficult theological questions, it was usually to seek out confirmation for what were already my solidified doctrinal presuppositions.\r\n\r\nAfter college and partly during seminary though, I went through a challenging season of having many of my assumptions questioned . . . in some ways I may have been too open-minded for my own good.  Nonetheless, I experienced what I guess could be called a second-conversion – a conversion to <em>not</em> knowing.  It was a conversion to a place of frustration with preconceived boundaries and filters.  I wouldn\'t have ever have called myself agnostic; nor would I fit into the popular category of “spiritual but not religious.”  But a fundamental paradigm shift definitely took place, and it has deeply affected my worldview. It wasn\'t just about the creeds of orthodoxy.  My transformation touched the political, economic and cultural.  Nor was it about left and right - while there may have been implication there.  The product is unfinished, and there’s a combined sense of both liberty and estrangement as a result.\r\n\r\nIn most respects I still confess the faith of my upbringing, but its significance for me has evolved substantially.  I sometimes wonder how this fits into the rubric for discipleship.  Maybe I’m off course a bit? Maybe I’ve learned how to be a little more honest and gracious toward myself and other people.  Most importantly perhaps, the journey doesn’t have to end at this point, and having conversation with others about it might be the doorway to the next chapter.\r\n\r\nDespite my resonance with Pagitt’s thesis, I do have some doubts about its soundness insofar as it’s superimposed on American culture writ large.  To what extent do others really relate to this, and to what extent is it more of a sub-cultural, Bible-belt phenomenon as a result of things like the information revolution, hipster Christian trends, and environmental changes in the burgeoning stages of young adulthood?  In addition, this narrative might also just nicely follow the typical stages of faith development - rules, doctrine, doubt, mature belief (or second naiveté) - but for some reason I\'m not sure.  Maybe I just want to feel more special than that :)  The <a href=\"http://www.emergentvillage.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergent Church movement</a> (with which Pagitt is associated) has sometimes been accused of being too ethnically and culturally insular, of being composed primarily of middle-class folks.  Whether this is fair, would it necessarily take away from the legitimacy of this testimony for a portion of North American Christians like myself?\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://peterrollins.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Rollins </a>talks a lot about a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fidelity-Betrayal-Towards-Church-Beyond/dp/1557255601\" target=\"_blank\">church “beyond belief”</a>.  We have our differences, but what Pete proposes seems to me to be striking a chord with a lot disenchanted would-be Jesus followers.  In order to do or be much of anything, a community certainly needs belief.  Going beyond belief doesn’t mean doing away with it or even changing it – though change might happen.  Moving beyond belief means changing <em>how</em> we believe.  Do we believe primarily with epistemology (knowledge) or ontology (being)? Do we lead with confession or action?  Do our beliefs first comfort or direct us?  Which kind of belief did Jesus embrace?  Maybe it\'s not always either/or.  Dark days require consolation.  But what does belief look like for privileged citizens in the land of plenty and power?  This is one of the main questions I hope to explore here, especially with regard to the responsibility that churches have in light of this belief.','From \"Aha\" To \"Uh-Oh,\" And Then What?','','inherit','open','open','','1627-revision-14','','','2011-11-04 16:36:11','2011-11-04 23:36:11','',1627,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1627-revision-14/',0,'revision','',0),(1808,20,'2011-11-04 16:42:01','2011-11-04 23:42:01','I was just listening to an interview with <a href=\"http://dougpagitt.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Pagitt</a> (whose book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Preaching-Re-Imagined-Sermon-Communities-Faith/dp/0310263638\" target=\"_blank\">Preaching Re-imagined</a>, among others, was a huge eye-opener for me in seminary) on the <a href=\"http://homebrewedchristianity.com\" target=\"_blank\">Homebrewed Christianity podcast</a>, and he was talking about how the dominant narrative for Christendom prior to recent decades was one of moving from “being lost” to “being found.”  This is illustrated well by the extensive familiarly you find in the West with songs like “Amazing Grace”… “I once was blind by now I see.”  This idea was, and for many perhaps still is, the dominant thinking about religion in general and Christianity in particular.\r\n\r\nWhat Pagitt suggests is that in today\'s cultural climate, which he calls “the inventive age” (see his latest books with this phrase in the title <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Church-Inventive-Age-Christianity-Now/dp/1451400853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320097483&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>), people in North America are more likely to have conversions for “aha” to “uh-oh” than from “I don’t know” to “aha.”  Pagitt is not implying, however, that these people are all saying goodbye to their Christian faith.  He makes a distinction between the current context as a post-Christian era vs. post-Church era, arguing for the latter more so than the former.\r\n\r\nIn many ways, I find this to be true in my own experience.  It’s not a new story; I hear it frequently.  Like Pagitt, my faith background was significantly influenced by conservative evangelicalism.  For those who can relate, what’s funny about the way this story usually goes for people is that we started singing “Amazing Grace” so early, it\'s hard to remember a time when we were ever “lost.”  I didn\'t have<em> time</em> to get lost!  By my baptism at age ten, I don’t even know how many times I had already prayed for Jesus to come into my heart.  During high school and most of college, if I did any reading related to difficult theological questions, it was usually to seek out confirmation for what were already my solidified doctrinal presuppositions.\r\n\r\nAfter college and partly during seminary though, I went through a challenging season of having many of my assumptions questioned . . . in some ways I may have even been too open-minded for my own good.  Nonetheless, I experienced what I guess could be called a second-conversion – a conversion to <em>not</em> knowing.  It was a conversion to a place of frustration with preconceived boundaries and filters.  I wouldn\'t have ever have called myself agnostic; nor would I fit into the popular category of “spiritual but not religious.”  But a fundamental paradigm shift definitely took place, and it has deeply affected my worldview. It wasn\'t just about the creeds of orthodoxy.  My transformation touched the political, economic and cultural.  Nor was it about left and right - while there may have been implication there.  The product is unfinished, and there’s a combined sense of both liberty and estrangement as a result.\r\n\r\nI still confess the faith of my upbringing, but its significance for me has evolved substantially.  I sometimes wonder how this fits into the rubric for discipleship.  Maybe I’m off course a bit? On the other hand, maybe I’ve learned how to be a little more honest and gracious toward myself and other people.  Most importantly perhaps, the journey doesn’t have to end at this point, and having conversation with others about it might be the doorway to the next chapter.\r\n\r\nDespite my resonance with Pagitt’s thesis, I do have some doubts about its soundness insofar as it’s superimposed on American culture writ large.  To what extent do others really relate to this, and to what extent is it more of a sub-cultural, Bible-belt phenomenon as a result of things like the information revolution, hipster Christian trends, and environmental changes in the burgeoning stages of young adulthood?  In addition, this narrative might also just nicely follow the typical stages of faith development - rules, doctrine, doubt, mature belief (or second naiveté) - but for some reason I\'m not sure.  Maybe I just want to feel more special than that :)  The <a href=\"http://www.emergentvillage.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergent Church movement</a> (with which Pagitt is associated) has sometimes been accused of being too ethnically and culturally insular, of being composed primarily of middle-class folks.  Whether this is fair, would it necessarily take away from the legitimacy of this testimony for a portion of North American Christians like myself?\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://peterrollins.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Rollins </a>talks a lot about a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fidelity-Betrayal-Towards-Church-Beyond/dp/1557255601\" target=\"_blank\">church “beyond belief”</a>.  We have our differences, but what Pete proposes seems to me to be striking a chord with a lot disenchanted would-be Jesus followers.  In order to do or be much of anything, a community certainly needs belief.  Going beyond belief doesn’t mean doing away with it or even changing it – though change might happen.  Moving beyond belief means changing <em>how</em> we believe.  Do we believe primarily with epistemology (knowledge) or ontology (being)? Do we lead with confession or action?  Do our beliefs first comfort or direct us?  Which kind of belief did Jesus embrace?  Maybe it\'s not always either/or.  Dark days require consolation.  But what does belief look like for privileged citizens in the land of plenty and power?  This is one of the main questions I hope to explore here, especially with regard to the responsibility that churches have in light of this belief.','From \"Aha\" To \"Uh-Oh,\" And Then What?','','inherit','open','open','','1627-revision-15','','','2011-11-04 16:42:01','2011-11-04 23:42:01','',1627,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1627-revision-15/',0,'revision','',0),(1809,20,'2011-11-04 16:45:07','2011-11-04 23:45:07','I was just listening to an interview with <a href=\"http://dougpagitt.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Pagitt</a> (whose book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Preaching-Re-Imagined-Sermon-Communities-Faith/dp/0310263638\" target=\"_blank\">Preaching Re-imagined</a>, among others, was a big eye-opener for me when i first started doing youth ministry) on the <a href=\"http://homebrewedchristianity.com\" target=\"_blank\">Homebrewed Christianity podcast</a>, and he was talking about how the dominant narrative for Christendom prior to recent decades was one of moving from “being lost” to “being found.”  This is illustrated well by the extensive familiarly you find in the West with songs like “Amazing Grace”… “I once was blind by now I see.”  This idea was, and for many perhaps still is, the dominant thinking about religion in general and Christianity in particular.\r\n\r\nWhat Pagitt suggests is that in today\'s cultural climate, which he calls “the inventive age” (see his latest books with this phrase in the title <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Church-Inventive-Age-Christianity-Now/dp/1451400853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320097483&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>), people in North America are more likely to have conversions for “aha” to “uh-oh” than from “I don’t know” to “aha.”  Pagitt is not implying, however, that these people are all saying goodbye to their Christian faith.  He makes a distinction between the current context as a post-Christian era vs. post-Church era, arguing for the latter more so than the former.\r\n\r\nIn many ways, I find this to be true in my own experience.  It’s not a new story; I hear it frequently.  Like Pagitt, my faith background was significantly influenced by conservative evangelicalism.  For those who can relate, what’s funny about the way this story usually goes for people is that we started singing “Amazing Grace” so early, it\'s hard to remember a time when we were ever “lost.”  I didn\'t have<em> time</em> to get lost!  By my baptism at age ten, I don’t even know how many times I had already prayed for Jesus to come into my heart.  During high school and most of college, if I did any reading related to difficult theological questions, it was usually to seek out confirmation for what were already my solidified doctrinal presuppositions.\r\n\r\nAfter college and partly during seminary though - though not really <em>because</em> of seminary - I went through a challenging season of having many of my assumptions questioned . . . in some ways I may have even been too open-minded for my own good.  Nonetheless, I experienced what I guess could be called a second-conversion – a conversion to <em>not</em> knowing.  It was a conversion to a place of frustration with preconceived boundaries and filters.  I wouldn\'t have ever have called myself agnostic; nor would I fit into the popular category of “spiritual but not religious.”  But a fundamental paradigm shift definitely took place, and it has deeply affected my worldview. It wasn\'t just about the creeds of orthodoxy.  My transformation touched the political, economic and cultural.  Nor was it about left and right - while there may have been implication there.  The product is unfinished, and there’s a combined sense of both liberty and estrangement as a result.\r\n\r\nI still confess the faith of my upbringing, but its significance for me has evolved substantially.  I sometimes wonder how this fits into the rubric for discipleship.  Maybe I’m off course a bit? On the other hand, maybe I’ve learned how to be a little more honest and gracious toward myself and other people.  Most importantly perhaps, the journey doesn’t have to end at this point, and having conversation with others about it might be the doorway to the next chapter.\r\n\r\nDespite my resonance with Pagitt’s thesis, I do have some doubts about its soundness insofar as it’s superimposed on American culture writ large.  To what extent do others really relate to this, and to what extent is it more of a sub-cultural, Bible-belt phenomenon as a result of things like the information revolution, hipster Christian trends, and environmental changes in the burgeoning stages of young adulthood?  In addition, this narrative might also just nicely follow the typical stages of faith development - rules, doctrine, doubt, mature belief (or second naiveté) - but for some reason I\'m not sure.  Maybe I just want to feel more special than that :)  The <a href=\"http://www.emergentvillage.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergent Church movement</a> (with which Pagitt is associated) has sometimes been accused of being too ethnically and culturally insular, of being composed primarily of middle-class folks.  Whether this is fair, would it necessarily take away from the legitimacy of this testimony for a portion of North American Christians like myself?\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://peterrollins.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Rollins </a>talks a lot about a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fidelity-Betrayal-Towards-Church-Beyond/dp/1557255601\" target=\"_blank\">church “beyond belief”</a>.  We have our differences, but what Pete proposes seems to me to be striking a chord with a lot disenchanted would-be Jesus followers.  In order to do or be much of anything, a community certainly needs belief.  Going beyond belief doesn’t mean doing away with it or even changing it – though change might happen.  Moving beyond belief means changing <em>how</em> we believe.  Do we believe primarily with epistemology (knowledge) or ontology (being)? Do we lead with confession or action?  Do our beliefs first comfort or direct us?  Which kind of belief did Jesus embrace?  Maybe it\'s not always either/or.  Dark days require consolation.  But what does belief look like for privileged citizens in the land of plenty and power?  This is one of the main questions I hope to explore here, especially with regard to the responsibility that churches have in light of this belief.','From \"Aha\" To \"Uh-Oh,\" And Then What?','','inherit','open','open','','1627-revision-16','','','2011-11-04 16:45:07','2011-11-04 23:45:07','',1627,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1627-revision-16/',0,'revision','',0),(1811,1,'2011-11-04 17:16:43','2011-11-05 00:16:43','I was just listening to an interview with <a href=\"http://dougpagitt.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Pagitt</a> (whose book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Preaching-Re-Imagined-Sermon-Communities-Faith/dp/0310263638\" target=\"_blank\">Preaching Re-imagined</a>, among others, was a big eye-opener for me when i first started doing youth ministry) on the <a href=\"http://homebrewedchristianity.com\" target=\"_blank\">Homebrewed Christianity podcast</a>, and he was talking about how the dominant narrative for Christendom prior to recent decades was one of moving from “being lost” to “being found.”  This is illustrated well by the extensive familiarly you find in the West with songs like “Amazing Grace”… “I once was blind by now I see.”  This idea was, and for many perhaps still is, the dominant thinking about religion in general and Christianity in particular.\r\n\r\nWhat Pagitt suggests is that in today\'s cultural climate, which he calls “the inventive age” (see his latest books with this phrase in the title <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Church-Inventive-Age-Christianity-Now/dp/1451400853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320097483&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>), people in North America are more likely to have conversions for “aha” to “uh-oh” than from “I don’t know” to “aha.”  Pagitt is not implying, however, that these people are all saying goodbye to their Christian faith.  He makes a distinction between the current context as a post-Christian era vs. post-Church era, arguing for the latter more so than the former.\r\n\r\nIn many ways, I find this to be true in my own experience.  It’s not a new story; I hear it frequently.  Like Pagitt, my faith background was significantly influenced by conservative evangelicalism.  For those who can relate, what’s funny about the way this story usually goes for people is that we started singing “Amazing Grace” so early, it\'s hard to remember a time when we were ever “lost.”  I didn\'t have<em> time</em> to get lost!  By my baptism at age ten, I don’t even know how many times I had already prayed for Jesus to come into my heart.  During high school and most of college, if I did any reading related to difficult theological questions, it was usually to seek out confirmation for what were already my solidified doctrinal presuppositions.\r\n\r\nAfter college and partly during seminary though - though not really <em>because</em> of seminary - I went through a challenging season of having many of my assumptions questioned . . . in some ways I may have even been too open-minded for my own good.  Nonetheless, I experienced what I guess could be called a second-conversion – a conversion to <em>not</em> knowing.  It was a conversion to a place of frustration with preconceived boundaries and filters.  I wouldn\'t have ever have called myself agnostic; nor would I fit into the popular category of “spiritual but not religious.”  But a fundamental paradigm shift definitely took place, and it has deeply affected my worldview. It wasn\'t just about the creeds of orthodoxy.  My transformation touched the political, economic and cultural.  Nor was it about left and right - while there may have been implication there.  The product is unfinished, and there’s a combined sense of both liberty and estrangement as a result.\r\n\r\nI still confess the faith of my upbringing, but its significance for me has evolved substantially.  I sometimes wonder how this fits into the rubric for discipleship.  Maybe I’m off course a bit? On the other hand, maybe I’ve learned how to be a little more honest and gracious toward myself and other people.  Most importantly perhaps, the journey doesn’t have to end at this point, and having conversation with others about it might be the doorway to the next chapter.\r\n\r\nDespite my resonance with Pagitt’s thesis, I do have some doubts about its soundness insofar as it’s superimposed on American culture writ large.  To what extent do others really relate to this, and to what extent is it more of a sub-cultural, Bible-belt phenomenon as a result of things like the information revolution, hipster Christian trends, and environmental changes in the burgeoning stages of young adulthood?  In addition, this narrative might also just nicely follow the typical stages of faith development - rules, doctrine, doubt, mature belief (or second naiveté) - but for some reason I\'m not sure.  Maybe I just want to feel more special than that :)  The <a href=\"http://www.emergentvillage.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergent Church movement</a> (with which Pagitt is associated) has sometimes been accused of being too ethnically and culturally insular, of being composed primarily of middle-class folks.  Whether this is fair, would it necessarily take away from the legitimacy of this testimony for a portion of North American Christians like myself?\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://peterrollins.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Rollins </a>talks a lot about a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fidelity-Betrayal-Towards-Church-Beyond/dp/1557255601\" target=\"_blank\">church “beyond belief”</a>.  We have our differences, but what Pete proposes seems to me to be striking a chord with a lot disenchanted would-be Jesus followers.  In order to do or be much of anything, a community certainly needs belief.  Going beyond belief doesn’t mean doing away with it or even changing it – though change might happen.  Moving beyond belief means changing <em>how</em> we believe.  Do we believe primarily with epistemology (knowledge) or ontology (being)? Do we lead with confession or action?  Do our beliefs first comfort or direct us?  Which kind of belief did Jesus embrace?  Maybe it\'s not always either/or.  Dark days require consolation.  But what does belief look like for privileged citizens in the land of plenty and power?  This is one of the main questions I hope to explore here, especially with regard to the responsibility that churches have in light of this belief.','From \"aha\" to \"uh-oh,\" and then what?','','inherit','open','open','','1627-revision-18','','','2011-11-04 17:16:43','2011-11-05 00:16:43','',1627,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1627-revision-18/',0,'revision','',0),(3554,20,'2012-01-03 23:28:11','2012-01-04 07:28:11','we want . . .\n\nto be a church that weighs deeply the suffering of the world; that mourns it, contemplates it, and takes responsibility for it by contributing in some way and somehow to systemic change – politically, economically, and culturally – both locally and globally.\n\nto be a church that extends healing and forgiveness by first recognizing our own need for healing and forgiveness.\n\nto be a church that confesses individual sins and constantly calls for repentance; but in recognition of the costliness of social and structural sin, does not overemphasis or reduce sin to the personal-“private” level.\n\nto be a church that is constantly journeying on the path of discipleship and transformation while inviting others into the same journey.\n\nto be a church that honors both the revelation <em>and</em> mystery of God, guarding against the idolatrous distractions of human-centeredness and otherworldliness respectively.\n\nto be a church that does not hesitate to profess that Jesus is Lord, but that, in faith, humbly prepares a place at the table for the non-Christian and religious other and consistently articulates eschatological hope for everyone.\n\nto be a church that does not fear – fear the consequences of prophetic action, speaking truth to power, or the risks that come from making real material sacrifices for the cause of God’s justice.\n\nto be a church that does not take itself too seriously and spends time resting, laughing and enjoying the simple pleasure and gifts of life.\n\nto be a church that does not worry about money – not because it doesn\'t matter or isn\'t needed, but because we do not organize and establish ourselves in such a way that requires utter dependence on it.\n\nto be a church that is structured to actually direct a sacrificial portion of its resources <em>not</em> toward its own institutional preservation and vertical growth but toward the needs of others.\n\nto be a church that is led by the work of the people, where leadership is both democratized and earned and where the reproduction and training of new leaders is not outsourced to higher education professionals.\n\nto be a church that proclaims the gospel but does not try to control it, where theological authority is shared and open, marked by generous and deep orthodoxy, as well as a vigorous ortho<em>praxy</em>\n\nto be a church that is intentional, patient, and unbusy; that does not over-plan or compete with other churches to attract new members, but that at the same time strives to live contagiously and make disciples.\n\nto be a church that reaches out relationally and focus on true friendship; that builds trust with neighbors and works together with community partners to better society.\n\nto be a church that does not mistake the meaning of counter-culturalism with culture warfare, and that instead seeks to subvert the status quo by implementing revolutionary social practices.\n\nto be a church that loves God and worships out of an authentic place of awe and appreciation for who God is – a God who has given us good news; who is righteous, just, gracious, sovereign, and desires redemption for all.\n\nIn sum, we want to be a church that loves, and that in doing so, participates passionately and faithfully in the Holy Spirit’s already-enacted mission and ministry of reconciliation for the coming of the Kingdom of God.\n\nIn a sense, this is my list, but I didn\'t write it alone, and I want it to be <em>ours</em>.  Maybe you can relate, have concerns, or others hopes and prayers.','my hopes and prayers for the church in 2012 and beyond','','inherit','open','open','','3551-revision-3','','','2012-01-03 23:28:11','2012-01-04 07:28:11','',3551,'http://provoketive.com/2012/01/03/3551-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(3688,1,'2012-01-07 09:20:26','2012-01-07 17:20:26','','we-the-church','','inherit','open','open','','we-the-church','','','2012-01-07 09:20:26','2012-01-07 17:20:26','',3551,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/we-the-church.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(3555,20,'2012-01-03 23:30:21','2012-01-04 07:30:21','we want . . .\r\n\r\nto be a church that weighs deeply the suffering of the world; that mourns it, contemplates it, and takes responsibility for it by contributing in some way and somehow to systemic change – politically, economically, and culturally – both locally and globally.\r\n\r\nto be a church that extends healing and forgiveness by first recognizing our own need for healing and forgiveness.\r\n\r\nto be a church that confesses individual sins and constantly calls for repentance; but in recognition of the costliness of social and structural sin, does not overemphasis or reduce sin to the personal-“private” level.\r\n\r\nto be a church that is constantly journeying on the path of discipleship and transformation while inviting others into the same journey.\r\n\r\nto be a church that honors both the revelation <em>and</em> mystery of God, guarding against the idolatrous distractions of human-centeredness and otherworldliness respectively.\r\n\r\nto be a church that does not hesitate to profess that Jesus is Lord, but that, in faith, humbly prepares a place at the table for the non-Christian and religious other and consistently articulates eschatological hope for everyone.\r\n\r\nto be a church that does not fear – fear the consequences of prophetic action, speaking truth to power, or the risks that come from making real material sacrifices for the cause of God’s justice.\r\n\r\nto be a church that does not take itself too seriously and spends time resting, laughing and enjoying the simple pleasure and gifts of life.\r\n\r\nto be a church that does not worry about money – not because it doesn\'t matter or isn\'t needed, but because we do not organize and establish ourselves in such a way that requires utter dependence on it.\r\n\r\nto be a church that is structured to actually direct a sacrificial portion of its resources <em>not</em> toward its own institutional preservation and vertical growth but toward the needs of others.\r\n\r\nto be a church that is led by the work of the people, where leadership is both democratized and earned and where the reproduction and training of new leaders is not outsourced to higher education professionals.\r\n\r\nto be a church that proclaims the gospel but does not try to control it, where theological authority is shared and open, marked by generous and deep orthodoxy, as well as a vigorous ortho<em>praxy</em>\r\n\r\nto be a church that is intentional, patient, and unbusy; that does not over-plan or compete with other churches to attract new members, but that at the same time strives to live contagiously and make disciples.\r\n\r\nto be a church that reaches out relationally and focus on true friendship; that builds trust with neighbors and works together with community partners to better society.\r\n\r\nto be a church that does not mistake the meaning of counter-culturalism with culture warfare, and that instead seeks to subvert the status quo by implementing revolutionary social practices.\r\n\r\nto be a church that loves God and worships out of an authentic place of awe and appreciation for who God is – a God who has given us good news; who is righteous, just, gracious, sovereign, and desires redemption for all.\r\n\r\nIn sum, we want to be a church that loves, and that in doing so, participates passionately and faithfully in the Holy Spirit’s already-enacted mission and ministry of reconciliation for the coming of the Kingdom of God.\r\n\r\nIn a sense, this is my list, but I didn\'t write it alone, and I want it to be <em>ours</em>.  Maybe you can relate, have concerns, or others hopes and prayers.','my hopes and prayers for the church in 2012 and beyond','','inherit','open','open','','3551-revision-4','','','2012-01-03 23:30:21','2012-01-04 07:30:21','',3551,'http://provoketive.com/2012/01/03/3551-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(3723,48,'2012-01-07 13:19:35','2012-01-07 21:19:35','There\'s a word getting thrown around a lot in regarding churches, ministries, an other faiths. It\'s a word I\'ve seen used flippantly, jokingly, and sometimes with what I see as an appropriate level of gravity. Often it\'s a word spoken, and probably rightly so, by broken and hurting people. It\'s a word used by a commenter recent previous post in Provoketive Magazine, Slap on a Little Lipstick, You\'ll Be Fine. If I am being completely honest, it\'s a word I\'ve used, sometimes quickly in anger and pain, and also after great prayer and thought.\n\nThat\'s right, I am talking about the \'C\' word. Cult.\n\nIt\'s used by many Christians to describe Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses, Christian Scientists, and many other fringe religious groups and doomsday groups like (insert examples... Jonestown group name and Heaven\'s Gatees??)  It\'s also used against many other Christian churches and ministries that have an authoritarian structure, rigid rules, and apparent spiritual abuse. The commenter from my last article used it in reference to what he thought was a minister requiring me to wear lipstick (as a note, I never stated whether that incident occured at a secular or religious organization).\n\nGiven that it carries such a negative connotation, it is probably not a word one should throw aaround unless they no for certain that a group is a cult. But what is a true cult?\n\nMerriam-Webster Dictionary gives the following definition:\n\n<span class=\"ssens\">1    : formal religious veneration : <a href=\"http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/worship\">worship</a></span>\n<div class=\"sblk\">\n<div class=\"snum\" style=\"float: left\">2</div>\n<div class=\"scnt\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 20px\"><span class=\"ssens\">: a system of religious beliefs and ritual; also : its body of adherents</span></div>\n</div>\n<div class=\"sblk\">\n<div class=\"snum\" style=\"float: left\">3</div>\n<div class=\"scnt\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 20px\"><span class=\"ssens\">: a religion regarded as unorthodox or spurious; also : its body of adherents</span></div>\n</div>\n<div class=\"sblk\">\n<div class=\"snum\" style=\"float: left\">4</div>\n<div class=\"scnt\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 20px\"><span class=\"ssens\">: a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator <span class=\"vi\">&lt;health cults&gt;</span></span></div>\n</div>\n<div class=\"sblk\">\n<div class=\"snum\" style=\"float: left\">5</div>\n<div class=\"scnt\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 20px\"><span class=\"ssens\"><span class=\"sn\">a</span> : great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (as a film or book); especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad</span></div>\n<div class=\"scnt\" style=\"margin-bottom: 10px;margin-left: 20px\"><span class=\"ssens\"><span class=\"sn\">b</span> : the object of such devotion</span><span class=\"ssens\"><span class=\"sn\">c</span> : a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion</span></div>\n</div>\nGoing by this definition, any religious group or faith is a cult. That\'s right, by this definition, any Christian church or group, mainstream or otherwise, is a cult. And it doesn\'t stop at religion: any fad or craze with a following could be called a cult, like the cult of Mac.  And, with the exception of the third definition above that describes cult as a religion \"regarded as unorhtodox or spurious\", the term \'cult\' doesn\'t necessarily have a negative connotation.\n\nEven sociologist and psychologists tend to disagree over the use of the word \"cult\", given that what is generally a neutral term has become to bring to mind only pictures of poisoned Kool-Aid of Jonestown infamy or the Charles Mansen cult murders. However, most agree that there is really a continuum between what constitutes \"cult\" and \"non-cult\", which is why many have given to adding further descriptors, such as \"dangerous\" or \"benign\" to cults. Because of this, for the purposes of this article, I have gotten the majority of my information on cults from the International Cultic Studies Association.  They focus on the damaging aspects and practices that often occur in damaging cults, but they are careful not to specifically list possible cultts on their webpage, as there are many gray areas where groups may contain some aspeccts of cults, but not really be a full blown cult, or a dangerous cult\n\nFurthermore, it can be difficult to be fully objective when determining what is \"unorthodox\" regarding religious beliefs and doctrine. And, who gets to decide? If you asked a Lutheran, Catholic, Pentacostal, Charistmatic, Bretheren, Mennononite, and Episcopalian about what constituted orthodox veruses unorthodox beliefs in other denominationsI thin it is likely each denomination would find themselves stuck with that label by another one.\n\nThat being said, here is a list of characteristics found with damaging cults, according to the ICSA\n<ol>\n	<li>The group displays excessively zealous and unquestioning commitment to its leader and (whether he is alive or dead) regards his belief system, ideology, and practices as the Truth, as law.</li>\n	<li>Questioning, doubt, and dissent are discouraged or even punished.</li>\n	<li>Mind-altering practices (such as meditation, chanting, speaking in tongues, denunciation sessions, and debilitating work routines) are used in excess and serve to suppress doubts about the group and its leader(s).</li>\n	<li>The leadership dictates, sometimes in great detail, how members should think, act, and feel (for example, members must get permission to date, change jobs, marry—or leaders prescribe what types of clothes to wear, where to live, whether or not to have children, how to discipline children, and so forth).</li>\n	<li>The group is elitist, claiming a special, exalted status for itself, its leader(s) and members (for example, the leader is considered the Messiah, a special being, an avatar—or the group and/or the leader is on a special mission to save humanity).</li>\n	<li>The group has a polarized us-versus-them mentality, which may cause conflict with the wider society</li>\n	<li>The leader is not accountable to any authorities (unlike, for example, teachers, military commanders or ministers, priests, monks, and rabbis of mainstream religious denominations).</li>\n	<li>The group teaches or implies that its supposedly exalted ends justify whatever means it deems necessary. This may result in members\' participating in behaviors or activities they would have considered reprehensible or unethical before joining the group (for example, lying to family or friends, or collecting money for bogus charities).</li>\n	<li>The leadership induces feelings of shame and/or guilt <span class=\"SpellE\" style=\"text-align: left;padding-top: 1px;padding-right: 3px;padding-left: 3px;padding-bottom: 6px;margin-top: 1px;margin-bottom: 1px;margin-left: 1px\">in</span>order to influence and/or control members. Often, this is done through peer pressure and subtle forms of persuasion.</li>\n	<li>Subservience to the leader or group requires members to cut ties with family and friends, and radically alter the personal goals and activities they had before joining the group.</li>\n	<li>The group is preoccupied with bringing in new members.</li>\n	<li>The group is preoccupied with making money.</li>\n	<li>Members are expected to devote inordinate amounts of time to the group and group-related activities.</li>\n	<li>Members are encouraged or required to live and/or socialize only with other group members.</li>\n	<li>The most loyal members (the “true believers”) feel there can be no life outside the context of the group. They believe there is no other way to be, and often fear reprisals to themselves or others if they leave (or even consider leaving) the group (Characteristics Associated with Cultic Groups-Revised, Michael D. Langone, Ph.D)</li>\n</ol>\nEven with this list, I think it is important to be careful before immediately labeling a group a \"cult\", given the current negative connotation that it immediately brings  to peoples\' minds. This is not a checklist to determine if a group is a cult for certain or not, but is merely a guideline of  characterithat cults often display. It is possible for a dangerous cult to not display all of these, and I think it is also possible for a group that is not a cult by today\'s current usage of the word to display some or even many of these trait.\n\nFor example, if you think about it, many of these traits could describe a sports team. In a sports team, all of the members are committed wholly to the coach. Questioning the coach can lead to being benched or removed from the team. Team members often engage in pre-game chants to grow team unity. Furthermore, the team must wear the required team uniform and any special equipment, or they are not allowed to participate. The team also has a polarized us versus them attitude towards any other teams they come across. Being apart of the team may also affect heir relationships and other personal goals, due to long practice sessions and traveling for games.  They will have little to no time to pursue other activities and they may not see their family very often during the on-season. Now granted, this example doesn\'t fit every characteristic listed, but as you can see, it could be easy to make a group fit these characteristics if you were already prejudiced against it.\n\nWhile the term cult is perhaps nebulous, or at best a cloudy term that can be misused, I do still think it a good thing to consider these spiritually and psychology damaging characteristics in the groups. Some people have a perception that only people with pre-existing psychoses join cults, really studies suggest only 5-6% of people who join cults had pre-existing psychological issues (GET REFERENCE!!!) People of all walks of life can be suspect to cults, especially since there is often misleading information about the true nature of cult activity when you first become involved. However, it is important that we are careful before immediately tossing out the \"cult\" label with any religious group that we disagree with or even one that has truly hurt us.\n\nI was a part of a 5-fold Christian para-church ministry for almost 8 years. For those of you unfamiliar with those terms, that essentially means it was a Christian ministry that was not a church, but rather worked along side Christian churches, with a focus on the 5-fold ministry gifts listed in Ephesians 4:11 (Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastor and Teacher). I knew many of the members from my previous church when I was still in high school, and my first involvement was merely as a member of the worship team while I was still in college. Shortly after college, my husband and I joined the team, and our involvement became deeper. As time progressed, meetings became more frequent and went into the early morning hours, more rigid rules were created and enforced regarding everything from not drinking to alcohol, meeting attendance, how to act around the leader of our ministry, dress code, things weree were not supposed to discuss with non-team members, and much more. Questioning of the leader was not only discouraged in public, but when you questioned him in','The \'C\' Word','','inherit','open','open','','3704-revision-12','','','2012-01-07 13:19:35','2012-01-07 21:19:35','',3704,'http://provoketive.com/2012/01/07/3704-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(3552,20,'2012-01-03 23:21:02','2012-01-04 07:21:02','we want . . .\n\nto be a church that weighs deeply the suffering of the world; that mourns it, contemplates it, and takes responsibility for it by contributing in some way and somehow to systemic change – politically, economically, and culturally – both locally and globally.\n\nto be a church that extends healing and forgiveness by first recognizing our own need for healing and forgiveness.\n\nto be a church that confesses individual sins and constantly calls for repentance; but in recognition of the costliness of social and structural sin, does not overemphasis or reduce sin to the personal-“private” level.\n\nto be a church that is constantly journeying on the path of discipleship and transformation while inviting others into the same journey.\n\nto be a church that honors both the revelation <em>and</em> mystery of God, guarding against the idolatrous distractions of human-centeredness and otherworldliness respectively.\n\nto be a church that does not hesitate to profess that Jesus is Lord, but that, in faith, humbly prepares a place at the table for the non-Christian and religious other and consistently articulates eschatological hope for everyone.\n\nto be a church that does not fear – fear the consequences of prophetic action, speaking truth to power, or the risks that come from making real material sacrifices for the cause of God’s justice.\n\nto be a church that does not take itself too seriously and spends time resting, laughing and enjoying the simple pleasure and gifts of life.\n\nto be a church that does not worry about money – not because it doesn\'t matter or isn\'t needed, but because we do not organize and establish ourselves in such a way that requires utter dependence on it.\n\nto be a church that is structured to actually direct a sacrificial portion of its resources <em>not</em> toward its own institutional preservation and vertical growth but toward the needs of others.\n\nto be a church that is led by the work of the people, where leadership is both democratized and earned and where the reproduction and training of new leaders is not outsourced to higher education professionals.\n\nto be a church that proclaims the gospel but does not try to control it, where theological authority is shared and open, marked by generous and deep orthodoxy, as well as a vigorous ortho<em>praxy</em>\n\nto be a church that is intentional, patient, and un-busy; that does not over-plan or compete with other churches in the rat race of attracting new members, but that at the same time strives to live contagiously.\n\nto be a church that reaches out relationally and focus on true friendship; that builds trust with neighbors and works together with community partners to better society.\n\nto be a church that does not mistake the meaning of counter-culturalism with culture warfare, and that instead seeks to subvert the status quo by implementing revolutionary social practices.\n\nto be a church that loves God and worships out of an authentic place of awe and appreciation for who God is – a God who has given us good news; who is righteous, just, gracious, sovereign, and desires redemption for all.\n\nIn sum, we want to be a church that loves, and in doing so, that participates passionately and faithfully in the Holy Spirit’s already-enacted mission and ministry of reconciliation toward the coming of the Kingdom of God.\n\nIn a sense, this is my list . . . but I didn\'t write it alone, and I want it to be <em>ours</em>.  Maybe you can relate, have concerns, or others hopes and prayers?','my hopes and prayers for the church in 2012 and beyond','','inherit','open','open','','3551-revision','','','2012-01-03 23:21:02','2012-01-04 07:21:02','',3551,'http://provoketive.com/2012/01/03/3551-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(3553,20,'2012-01-03 23:26:41','2012-01-04 07:26:41','we want . . .\n\nto be a church that weighs deeply the suffering of the world; that mourns it, contemplates it, and takes responsibility for it by contributing in some way and somehow to systemic change – politically, economically, and culturally – both locally and globally.\n\nto be a church that extends healing and forgiveness by first recognizing our own need for healing and forgiveness.\n\nto be a church that confesses individual sins and constantly calls for repentance; but in recognition of the costliness of social and structural sin, does not overemphasis or reduce sin to the personal-“private” level.\n\nto be a church that is constantly journeying on the path of discipleship and transformation while inviting others into the same journey.\n\nto be a church that honors both the revelation <em>and</em> mystery of God, guarding against the idolatrous distractions of human-centeredness and otherworldliness respectively.\n\nto be a church that does not hesitate to profess that Jesus is Lord, but that, in faith, humbly prepares a place at the table for the non-Christian and religious other and consistently articulates eschatological hope for everyone.\n\nto be a church that does not fear – fear the consequences of prophetic action, speaking truth to power, or the risks that come from making real material sacrifices for the cause of God’s justice.\n\nto be a church that does not take itself too seriously and spends time resting, laughing and enjoying the simple pleasure and gifts of life.\n\nto be a church that does not worry about money – not because it doesn\'t matter or isn\'t needed, but because we do not organize and establish ourselves in such a way that requires utter dependence on it.\n\nto be a church that is structured to actually direct a sacrificial portion of its resources <em>not</em> toward its own institutional preservation and vertical growth but toward the needs of others.\n\nto be a church that is led by the work of the people, where leadership is both democratized and earned and where the reproduction and training of new leaders is not outsourced to higher education professionals.\n\nto be a church that proclaims the gospel but does not try to control it, where theological authority is shared and open, marked by generous and deep orthodoxy, as well as a vigorous ortho<em>praxy</em>\n\nto be a church that is intentional, patient, and unbusy; that does not over-plan or compete with other churches to attract new members, but that at the same time strives to live contagiously and make disciples.\n\nto be a church that reaches out relationally and focus on true friendship; that builds trust with neighbors and works together with community partners to better society.\n\nto be a church that does not mistake the meaning of counter-culturalism with culture warfare, and that instead seeks to subvert the status quo by implementing revolutionary social practices.\n\nto be a church that loves God and worships out of an authentic place of awe and appreciation for who God is – a God who has given us good news; who is righteous, just, gracious, sovereign, and desires redemption for all.\n\nIn sum, we want to be a church that loves, and that in doing so, participates passionately and faithfully in the Holy Spirit’s already-enacted mission and ministry of reconciliation for the coming of the Kingdom of God.\n\nIn a sense, this is my list, but I didn\'t write it alone, and I want it to be <em>ours</em>.  Maybe you can relate, have concerns, or others hopes and prayers.','my hopes and prayers for the church in 2012 and beyond','','inherit','open','open','','3551-revision-2','','','2012-01-03 23:26:41','2012-01-04 07:26:41','',3551,'http://provoketive.com/2012/01/03/3551-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1814,43,'2011-11-04 18:40:36','2011-11-05 01:40:36','','what are you doing wrong','','inherit','open','open','','what-are-you-doing-wrong','','','2011-11-04 18:40:36','2011-11-05 01:40:36','',1734,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/what-are-you-doing-wrong.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(1815,43,'2011-11-04 18:37:36','2011-11-05 01:37:36','My husband is a teacher.  I appreciate that, because it gives me a window into the world of public education.  Recently, Dear Husband was looking for information on <a href=\"http://www.dianeravitch.com/\">Diane Ravitch</a>.  He came across an excellent <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZUDmBZ6Y4s\">speech</a> she gave at Stanford University in August of 2010.  Our favorite moment is when she suggests that No Child Left Behind is a foolish endeavor.  She likens it to the federal government demanding that the police reduce crime to zero percent within 10 to 15 years.  If they are unsuccessful, police officers will be fired and police departments will be closed.\n\nDear Husband found this entertaining enough to start a thread on his Facebook page.  He suggested that perhaps the same principle could be applied to all sorts of professions.  Others have suggested this as well; some examples can be found for <a href=\"http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/no-dentist.html\">No Dentist Left Behind</a>; <a href=\"http://www.hollandsentinel.com/opinions/x227108199/COLUMN-Teaching-in-America-No-Child-Left-Behind\">No Patient Left Behind</a>; <a href=\"http://www.janebluestein.com/articles/football.html\">NCLB: Football</a>; and even <a href=\"http://libraryhopper.blogspot.com/2006/09/parody-for-you.html\">No Cow Left Behind</a>.  There\'s even a <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dAujuqCo7s\">song</a>, the very funny (and piquant) \"Not on the Test\" by Tom Chapin.\n\nSo far, there is no end in sight to this educational train wreck.  One of the problems is that it\'s a goal it\'s hard to argue with.  When teachers have questioned it, the answer is, \"Well, why <em>wouldn\'t</em> you want your students to succeed?\"  There is no response to that.  Of <em>course</em> teachers want their students to be successful, otherwise they\'d have gone into some other profession.  But at what price?\n\nThe problem with the demand for all students to pass grade level standards is that there isn\'t a level playing field.  Far too many factors prevent children from reaching their potential.  Several years ago, I had a fascinating conversation with my late brother-in-law\'s girlfriend.  She was working for the state in which she lived, and her committee was discussing the low rates of female college enrollment.  This young woman told me that her colleagues had failed to see the obvious:  If you live someplace where your roads are lousy and your water quality is poor, you probably aren\'t worried about how many women go to college.\n\nThe same principle applies to NCLB.  The one factor that has been conclusively demonstrated to be important in educational improvement has been parental involvement.  We won\'t see all students succeed until all parents are actively taking part in their children\'s learning.  We won\'t see parent participation until we resolve larger problems related to poverty and family stress.\n\nIn the meantime, the rest of us may be able to lend a hand.  I had the wonderful opportunity to volunteer in my son\'s classroom recently, something I will be doing bi-weekly throughout the year.  His teacher assigned me to reading conferences.  The kids read a page or two of their books, then discuss it.  At first, I wasn\'t sure whether the kids would warm to having me sit with them and listen to them reading.  I needn\'t have worried.  These kids are so eager to share, so full of joy at having a special grown-up pay attention to them and care about what they like.  I had a list of discussion prompts; I didn\'t need them.\n\nIf kids\' parents won\'t, or can\'t, be there for them, then <em>we</em> can.  Those of us who are able, who have time or can make time, have the chance to touch these kids\' lives.  We <em>can</em> make a difference.  Let\'s support our kids, our schools, and our teachers by reaching out and loving these children towards success.','The Children Are Not All Right','','inherit','open','open','','1734-revision-4','','','2011-11-04 18:37:36','2011-11-05 01:37:36','',1734,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1734-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1816,43,'2011-11-04 18:41:07','2011-11-05 01:41:07','My husband is a teacher.  I appreciate that, because it gives me a window into the world of public education.  Recently, Dear Husband was looking for information on <a href=\"http://www.dianeravitch.com/\">Diane Ravitch</a>.  He came across an excellent <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZUDmBZ6Y4s\">speech</a> she gave at Stanford University in August of 2010.  Our favorite moment is when she suggests that No Child Left Behind is a foolish endeavor.  She likens it to the federal government demanding that the police reduce crime to zero percent within 10 to 15 years.  If they are unsuccessful, police officers will be fired and police departments will be closed.\r\n\r\nDear Husband found this entertaining enough to start a thread on his Facebook page.  He suggested that perhaps the same principle could be applied to all sorts of professions.  Others have suggested this as well; some examples can be found for <a href=\"http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/no-dentist.html\">No Dentist Left Behind</a>; <a href=\"http://www.hollandsentinel.com/opinions/x227108199/COLUMN-Teaching-in-America-No-Child-Left-Behind\">No Patient Left Behind</a>; <a href=\"http://www.janebluestein.com/articles/football.html\">NCLB: Football</a>; and even <a href=\"http://libraryhopper.blogspot.com/2006/09/parody-for-you.html\">No Cow Left Behind</a>.  There\'s even a <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dAujuqCo7s\">song</a>, the very funny (and piquant) \"Not on the Test\" by Tom Chapin.\r\n\r\nSo far, there is no end in sight to this educational train wreck.  One of the problems is that it\'s a goal it\'s hard to argue with.  When teachers have questioned it, the answer is, \"Well, why <em>wouldn\'t</em> you want your students to succeed?\"  There is no response to that.  Of <em>course</em> teachers want their students to be successful, otherwise they\'d have gone into some other profession.  But at what price?\r\n\r\nThe problem with the demand for all students to pass grade level standards is that there isn\'t a level playing field.  Far too many factors prevent children from reaching their potential.  Several years ago, I had a fascinating conversation with my late brother-in-law\'s girlfriend.  She was working for the state in which she lived, and her committee was discussing the low rates of female college enrollment.  This young woman told me that her colleagues had failed to see the obvious:  If you live someplace where your roads are lousy and your water quality is poor, you probably aren\'t worried about how many women go to college.\r\n\r\nThe same principle applies to NCLB.  The one factor that has been conclusively demonstrated to be important in educational improvement has been parental involvement.  We won\'t see all students succeed until all parents are actively taking part in their children\'s learning.  We won\'t see parent participation until we resolve larger problems related to poverty and family stress.\r\n\r\nIn the meantime, the rest of us may be able to lend a hand.  I had the wonderful opportunity to volunteer in my son\'s classroom recently, something I will be doing bi-weekly throughout the year.  His teacher assigned me to reading conferences.  The kids read a page or two of their books, then discuss it.  At first, I wasn\'t sure whether the kids would warm to having me sit with them and listen to them reading.  I needn\'t have worried.  These kids are so eager to share, so full of joy at having a special grown-up pay attention to them and care about what they like.  I had a list of discussion prompts; I didn\'t need them.\r\n\r\nIf kids\' parents won\'t, or can\'t, be there for them, then <em>we</em> can.  Those of us who are able, who have time or can make time, have the chance to touch these kids\' lives.  We <em>can</em> make a difference.  Let\'s support our kids, our schools, and our teachers by reaching out and loving these children towards success.','The Children Are Not All Right','','inherit','open','open','','1734-revision-5','','','2011-11-04 18:41:07','2011-11-05 01:41:07','',1734,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1734-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(1817,43,'2011-11-04 18:41:13','2011-11-05 01:41:13','My husband is a teacher.  I appreciate that, because it gives me a window into the world of public education.  Recently, Dear Husband was looking for information on <a href=\"http://www.dianeravitch.com/\">Diane Ravitch</a>.  He came across an excellent <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZUDmBZ6Y4s\">speech</a> she gave at Stanford University in August of 2010.  Our favorite moment is when she suggests that No Child Left Behind is a foolish endeavor.  She likens it to the federal government demanding that the police reduce crime to zero percent within 10 to 15 years.  If they are unsuccessful, police officers will be fired and police departments will be closed.\r\n\r\nDear Husband found this entertaining enough to start a thread on his Facebook page.  He suggested that perhaps the same principle could be applied to all sorts of professions.  Others have suggested this as well; some examples can be found for <a href=\"http://www.trelease-on-reading.com/no-dentist.html\">No Dentist Left Behind</a>; <a href=\"http://www.hollandsentinel.com/opinions/x227108199/COLUMN-Teaching-in-America-No-Child-Left-Behind\">No Patient Left Behind</a>; <a href=\"http://www.janebluestein.com/articles/football.html\">NCLB: Football</a>; and even <a href=\"http://libraryhopper.blogspot.com/2006/09/parody-for-you.html\">No Cow Left Behind</a>.  There\'s even a <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dAujuqCo7s\">song</a>, the very funny (and piquant) \"Not on the Test\" by Tom Chapin.\r\n\r\nSo far, there is no end in sight to this educational train wreck.  One of the problems is that it\'s a goal it\'s hard to argue with.  When teachers have questioned it, the answer is, \"Well, why <em>wouldn\'t</em> you want your students to succeed?\"  There is no response to that.  Of <em>course</em> teachers want their students to be successful, otherwise they\'d have gone into some other profession.  But at what price?\r\n\r\nThe problem with the demand for all students to pass grade level standards is that there isn\'t a level playing field.  Far too many factors prevent children from reaching their potential.  Several years ago, I had a fascinating conversation with my late brother-in-law\'s girlfriend.  She was working for the state in which she lived, and her committee was discussing the low rates of female college enrollment.  This young woman told me that her colleagues had failed to see the obvious:  If you live someplace where your roads are lousy and your water quality is poor, you probably aren\'t worried about how many women go to college.\r\n\r\nThe same principle applies to NCLB.  The one factor that has been conclusively demonstrated to be important in educational improvement has been parental involvement.  We won\'t see all students succeed until all parents are actively taking part in their children\'s learning.  We won\'t see parent participation until we resolve larger problems related to poverty and family stress.\r\n\r\nIn the meantime, the rest of us may be able to lend a hand.  I had the wonderful opportunity to volunteer in my son\'s classroom recently, something I will be doing bi-weekly throughout the year.  His teacher assigned me to reading conferences.  The kids read a page or two of their books, then discuss it.  At first, I wasn\'t sure whether the kids would warm to having me sit with them and listen to them reading.  I needn\'t have worried.  These kids are so eager to share, so full of joy at having a special grown-up pay attention to them and care about what they like.  I had a list of discussion prompts; I didn\'t need them.\r\n\r\nIf kids\' parents won\'t, or can\'t, be there for them, then <em>we</em> can.  Those of us who are able, who have time or can make time, have the chance to touch these kids\' lives.  We <em>can</em> make a difference.  Let\'s support our kids, our schools, and our teachers by reaching out and loving these children towards success.','The Children Are Not All Right','','inherit','open','open','','1734-revision-6','','','2011-11-04 18:41:13','2011-11-05 01:41:13','',1734,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1734-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(1818,20,'2011-11-04 17:17:08','2011-11-05 00:17:08','I was just listening to an interview with <a href=\"http://dougpagitt.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Doug Pagitt</a> (whose book <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Preaching-Re-Imagined-Sermon-Communities-Faith/dp/0310263638\" target=\"_blank\">Preaching Re-imagined</a>, among others, was a big eye-opener for me when i first started doing youth ministry) on the <a href=\"http://homebrewedchristianity.com\" target=\"_blank\">Homebrewed Christianity podcast</a>, and he was talking about how the dominant narrative for Christendom prior to recent decades was one of moving from “being lost” to “being found.”  This is illustrated well by the extensive familiarly you find in the West with songs like “Amazing Grace”… “I once was blind by now I see.”  This idea was, and for many perhaps still is, the dominant thinking about religion in general and Christianity in particular.\r\n\r\nWhat Pagitt suggests is that in today\'s cultural climate, which he calls “the inventive age” (see his latest books with this phrase in the title <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Church-Inventive-Age-Christianity-Now/dp/1451400853/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320097483&amp;sr=1-1\" target=\"_blank\">here</a>), people in North America are more likely to have conversions for “aha” to “uh-oh” than from “I don’t know” to “aha.”  Pagitt is not implying, however, that these people are all saying goodbye to their Christian faith.  He makes a distinction between the current context as a post-Christian era vs. post-Church era, arguing for the latter more so than the former.\r\n\r\nIn many ways, I find this to be true in my own experience.  It’s not a new story; I hear it frequently.  Like Pagitt, my faith background was significantly influenced by conservative evangelicalism.  For those who can relate, what’s funny about the way this story usually goes for people is that we started singing “Amazing Grace” so early, it\'s hard to remember a time when we were ever “lost.”  I didn\'t have<em> time</em> to get lost!  By my baptism at age ten, I don’t even know how many times I had already prayed for Jesus to come into my heart.  During high school and most of college, if I did any reading related to difficult theological questions, it was usually to seek out confirmation for what were already my solidified doctrinal presuppositions.\r\n\r\nAfter college and partly during seminary though - though not really <em>because</em> of seminary - I went through a challenging season of having many of my assumptions questioned . . . in some ways I may have even been too open-minded for my own good.  Nonetheless, I experienced what I guess could be called a second-conversion – a conversion to <em>not</em> knowing.  It was a conversion to a place of frustration with preconceived boundaries and filters.  I wouldn\'t have ever have called myself agnostic; nor would I fit into the popular category of “spiritual but not religious.”  But a fundamental paradigm shift definitely took place, and it has deeply affected my worldview. It wasn\'t just about the creeds of orthodoxy.  My transformation touched the political, economic and cultural.  Nor was it about left and right - while there may have been implication there.  The product is unfinished, and there’s a combined sense of both liberty and estrangement as a result.\r\n\r\nI still confess the faith of my upbringing, but its significance for me has evolved substantially.  I sometimes wonder how this fits into the rubric for discipleship.  Maybe I’m off course a bit? On the other hand, maybe I’ve learned how to be a little more honest and gracious toward myself and other people.  Most importantly perhaps, the journey doesn’t have to end at this point, and having conversation with others about it might be the doorway to the next chapter.\r\n\r\nDespite my resonance with Pagitt’s thesis, I do have some doubts about its soundness insofar as it’s superimposed on American culture writ large.  To what extent do others really relate to this, and to what extent is it more of a sub-cultural, Bible-belt phenomenon as a result of things like the information revolution, hipster Christian trends, and environmental changes in the burgeoning stages of young adulthood?  In addition, this narrative might also just nicely follow the typical stages of faith development - rules, doctrine, doubt, mature belief (or second naiveté) - but for some reason I\'m not sure.  Maybe I just want to feel more special than that :)  The <a href=\"http://www.emergentvillage.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Emergent Church movement</a> (with which Pagitt is associated) has sometimes been accused of being too ethnically and culturally insular, of being composed primarily of middle-class folks.  Whether this is fair, would it necessarily take away from the legitimacy of this testimony for a portion of North American Christians like myself?\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://peterrollins.net/\" target=\"_blank\">Peter Rollins </a>talks a lot about a <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Fidelity-Betrayal-Towards-Church-Beyond/dp/1557255601\" target=\"_blank\">church “beyond belief”</a>.  We have our differences, but what Pete proposes seems to me to be striking a chord with a lot disenchanted would-be Jesus followers.  In order to do or be much of anything, a community certainly needs belief.  Going beyond belief doesn’t mean doing away with it or even changing it – though change might happen.  Moving beyond belief means changing <em>how</em> we believe.  Do we believe primarily with epistemology (knowledge) or ontology (being)? Do we lead with confession or action?  Do our beliefs first comfort or direct us?  Which kind of belief did Jesus embrace?  Maybe it\'s not always either/or.  Dark days require consolation.  But what does belief look like for privileged citizens in the land of plenty and power?  This is one of the main questions I hope to explore here, especially with regard to the responsibility that churches have in light of this belief.','From \"Aha\" To \"Uh-Oh,\" And Then What?','','inherit','open','open','','1627-revision-19','','','2011-11-04 17:17:08','2011-11-05 00:17:08','',1627,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/04/1627-revision-19/',0,'revision','',0),(1819,0,'2011-11-04 21:15:04','2011-11-05 04:15:04','Asking All The Wrong Questions: Why Christians Are Waiting for Marriage for Sex.\r\n\r\nContact: Darrell Vesterfelt\r\nE-mail: editor@hopepublishing.org\r\n\r\nFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE\r\n\r\nPortland, OR / Tuesday, November 8, 2011 -- Christian author Ally Spotts is proud to announce the release of her new e-book All The Wrong Questions: Why Christians Are Waiting for Marriage for Sex ($.99/Hope Publishing) This 47-page too-the-point manuscript takes a direct approach to discussing the dangers of sex without boundaries.\r\n\r\nThe book was written in response to her a series she posted on her blog at http://allyspotts.com.\r\nShe wrote the series because she was convinced that singles were asking the wrong questions when it came to sex before marriage.\r\n\r\n“Instead of asking, ‘How far is too far?’” Spotts writes, “We should be asking, ‘Why are we committed to this in the first place?’”\r\n\r\nThe articles from the blog series are as follows:\r\n\r\nWhat\'s The Big Deal About Saving Sex For Marriage?\r\nIt Builds Trust\r\nIt Builds Friendship \r\nHappiness Isn\'t Everything\r\nYou Are Valuable \r\nLust Is Not Manageable\r\n\r\nIn the book Spotts shares reasons she thinks it’s important to wait for marriage for sex and how she came to these conclusions through personal experience. She shares openly about her own mistakes and speaks to guilt, lust, fear and insecurities.\r\n\r\nThe book is available for purchase HERE (http://pul.ly/b/22143) and is $.99 per copy. Readers should consider purchasing the e-book if:\r\n\r\nYou are wondering why on earth anyone would wait for marriage to have sex\r\nYou want to wait for marriage for sex but is having a hard time doing it\r\nYou are wondering what it looks like to wait for marriage for sex (“Like, can we do other stuff instead?”)\r\nYou work with young adults who are wrestling with these questions and you want to help\r\n\r\nAbout the Author:\r\nAlly Spotts is a 20-something blogger and writer who believes that there’s no such thing as a quarter life crisis. What feels like a crisis is almost always an opportunity to do something interesting. She’s currently working on full-length manuscript about her road trip to all 50 States.\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Darrell Vesterfelt\nAUTHOR EMAIL: editor@hopepublishing.org\nAUTHOR URL: http://AllySpotts.com\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 50.43.14.75\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Darrell Vesterfelt\n    [Email] =&gt; editor@hopepublishing.org\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; http://AllySpotts.com\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; Asking All The Wrong Questions: Why Christians Are Waiting for Marriage for Sex.\r\n\r\nContact: Darrell Vesterfelt\r\nE-mail: editor@hopepublishing.org\r\n\r\nFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE\r\n\r\nPortland, OR / Tuesday, November 8, 2011 -- Christian author Ally Spotts is proud to announce the release of her new e-book All The Wrong Questions: Why Christians Are Waiting for Marriage for Sex ($.99/Hope Publishing) This 47-page too-the-point manuscript takes a direct approach to discussing the dangers of sex without boundaries.\r\n\r\nThe book was written in response to her a series she posted on her blog at http://allyspotts.com.\r\nShe wrote the series because she was convinced that singles were asking the wrong questions when it came to sex before marriage.\r\n\r\n“Instead of asking, ‘How far is too far?’” Spotts writes, “We should be asking, ‘Why are we committed to this in the first place?’”\r\n\r\nThe articles from the blog series are as follows:\r\n\r\nWhat\'s The Big Deal About Saving Sex For Marriage?\r\nIt Builds Trust\r\nIt Builds Friendship \r\nHappiness Isn\'t Everything\r\nYou Are Valuable \r\nLust Is Not Manageable\r\n\r\nIn the book Spotts shares reasons she thinks it’s important to wait for marriage for sex and how she came to these conclusions through personal experience. She shares openly about her own mistakes and speaks to guilt, lust, fear and insecurities.\r\n\r\nThe book is available for purchase HERE (http://pul.ly/b/22143) and is $.99 per copy. Readers should consider purchasing the e-book if:\r\n\r\nYou are wondering why on earth anyone would wait for marriage to have sex\r\nYou want to wait for marriage for sex but is having a hard time doing it\r\nYou are wondering what it looks like to wait for marriage for sex (“Like, can we do other stuff instead?”)\r\nYou work with young adults who are wrestling with these questions and you want to help\r\n\r\nAbout the Author:\r\nAlly Spotts is a 20-something blogger and writer who believes that there’s no such thing as a quarter life crisis. What feels like a crisis is almost always an opportunity to do something interesting. She’s currently working on full-length manuscript about her road trip to all 50 States.\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; ally.spotts@gmail.com\n)\n','Darrell Vesterfelt - 2011-11-04 21:15:04','','publish','open','open','','fe86e7814c4e0199885f281c95285dd3','','','2011-11-04 21:15:04','2011-11-05 04:15:04','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=1819',0,'feedback','',0),(1820,77,'2011-11-05 06:35:04','2011-11-05 13:35:04','As a teenager, I was one of those kids who hadn\'t a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. My twenties came and life just kind of happened.  I had opportunities.  I took advantage of them.  I gave it my all.  And life unfolded from there. By the time I was 23 I was in a mid-level retail management position overseeing about 20 employees. And I thought to myself that by the time I was in my thirties I wanted to be a senior level manager in my company with a big profit sharing portfolio on a trajectory toward retirement by my mid-forties.\n\nAfter learning of the disproportionate number of those managers who ended up dead early of heart attacks or divorced, I opted for a move into another industry in my thirties. As life continued to unfold I looked ahead to my forties with a desire to be successfully self-employed and financially independent.\n\nI entered my forties over three years ago and today I am neither successfully self-employed nor financially independent.  And with another decade of life well underway I am once again looking ahead to the next milestone, the age of 50, and thinking about where I want to be, where I feel I need to be, when I arrive at that number which at the moment scares the hell out of me.  Fifty?  Me?  No way.\n\nI am learning something valuable in my forties that I didn’t grasp in the first few decades of life.  And that is the necessity of finding balance and forward momentum in the midst that which is less desirable while longing for my preferred future.  The Chinese call a similar tension in life the Yin Yang.  It is the interconnectedness and interdependence between seemingly polar opposite forces.  Light. Dark. Positive. Negative. Happy. Sad. Difficult. Easy. Complex. Simple.\n\nTranslated into the Zen of work, it looks something like this.  You know what you were created to do, but circumstances seem to prevent you from doing it.  You know what you are great at.  But real life demands that you devote a lot of time and energy to other things that you aren’t so great at.  You have your dreams.  Yet reality always seems to get in the way causing your dreams to be deferred for perhaps another decade or two, or three, or five.\n\nSounds frustrating doesn’t it?  It can be.  After a couple of decades, I think most people simply give up.  The ones who do surrender are the ones who misunderstand the nature of Yin Yang.  It isn’t a battle in which negative overcomes positive, or positive overcomes negative.  To the contrary, one is dependent upon and gives rise to the other in turn.  Both are required.  Both are unavoidable.  And the person who finds fulfillment in life and work is the person who learns to cooperate with the negative to bring about the positive and in the midst of the positive is strengthened, prepared, and emboldened to endure the negative that will come in turn.  The Yin Yang symbol demonstrates this interdependence. White on one side (representing light, positive, happy, easy and simple with black on the other representing dark, negative, sad, difficult, and complex.  Yet there is the presence of a black circle in the midst of the white side and the presence of a white circle on the black side.\n\nSo here you are in the midst of living and working and dreaming about the future.  You may have a very good job with a great company, surrounded by positive, talented people. But you still dream about someday finding that career “sweet spot” wherein it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between work and play.  You have a vision for the thing you’d love to be doing.  But you aren’t there.  You don’t know how to get there.  You keep waiting for all of the stars and planets to align perfectly so you wake up one morning and all you’ve dreamed about is right outside your door waiting for you to step onto the scene.  But life doesn’t happen that way.  Yin. Yang. Tick. Tock.\n\nLook again at the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_and_Yang.svg\">taijitu symbol</a>.  In the forward portion of the dark side is a circle of light. And herein lies the secret of maintaining forward momentum toward your dream career. Hidden in plain sight within your present reality are daily moments of preparation for the future you dream about.  Remember, the Yin Yang concept does not teach us that one force or one reality conquers the other.  Dark doesn’t conquer light.  Light doesn’t conquer dark.  They interplay and give rise to one another.  Your goal is not to find a means of escape from your present reality to enter the career of your dreams.  Your goal is to undergo hands-on training for the career of your dreams in the midst of your present reality.\n\nEven if the work you dream about doing bears little resemblance to what you do today, there are basic fundamentals that are common across the entire spectrum of our work.  And mastering those fundamentals is a prerequisite to successfully entering your preferred future.\n\nWhat will you need to know about people in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\n\nWhat will you need to know about business in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\n\nWhat will you need to know about marketing in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\n\nWhat will you need to know about finance in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\n\nWhat will you need to know about leadership in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job even if leadership isn’t a formal part of your job description.\n\nAll of these things are common themes in work and business.  Every day that you wake up to do the work that you have to do while waiting to do the work you’d love to do you are presented with  and surrounded by moment after moment, opportunity after opportunity, to prepare for the work of your dreams.  Recognizing those moments and seizing those opportunities will keep your heart and mind in balance with life today as you maintain forward momentum toward what you were created to contribute to this world.','Here Today; Where Tomorrow?','','inherit','open','open','','1792-autosave','','','2011-11-05 06:35:04','2011-11-05 13:35:04','',1792,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1792-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(1821,77,'2011-11-03 19:28:04','2011-11-04 02:28:04','As a teenager, I was one of those kids who hadn\'t a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. My twenties came and life just kind of happened.  I had opportunities.  I took advantage of them.  I gave it my all.  And life unfolded from there. By the time I was 23 I was in a mid-level retail management position overseeing about 20 employees. And I thought to myself that by the time I was in my thirties I wanted to be a senior level manager in my company with a big profit sharing portfolio on a trajectory toward retirement by my mid-forties.\r\n\r\nAfter learning of the disproportionate number of those managers who ended up dead early of heart attacks or divorced, I opted for a move into another industry in my thirties. As life continued to unfold I looked ahead to my forties with a desire to be successfully self-employed and financially independent.\r\n\r\nI entered my forties nearly over years ago and today I am neither successfully self-employed nor financially independent.  And with another decade of life well underway I am once again looking ahead to the next milestone, the age of 50, and thinking about where I want to be, where I feel I need to be, when I arrive at that number which at the moment scares the hell out of me.  Fifty?  Me?  No way.\r\n\r\nI am learning something valuable in my forties that I didn’t grasp in the first few decades of life.  And that is the necessity of finding balance and forward momentum in the midst that which is less desirable while longing for my preferred future.  The Chinese call a similar tension in life the Yin Yang.  It is the interconnectedness and interdependence between seemingly polar opposite forces.  Light. Dark. Positive. Negative. Happy. Sad. Difficult. Easy. Complex. Simple.\r\n\r\nTranslated into the Zen of work, it looks something like this.  You know what you were created to do, but circumstances seem to prevent you from doing it.  You know what you are great at.  But real life demands that you devote a lot of time and energy to other things that you aren’t so great at.  You have your dreams.  Yet reality always seems to get in the way causing your dreams to be deferred for perhaps another decade or two, or three, or five.\r\n\r\nSounds frustrating doesn’t it?  It can be.  After a couple of decades, I think most people simply give up.  The ones who do surrender are the ones who misunderstand the nature of Yin Yang.  It isn’t a battle in which negative overcomes positive, or positive overcomes negative.  To the contrary, one is dependent upon and gives rise to the other in turn.  Both are required.  Both are unavoidable.  And the person who finds fulfillment in life and work is the person who learns to cooperate with the negative to bring about the positive and in the midst of the positive is strengthened, prepared, and emboldened to endure the negative that will come in turn.  The Yin Yang symbol demonstrates this interdependence. White on one side (representing light, positive, happy, easy and simple with black on the other representing dark, negative, sad, difficult, and complex.  Yet there is the presence of a black circle in the midst of the white side and the presence of a white circle on the black side.\r\n\r\nSo here you are in the midst of living and working and dreaming about the future.  You may have a very good job with a great company, surrounded by positive, talented people. But you still dream about someday finding that career “sweet spot” wherein it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between work and play.  You have a vision for the thing you’d love to be doing.  But you aren’t there.  You don’t know how to get there.  You keep waiting for all of the stars and planets to align perfectly so you wake up one morning and all you’ve dreamed about is right outside your door waiting for you to step onto the scene.  But life doesn’t happen that way.  Yin. Yang. Tick. Tock.\r\n\r\nLook again at the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_and_Yang.svg\">taijitu symbol</a>.  In the forward portion of the dark side is a circle of light. And herein lies the secret of maintaining forward momentum toward your dream career. Hidden in plain sight within your present reality are daily moments of preparation for the future you dream about.  Remember, the Yin Yang concept does not teach us that one force or one reality conquers the other.  Dark doesn’t conquer light.  Light doesn’t conquer dark.  They interplay and give rise to one another.  Your goal is not to find a means of escape from your present reality to enter the career of your dreams.  Your goal is to undergo hands-on training for the career of your dreams in the midst of your present reality.\r\n\r\nEven if the work you dream about doing bears little resemblance to what you do today, there are basic fundamentals that are common across the entire spectrum of the Zen of work.  And mastering those fundamentals is a prerequisite to successfully entering your preferred future.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about people in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about business in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about marketing in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about finance in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about leadership in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job even if leadership isn’t a formal part of your job description.\r\n\r\nAll of these things are common themes in work and business.  Every day that you wake up to do the work that you have to do while waiting to do the work you’d love to do you are presented with  and surrounded by moment after moment, opportunity after opportunity, to prepare for the work of your dreams.  Recognizing those moments and seizing those opportunities will keep your heart and mind in balance with life today as you maintain forward momentum toward what you were created to contribute to this world.','Here Today; Where Tomorrow?','','inherit','open','open','','1792-revision-4','','','2011-11-03 19:28:04','2011-11-04 02:28:04','',1792,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1792-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1836,38,'2011-11-05 18:50:46','2011-11-06 01:50:46','Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.\n\nI was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.\n\nNow, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href=\"http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/\">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/\">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase\">Dionysus</a> or <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666\">Julius Caesar</a>.\n\nThe reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus would just stand around and monologue to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:\n\n\"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.\" (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)\n\nIf someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.\n\nI can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse. This isn’t anyone fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.\n\nIt wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: \"You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.\" (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)\n\nHuman Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”\n\nDo you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.\n\nIf Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes a cold actor just going through the motions on our stage. I think the author of “<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1\">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM\">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”','Flannel Graph Robot Jesus','','inherit','open','open','','1826-revision-8','','','2011-11-05 18:50:46','2011-11-06 01:50:46','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1826-revision-8/',0,'revision','',0),(1828,38,'2011-11-05 13:42:33','2011-11-05 20:42:33','Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.\r\n\r\nI was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.\r\n\r\nNow, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href=\"http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/\">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/\">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase\">Dionysus</a> or <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666\">Julius Caesar</a>.\r\n\r\nThe reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus was always standing around and monologuing to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:\r\n\r\n\"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.\" (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)\r\n\r\nIf someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.\r\n\r\nI can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse. This isn’t anyone fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.\r\n\r\nIt wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: \"You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.\" (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)\r\n\r\nHuman Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”\r\n\r\nDo you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.\r\n\r\nIf Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes an actor just going through the motions on our stage.  Without a blood pumping muscle, he becomes just another cold guy monologuing like any good cartoon character.\r\n\r\nI think the author of “<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1\">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM\">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”','Flannel Graph Robot Jesus','','inherit','open','open','','1826-revision-2','','','2011-11-05 13:42:33','2011-11-05 20:42:33','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1826-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1831,38,'2011-11-05 18:19:30','2011-11-06 01:19:30','Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.\r\n\r\nI was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.\r\n\r\nNow, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href=\"http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/\">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/\">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase\">Dionysus</a> or <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666\">Julius Caesar</a>.\r\n\r\nThe reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus was always standing around and monologuing to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:\r\n\r\n\"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.\" (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)\r\n\r\nIf someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.\r\n\r\nI can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse. This isn’t anyone fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.\r\n\r\nIt wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: \"You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.\" (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)\r\n\r\nHuman Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”\r\n\r\nDo you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.\r\n\r\nIf Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes an actor just going through the motions on our stage.  Without a blood pumping muscle, he becomes just another cold guy monologuing like any good cartoon character.\r\n\r\nI think the author of “<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1\">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM\">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”','Flannel Graph Robot Jesus','','inherit','open','open','','1826-revision-4','','','2011-11-05 18:19:30','2011-11-06 01:19:30','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1826-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1832,38,'2011-11-05 18:43:56','2011-11-06 01:43:56','','jesus','','inherit','open','open','','jesus','','','2011-11-05 18:43:56','2011-11-06 01:43:56','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/jesus.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(1833,38,'2011-11-05 18:21:28','2011-11-06 01:21:28','Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.\n\nI was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.\n\nNow, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href=\"http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/\">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/\">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase\">Dionysus</a> or <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666\">Julius Caesar</a>.\n\nThe reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus was always standing around and monologuing to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:\n\n\"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.\" (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)\n\nIf someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.\n\nI can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse. This isn’t anyone fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.\n\nIt wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: \"You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.\" (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)\n\nHuman Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”\n\nDo you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.\n\nIf Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes an actor just going through the motions on our stage.  Without a blood pumping muscle, he becomes just another cold guy monologuing like any good cartoon character.\n\nI think the author of “<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1\">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM\">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”','Flannel Graph Robot Jesus','','inherit','open','open','','1826-revision-5','','','2011-11-05 18:21:28','2011-11-06 01:21:28','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1826-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(1834,38,'2011-11-05 18:45:10','2011-11-06 01:45:10','Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.\r\n\r\nI was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.\r\n\r\nNow, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href=\"http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/\">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/\">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase\">Dionysus</a> or <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666\">Julius Caesar</a>.\r\n\r\nThe reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus was always standing around and monologuing to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:\r\n\r\n\"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.\" (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)\r\n\r\nIf someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.\r\n\r\nI can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse. This isn’t anyone fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.\r\n\r\nIt wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: \"You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.\" (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)\r\n\r\nHuman Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”\r\n\r\nDo you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.\r\n\r\nIf Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes an actor just going through the motions on our stage.  Without a blood pumping muscle, he becomes just another cold guy monologuing like any good cartoon character.\r\n\r\nI think the author of “<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1\">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM\">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”','Flannel Graph Robot Jesus','','inherit','open','open','','1826-revision-6','','','2011-11-05 18:45:10','2011-11-06 01:45:10','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1826-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(1835,38,'2011-11-05 18:45:17','2011-11-06 01:45:17','Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.\r\n\r\nI was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.\r\n\r\nNow, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href=\"http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/\">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/\">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase\">Dionysus</a> or <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666\">Julius Caesar</a>.\r\n\r\nThe reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus was always standing around and monologuing to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:\r\n\r\n\"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.\" (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)\r\n\r\nIf someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.\r\n\r\nI can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse. This isn’t anyone fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.\r\n\r\nIt wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: \"You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.\" (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)\r\n\r\nHuman Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”\r\n\r\nDo you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.\r\n\r\nIf Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes an actor just going through the motions on our stage.  Without a blood pumping muscle, he becomes just another cold guy monologuing like any good cartoon character.\r\n\r\nI think the author of “<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1\">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM\">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”','Flannel Graph Robot Jesus','','inherit','open','open','','1826-revision-7','','','2011-11-05 18:45:17','2011-11-06 01:45:17','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1826-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(1837,38,'2011-11-05 18:50:49','2011-11-06 01:50:49','Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.\r\n\r\nI was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.\r\n\r\nNow, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href=\"http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/\">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/\">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase\">Dionysus</a> or <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666\">Julius Caesar</a>.\r\n\r\nThe reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus would just stand around and monologue to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:\r\n\r\n\"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.\" (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)\r\n\r\nIf someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.\r\n\r\nI can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse. This isn’t anyone fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.\r\n\r\nIt wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: \"You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.\" (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)\r\n\r\nHuman Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”\r\n\r\nDo you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.\r\n\r\nIf Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes a cold actor just going through the motions on our stage. I think the author of “<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1\">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM\">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”','Flannel Graph Robot Jesus','','inherit','open','open','','1826-revision-9','','','2011-11-05 18:50:49','2011-11-06 01:50:49','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1826-revision-9/',0,'revision','',0),(1838,38,'2011-11-05 18:51:09','2011-11-06 01:51:09','Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.\r\n\r\nI was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.\r\n\r\nNow, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href=\"http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/\">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/\">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase\">Dionysus</a> or <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666\">Julius Caesar</a>.\r\n\r\nThe reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus would just stand around and monologue to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:\r\n\r\n\"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.\" (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)\r\n\r\nIf someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.\r\n\r\nI can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse. This isn’t anyone fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.\r\n\r\nIt wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: \"You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.\" (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)\r\n\r\nHuman Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”\r\n\r\nDo you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.\r\n\r\nIf Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes a cold actor just going through the motions on our stage. I think the author of “<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1\">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM\">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”','Flannel Graph Robot Jesus','','inherit','open','open','','1826-revision-10','','','2011-11-05 18:51:09','2011-11-06 01:51:09','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1826-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(1840,38,'2011-11-03 15:25:15','2011-11-03 22:25:15','For those of you who don’t live with gamers or who have not heard of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_effect_2\" target=\"_blank\">Mass Effect 2</a>, it’s an action role-playing space epic video game. As any good space epic goes, there is a species that is the cause of full colonies disappearing overnight. Commander Shepherd, the main character, is tasked with stopping this relatively unknown destructive force by taking his eclectic team planet-hopping to save the galaxy. The graphics in the game are absolutely stunning, the dialogue between species is thoughtful and well done (which I learned to appreciate from my love of the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Redwall-Book-1-Brian-Jacques/dp/0142302376/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320295383&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Redwall</a> books growing up), and your in-game actions and dialogue choices impact the characters around you and your relationships with them (and even carry through into the next game).  Some of you might even recognize one of the characters as Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Sarah Walker in the TV show “Chuck”.\r\n\r\nSo, now that I’ve outed myself as a nerd, or at the very least the wife of a gamer, what does this have anything to do with blame?\r\n\r\nOne of Shepherd’s team members is a woman named Jack. Jack was experimented on as a child by an elitist organization called Cerebus. She somehow managed to escape and ever since has been a very hard individual. She keeps to her quarters away from the main traffic areas of the ship. She is suspicious the moment anyone asks anything close to a personal question.\r\n\r\nFor those of you who might play the game, I don’t want spoil anything so I won’t tell you how this situation arises, but at some point in the game Jack runs into a friend, Aresh, who was another child who had been experimented during same time she was. They talk for a minute, re-establishing a connection and they start to talk about what happens when the conversation gets weird. As the conversation continues, Aresh reveals that he is trying to <em>rebuild</em> the set of experiments that were performed on him.\r\n\r\nWait, what? That’s crazy. Why would anyone try to duplicate the awful experimentation performed on him as an innocent, defenseless child?\r\n\r\n“I’m rebuilding [the experiments]. What they were looking for… It must have been important. So I’m going to try to find it myself. They must have had good reasons for what they did!”\r\n\r\nI was only half paying attention to what was happening on the TV screen until this moment. It struck me: what a fascinating take on how people process traumatic events. Aresh wasn’t trying to harm other people; he was only trying to find meaning in what happened.\r\n\r\nYou see two people who experienced the same situation growing up and it produced two different effects. One is inked from head to toe, is a loner out in the universe and keeps to herself. Another, haunted by what happened, seeks to try to find the good intentions from the perpetrators, even if they are buried deep. There must have been a good reason that they found it okay to experiment on kids. It must have been a case of sacrificing for the greater good. He was trying to discover the greater good so he could finally put his past to bed.\r\n\r\nI am aware that this is a very extreme analogy for people like you and me. We aren’t on a spaceship bringing justice to the universe, but the one thing we all have in common is that bad things happen to us and we all have to find a way to deal with it.\r\n\r\nSome people (like me) shove it way down into a jar inside and shut the lid. They keep filling the jar until it explodes. Some people deal with it head on and are abrasive to everyone around them until they can work it out. Some people give the past its space but keep everyone at a distance for the rest of their lives. Some people, like in the case of Aresh, go back to the scene of the crime and try to find evidence of a heart or conscience somewhere—anywhere!—even if there are only tiny scraps of it left.\r\n\r\nFrom the outside we all can see that Aresh has a few screws loose, but he can’t see that. To him, having lived through that, the only way he can come to terms with what happened is if he suffered for a greater cause. He is dealing with his lifelong pain the only way he knows how.\r\n\r\nWhat about you? Do you have a coping mechanism that you go back to in times of need? How does that mechanism affect you and the people around you in the long run? How do you come to terms with your memories?\r\n\r\nA lot of people I know would tell me to “give it to God.” But what does that really mean? How do I actually just give it to God? There is a measure of pain I need to work through on my own. Giving it to someone else so it can magically disappear feels like I’m giving up and letting the other party win. It feels like a cop-out and like I’m not strong enough to slay my own dragons. Sometimes I can’t tell if that’s a pride thing or a human thing.\r\n\r\nI can identify with Aresh on a level because I like to think that people carry around the same heart and brain that I do. So when people commit crimes without batting an eyelash or, as one of my friends said, “sit over their Wheaties in the morning trying to figure out ways to screw people,” I have no way of processing it. It’s outside of my understanding of how the universe is supposed to work.\r\n\r\nThankfully, there is no right or wrong way to handle grief or pain. Can you identify with Aresh? How do you process painful events? How do you put your past to rest and find peace?\r\n\r\n<em>Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/annakie/4431762093/\" target=\"_blank\">Annakie</a></em>','Finding Meaning In Our Trauma','','inherit','open','open','','1747-revision-15','','','2011-11-03 15:25:15','2011-11-03 22:25:15','',1747,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1747-revision-15/',0,'revision','',0),(1841,0,'2011-11-06 12:36:45','2011-11-06 20:36:45','gfSRDc  epyiqedlbigx, [url=http://ljevchydzamt.com/]ljevchydzamt[/url], [link=http://zhirzzxbtbod.com/]zhirzzxbtbod[/link], http://smzigltavrgl.com/\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: zybweddf\nAUTHOR EMAIL: jtoqpl@rwqzhi.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://xzderxtqbswh.com/\nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Blog List\nIP: 188.92.75.82\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; zybweddf\n    [Email] =&gt; jtoqpl@rwqzhi.com\n    [Website] =&gt; http://xzderxtqbswh.com/\n    [Comment] =&gt; gfSRDc  epyiqedlbigx, [url=http://ljevchydzamt.com/]ljevchydzamt[/url], [link=http://zhirzzxbtbod.com/]zhirzzxbtbod[/link], http://smzigltavrgl.com/\n)\n','zybweddf - 2011-11-06 12:36:45','','publish','open','open','','07d3dfae2194072b38c5a237ab9f6076','','','2011-11-06 12:36:45','2011-11-06 20:36:45','',683,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=1841',0,'feedback','',0),(1843,96,'2011-11-06 14:21:18','2011-11-06 22:21:18','Eid Al Adha is celebrated by Muslims around the world today. The number of Muslims in the United States is estimated in the millions, many quiet about their faith for fear of repercussions and misunderstanding. Learning about the truth claims of this faith is an important piece to building bridges. Just as Christians do not want to be stereotyped, so it is with Muslims. Stereotyping puts people into a sealed box, disallowing real conversation and putting up a barrier to grace and understanding.\n\nOur family spent many years living in the Muslim world and as I think about this celebration for Muslims, I am taken back to our years in Cairo where we learned valuable lessons on community and faith, one time through the love of a sheep.\n\nThe sheep had made it’s home in the bottom of our stairwell. With pleading brown eyes and a plaintive “BAA” it made its way into the hearts of our kids, an instant love affair. With the absence of a pet of their own, they were vulnerable to this beast, seemingly brought by God to their stairwell.\n\nThe trouble is, the sheep had an ordained purpose. It would serve as the sacrificial sheep for Eid Al Adha, Feast of Sacrifice, and the most important religious feast of the year for Muslims. Eid Al Adha is a big deal. The Eid celebration concludes the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca and one of the five pillars of Islam. New clothes, days off from work and school, visiting, and a feast were all part of the celebration.\n\nWe were living in Cairo, Egypt and our small walk-up apartment was in the middle of a regular neighborhood. Our friends and neighbors were beginning the preparations for the feast which would be in a couple of weeks. The preparation included the purchase and fattening of a sheep, goat, camel or cow, depending on the availability of any or all of those animals. We were guests in the country of Egypt, brought there for a job at the American University in Cairo. We had fallen in love with the people and city of Cairo. It was big, it was crazy, it was loud, it was dirty, it was chaotic and in a few short months it had become home. We were slowly building friendships with both expatriates from all over the world as well as Egyptians. Our children were magnets for friendship and had helped us navigate our new world simply by their wide-eyed acceptance of all of life.\n\nThe sheep was posing a different sort of problem. I knew that this was not a pet. The sheep was blissfully fattening up for the slaughter as our neighbors counted down the days to the celebration. Daily leftovers from the sheep’s diet could be seen in the stairwell and we had to dodge bits of vegetables every time we went up or down the stairs. And then the day came.\n\nAs we walked out of our apartment, the silence was evidence that the sheep was no more. “Where’s our sheep? What happened to the sheep? Will it come back” The questions came rapidly through the mouths of confused kindergarten and pre-schoolers. I took a deep breath. I wanted to lie. But we were living in this country for a purpose, we didn’t want to live in a bubble of western thought and belief, we wanted to build friendships and with the friendships, increase understanding.\n\nI began to explain to my children that the sheep had been killed. That it was symbolic of sacrifice for our Muslim friends and that on this, their feast day, they would eat the sheep and invite us to eat with them. As is often the case with children, when allowed to hear the truth, they accepted the reality. The neighbors were important to all of us. We were living in neighborhood and community, and that meant eating a “pet” sheep for an Eid celebration.  I needn\'t have worried. There was an acceptance, indicative of kids who already knew the world was bigger then their particular safety zone, and after a few sniffles we were ready to go out and wish people an \"<em>Eid Mubarak</em>\"\n\nI often think about those years and my children’s trusting acceptance of the fate of the sheep, understanding that our neighbors and friends were of far more value than the sheep that had made its way into our stairwell and our hearts. It seemed like a little thing at the time, but I don\'t think it was. It was part of the daily commitment to seeing people as more important than ideas, or arguments, or sheep, and in doing so slowly pulling out a nail from the coffin of misunderstanding.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n&nbsp;','Eid Al Adha: Loving Our Neighbor More than His Sheep ','','inherit','open','open','','1842-revision','','','2011-11-06 14:21:18','2011-11-06 22:21:18','',1842,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/06/1842-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(1844,0,'2011-11-06 14:23:03','2011-11-06 22:23:03','Hi Jonathan. Everything ok with my pending post, From Here to Where?\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Bill Huffhine\nAUTHOR EMAIL: billhuffhine@gmail.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://www.christiandropout.com\nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Party Rock Halloween House\nIP: 75.205.15.82\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Bill Huffhine\n    [Email] =&gt; billhuffhine@gmail.com\n    [Website] =&gt; http://www.christiandropout.com\n    [Message] =&gt; Hi Jonathan. Everything ok with my pending post, From Here to Where?\n)\n','Bill Huffhine - 2011-11-06 14:23:03','','publish','open','open','','5aaf4e1ce48e142306666a20d78ce350','','','2011-11-06 14:23:03','2011-11-06 22:23:03','',1207,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=1844',0,'feedback','',0),(1845,96,'2011-11-06 14:24:25','2011-11-06 22:24:25','Eid Al Adha is celebrated by Muslims around the world today. The number of Muslims in the United States is estimated in the millions, many quiet about their faith for fear of repercussions and misunderstanding. Learning about the truth claims of this faith is an important piece to building bridges. Just as Christians do not want to be stereotyped, so it is with Muslims. Stereotyping puts people into a sealed box, disallowing real conversation and putting up a barrier to grace and understanding.\n\nOur family spent many years living in the Muslim world and as I think about this celebration for Muslims, I am taken back to our years in Cairo where we learned valuable lessons on community and faith, one time through the love of a sheep.\n\nThe sheep had made it’s home in the bottom of our stairwell. With pleading brown eyes and a plaintive “BAA” it made its way into the hearts of our kids, an instant love affair. With the absence of a pet of their own, they were vulnerable to this beast, seemingly brought by God to their stairwell.\n\nThe trouble is, the sheep had an ordained purpose. It would serve as the sacrificial sheep for Eid Al Adha, Feast of Sacrifice, and the most important religious feast of the year for Muslims. Eid Al Adha is a big deal. The Eid celebration concludes the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca and one of the five pillars of Islam. New clothes, days off from work and school, visiting, and a feast were all part of the celebration.\n\nWe were living in Cairo, Egypt and our small walk-up apartment was in the middle of a regular neighborhood. Our friends and neighbors were beginning the preparations for the feast which would be in a couple of weeks. The preparation included the purchase and fattening of a sheep, goat, camel or cow, depending on the availability of any or all of those animals. We were guests in the country of Egypt, brought there for a job at the American University in Cairo. We had fallen in love with the people and city of Cairo. It was big, it was crazy, it was loud, it was dirty, it was chaotic and in a few short months it had become home. We were slowly building friendships with both expatriates from all over the world as well as Egyptians. Our children were magnets for friendship and had helped us navigate our new world simply by their wide-eyed acceptance of all of life.\n\nThe sheep was posing a different sort of problem. I knew that this was not a pet. The sheep was blissfully being fattened, unaware of the imminent slaughter as our neighbors counted down the days to the celebration. Daily leftovers from the sheep’s diet could be seen in the stairwell and we had to dodge bits of vegetables every time we went up or down the stairs. And then the day came.\n\nAs we walked out of our apartment, the silence was evidence that the sheep was no more. “Where’s our sheep? What happened to the sheep? Will it come back” The questions came rapidly through the mouths of confused kindergarten and pre-schoolers. I took a deep breath. I wanted to lie. But we were living in this country for a purpose, we didn’t want to live in a bubble of western thought and belief, we wanted to build friendships and with the friendships, increase understanding.\n\nI began to explain to my children that the sheep had been killed. That it was symbolic of sacrifice for our Muslim friends and that on this, their feast day, they would eat the sheep and invite us to eat with them. As is often the case with children, when allowed to hear the truth, they accepted the reality. The neighbors were important to all of us. We were living in neighborhood and community, and that meant eating a “pet” sheep for an Eid celebration.  I needn\'t have worried. There was an acceptance, indicative of kids who already knew the world was bigger then their particular safety zone, and after a few sniffles we were ready to go out and wish people an \"<em>Eid Mubarak</em>\"\n\nI often think about those years and my children’s trusting acceptance of the fate of the sheep, understanding that our neighbors and friends were of far more value than the sheep that had made its way into our stairwell and our hearts. It seemed like a little thing at the time, but I don\'t think it was. It was part of the daily commitment to seeing people as more important than ideas, or arguments, or sheep, and in doing so slowly pulling out a nail from the coffin of misunderstanding.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n&nbsp;','Eid Al Adha: Loving Our Neighbor More than His Sheep ','','inherit','open','open','','1842-revision-2','','','2011-11-06 14:24:25','2011-11-06 22:24:25','',1842,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/06/1842-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1846,1,'2011-11-07 07:21:59','2011-11-07 15:21:59','Eid Al Adha is celebrated by Muslims around the world today. The number of Muslims in the United States is estimated in the millions, many quiet about their faith for fear of repercussions and misunderstanding. Learning about the truth claims of this faith is an important piece to building bridges. Just as Christians do not want to be stereotyped, so it is with Muslims. Stereotyping puts people into a sealed box, disallowing real conversation and putting up a barrier to grace and understanding.\n\nOur family spent many years living in the Muslim world and as I think about this celebration for Muslims, I am taken back to our years in Cairo where we learned valuable lessons on community and faith, one time through the love of a sheep.\n\nThe sheep had made it’s home in the bottom of our stairwell. With pleading brown eyes and a plaintive “BAA” it made its way into the hearts of our kids, an instant love affair. With the absence of a pet of their own, they were vulnerable to this beast, seemingly brought by God to their stairwell.\n\nThe trouble is, the sheep had an ordained purpose. It would serve as the sacrificial sheep for Eid Al Adha, Feast of Sacrifice, and the most important religious feast of the year for Muslims. Eid Al Adha is a big deal. The Eid celebration concludes the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca and one of the five pillars of Islam. New clothes, days off from work and school, visiting, and a feast were all part of the celebration.\n\nWe were living in Cairo, Egypt and our small walk-up apartment was in the middle of a regular neighborhood. Our friends and neighbors were beginning the preparations for the feast which would be in a couple of weeks. The preparation included the purchase and fattening of a sheep, goat, camel or cow, depending on the availability of any or all of those animals. We were guests in the country of Egypt, brought there for a job at the American University in Cairo. We had fallen in love with the people and city of Cairo. It was big, it was crazy, it was loud, it was dirty, it was chaotic and in a few short months it had become home. We were slowly building friendships with both expatriates from all over the world as well as Egyptians. Our children were magnets for friendship and had helped us navigate our new world simply by their wide-eyed acceptance of all of life.\n\nThe sheep was posing a different sort of problem. I knew that this was not a pet. The sheep was blissfully being fattened, unaware of the imminent slaughter as our neighbors counted down the days to the celebration. Daily leftovers from the sheep’s diet could be seen in the stairwell and we had to dodge bits of vegetables every time we went up or down the stairs. And then the day came.\n\nAs we walked out of our apartment, the silence was evidence that the sheep was no more. “Where’s our sheep? What happened to the sheep? Will it come back” The questions came rapidly through the mouths of confused kindergarten and pre-schoolers. I took a deep breath. I wanted to lie. But we were living in this country for a purpose, we didn’t want to live in a bubble of western thought and belief, we wanted to build friendships and with the friendships, increase understanding.\n\nI began to explain to my children that the sheep had been killed. That it was symbolic of sacrifice for our Muslim friends and that on this, their feast day, they would eat the sheep and invite us to eat with them. As is often the case with children, when allowed to hear the truth, they accepted the reality. The neighbors were important to all of us. We were living in neighborhood and community, and that meant eating a “pet” sheep for an Eid celebration.  I needn\'t have worried. There was an acceptance, indicative of kids who already knew the world was bigger then their particular safety zone, and after a few sniffles we were ready to go out and wish people an \"<em>Eid Mubarak</em>\"\n\nI often think about those years and my children’s trusting acceptance of the fate of the sheep, understanding that our neighbors and friends were of far more value than the sheep that had made its way into our stairwell and our hearts. It seemed like a little thing at the time, but I don\'t think it was. It was part of the daily commitment to seeing people as more important than ideas, or arguments, or sheep, and in doing so slowly pulling out a nail from the coffin of misunderstanding.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n&nbsp;','Eid Al Adha: Loving Our Neighbor More than His Sheep ','','inherit','open','open','','1842-autosave','','','2011-11-07 07:21:59','2011-11-07 15:21:59','',1842,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/06/1842-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(1847,0,'2011-11-06 19:36:54','2011-11-07 03:36:54','Theology\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Aaron Aiken\nAUTHOR EMAIL: aaronaiken@me.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://www.aaronaiken.wordpress.com\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 98.235.121.86\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Aaron Aiken \n    [Email] =&gt; aaronaiken@me.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; http://www.aaronaiken.wordpress.com\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; Theology\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; aaronaiken\n)\n','Aaron Aiken - 2011-11-06 19:36:54','','publish','open','open','','144793a8061ad3a48dc02113cf7c2168','','','2011-11-06 19:36:54','2011-11-07 03:36:54','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=1847',0,'feedback','',0),(1848,38,'2011-11-06 20:58:30','2011-11-07 04:58:30','Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.\r\n\r\nI was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.\r\n\r\nNow, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href=\"http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/\">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/\">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase\">Dionysus</a> or <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666\">Julius Caesar</a>.\r\n\r\nThe reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus would just stand around and monologue to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:\r\n\r\n\"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.\" (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)\r\n\r\nIf someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.\r\n\r\nI can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse.\r\n\r\nPeter, @Muslimerican on Twitter, <a href=\"As a child I never read the Bible much. Whenever I tried, the text felt remote, arcane, and impenetrable.\" target=\"_blank\">tweeted recently</a>:\r\n<blockquote>As a child I never read the Bible much. Whenever I tried, the text felt remote, arcane, and impenetrable.</blockquote>\r\nI strongly relate to what Peter is saying. I don\'t think this is anyone\'s fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.\r\n\r\nIt wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: \"You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.\" (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)\r\n\r\nHuman Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”\r\n\r\nDo you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.\r\n\r\nIf Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes a cold actor just going through the motions on our stage. I think the author of “<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1\">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM\">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”\r\n\r\n<em>Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike52ad/3007681001/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael 1952</a></em>','Flannel Graph Robot Jesus','','inherit','open','open','','1826-autosave','','','2011-11-06 20:58:30','2011-11-07 04:58:30','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/06/1826-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(1849,38,'2011-11-05 18:52:01','2011-11-06 01:52:01','Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.\r\n\r\nI was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.\r\n\r\nNow, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href=\"http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/\">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/\">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase\">Dionysus</a> or <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666\">Julius Caesar</a>.\r\n\r\nThe reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus would just stand around and monologue to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:\r\n\r\n\"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.\" (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)\r\n\r\nIf someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.\r\n\r\nI can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse. This isn’t anyone fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.\r\n\r\nIt wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: \"You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.\" (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)\r\n\r\nHuman Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”\r\n\r\nDo you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.\r\n\r\nIf Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes a cold actor just going through the motions on our stage. I think the author of “<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1\">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM\">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”\r\n\r\n<em>Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike52ad/3007681001/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael 1952</a></em>','Flannel Graph Robot Jesus','','inherit','open','open','','1826-revision-11','','','2011-11-05 18:52:01','2011-11-06 01:52:01','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1826-revision-11/',0,'revision','',0),(1850,1,'2011-11-05 06:35:09','2011-11-05 13:35:09','As a teenager, I was one of those kids who hadn\'t a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. My twenties came and life just kind of happened.  I had opportunities.  I took advantage of them.  I gave it my all.  And life unfolded from there. By the time I was 23 I was in a mid-level retail management position overseeing about 20 employees. And I thought to myself that by the time I was in my thirties I wanted to be a senior level manager in my company with a big profit sharing portfolio on a trajectory toward retirement by my mid-forties.\r\n\r\nAfter learning of the disproportionate number of those managers who ended up dead early of heart attacks or divorced, I opted for a move into another industry in my thirties. As life continued to unfold I looked ahead to my forties with a desire to be successfully self-employed and financially independent.\r\n\r\nI entered my forties over three years ago and today I am neither successfully self-employed nor financially independent.  And with another decade of life well underway I am once again looking ahead to the next milestone, the age of 50, and thinking about where I want to be, where I feel I need to be, when I arrive at that number which at the moment scares the hell out of me.  Fifty?  Me?  No way.\r\n\r\nI am learning something valuable in my forties that I didn’t grasp in the first few decades of life.  And that is the necessity of finding balance and forward momentum in the midst that which is less desirable while longing for my preferred future.  The Chinese call a similar tension in life the Yin Yang.  It is the interconnectedness and interdependence between seemingly polar opposite forces.  Light. Dark. Positive. Negative. Happy. Sad. Difficult. Easy. Complex. Simple.\r\n\r\nTranslated into the Zen of work, it looks something like this.  You know what you were created to do, but circumstances seem to prevent you from doing it.  You know what you are great at.  But real life demands that you devote a lot of time and energy to other things that you aren’t so great at.  You have your dreams.  Yet reality always seems to get in the way causing your dreams to be deferred for perhaps another decade or two, or three, or five.\r\n\r\nSounds frustrating doesn’t it?  It can be.  After a couple of decades, I think most people simply give up.  The ones who do surrender are the ones who misunderstand the nature of Yin Yang.  It isn’t a battle in which negative overcomes positive, or positive overcomes negative.  To the contrary, one is dependent upon and gives rise to the other in turn.  Both are required.  Both are unavoidable.  And the person who finds fulfillment in life and work is the person who learns to cooperate with the negative to bring about the positive and in the midst of the positive is strengthened, prepared, and emboldened to endure the negative that will come in turn.  The Yin Yang symbol demonstrates this interdependence. White on one side (representing light, positive, happy, easy and simple with black on the other representing dark, negative, sad, difficult, and complex.  Yet there is the presence of a black circle in the midst of the white side and the presence of a white circle on the black side.\r\n\r\nSo here you are in the midst of living and working and dreaming about the future.  You may have a very good job with a great company, surrounded by positive, talented people. But you still dream about someday finding that career “sweet spot” wherein it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between work and play.  You have a vision for the thing you’d love to be doing.  But you aren’t there.  You don’t know how to get there.  You keep waiting for all of the stars and planets to align perfectly so you wake up one morning and all you’ve dreamed about is right outside your door waiting for you to step onto the scene.  But life doesn’t happen that way.  Yin. Yang. Tick. Tock.\r\n\r\nLook again at the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_and_Yang.svg\">taijitu symbol</a>.  In the forward portion of the dark side is a circle of light. And herein lies the secret of maintaining forward momentum toward your dream career. Hidden in plain sight within your present reality are daily moments of preparation for the future you dream about.  Remember, the Yin Yang concept does not teach us that one force or one reality conquers the other.  Dark doesn’t conquer light.  Light doesn’t conquer dark.  They interplay and give rise to one another.  Your goal is not to find a means of escape from your present reality to enter the career of your dreams.  Your goal is to undergo hands-on training for the career of your dreams in the midst of your present reality.\r\n\r\nEven if the work you dream about doing bears little resemblance to what you do today, there are basic fundamentals that are common across the entire spectrum of our work.  And mastering those fundamentals is a prerequisite to successfully entering your preferred future.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about people in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about business in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about marketing in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about finance in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about leadership in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job even if leadership isn’t a formal part of your job description.\r\n\r\nAll of these things are common themes in work and business.  Every day that you wake up to do the work that you have to do while waiting to do the work you’d love to do you are presented with  and surrounded by moment after moment, opportunity after opportunity, to prepare for the work of your dreams.  Recognizing those moments and seizing those opportunities will keep your heart and mind in balance with life today as you maintain forward momentum toward what you were created to contribute to this world.','Here Today; Where Tomorrow?','','inherit','open','open','','1792-revision-5','','','2011-11-05 06:35:09','2011-11-05 13:35:09','',1792,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1792-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(1855,1,'2011-11-07 07:27:33','2011-11-07 15:27:33','Eid Al Adha is celebrated by Muslims around the world today. The number of Muslims in the United States is estimated in the millions, many quiet about their faith for fear of repercussions and misunderstanding. Learning about the truth claims of this faith is an important piece to building bridges. Just as Christians do not want to be stereotyped, so it is with Muslims. Stereotyping puts people into a sealed box, disallowing real conversation and putting up a barrier to grace and understanding.\r\n\r\nOur family spent many years living in the Muslim world and as I think about this celebration for Muslims, I am taken back to our years in Cairo where we learned valuable lessons on community and faith, one time through the love of a sheep.\r\n\r\nThe sheep had made it’s home in the bottom of our stairwell. With pleading brown eyes and a plaintive “BAA” it made its way into the hearts of our kids, an instant love affair. With the absence of a pet of their own, they were vulnerable to this beast, seemingly brought by God to their stairwell.\r\n\r\nThe trouble is, the sheep had an ordained purpose. It would serve as the sacrificial sheep for Eid Al Adha, Feast of Sacrifice, and the most important religious feast of the year for Muslims. Eid Al Adha is a big deal. The Eid celebration concludes the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca and one of the five pillars of Islam. New clothes, days off from work and school, visiting, and a feast were all part of the celebration.\r\n\r\nWe were living in Cairo, Egypt and our small walk-up apartment was in the middle of a regular neighborhood. Our friends and neighbors were beginning the preparations for the feast which would be in a couple of weeks. The preparation included the purchase and fattening of a sheep, goat, camel or cow, depending on the availability of any or all of those animals. We were guests in the country of Egypt, brought there for a job at the American University in Cairo. We had fallen in love with the people and city of Cairo. It was big, it was crazy, it was loud, it was dirty, it was chaotic and in a few short months it had become home. We were slowly building friendships with both expatriates from all over the world as well as Egyptians. Our children were magnets for friendship and had helped us navigate our new world simply by their wide-eyed acceptance of all of life.\r\n\r\nThe sheep was posing a different sort of problem. I knew that this was not a pet. The sheep was blissfully being fattened, unaware of the imminent slaughter as our neighbors counted down the days to the celebration. Daily leftovers from the sheep’s diet could be seen in the stairwell and we had to dodge bits of vegetables every time we went up or down the stairs. And then the day came.\r\n\r\nAs we walked out of our apartment, the silence was evidence that the sheep was no more. “Where’s our sheep? What happened to the sheep? Will it come back” The questions came rapidly through the mouths of confused kindergarten and pre-schoolers. I took a deep breath. I wanted to lie. But we were living in this country for a purpose, we didn’t want to live in a bubble of western thought and belief, we wanted to build friendships and with the friendships, increase understanding.\r\n\r\nI began to explain to my children that the sheep had been killed. That it was symbolic of sacrifice for our Muslim friends and that on this, their feast day, they would eat the sheep and invite us to eat with them. As is often the case with children, when allowed to hear the truth, they accepted the reality. The neighbors were important to all of us. We were living in neighborhood and community, and that meant eating a “pet” sheep for an Eid celebration.  I needn\'t have worried. There was an acceptance, indicative of kids who already knew the world was bigger then their particular safety zone, and after a few sniffles we were ready to go out and wish people an \"<em>Eid Mubarak</em>\"\r\n\r\nI often think about those years and my children’s trusting acceptance of the fate of the sheep, understanding that our neighbors and friends were of far more value than the sheep that had made its way into our stairwell and our hearts. It seemed like a little thing at the time, but I don\'t think it was. It was part of the daily commitment to seeing people as more important than ideas, or arguments, or sheep, and in doing so slowly pulling out a nail from the coffin of misunderstanding.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n&nbsp;','Eid Al Adha: Loving Our Neighbor More than His Sheep ','','inherit','open','open','','1842-revision-4','','','2011-11-07 07:27:33','2011-11-07 15:27:33','',1842,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1842-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1856,1,'2011-11-03 15:10:10','2011-11-03 22:10:10','He sat in a red chair and watched while I was raped.  I was only four, but I knew who he was.  Jesus didn’t do anything but speak into my mind, over and over, “I’m right here.  I’m not going anywhere.  You’re going to be OK.”  And I believed him as I slid into darkness from pain and suffocation.\r\n\r\nThe incest went on for years, and Jesus stayed with me, more like a stray dog than God.  He followed me into bars and hotel rooms with strangers, in and out of church, through three divorce hearings, into alcoholic blackouts.  Sometimes I appreciated his company; sometimes I just wished he would leave me alone.  Often I took him for granted, but I always knew he was there, as real as I was.\r\n\r\nAlong the way, our relationship got messed up when church told me that Jesus did things for those who believed, for those who asked in faith, for those who followed him.  I couldn’t figure out the “follow” part because we always traveled side by side.  But what about “faith”?  I had believed Jesus from the very beginning.  He did what he said he’d do:  never leave.  But what about everything else in my life?  He hadn’t stopped the rapes, kept me out of trouble, helped me get sober.  Whose fault was that?  Apparently mine.  I didn’t have enough faith or pray right or behave enough or or or.\r\n\r\nThen I heard that “All things are possible with God.”  Except for me.  It seemed like my Stray Dog God shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Sure, I can do anything, but for you?”  Silence.  I knew I could never go to All Saints Academy.  If I got into heaven, which was questionable, my crown would come from Burger King with painted paper jewels.  And the crucifixion story – all that gore and torture made me shudder.  I’d had too much abuse for too long.  Instead of making me feel connected with a fellow sufferer, I fled in revulsion.  If being “washed in the blood of the Lamb” was required for salvation, well…..I couldn’t do that or go there.  I was already lost.  Now I had to stay lost.\r\n\r\nSo what did that make Jesus for me?  A partner in crime, like the guy at the wheel in the getaway car while I robbed the bank?  Or was he my little friend who let me play with his toys until it was time for him to go home to his Daddy?  Was Jesus on loan to me until I died and went…….where?  I didn’t know, but I was getting really pissed off.  I had a useless God on my hands whom I loved and hated at the same time, and I didn’t know what to do with him.\r\n\r\nThe day came when my years of compressed pain and anger erupted all over Jesus.  I screamed at him, wanting to hurt him as badly as I hurt, and to my complete shock, he screamed back – his love.  And that’s how I learned to pray.  We began talking, and I let him have it, trying to be as blasphemous as possible, and he just laughed and said, “Finally!  You’re being honest with me.  Come on, let’s get in the mud and fight dirty.  I love to wrestle.”  And we did, and I didn’t always win, but I always wanted another round.\r\n\r\nYou see, he wouldn’t give up on me.  What I didn’t realize was I hadn’t ever given up on him, either.  No matter what had gone wrong in my life, I was never alone, never abandoned by my God like so many other people had.  I discovered I couldn’t offend him – he hadn’t ever run off screaming or struck me by lightning, right?  And come to think of it, Jesus had done a lot for me.  I wasn’t in prison from killing someone while driving drunk.  I wasn’t dead, though I should have been.  Jesus had been working his ass off protecting me.  Why?  Because he loved me just as I was.  In fact, he made me just like I was, knowing how I’d turn out, which is totally insane.\r\n\r\nAnd then lightning really did strike – in my brain:  Jesus had been saving me all my life.  I didn’t have to get saved – I already was.  We shared a deep, personal relationship like I had with no one else.  I was loved and accepted unconditionally, which meant I didn’t have to pray right, have enough faith, act like Mother Teresa, or be someone I wasn’t.  Then lightning struck twice, and I realized it had been awhile since I’d done something self-destructive.  I was getting better at telling the truth, being kind, stuff like that.  I was starting to act like…..him.\r\n\r\nLast night we were talking outside in the carport, and I said, “I love you so much.  But what about the crucifixion?”  And Jesus said, “Don’t worry about it.  I’ve got you covered.”','What If Jesus Didn\'t Die For Me?','','inherit','open','open','','1760-revision-6','','','2011-11-03 15:10:10','2011-11-03 22:10:10','',1760,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1760-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(1857,1,'2011-11-03 08:46:36','2011-11-03 15:46:36','When did we develop and idolatrous relationship with work?  Now, don\'t misunderstand me.  I\'m not talking about productivity over laziness.  What I mean is that we tend to place value on people based on how hard we believe they are working.  Besides simply being thinly veiled judgmentalism (and possibly several other -isms as well), we don\'t even seem to agree on a proper definition for \"hard work.\"\r\n\r\nIs it earning wages?  Is it a function of the number of hours one puts in?  Is it the kind of work one does?  It seems to have been reduced to \"I know it when I see it.\"  The problem with that is that no one actually operates on that principle.  the number of times my husband or I have heard that teachers earn too much, people on welfare are lazy, or that I ought to think about getting a \"real\" job is rapidly approaching nausea-inducing levels.\r\n\r\nAt this point in my life, I\'m still a stay-at-home mom.  For now, that pretty much means that I homeschool our six-year-old (most days), keep the house tidy (more or less), take care of the dishes and the laundry (usually), and make meals (fairly often).  It also means that I have some spare time to blog about our failed science experiments, teach Sunday school, and play with an amateur orchestra.  I also have an unpaid job as Family Chauffeur.  Am I working hard?  That\'s difficult to say.  On a good day (most of them), it doesn\'t even feel like work.  So maybe I\'m just living it up, mooching off my husband\'s salary.  After all, I\'m not contributing to the family income.\r\n\r\nI have several friends and family members receiving public benefits.  They may not be working, or working many hours, at a paid job.  But every single one of them is contributing to family and society in a variety of ways.  And each is receiving benefits for different reasons.  When I mention this to the Frown on Welfare Brigade, they are hasty to say, \"Well we don\'t mean <em>them</em>, really.  We\'re talking about those <em>other</em> people.\"  (Incidentally, we get the same answer when we ask if they believe my teacher husband\'s salary should be cut.)  And of course, someone always has to bring in the Big Guns.  Someone always claims to know of someone who uses food stamps to buy nothing but junk, or uses welfare to pay for cable and lets the kids starve.\r\n\r\nIs this what we\'re reduced to?  Arguing over whether a person is valuable to society because he or she isn\'t \"working\"?  Work is not what should define us.  It\'s not an ideal to aspire to, in terms of hours logged.  And if it were about actual toil, construction workers and farmers would be at the top, with business managers and technical specialists at the bottom.\r\n\r\nInstead of misunderstanding and resenting one another based on something so meaningless as working for work\'s sake, why not put our efforts to better use?  Why not create common goals and labor for those together?','Working Hard or Hardly Working','','inherit','open','open','','1717-revision-4','','','2011-11-03 08:46:36','2011-11-03 15:46:36','',1717,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/03/1717-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1858,1,'2011-11-05 18:55:31','2011-11-06 01:55:31','For those of you who don’t live with gamers or who have not heard of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_effect_2\" target=\"_blank\">Mass Effect 2</a>, it’s an action role-playing space epic video game. As any good space epic goes, there is a species that is the cause of full colonies disappearing overnight. Commander Shepherd, the main character, is tasked with stopping this relatively unknown destructive force by taking his eclectic team planet-hopping to save the galaxy. The graphics in the game are absolutely stunning, the dialogue between species is thoughtful and well done (which I learned to appreciate from my love of the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Redwall-Book-1-Brian-Jacques/dp/0142302376/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320295383&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Redwall</a> books growing up), and your in-game actions and dialogue choices impact the characters around you and your relationships with them (and even carry through into the next game).  Some of you might even recognize one of the characters as Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Sarah Walker in the TV show “Chuck”.\r\n\r\nSo, now that I’ve outed myself as a nerd, or at the very least the wife of a gamer, what does this have anything to do with blame?\r\n\r\nOne of Shepherd’s team members is a woman named Jack. Jack was experimented on as a child by an elitist organization called Cerebus. She somehow managed to escape and ever since has been a very hard individual. She keeps to her quarters away from the main traffic areas of the ship. She is suspicious the moment anyone asks anything close to a personal question.\r\n\r\nFor those of you who might play the game, I don’t want spoil anything so I won’t tell you how this situation arises, but at some point in the game Jack runs into a friend, Aresh, who was another child who had been experimented during same time she was. They talk for a minute, re-establishing a connection and they start to talk about what happens when the conversation gets weird. As the conversation continues, Aresh reveals that he is trying to <em>rebuild</em> the set of experiments that were performed on him.\r\n\r\nWait, what? That’s crazy. Why would anyone try to duplicate the awful experimentation performed on him as an innocent, defenseless child?\r\n\r\n“I’m rebuilding [the experiments]. What they were looking for… It must have been important. So I’m going to try to find it myself. They must have had good reasons for what they did!”\r\n\r\nI was only half paying attention to what was happening on the TV screen until this moment. It struck me: what a fascinating take on how people process traumatic events. Aresh wasn’t trying to harm other people; he was only trying to find meaning in what happened.\r\n\r\nYou see two people who experienced the same situation growing up and it produced two different effects. One is inked from head to toe, is a loner out in the universe and keeps to herself. Another, haunted by what happened, seeks to try to find the good intentions from the perpetrators, even if they are buried deep. There must have been a good reason that they found it okay to experiment on kids. It must have been a case of sacrificing for the greater good. He was trying to discover the greater good so he could finally put his past to bed.\r\n\r\nI am aware that this is a very extreme analogy for people like you and me. We aren’t on a spaceship bringing justice to the universe, but the one thing we all have in common is that bad things happen to us and we all have to find a way to deal with it.\r\n\r\nSome people (like me) shove it way down into a jar inside and shut the lid. They keep filling the jar until it explodes. Some people deal with it head on and are abrasive to everyone around them until they can work it out. Some people give the past its space but keep everyone at a distance for the rest of their lives. Some people, like in the case of Aresh, go back to the scene of the crime and try to find evidence of a heart or conscience somewhere—anywhere!—even if there are only tiny scraps of it left.\r\n\r\nFrom the outside we all can see that Aresh has a few screws loose, but he can’t see that. To him, having lived through that, the only way he can come to terms with what happened is if he suffered for a greater cause. He is dealing with his lifelong pain the only way he knows how.\r\n\r\nWhat about you? Do you have a coping mechanism that you go back to in times of need? How does that mechanism affect you and the people around you in the long run? How do you come to terms with your memories?\r\n\r\nA lot of people I know would tell me to “give it to God.” But what does that really mean? How do I actually just give it to God? There is a measure of pain I need to work through on my own. Giving it to someone else so it can magically disappear feels like I’m giving up and letting the other party win. It feels like a cop-out and like I’m not strong enough to slay my own dragons. Sometimes I can’t tell if that’s a pride thing or a human thing.\r\n\r\nI can identify with Aresh on a level because I like to think that people carry around the same heart and brain that I do. So when people commit crimes without batting an eyelash or, as one of my friends said, “sit over their Wheaties in the morning trying to figure out ways to screw people,” I have no way of processing it. It’s outside of my understanding of how the universe is supposed to work.\r\n\r\nThankfully, there is no right or wrong way to handle grief or pain. Can you identify with Aresh? How do you process painful events? How do you put your past to rest and find peace?\r\n\r\n<em>Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/25722571@N08/5458462891/\" target=\"_blank\">JaseCurtis</a></em>','Finding Meaning In Our Trauma','','inherit','open','open','','1747-revision-16','','','2011-11-05 18:55:31','2011-11-06 01:55:31','',1747,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/05/1747-revision-16/',0,'revision','',0),(1859,1,'2011-11-06 20:58:45','2011-11-07 04:58:45','Flannel graphs were the height of fun for me growing up in church. For those of you who aren’t from a church that used them relentlessly in Sunday School, they are basically large boards with panels of felt-like material covering them that are used to tell Bible stories. The flannel graph has a base scene of the sky and water, and then has various landscapes you could put over top of it for the appropriate story like a shoreline, golden streets, and a generic grassy knoll. There were cut-out felt pieces of Bible characters that the teacher would smooth onto the board once they were introduced into the story.\r\n\r\nI was born into a Christian family; everyone from my immediate family all the way up into two of my living sets of great-grandparents and all the way out into second cousins are members of the faith. I remember seeing home videos of my prune-y little newborn self in my father’s arms all ready to go to my first day of church when I was only a few days old. So almost from day one I started learning about Flannel Graph Robot Jesus in church.\r\n\r\nNow, since moving into adulthood I’ve realized that there are <a href=\"http://www.revolutionnyc.com/this-unknown-god/\">different Jesus’</a>, but I’ll tell you about the one I knew growing up. He’s got long, dark wavy locks of hair whose beauty rivals that of Fabio. His eyes are even gentler than <a href=\"http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001029/\">Jim Caviezel’s</a>, and he is always wearing impeccably white robes that make him look like he might be friends with <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/dionysus-mens-plus-costume/_/R-136222;jsessionid=3701FC431A596FDCFA94290446D86120.instance04?CAWELAID=895421131&amp;cmpid=goobase\">Dionysus</a> or <a href=\"http://www.meijer.com/s/caesar-mens-plus-costume/_/R-116666\">Julius Caesar</a>.\r\n\r\nThe reason I call him “Flannel Graph Robot Jesus” is because until college I didn’t really regard him as human. Of course, everyone says he was fully human and fully God, but I mostly stuck to the God part. The way I always read passages from Bible, it seemed like Jesus would just stand around and monologue to his disciples in his best “Thank you for shopping at Home Depot, we hope you enjoyed your stay” manly robot voice.  For example, in Luke 11 a little while after Jesus casts out a demon that was making a man mute, he says this:\r\n\r\n\"No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a basket, but on a stand, so that those who enter may see the light. Your eye is the lamp of your body. When your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light, but when it is bad, your body is full of darkness. Therefore be careful lest the light in you be darkness. If then your whole body is full of light, having no part dark, it will be wholly bright, as when a lamp with its rays gives you light.\" (Luke 11:33-35,ESV)\r\n\r\nIf someone asked me what this means I would tell them that what we choose to look at goes into our minds and informs not only our bodies but our character. Things we see don’t usually leave us; you can’t “un-see” something. So Jesus here is warning us to be cautious about looking at things that might not be wholesome because you can’t really remove that image once it’s in your mind.\r\n\r\nI can say that, having internalized the message and paraphrasing it, but I can’t quite picture Jesus saying in a human way, like someone like my Dad would. I can imagine my Dad telling me this, using his hands when he talked, his hazel eyes engaged in the conversation, and chuckling slightly as he says “You can’t ‘un-see’ something.” In my mind, Jesus has a robot voice, occasionally extends his hand like a Ken doll to illustrate his point, and then is done. I don’t see him chuckling, or see a glint in his eye or any emotion attached to the verse.\r\n\r\nPeter, @Muslimerican on Twitter, <a href=\"As a child I never read the Bible much. Whenever I tried, the text felt remote, arcane, and impenetrable.\" target=\"_blank\">tweeted recently</a>:\r\n<blockquote>As a child I never read the Bible much. Whenever I tried, the text felt remote, arcane, and impenetrable.</blockquote>\r\nI strongly relate to what Peter is saying. I don\'t think this is anyone\'s fault—it’s just a product of the language structure in the verses—but it does become a barrier to having a “relationship” with Jesus. I think this is why The Message translation of the Bible was so revolutionary to people when it came out. It was full of the emotion and regular English we could all relate to that we struggled to find in mainstream translations.\r\n\r\nIt wasn’t until after I came home from a mission trip and started hanging out in an informal Bible study with some of my team members that I realized that Jesus was full of emotion and expression just like I am.  For example, when Salome, the mother of James and John comes to Jesus and asks that her sons be placed either side of Jesus in his kingdom, Robot Jesus says: \"You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink […]You will drink my cup, but to sit at my right hand and at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared by my Father.\" (Matthew 20:20-23, ESV)\r\n\r\nHuman Jesus might have been a bit flabbergasted, maybe laughed nervously and then said “Well… You have no idea what you just asked for. Do you think they can handle the journey that I’m meant to take? Well, in that case, you’ll come with me on this path, but I can’t guarantee anyone seats and my right and left hand because those are reserved for my Dad to pick.”\r\n\r\nDo you see how much more human that is? When the language is brought into forms that you and I can relate to, we suddenly can hear the emotions that he might have expressed. We see countless other examples of situations like this where Jesus is frustrated, sarcastic, cryptic, sweet, protective, and angry. If I don’t remember to do this mental translation on a regular basis I forget the part about Jesus being fully human.  Now, this doesn’t mean that Robot Jesus is bad or that the Bible is written improperly because it’s not. I only bring this up because this kind of robot-to-human translation was really critical for me to move from seeing Jesus as a 2D flannel character to seeing him as a real man who understands the human experience.\r\n\r\nIf Jesus didn’t experience a wide range of feelings just like the rest of us do, he becomes a cold actor just going through the motions on our stage. I think the author of “<a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Flunking-Sainthood-Breaking-Forgetting-Neighbor/dp/1557256608/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320525173&amp;sr=8-1\">Flunking Sainthood</a>”, Jana Reiss, said it best when <a href=\"http://blog.beliefnet.com/flunkingsainthood/2011/11/jesus-and-superman-do-we-really-need-the-backstory.html#ixzz1cqYthmuM\">she said</a> “I like my Jesus like I like my Superman: socially conscious, tough, and super-powered, sure, but still relatable, still someone who suffers the same heartache we all do, simultaneously completely super and completely human.”\r\n\r\n<em>Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/mike52ad/3007681001/\" target=\"_blank\">Michael 1952</a></em>','Flannel Graph Robot Jesus','','inherit','open','open','','1826-revision-12','','','2011-11-06 20:58:45','2011-11-07 04:58:45','',1826,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/06/1826-revision-12/',0,'revision','',0),(1860,57,'2011-11-07 08:34:44','2011-11-07 16:34:44','','Jesus with cross','','inherit','open','open','','jesus-with-cross','','','2011-11-07 08:34:44','2011-11-07 16:34:44','',1852,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Jesus-with-cross.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(1861,57,'2011-11-07 08:31:40','2011-11-07 16:31:40','As the lead pastor of a contemporary worship service, I have had a lot of time to meditate upon the lyrics of Jeremy Riddle\'s song \"Sweetly Broken,\" which we sing perhaps every other weekend. The verses are a catechism of penal substitution theology: \"For on [the cross] my Savior both bruised and crushed / Showed that God is love / And God is just\" and \"I was under Your wrath / Now through the cross I\'m reconciled.\"\n\nI often cringe at the way that an overzealous worship of substitutionary atonement creates an account of divine justice in which God is way more invested in making humanity pay infinitely for every small infraction against Him than He cares about standing up for the widows, orphans, and aliens. I\'ve also spent many hours of my life wrestling with the Greek word <em>orge </em>which gets translated as \"wrath\" in English, but is also etymologically related to our word \"orgy.\" It seems like there is more going on with God\'s <em>orge</em> than just intense anger. I tend to think of God\'s <em>orge</em> as expressing the cataclysmic dissonance that occurs when God\'s all-consuming, infinite love confronts our stand-offish self-reliance and self-justification.\n\nBut what really makes me uneasy about this song is the chorus:\n<blockquote><em>At the cross You beckon me</em>\n<em> You draw me gently to my knees, and I am</em>\n<em> Lost for words, so lost in love,</em>\n<em> I\'m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered</em></blockquote>\nAm I the only one who sees this as an uncomfortably erotic image? Madonna\'s song \"Like a Prayer\" uses similar imagery: \"When you call my name, it\'s like a little prayer; I\'m <em>down on my knees</em>, I can take you there.\" Throughout Christian history, erotic language has been used to describe the mystical reality of our relationship with Christ. He is called the bridegroom of the church, and the steamy Biblical book <em>Song of Songs</em> has been interpreted as a description of what that bridal chamber looks like. Jesus certainly used language about his own body that was very uncomfortable for His original listeners to hear: \"Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.\" (John 6:53). Early Christians were accused by the Romans of cannibalism because of language like this.\n\nHere\'s my concern though. When the cross is eroticized in a song like this, do we forget that real blood was shed? As Mark Baker writes in his <em>Recovering the Scandal of the Cross</em>, the brutality of what was done to Jesus has been lost in an age when we\'re \"lost in love\" with the piety of our atonement theories. Certainly Paul used the cross metaphorically in his writings; it\'s an eternal mystery that transcends the temporal physical event itself, but has the cross lost its power when we are able to use words like \"gentle\" and \"sweet\" to talk about what happened to Jesus? Perhaps the problem is not so much the eroticism, but the fact that Jeremy Riddle isn\'t really \"lost for words\" before a cross that gets domesticated when it becomes the centerpiece of a love song.\n\nI will never completely understand the cross, though I will probably preach about it several hundred more times before I die. I understand that Riddle is grappling for a way to describe the mystery of atonement and that he\'s talking about his personal experience of redemption rather than what physically happened to Jesus. But it\'s also important to name the truly horrifying eroticism of the cross, since Jesus was <em>penetrated</em> by the world\'s nails. So I\'m not sure that \"gentle\" and \"sweet\" are the right adjectives to use when talking about the rape of the creator of the universe. I must confess I\'m \"lost for words\" myself, because I\'m not sure how I would write the song differently or whether we should be making pop love songs about the cross.','Eroticizing the Cross: Jeremy Riddle\'s \"Sweetly Broken\"','','inherit','open','open','','1852-revision','','','2011-11-07 08:31:40','2011-11-07 16:31:40','',1852,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1852-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(1862,57,'2011-11-07 08:36:39','2011-11-07 16:36:39','As the lead pastor of a contemporary worship service, I have had a lot of time to meditate upon the lyrics of Jeremy Riddle\'s song \"Sweetly Broken,\" which we sing perhaps every other weekend. The verses are a catechism of penal substitution theology: \"For on [the cross] my Savior both bruised and crushed / Showed that God is love / And God is just\" and \"I was under Your wrath / Now through the cross I\'m reconciled.\"\r\n\r\nI often cringe at the way that an overzealous worship of substitutionary atonement creates an account of divine justice in which God is way more invested in making humanity pay infinitely for every small infraction against Him than He cares about standing up for the widows, orphans, and aliens. I\'ve also spent many hours of my life wrestling with the Greek word <em>orge </em>which gets translated as \"wrath\" in English, but is also etymologically related to our word \"orgy.\" It seems like there is more going on with God\'s <em>orge</em> than just intense anger. I tend to think of God\'s <em>orge</em> as expressing the cataclysmic dissonance that occurs when God\'s all-consuming, infinite love confronts our stand-offish self-reliance and self-justification.\r\n\r\nBut what really makes me uneasy about this song is the chorus:\r\n<blockquote><em>At the cross You beckon me</em>\r\n<em> You draw me gently to my knees, and I am</em>\r\n<em> Lost for words, so lost in love,</em>\r\n<em> I\'m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered</em></blockquote>\r\nAm I the only one who sees this as an uncomfortably erotic image? Madonna\'s song \"Like a Prayer\" uses similar imagery: \"When you call my name, it\'s like a little prayer; I\'m <em>down on my knees</em>, I can take you there.\" Throughout Christian history, erotic language has been used to describe the mystical reality of our relationship with Christ. He is called the bridegroom of the church, and the steamy Biblical book <em>Song of Songs</em> has been interpreted as a description of what that bridal chamber looks like. Jesus certainly used language about his own body that was very uncomfortable for His original listeners to hear: \"Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.\" (John 6:53). Early Christians were accused by the Romans of cannibalism because of language like this.\r\n\r\nHere\'s my concern though. When the cross is eroticized in a song like this, do we forget that real blood was shed? As Mark Baker writes in his <em>Recovering the Scandal of the Cross</em>, the brutality of what was done to Jesus has been lost in an age when we\'re \"lost in love\" with the piety of our atonement theories. Certainly Paul used the cross metaphorically in his writings; it\'s an eternal mystery that transcends the temporal physical event itself, but has the cross lost its power when we are able to use words like \"gentle\" and \"sweet\" to talk about what happened to Jesus? Perhaps the problem is not so much the eroticism, but the fact that Jeremy Riddle isn\'t really \"lost for words\" before a cross that gets domesticated when it becomes the centerpiece of a love song.\r\n\r\nI will never completely understand the cross, though I will probably preach about it several hundred more times before I die. I understand that Riddle is grappling for a way to describe the mystery of atonement and that he\'s talking about his personal experience of redemption rather than what physically happened to Jesus. But it\'s also important to name the truly horrifying eroticism of the cross, since Jesus was <em>penetrated</em> by the world\'s nails. So I\'m not sure that \"gentle\" and \"sweet\" are the right adjectives to use when talking about the rape of the creator of the universe. I must confess I\'m \"lost for words\" myself, because I\'m not sure how I would write the song differently or whether we should be making pop love songs about the cross.','Eroticizing the Cross: Jeremy Riddle\'s \"Sweetly Broken\"','','inherit','open','open','','1852-revision-2','','','2011-11-07 08:36:39','2011-11-07 16:36:39','',1852,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1852-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1863,1,'2011-11-07 09:17:52','2011-11-07 17:17:52','','Yin_Yang','','inherit','open','open','','yin_yang','','','2011-11-07 09:17:52','2011-11-07 17:17:52','',1792,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Yin_Yang.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(1864,1,'2011-11-07 07:20:23','2011-11-07 15:20:23','As a teenager, I was one of those kids who hadn\'t a clue what I wanted to be when I grew up. My twenties came and life just kind of happened.  I had opportunities.  I took advantage of them.  I gave it my all.  And life unfolded from there. By the time I was 23 I was in a mid-level retail management position overseeing about 20 employees. And I thought to myself that by the time I was in my thirties I wanted to be a senior level manager in my company with a big profit sharing portfolio on a trajectory toward retirement by my mid-forties.\r\n\r\nAfter learning of the disproportionate number of those managers who ended up dead early of heart attacks or divorced, I opted for a move into another industry in my thirties. As life continued to unfold I looked ahead to my forties with a desire to be successfully self-employed and financially independent.\r\n\r\nI entered my forties over three years ago and today I am neither successfully self-employed nor financially independent.  And with another decade of life well underway I am once again looking ahead to the next milestone, the age of 50, and thinking about where I want to be, where I feel I need to be, when I arrive at that number which at the moment scares the hell out of me.  Fifty?  Me?  No way.\r\n\r\nI am learning something valuable in my forties that I didn’t grasp in the first few decades of life.  And that is the necessity of finding balance and forward momentum in the midst that which is less desirable while longing for my preferred future.  The Chinese call a similar tension in life the Yin Yang.  It is the interconnectedness and interdependence between seemingly polar opposite forces.  Light. Dark. Positive. Negative. Happy. Sad. Difficult. Easy. Complex. Simple.\r\n\r\nTranslated into the Zen of work, it looks something like this.  You know what you were created to do, but circumstances seem to prevent you from doing it.  You know what you are great at.  But real life demands that you devote a lot of time and energy to other things that you aren’t so great at.  You have your dreams.  Yet reality always seems to get in the way causing your dreams to be deferred for perhaps another decade or two, or three, or five.\r\n\r\nSounds frustrating doesn’t it?  It can be.  After a couple of decades, I think most people simply give up.  The ones who do surrender are the ones who misunderstand the nature of Yin Yang.  It isn’t a battle in which negative overcomes positive, or positive overcomes negative.  To the contrary, one is dependent upon and gives rise to the other in turn.  Both are required.  Both are unavoidable.  And the person who finds fulfillment in life and work is the person who learns to cooperate with the negative to bring about the positive and in the midst of the positive is strengthened, prepared, and emboldened to endure the negative that will come in turn.  The Yin Yang symbol demonstrates this interdependence. White on one side (representing light, positive, happy, easy and simple with black on the other representing dark, negative, sad, difficult, and complex.  Yet there is the presence of a black circle in the midst of the white side and the presence of a white circle on the black side.\r\n\r\nSo here you are in the midst of living and working and dreaming about the future.  You may have a very good job with a great company, surrounded by positive, talented people. But you still dream about someday finding that career “sweet spot” wherein it’s nearly impossible to distinguish between work and play.  You have a vision for the thing you’d love to be doing.  But you aren’t there.  You don’t know how to get there.  You keep waiting for all of the stars and planets to align perfectly so you wake up one morning and all you’ve dreamed about is right outside your door waiting for you to step onto the scene.  But life doesn’t happen that way.  Yin. Yang. Tick. Tock.\r\n\r\nLook again at the <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Yin_and_Yang.svg\">taijitu symbol</a>.  In the forward portion of the dark side is a circle of light. And herein lies the secret of maintaining forward momentum toward your dream career. Hidden in plain sight within your present reality are daily moments of preparation for the future you dream about.  Remember, the Yin Yang concept does not teach us that one force or one reality conquers the other.  Dark doesn’t conquer light.  Light doesn’t conquer dark.  They interplay and give rise to one another.  Your goal is not to find a means of escape from your present reality to enter the career of your dreams.  Your goal is to undergo hands-on training for the career of your dreams in the midst of your present reality.\r\n\r\nEven if the work you dream about doing bears little resemblance to what you do today, there are basic fundamentals that are common across the entire spectrum of our work.  And mastering those fundamentals is a prerequisite to successfully entering your preferred future.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about people in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about business in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about marketing in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about finance in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job.\r\n\r\nWhat will you need to know about leadership in your dream job?  You can master it in your present job even if leadership isn’t a formal part of your job description.\r\n\r\nAll of these things are common themes in work and business.  Every day that you wake up to do the work that you have to do while waiting to do the work you’d love to do you are presented with  and surrounded by moment after moment, opportunity after opportunity, to prepare for the work of your dreams.  Recognizing those moments and seizing those opportunities will keep your heart and mind in balance with life today as you maintain forward momentum toward what you were created to contribute to this world.','Here Today; Where Tomorrow?','','inherit','open','open','','1792-revision-6','','','2011-11-07 07:20:23','2011-11-07 15:20:23','',1792,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1792-revision-6/',0,'revision','',0),(1865,1,'2011-11-07 09:18:53','2011-11-07 17:18:53','','Mass_effect','','inherit','open','open','','mass_effect-2','','','2011-11-07 09:18:53','2011-11-07 17:18:53','',1747,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Mass_effect1.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(1866,1,'2011-11-07 07:29:17','2011-11-07 15:29:17','For those of you who don’t live with gamers or who have not heard of <a href=\"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_effect_2\" target=\"_blank\">Mass Effect 2</a>, it’s an action role-playing space epic video game. As any good space epic goes, there is a species that is the cause of full colonies disappearing overnight. Commander Shepherd, the main character, is tasked with stopping this relatively unknown destructive force by taking his eclectic team planet-hopping to save the galaxy. The graphics in the game are absolutely stunning, the dialogue between species is thoughtful and well done (which I learned to appreciate from my love of the <a href=\"http://www.amazon.com/Redwall-Book-1-Brian-Jacques/dp/0142302376/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1320295383&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Redwall</a> books growing up), and your in-game actions and dialogue choices impact the characters around you and your relationships with them (and even carry through into the next game).  Some of you might even recognize one of the characters as Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Sarah Walker in the TV show “Chuck”.\r\n\r\nSo, now that I’ve outed myself as a nerd, or at the very least the wife of a gamer, what does this have anything to do with blame?\r\n\r\nOne of Shepherd’s team members is a woman named Jack. Jack was experimented on as a child by an elitist organization called Cerebus. She somehow managed to escape and ever since has been a very hard individual. She keeps to her quarters away from the main traffic areas of the ship. She is suspicious the moment anyone asks anything close to a personal question.\r\n\r\nFor those of you who might play the game, I don’t want spoil anything so I won’t tell you how this situation arises, but at some point in the game Jack runs into a friend, Aresh, who was another child who had been experimented during same time she was. They talk for a minute, re-establishing a connection and they start to talk about what happens when the conversation gets weird. As the conversation continues, Aresh reveals that he is trying to <em>rebuild</em> the set of experiments that were performed on him.\r\n\r\nWait, what? That’s crazy. Why would anyone try to duplicate the awful experimentation performed on him as an innocent, defenseless child?\r\n\r\n“I’m rebuilding [the experiments]. What they were looking for… It must have been important. So I’m going to try to find it myself. They must have had good reasons for what they did!”\r\n\r\nI was only half paying attention to what was happening on the TV screen until this moment. It struck me: what a fascinating take on how people process traumatic events. Aresh wasn’t trying to harm other people; he was only trying to find meaning in what happened.\r\n\r\nYou see two people who experienced the same situation growing up and it produced two different effects. One is inked from head to toe, is a loner out in the universe and keeps to herself. Another, haunted by what happened, seeks to try to find the good intentions from the perpetrators, even if they are buried deep. There must have been a good reason that they found it okay to experiment on kids. It must have been a case of sacrificing for the greater good. He was trying to discover the greater good so he could finally put his past to bed.\r\n\r\nI am aware that this is a very extreme analogy for people like you and me. We aren’t on a spaceship bringing justice to the universe, but the one thing we all have in common is that bad things happen to us and we all have to find a way to deal with it.\r\n\r\nSome people (like me) shove it way down into a jar inside and shut the lid. They keep filling the jar until it explodes. Some people deal with it head on and are abrasive to everyone around them until they can work it out. Some people give the past its space but keep everyone at a distance for the rest of their lives. Some people, like in the case of Aresh, go back to the scene of the crime and try to find evidence of a heart or conscience somewhere—anywhere!—even if there are only tiny scraps of it left.\r\n\r\nFrom the outside we all can see that Aresh has a few screws loose, but he can’t see that. To him, having lived through that, the only way he can come to terms with what happened is if he suffered for a greater cause. He is dealing with his lifelong pain the only way he knows how.\r\n\r\nWhat about you? Do you have a coping mechanism that you go back to in times of need? How does that mechanism affect you and the people around you in the long run? How do you come to terms with your memories?\r\n\r\nA lot of people I know would tell me to “give it to God.” But what does that really mean? How do I actually just give it to God? There is a measure of pain I need to work through on my own. Giving it to someone else so it can magically disappear feels like I’m giving up and letting the other party win. It feels like a cop-out and like I’m not strong enough to slay my own dragons. Sometimes I can’t tell if that’s a pride thing or a human thing.\r\n\r\nI can identify with Aresh on a level because I like to think that people carry around the same heart and brain that I do. So when people commit crimes without batting an eyelash or, as one of my friends said, “sit over their Wheaties in the morning trying to figure out ways to screw people,” I have no way of processing it. It’s outside of my understanding of how the universe is supposed to work.\r\n\r\nThankfully, there is no right or wrong way to handle grief or pain. Can you identify with Aresh? How do you process painful events? How do you put your past to rest and find peace?\r\n\r\n<em>Photo credit: <a href=\"http://www.flickr.com/photos/25722571@N08/5458462891/\" target=\"_blank\">JaseCurtis</a></em>','Finding Meaning In Our Trauma','','inherit','open','open','','1747-revision-17','','','2011-11-07 07:29:17','2011-11-07 15:29:17','',1747,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1747-revision-17/',0,'revision','',0),(1867,0,'2011-11-07 09:57:49','2011-11-07 17:57:49','Books review of Run With Me by jennifer Luitwieler\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Jake Kampe\nAUTHOR EMAIL: wjkampe@comcast.net\nAUTHOR URL: http://www.nakedtheologytalk.blogspot.com\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 98.196.167.195\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Jake Kampe\n    [Email] =&gt; wjkampe@comcast.net\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; http://www.nakedtheologytalk.blogspot.com\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; Books review of Run With Me by jennifer Luitwieler\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; wjkampe\n)\n','Jake Kampe - 2011-11-07 09:57:49','','publish','open','open','','d141b3868054930bed03bb785c198d2a','','','2011-11-07 09:57:49','2011-11-07 17:57:49','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=1867',0,'feedback','',0),(1868,1,'2011-11-07 10:02:31','2011-11-07 18:02:31','As the lead pastor of a contemporary worship service, I have had a lot of time to meditate upon the lyrics of Jeremy Riddle\'s song \"Sweetly Broken,\" which we sing perhaps every other weekend. The verses are a catechism of penal substitution theology: \"For on [the cross] my Savior both bruised and crushed / Showed that God is love / And God is just\" and \"I was under Your wrath / Now through the cross I\'m reconciled.\"\n\nI often cringe at the way that an overzealous worship of substitutionary atonement creates an account of divine justice in which God is way more invested in making humanity pay infinitely for every small infraction against Him than He cares about standing up for the widows, orphans, and aliens. I\'ve also spent many hours of my life wrestling with the Greek word <em>orge </em>which gets translated as \"wrath\" in English, but is also etymologically related to our word \"orgy.\" It seems like there is more going on with God\'s <em>orge</em> than just intense anger. I tend to think of God\'s <em>orge</em> as expressing the cataclysmic dissonance that occurs when God\'s all-consuming, infinite love confronts our stand-offish self-reliance and self-justification.\n\nBut what really makes me uneasy about this song is the chorus:\n<blockquote><em>At the cross You beckon me</em>\n<em> You draw me gently to my knees, and I am</em>\n<em> Lost for words, so lost in love,</em>\n<em> I\'m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered</em></blockquote>\nAm I the only one who sees this as an uncomfortably erotic image? Madonna\'s song \"Like a Prayer\" uses similar imagery: \"When you call my name, it\'s like a little prayer; I\'m <em>down on my knees</em>, I can take you there.\" Throughout Christian history, erotic language has been used to describe the mystical reality of our relationship with Christ. He is called the bridegroom of the church, and the steamy Biblical book <em>Song of Songs</em> has been interpreted as a description of what that bridal chamber looks like. Jesus certainly used language about his own body that was very uncomfortable for His original listeners to hear: \"Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.\" (John 6:53). Early Christians were accused by the Romans of cannibalism because of language like this.\n\nHere\'s my concern though. When the cross is eroticized in a song like this, do we forget that real blood was shed? As Mark Baker writes in his <em>Recovering the Scandal of the Cross</em>, the brutality of what was done to Jesus has been lost in an age when we\'re \"lost in love\" with the piety of our atonement theories. Certainly Paul used the cross metaphorically in his writings; it\'s an eternal mystery that transcends the temporal physical event itself, but has the cross lost its power when we are able to use words like \"gentle\" and \"sweet\" to talk about what happened to Jesus? Perhaps the problem is not so much the eroticism, but the fact that Jeremy Riddle isn\'t really \"lost for words\" before a cross that gets domesticated when it becomes the centerpiece of a love song.\n\nI will never completely understand the cross, though I will probably preach about it several hundred more times before I die. I understand that Riddle is grappling for a way to describe the mystery of atonement and that he\'s talking about his personal experience of redemption rather than what physically happened to Jesus. But it\'s also important to name the truly horrifying eroticism of the cross, since Jesus was <em>penetrated</em> by the world\'s nails. So I\'m not sure that \"gentle\" and \"sweet\" are the right adjectives to use when talking about the rape of the creator of the universe. I must confess I\'m \"lost for words\" myself, because I\'m not sure how I would write the song differently or whether we should be making pop love songs about the cross.','Eroticizing the Cross','','inherit','open','open','','1852-autosave','','','2011-11-07 10:02:31','2011-11-07 18:02:31','',1852,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1852-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(1871,67,'2011-11-07 10:01:13','2011-11-07 18:01:13','Have you ever wondered what your life would look like if told through a story?  Imagine if you had to chronicle your life up to this moment, what would it look like?  How would it sound?  What would you choose to include?  What would you leave out and why?  What would you highlight, and why would that be interesting to others?  What people would stand out as characters in the story?  What would be the plot?  How would the story rise to a climax and then end with every aspect coming together to complete the wonderful tale that is your life, all the while keeping the attention of the reader?  Seems a bit overwhelming, doesn\'t it?  Maybe a little humbling?  After all, most of us don\'t live crazy, exciting James Bond kind of lives, right?  So why would someone want to read \"our\" story?  Good question.  But rather than attempting to solve the seemingly impossible, let me tell you a little about a book and someone who seems to have figured it out.  And with near perfection, I might add.\n\nIn <em>Run With Me: An Accidental Runner and the Power of Poo,</em> my friend and author, Jennifer Luitwieler takes all of the ingredients listed above, tells her story in a way that instantly captures your attention, and all the while creates a cohesive narrative that remains adjoined in seamless perfection.  And she does this in one of the most simple ways possible: she takes you on a <em>journey</em>.  The vehicle she uses for the journey is<em> running </em>and the fuel that gets you there is <em>poo</em>.  Yes, poo!  Dog poo to be more specific.  But you\'ll have to read the book to find out why dog poo is so significant to this book.\n\nAs Jennifer states in the beginning of the book, <em>Run With Me</em> is not only a book about running.  And it really isn\'t, although in a strange way, it is.  Again, you\'ll just have to read the book to understand the dichotomy.  In realty, running is only the cohesive gel that holds the story together.  It\'s the common thread that keeps it going and unites aspects of a life, just like yours and mine and packages them together.  Although running has become a significant part of her life, she uses her passion to link ordinarily life together in an enjoyable story.  That is what is so powerful about this book.  Jennifer creates a story telling model that reveals that each and every one of us has a \"story\", we just have to find the vehicle that carries it.  If you\'re runner, you\'ll get it.  If you\'re not a runner, you\'ll get it.\n\nOne of my favorite aspects of the book is it\'s simplicity and holistic flow.  In a society that compartmentalizes every aspect of our life, Jennifer is able to blend life realities into a refreshing story that is intertwined at almost every point.  Each theme that she emphasizes and each point she makes, remarkably connects to the entire essential theme and leaves no loose ends.  The story is organic and flows naturally without confusion.  You never get lost in the story or find yourself wondering where a particular point is going.  Whether she is describing her spiritual journey and frustrations with the Church, or the details of her first half marathon, she makes her point while making sure that you\'re connecting with her.\n\n<em>Run with me</em> is fun, refreshing and uplifting.  In fact, having somewhat of a melancholy personality, at times I found it too uplifting!  Through the story, Jennifer is like the friend that keep telling you jokes or tickling you until you smile.  You do your best to remain in self-pity, but you finally submit, realizing that your attempts are futile.  You WILL smile.  You WILL laugh.  You WILL end up having a better outlook on life. Curse you, Jennifer, and your motivationally themed memoir!\n\nIn all honesty, Jennifer leaves it up to you.  She has no agenda and no preconceived notions that she will change your perspective on life.  She simply shares her journey.  <em>Run With Me</em> leaves you feeling that you just had a great conversation with a friend, she shared some good stuff with you and hopes you took something from the story.  You get the impression that if she made you laugh, at least for that moment, she accomplished her goal.  Although, if you want to run with her, just a little farther, she\'s ready to go!\n\nRead <em>Run With Me</em> and run with Jennifer!\n\n&nbsp;','Run With Me by Jennifer Luitwieler: A Retrospective Review ','','inherit','open','open','','1869-revision','','','2011-11-07 10:01:13','2011-11-07 18:01:13','',1869,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1869-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(1872,67,'2011-11-07 10:02:18','2011-11-07 18:02:18','','run-with-me-large6','','inherit','open','open','','run-with-me-large6','','','2011-11-07 10:02:18','2011-11-07 18:02:18','',1869,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/run-with-me-large6.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(1873,67,'2011-11-07 10:01:15','2011-11-07 18:01:15','Have you ever wondered what your life would look like if told through a story?  Imagine if you had to chronicle your life up to this moment, what would it look like?  How would it sound?  What would you choose to include?  What would you leave out and why?  What would you highlight, and why would that be interesting to others?  What people would stand out as characters in the story?  What would be the plot?  How would the story rise to a climax and then end with every aspect coming together to complete the wonderful tale that is your life, all the while keeping the attention of the reader?  Seems a bit overwhelming, doesn\'t it?  Maybe a little humbling?  After all, most of us don\'t live crazy, exciting James Bond kind of lives, right?  So why would someone want to read \"our\" story?  Good question.  But rather than attempting to solve the seemingly impossible, let me tell you a little about a book and someone who seems to have figured it out.  And with near perfection, I might add.\r\n\r\nIn <em>Run With Me: An Accidental Runner and the Power of Poo,</em> my friend and author, Jennifer Luitwieler takes all of the ingredients listed above, tells her story in a way that instantly captures your attention, and all the while creates a cohesive narrative that remains adjoined in seamless perfection.  And she does this in one of the most simple ways possible: she takes you on a <em>journey</em>.  The vehicle she uses for the journey is<em> running </em>and the fuel that gets you there is <em>poo</em>.  Yes, poo!  Dog poo to be more specific.  But you\'ll have to read the book to find out why dog poo is so significant to this book.\r\n\r\nAs Jennifer states in the beginning of the book, <em>Run With Me</em> is not only a book about running.  And it really isn\'t, although in a strange way, it is.  Again, you\'ll just have to read the book to understand the dichotomy.  In realty, running is only the cohesive gel that holds the story together.  It\'s the common thread that keeps it going and unites aspects of a life, just like yours and mine and packages them together.  Although running has become a significant part of her life, she uses her passion to link ordinarily life together in an enjoyable story.  That is what is so powerful about this book.  Jennifer creates a story telling model that reveals that each and every one of us has a \"story\", we just have to find the vehicle that carries it.  If you\'re runner, you\'ll get it.  If you\'re not a runner, you\'ll get it.\r\n\r\nOne of my favorite aspects of the book is it\'s simplicity and holistic flow.  In a society that compartmentalizes every aspect of our life, Jennifer is able to blend life realities into a refreshing story that is intertwined at almost every point.  Each theme that she emphasizes and each point she makes, remarkably connects to the entire essential theme and leaves no loose ends.  The story is organic and flows naturally without confusion.  You never get lost in the story or find yourself wondering where a particular point is going.  Whether she is describing her spiritual journey and frustrations with the Church, or the details of her first half marathon, she makes her point while making sure that you\'re connecting with her.\r\n\r\n<em>Run with me</em> is fun, refreshing and uplifting.  In fact, having somewhat of a melancholy personality, at times I found it too uplifting!  Through the story, Jennifer is like the friend that keep telling you jokes or tickling you until you smile.  You do your best to remain in self-pity, but you finally submit, realizing that your attempts are futile.  You WILL smile.  You WILL laugh.  You WILL end up having a better outlook on life. Curse you, Jennifer, and your motivationally themed memoir!\r\n\r\nIn all honesty, Jennifer leaves it up to you.  She has no agenda and no preconceived notions that she will change your perspective on life.  She simply shares her journey.  <em>Run With Me</em> leaves you feeling that you just had a great conversation with a friend, she shared some good stuff with you and hopes you took something from the story.  You get the impression that if she made you laugh, at least for that moment, she accomplished her goal.  Although, if you want to run with her, just a little farther, she\'s ready to go!\r\n\r\nRead <em>Run With Me</em> and run with Jennifer!\r\n\r\n&nbsp;','Run With Me by Jennifer Luitwieler: A Retrospective Review ','','inherit','open','open','','1869-revision-2','','','2011-11-07 10:01:15','2011-11-07 18:01:15','',1869,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1869-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1874,67,'2011-11-07 10:03:34','2011-11-07 18:03:34','','run-with-me-large6','','inherit','open','open','','run-with-me-large6-2','','','2011-11-07 10:03:34','2011-11-07 18:03:34','',1869,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/run-with-me-large61.jpg',0,'attachment','image/jpeg',0),(1875,67,'2011-11-07 10:02:57','2011-11-07 18:02:57','Have you ever wondered what your life would look like if told through a story?  Imagine if you had to chronicle your life up to this moment, what would it look like?  How would it sound?  What would you choose to include?  What would you leave out and why?  What would you highlight, and why would that be interesting to others?  What people would stand out as characters in the story?  What would be the plot?  How would the story rise to a climax and then end with every aspect coming together to complete the wonderful tale that is your life, all the while keeping the attention of the reader?  Seems a bit overwhelming, doesn\'t it?  Maybe a little humbling?  After all, most of us don\'t live crazy, exciting James Bond kind of lives, right?  So why would someone want to read \"our\" story?  Good question.  But rather than attempting to solve the seemingly impossible, let me tell you a little about a book and someone who seems to have figured it out.  And with near perfection, I might add.\r\n\r\nIn <em>Run With Me: An Accidental Runner and the Power of Poo,</em> my friend and author, Jennifer Luitwieler takes all of the ingredients listed above, tells her story in a way that instantly captures your attention, and all the while creates a cohesive narrative that remains adjoined in seamless perfection.  And she does this in one of the most simple ways possible: she takes you on a <em>journey</em>.  The vehicle she uses for the journey is<em> running </em>and the fuel that gets you there is <em>poo</em>.  Yes, poo!  Dog poo to be more specific.  But you\'ll have to read the book to find out why dog poo is so significant to this book.\r\n\r\nAs Jennifer states in the beginning of the book, <em>Run With Me</em> is not only a book about running.  And it really isn\'t, although in a strange way, it is.  Again, you\'ll just have to read the book to understand the dichotomy.  In realty, running is only the cohesive gel that holds the story together.  It\'s the common thread that keeps it going and unites aspects of a life, just like yours and mine and packages them together.  Although running has become a significant part of her life, she uses her passion to link ordinarily life together in an enjoyable story.  That is what is so powerful about this book.  Jennifer creates a story telling model that reveals that each and every one of us has a \"story\", we just have to find the vehicle that carries it.  If you\'re runner, you\'ll get it.  If you\'re not a runner, you\'ll get it.\r\n\r\nOne of my favorite aspects of the book is it\'s simplicity and holistic flow.  In a society that compartmentalizes every aspect of our life, Jennifer is able to blend life realities into a refreshing story that is intertwined at almost every point.  Each theme that she emphasizes and each point she makes, remarkably connects to the entire essential theme and leaves no loose ends.  The story is organic and flows naturally without confusion.  You never get lost in the story or find yourself wondering where a particular point is going.  Whether she is describing her spiritual journey and frustrations with the Church, or the details of her first half marathon, she makes her point while making sure that you\'re connecting with her.\r\n\r\n<em>Run with me</em> is fun, refreshing and uplifting.  In fact, having somewhat of a melancholy personality, at times I found it too uplifting!  Through the story, Jennifer is like the friend that keep telling you jokes or tickling you until you smile.  You do your best to remain in self-pity, but you finally submit, realizing that your attempts are futile.  You WILL smile.  You WILL laugh.  You WILL end up having a better outlook on life. Curse you, Jennifer, and your motivationally themed memoir!\r\n\r\nIn all honesty, Jennifer leaves it up to you.  She has no agenda and no preconceived notions that she will change your perspective on life.  She simply shares her journey.  <em>Run With Me</em> leaves you feeling that you just had a great conversation with a friend, she shared some good stuff with you and hopes you took something from the story.  You get the impression that if she made you laugh, at least for that moment, she accomplished her goal.  Although, if you want to run with her, just a little farther, she\'s ready to go!\r\n\r\nRead <em>Run With Me</em> and run with Jennifer!\r\n\r\n&nbsp;','Run With Me by Jennifer Luitwieler: A Retrospective Review ','','inherit','open','open','','1869-revision-3','','','2011-11-07 10:02:57','2011-11-07 18:02:57','',1869,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1869-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(1876,67,'2011-11-07 10:04:05','2011-11-07 18:04:05','Have you ever wondered what your life would look like if told through a story?  Imagine if you had to chronicle your life up to this moment, what would it look like?  How would it sound?  What would you choose to include?  What would you leave out and why?  What would you highlight, and why would that be interesting to others?  What people would stand out as characters in the story?  What would be the plot?  How would the story rise to a climax and then end with every aspect coming together to complete the wonderful tale that is your life, all the while keeping the attention of the reader?  Seems a bit overwhelming, doesn\'t it?  Maybe a little humbling?  After all, most of us don\'t live crazy, exciting James Bond kind of lives, right?  So why would someone want to read \"our\" story?  Good question.  But rather than attempting to solve the seemingly impossible, let me tell you a little about a book and someone who seems to have figured it out.  And with near perfection, I might add.\r\n\r\nIn <em>Run With Me: An Accidental Runner and the Power of Poo,</em> my friend and author, Jennifer Luitwieler takes all of the ingredients listed above, tells her story in a way that instantly captures your attention, and all the while creates a cohesive narrative that remains adjoined in seamless perfection.  And she does this in one of the most simple ways possible: she takes you on a <em>journey</em>.  The vehicle she uses for the journey is<em> running </em>and the fuel that gets you there is <em>poo</em>.  Yes, poo!  Dog poo to be more specific.  But you\'ll have to read the book to find out why dog poo is so significant to this book.\r\n\r\nAs Jennifer states in the beginning of the book, <em>Run With Me</em> is not only a book about running.  And it really isn\'t, although in a strange way, it is.  Again, you\'ll just have to read the book to understand the dichotomy.  In realty, running is only the cohesive gel that holds the story together.  It\'s the common thread that keeps it going and unites aspects of a life, just like yours and mine and packages them together.  Although running has become a significant part of her life, she uses her passion to link ordinarily life together in an enjoyable story.  That is what is so powerful about this book.  Jennifer creates a story telling model that reveals that each and every one of us has a \"story\", we just have to find the vehicle that carries it.  If you\'re runner, you\'ll get it.  If you\'re not a runner, you\'ll get it.\r\n\r\nOne of my favorite aspects of the book is it\'s simplicity and holistic flow.  In a society that compartmentalizes every aspect of our life, Jennifer is able to blend life realities into a refreshing story that is intertwined at almost every point.  Each theme that she emphasizes and each point she makes, remarkably connects to the entire essential theme and leaves no loose ends.  The story is organic and flows naturally without confusion.  You never get lost in the story or find yourself wondering where a particular point is going.  Whether she is describing her spiritual journey and frustrations with the Church, or the details of her first half marathon, she makes her point while making sure that you\'re connecting with her.\r\n\r\n<em>Run with me</em> is fun, refreshing and uplifting.  In fact, having somewhat of a melancholy personality, at times I found it too uplifting!  Through the story, Jennifer is like the friend that keep telling you jokes or tickling you until you smile.  You do your best to remain in self-pity, but you finally submit, realizing that your attempts are futile.  You WILL smile.  You WILL laugh.  You WILL end up having a better outlook on life. Curse you, Jennifer, and your motivationally themed memoir!\r\n\r\nIn all honesty, Jennifer leaves it up to you.  She has no agenda and no preconceived notions that she will change your perspective on life.  She simply shares her journey.  <em>Run With Me</em> leaves you feeling that you just had a great conversation with a friend, she shared some good stuff with you and hopes you took something from the story.  You get the impression that if she made you laugh, at least for that moment, she accomplished her goal.  Although, if you want to run with her, just a little farther, she\'s ready to go!\r\n\r\nRead <em>Run With Me</em> and run with Jennifer!\r\n\r\n&nbsp;','Run With Me by Jennifer Luitwieler: A Retrospective Review ','','inherit','open','open','','1869-revision-4','','','2011-11-07 10:04:05','2011-11-07 18:04:05','',1869,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1869-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1877,1,'2011-11-07 10:05:03','2011-11-07 18:05:03','','Jesus_Cross','','inherit','open','open','','jesus_cross','','','2011-11-07 10:05:03','2011-11-07 18:05:03','',1852,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Jesus_Cross.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(1878,67,'2011-11-07 10:04:39','2011-11-07 18:04:39','Have you ever wondered what your life would look like if told through a story?  Imagine if you had to chronicle your life up to this moment, what would it look like?  How would it sound?  What would you choose to include?  What would you leave out and why?  What would you highlight, and why would that be interesting to others?  What people would stand out as characters in the story?  What would be the plot?  How would the story rise to a climax and then end with every aspect coming together to complete the wonderful tale that is your life, all the while keeping the attention of the reader?  Seems a bit overwhelming, doesn\'t it?  Maybe a little humbling?  After all, most of us don\'t live crazy, exciting James Bond kind of lives, right?  So why would someone want to read \"our\" story?  Good question.  But rather than attempting to solve the seemingly impossible, let me tell you a little about a book and someone who seems to have figured it out.  And with near perfection, I might add.\r\n\r\nIn <em>Run With Me: An Accidental Runner and the Power of Poo,</em> my friend and author, Jennifer Luitwieler takes all of the ingredients listed above, tells her story in a way that instantly captures your attention, and all the while creates a cohesive narrative that remains adjoined in seamless perfection.  And she does this in one of the most simple ways possible: she takes you on a <em>journey</em>.  The vehicle she uses for the journey is<em> running </em>and the fuel that gets you there is <em>poo</em>.  Yes, poo!  Dog poo to be more specific.  But you\'ll have to read the book to find out why dog poo is so significant to this book.\r\n\r\nAs Jennifer states in the beginning of the book, <em>Run With Me</em> is not only a book about running.  And it really isn\'t, although in a strange way, it is.  Again, you\'ll just have to read the book to understand the dichotomy.  In realty, running is only the cohesive gel that holds the story together.  It\'s the common thread that keeps it going and unites aspects of a life, just like yours and mine and packages them together.  Although running has become a significant part of her life, she uses her passion to link ordinarily life together in an enjoyable story.  That is what is so powerful about this book.  Jennifer creates a story telling model that reveals that each and every one of us has a \"story\", we just have to find the vehicle that carries it.  If you\'re runner, you\'ll get it.  If you\'re not a runner, you\'ll get it.\r\n\r\nOne of my favorite aspects of the book is it\'s simplicity and holistic flow.  In a society that compartmentalizes every aspect of our life, Jennifer is able to blend life realities into a refreshing story that is intertwined at almost every point.  Each theme that she emphasizes and each point she makes, remarkably connects to the entire essential theme and leaves no loose ends.  The story is organic and flows naturally without confusion.  You never get lost in the story or find yourself wondering where a particular point is going.  Whether she is describing her spiritual journey and frustrations with the Church, or the details of her first half marathon, she makes her point while making sure that you\'re connecting with her.\r\n\r\n<em>Run with me</em> is fun, refreshing and uplifting.  In fact, having somewhat of a melancholy personality, at times I found it too uplifting!  Through the story, Jennifer is like the friend that keep telling you jokes or tickling you until you smile.  You do your best to remain in self-pity, but you finally submit, realizing that your attempts are futile.  You WILL smile.  You WILL laugh.  You WILL end up having a better outlook on life. Curse you, Jennifer, and your motivationally themed memoir!\r\n\r\nIn all honesty, Jennifer leaves it up to you.  She has no agenda and no preconceived notions that she will change your perspective on life.  She simply shares her journey.  <em>Run With Me</em> leaves you feeling that you just had a great conversation with a friend, she shared some good stuff with you and hopes you took something from the story.  You get the impression that if she made you laugh, at least for that moment, she accomplished her goal.  Although, if you want to run with her, just a little farther, she\'s ready to go!\r\n\r\nRead <em>Run With Me</em> and run with Jennifer!\r\n\r\n&nbsp;','Run With Me by Jennifer Luitwieler: A Retrospective Review ','','inherit','open','open','','1869-revision-5','','','2011-11-07 10:04:39','2011-11-07 18:04:39','',1869,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1869-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(1879,1,'2011-11-07 10:00:26','2011-11-07 18:00:26','As the lead pastor of a contemporary worship service, I have had a lot of time to meditate upon the lyrics of Jeremy Riddle\'s song \"Sweetly Broken,\" which we sing perhaps every other weekend. The verses are a catechism of penal substitution theology: \"For on [the cross] my Savior both bruised and crushed / Showed that God is love / And God is just\" and \"I was under Your wrath / Now through the cross I\'m reconciled.\"\r\n\r\nI often cringe at the way that an overzealous worship of substitutionary atonement creates an account of divine justice in which God is way more invested in making humanity pay infinitely for every small infraction against Him than He cares about standing up for the widows, orphans, and aliens. I\'ve also spent many hours of my life wrestling with the Greek word <em>orge </em>which gets translated as \"wrath\" in English, but is also etymologically related to our word \"orgy.\" It seems like there is more going on with God\'s <em>orge</em> than just intense anger. I tend to think of God\'s <em>orge</em> as expressing the cataclysmic dissonance that occurs when God\'s all-consuming, infinite love confronts our stand-offish self-reliance and self-justification.\r\n\r\nBut what really makes me uneasy about this song is the chorus:\r\n<blockquote><em>At the cross You beckon me</em>\r\n<em> You draw me gently to my knees, and I am</em>\r\n<em> Lost for words, so lost in love,</em>\r\n<em> I\'m sweetly broken, wholly surrendered</em></blockquote>\r\nAm I the only one who sees this as an uncomfortably erotic image? Madonna\'s song \"Like a Prayer\" uses similar imagery: \"When you call my name, it\'s like a little prayer; I\'m <em>down on my knees</em>, I can take you there.\" Throughout Christian history, erotic language has been used to describe the mystical reality of our relationship with Christ. He is called the bridegroom of the church, and the steamy Biblical book <em>Song of Songs</em> has been interpreted as a description of what that bridal chamber looks like. Jesus certainly used language about his own body that was very uncomfortable for His original listeners to hear: \"Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.\" (John 6:53). Early Christians were accused by the Romans of cannibalism because of language like this.\r\n\r\nHere\'s my concern though. When the cross is eroticized in a song like this, do we forget that real blood was shed? As Mark Baker writes in his <em>Recovering the Scandal of the Cross</em>, the brutality of what was done to Jesus has been lost in an age when we\'re \"lost in love\" with the piety of our atonement theories. Certainly Paul used the cross metaphorically in his writings; it\'s an eternal mystery that transcends the temporal physical event itself, but has the cross lost its power when we are able to use words like \"gentle\" and \"sweet\" to talk about what happened to Jesus? Perhaps the problem is not so much the eroticism, but the fact that Jeremy Riddle isn\'t really \"lost for words\" before a cross that gets domesticated when it becomes the centerpiece of a love song.\r\n\r\nI will never completely understand the cross, though I will probably preach about it several hundred more times before I die. I understand that Riddle is grappling for a way to describe the mystery of atonement and that he\'s talking about his personal experience of redemption rather than what physically happened to Jesus. But it\'s also important to name the truly horrifying eroticism of the cross, since Jesus was <em>penetrated</em> by the world\'s nails. So I\'m not sure that \"gentle\" and \"sweet\" are the right adjectives to use when talking about the rape of the creator of the universe. I must confess I\'m \"lost for words\" myself, because I\'m not sure how I would write the song differently or whether we should be making pop love songs about the cross.','Eroticizing the Cross: Jeremy Riddle\'s \"Sweetly Broken\"','','inherit','open','open','','1852-revision-4','','','2011-11-07 10:00:26','2011-11-07 18:00:26','',1852,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1852-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1880,1,'2011-11-07 13:46:52','2011-11-07 21:46:52','Have you ever wondered what your life would look like if told through a story?  Imagine if you had to chronicle your life up to this moment, what would it look like?  How would it sound?  What would you choose to include?  What would you leave out and why?  What would you highlight, and why would that be interesting to others?  What people would stand out as characters in the story?  What would be the plot?  How would the story rise to a climax and then end with every aspect coming together to complete the wonderful tale that is your life, all the while keeping the attention of the reader?  Seems a bit overwhelming, doesn\'t it?  Maybe a little humbling?  After all, most of us don\'t live crazy, exciting James Bond kind of lives, right?  So why would someone want to read \"our\" story?  Good question.  But rather than attempting to solve the seemingly impossible, let me tell you a little about a book and someone who seems to have figured it out.  And with near perfection, I might add.\n\nIn <em><a href=\"http://store.civitaspress.com/books/242\" target=\"_blank\">Run With Me: An Accidental Runner and the Power of Poo</a>,</em> my friend and author, Jennifer Luitwieler takes all of the ingredients listed above, tells her story in a way that instantly captures your attention, and all the while creates a cohesive narrative that remains adjoined in seamless perfection.  And she does this in one of the most simple ways possible: she takes you on a <em>journey</em>.  The vehicle she uses for the journey is<em> running </em>and the fuel that gets you there is <em>poo</em>.  Yes, poo!  Dog poo to be more specific.  But you\'ll have to read the book to find out why dog poo is so significant to this book.\n\nAs Jennifer states in the beginning of the book, <em>Run With Me</em> is not only a book about running.  And it really isn\'t, although in a strange way, it is.  Again, you\'ll just have to read the book to understand the dichotomy.  In realty, running is only the cohesive gel that holds the story together.  It\'s the common thread that keeps it going and unites aspects of a life, just like yours and mine and packages them together.  Although running has become a significant part of her life, she uses her passion to link ordinarily life together in an enjoyable story.  That is what is so powerful about this book.  Jennifer creates a story telling model that reveals that each and every one of us has a \"story\", we just have to find the vehicle that carries it.  If you\'re runner, you\'ll get it.  If you\'re not a runner, you\'ll get it.\n\nOne of my favorite aspects of the book is it\'s simplicity and holistic flow.  In a society that compartmentalizes every aspect of our life, Jennifer is able to blend life realities into a refreshing story that is intertwined at almost every point.  Each theme that she emphasizes and each point she makes, remarkably connects to the entire essential theme and leaves no loose ends.  The story is organic and flows naturally without confusion.  You never get lost in the story or find yourself wondering where a particular point is going.  Whether she is describing her spiritual journey and frustrations with the Church, or the details of her first half marathon, she makes her point while making sure that you\'re connecting with her.\n\n<em>Run with me</em> is fun, refreshing and uplifting.  In fact, having somewhat of a melancholy personality, at times I found it too uplifting!  Through the story, Jennifer is like the friend that keep telling you jokes or tickling you until you smile.  You do your best to remain in self-pity, but you finally submit, realizing that your attempts are futile.  You WILL smile.  You WILL laugh.  You WILL end up having a better outlook on life. Curse you, Jennifer, and your motivationally themed memoir!\n\nIn all honesty, Jennifer leaves it up to you.  She has no agenda and no preconceived notions that she will change your perspective on life.  She simply shares her journey.  <em>Run With Me</em> leaves you feeling that you just had a great conversation with a friend, she shared some good stuff with you and hopes you took something from the story.  You get the impression that if she made you laugh, at least for that moment, she accomplished her goal.  Although, if you want to run with her, just a little farther, she\'s ready to go!\n\nRead <em>Run With Me</em> and run with Jennifer!\n\n&nbsp;','Run With Me by Jennifer Luitwieler: A Retrospective Review ','','inherit','open','open','','1869-autosave','','','2011-11-07 13:46:52','2011-11-07 21:46:52','',1869,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1869-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(1881,20,'2011-11-07 11:31:31','2011-11-07 19:31:31','I try to be conscious of what I buy and what I eat, and to take an interest in where things are made, by who, for how much, and so on.  And yet, no matter how well I manage to do this, I remain a consumer.  I might purchase fair trade coffee and chocolate, but I’m still addicted to coffee and chocolate.  My wife tries to shop only for clothes made in the U.S., but she still really likes to shop.   So I started wondering how much of this is just human, and how much of it is culturally constructed.\n\nDespite the fact that many Christians themselves get caught up in this pattern of behavior, there seems to at least be some level of awareness in the church about the problem.  This is a good thing.  Less understood though is the extent to which society is able to increasingly produce in us an insatiable desire for consumption in the first place.  You also hear the word materialism, but this could be a misnomer.  Material-ism implies the absolutization of the material, when in fact the lie we are fed is that the material offers something else: happiness, fulfillment... a certain image or experience.In their genuine intent to encourage counter-culturalism, we might hear pastors talk about the innate human drive to always want more.  But how much of this is rooted in a universal anthropology vs. just a modern Western phenomenon now gone viral?  I mean, people aren\'t just born with preferences for television sets.  Our preferences typically  emerge from a context of social relations.\n\nOf course there is a difference between our basic needs and deepest desires.  Theological anthropology has said that human beings live with a kind of openness directed toward possibility in the world, always becoming and searching.  Some people say there is a \"God-shaped hole\" in each us - a void.  This too can be a good a thing.  But this desire can be distorted.  It can be harnessed by market forces in such a way as to induce complacency in our individualism and trivialize any concern about our unsustainable standard of living.\n\nEven more troubling, this desire is very difficult to control.  Theologian <a title=\"Joerg Rieger homepage\" href=\"http://www.joergrieger.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Joerg Rieger</a> argues that in today\'s world the drive to consume is frequently propelled by economic mechanisms and reinforced by the advertising industry.  The deceit of this system is increasingly taken for granted.  Obviously recognizing this, one of my former seminary professors Roger Olson recently wrote a <a title=\"Can a Christian Work in the Marketing Field?\" href=\"www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2011/10/can-a-christian-work-in-the-marketing-field/\" target=\"_blank\">blog post</a> asking whether Christians should even work in marketing at all!  Rieger further contends that economic and religious desires often parallel each other.  This is illustrated by the way we tend to project our desires and ideals from the physical world onto the divine and thus replace the transcendent God with an idol.  If desire is shaped by the production of wealth in a given society, this process can have a subconscious effect on people’s deepest convictions and ultimate values.  This means that the way culture teaches us to view wealth has a tremendous impact on the kind of people we become - not to even mention the potential social costs that can be incurred on society\'s most vulnerable citizens as a result.\n\nAs communities that are supposed to be convicting, healing and nurturing us on the path to holiness, churches have a vital part to play in resisting co-optation by the marketplace.  Sadly it’s not uncommon, however, for Christian congregations to become complicit in the cycle of consuming and selling as well, even if only in very subtle ways.  To a degree this might be unavoidable, but it’s imperative for us to be sensitized and attentive to how we succumb to various addictive, superimposed desires.  I’m interested in how the church can be a place that enables Christians to subvert the status quo in this regard.  I know there are many tangible ways to do this, but I’m curious as to what others have seen and discovered about how our local practice can transcend systems that resist and suppress change.\n\nSpeaking of which, I really liked what David Fitch had to say recently <a title=\"Why branding is the ultimate anti-missional act\" href=\"http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/the-mars-hill-seattle-%E2%80%9Ccease-and-desist%E2%80%9D-letter-why-branding-is-the-ultimate-anti-missional-act/\" target=\"_blank\">in a post he made</a> about branding as the ultimate anti-missional act.  Seems very related to this struggle.','That to Which Your Heart Clings: Diagnosing Consumerism   ','','inherit','open','open','','1148-revision-26','','','2011-11-07 11:31:31','2011-11-07 19:31:31','',1148,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1148-revision-26/',0,'revision','',0),(1882,20,'2011-11-07 11:32:18','2011-11-07 19:32:18','I try to be conscious of what I buy and what I eat, and to take an interest in where things are made, by who, for how much, and so on.  And yet, no matter how well I manage to do this, I remain a consumer.  I might purchase fair trade coffee and chocolate, but I’m still addicted to coffee and chocolate.  My wife tries to shop only for clothes made in the U.S., but she still really likes to shop.   So I started wondering how much of this is just human, and how much of it is culturally constructed.\r\n\r\nDespite the fact that many Christians themselves get caught up in this pattern of behavior, there seems to at least be some level of awareness in the church about the problem.  This is a good thing.  Less understood though is the extent to which society is able to increasingly produce in us an insatiable desire for consumption in the first place.  You also hear the word materialism, but this could be a misnomer.  Material-ism implies the absolutization of the material, when in fact the lie we are fed is that the material offers something else: happiness, fulfillment... a certain image or experience.In their genuine intent to encourage counter-culturalism, we might hear pastors talk about the innate human drive to always want more.  But how much of this is rooted in a universal anthropology vs. just a modern Western phenomenon now gone viral?  I mean, people aren\'t just born with preferences for television sets.  Our preferences typically  emerge from a context of social relations.\r\n\r\nOf course there is a difference between our basic needs and deepest desires.  Theological anthropology has said that human beings live with a kind of openness directed toward possibility in the world, always becoming and searching.  Some people say there is a \"God-shaped hole\" in each us - a void.  This too can be a good a thing.  But this desire can be distorted.  It can be harnessed by market forces in such a way as to induce complacency in our individualism and trivialize any concern about our unsustainable standard of living.\r\n\r\nEven more troubling, this desire is very difficult to control.  Theologian <a title=\"Joerg Rieger homepage\" href=\"http://www.joergrieger.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Joerg Rieger</a> argues that in today\'s world the drive to consume is frequently propelled by economic mechanisms and reinforced by the advertising industry.  The deceit of this system is increasingly taken for granted.  Obviously recognizing this, one of my former seminary professors Roger Olson recently wrote a <a title=\"Can a Christian Work in the Marketing Field?\" href=\"www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2011/10/can-a-christian-work-in-the-marketing-field/\" target=\"_blank\">blog post</a> asking whether Christians should even work in marketing at all!  Rieger further contends that economic and religious desires often parallel each other.  This is illustrated by the way we tend to project our desires and ideals from the physical world onto the divine and thus replace the transcendent God with an idol.  If desire is shaped by the production of wealth in a given society, this process can have a subconscious effect on people’s deepest convictions and ultimate values.  This means that the way culture teaches us to view wealth has a tremendous impact on the kind of people we become - not to even mention the potential social costs that can be incurred on society\'s most vulnerable citizens as a result.\r\n\r\nAs communities that are supposed to be convicting, healing and nurturing us on the path to holiness, churches have a vital part to play in resisting co-optation by the marketplace.  Sadly it’s not uncommon, however, for Christian congregations to become complicit in the cycle of consuming and selling as well, even if only in very subtle ways.  To a degree this might be unavoidable, but it’s imperative for us to be sensitized and attentive to how we succumb to various addictive, superimposed desires.  I’m interested in how the church can be a place that enables Christians to subvert the status quo in this regard.  I know there are many tangible ways to do this, but I’m curious as to what others have seen and discovered about how our local practice can transcend systems that resist and suppress change.\r\n\r\nSpeaking of which, I really liked what David Fitch had to say recently <a title=\"Why branding is the ultimate anti-missional act\" href=\"http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/the-mars-hill-seattle-%E2%80%9Ccease-and-desist%E2%80%9D-letter-why-branding-is-the-ultimate-anti-missional-act/\" target=\"_blank\">in a post he made</a> about branding as the ultimate anti-missional act.  Seems very related to this struggle.','That to Which Your Heart Clings: Diagnosing Consumerism   ','','inherit','open','open','','1148-revision-27','','','2011-11-07 11:32:18','2011-11-07 19:32:18','',1148,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1148-revision-27/',0,'revision','',0),(1883,20,'2012-03-24 13:35:48','2012-03-24 20:35:48','I try to be conscious of what I buy and what I eat, and to take an interest in where things are made, by who, for how much, and so on.  And yet, no matter how well I manage to do this, I remain a consumer.  I might purchase fair trade coffee and chocolate, but I’m still addicted to coffee and chocolate.  My wife tries to shop only for clothes made in the U.S., but she still really likes to shop.   So I started wondering how much of this is just human, and how much of it is culturally constructed.\n\nDespite the fact that many Christians themselves get caught up in this pattern of behavior, there seems to at least be some level of awareness in the church about the problem.  This is a good thing.  Less understood though is the extent to which society is able to increasingly produce in us an insatiable desire for consumption in the first place.  You also hear the word materialism, but this could be a misnomer.  Material-ism implies the absolutization of the material, when in fact the lie we are fed is that the material offers something else: happiness, fulfillment... a certain image or experience.In their genuine intent to encourage counter-culturalism, we might hear pastors talk about the innate human drive to always want more.  But how much of this is rooted in a universal anthropology vs. just a modern Western phenomenon now gone viral?  I mean, people aren\'t just born with preferences for television sets.  Our preferences typically  emerge from a context of social relations.\n\nOf course there is a difference between our basic needs and deepest desires.  Theological anthropology has said that human beings live with a kind of openness directed toward possibility in the world, always becoming and searching.  Some people say there is a \"God-shaped hole\" in each us - a void.  This too can be a good a thing.  But this desire can be distorted.  It can be harnessed by market forces in such a way as to induce complacency in our individualism and trivialize any concern about our unsustainable standard of living.\n\nEven more troubling, this desire is very difficult to control.  Theologian <a title=\"Joerg Rieger homepage\" href=\"http://www.joergrieger.com/\" target=\"_blank\">Joerg Rieger</a> argues that in today\'s world the drive to consume is frequently propelled by economic mechanisms and reinforced by the advertising industry.  The deceit of this system is increasingly taken for granted.  Obviously recognizing this, one of my former seminary professors Roger Olson recently wrote a <a title=\"Can a Christian Work in the Marketing Field?\" href=\"www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2011/10/can-a-christian-work-in-the-marketing-field/\" target=\"_blank\">blog post</a> asking whether Christians should even work in marketing at all!  Rieger further contends that economic and religious desires often parallel each other.  This is illustrated by the way we tend to project our desires and ideals from the physical world onto the divine and thus replace the transcendent God with an idol.  If desire is shaped by the production of wealth in a given society, this process can have a subconscious effect on people’s deepest convictions and ultimate values.  This means that the way culture teaches us to view wealth has a tremendous impact on the kind of people we become - not to even mention the potential social costs that can be incurred on society\'s most vulnerable citizens as a result.\n\nAs communities that are supposed to be convicting, healing and nurturing us on the path to holiness, churches have a vital part to play in resisting co-optation by the marketplace.  Sadly it’s not uncommon, however, for Christian congregations to become complicit in the cycle of consuming and selling as well, even if only in very subtle ways.  To a degree this might be unavoidable, but it’s imperative for us to be sensitized and attentive to how we succumb to various addictive, superimposed desires.  I’m interested in how the church can be a place that enables Christians to subvert the status quo in this regard.  I know there are many tangible ways to do this, but I’m curious as to what others have seen and discovered about how our local practice can transcend systems that resist and suppress change.\n\nSpeaking of which, I really liked what David Fitch had to say recently <a title=\"Why branding is the ultimate anti-missional act\" href=\"http://www.reclaimingthemission.com/the-mars-hill-seattle-%E2%80%9Ccease-and-desist%E2%80%9D-letter-why-branding-is-the-ultimate-anti-missional-act/\" target=\"_blank\">in a post he made</a> about branding as the ultimate anti-missional act.  Seems very related to this struggle.\n\n&nbsp;','That to Which Your Heart Clings: Diagnosing Consumerism   ','','inherit','open','open','','1148-autosave','','','2012-03-24 13:35:48','2012-03-24 20:35:48','',1148,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1148-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(2255,35,'2011-11-19 11:00:49','2011-11-19 19:00:49','<strong><a href=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Midwest-Outlaw-Preachers-Retreat.jpg\"><img class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-2256\" title=\"Midwest Outlaw Preacher\'s Retreat\" src=\"http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Midwest-Outlaw-Preachers-Retreat.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"143\" height=\"268\" /></a>Dates</strong>: Friday, February 3 through Sunday, February 5, 2012\r\n\r\n<strong>Location</strong>: The Cove of Lake Geneva,  Wisconsin\r\n\r\n<strong>The theme this year will be “Uncensored Christianity”.   </strong>Ever struggled with feeling like your prayers have to be perfect, because if you don’t say the right kind of things God will tune you out? Are there things you’ve always wanted to ask or say to God, but haven’t because you’re afraid God will reject you?   The truth is God wants to have totally honest conversations with you, and you can say anything you want.  No topic, language, or feeling is inappropriate.Come with us as we spend the weekend in Lake Geneva finding a way to get past all of the “shoulds” of religion so we can enter into a truly, scandalously honest relationship with God. We want to learn to relish the high times, low times, questions, answers, and all the other dynamics of what we call Christianity.Our keynote speaker is <a title=\"Facilitators &amp; Speakers\" href=\"http://midwestoutlawretreat.wordpress.com/facilitators-speakers/\">Joy Wilson</a>, the author of <a href=\"http://store.civitaspress.com/books/193\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Uncensored Prayer: The Spiritual Practice of Wrestling With God</em></a><em>,</em> who will show us through her poetry how being open and honest in her conversations with God has transformed her understanding of Him/Her, and immensely expanded her understanding of what it means to have faith.  Also, there will be a session with the homeless advocate and artist, Revolución MacInnes.\r\n\r\nWho are Outlaw Preachers?  An eclectic group of Jesus followers whose interests and ministries often aren’t traditional. You are an Outlaw is you say you are, preacher or not. Registration is only $25, which includes a Chicago style pizza dinner on Friday night and a Breakfast together on Sunday morning.\r\n\r\nSee the website for information about lodging and to register today!\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http://midwestoutlawretreat.wordpress.com/\" target=\"_blank\">http://midwestoutlawretreat.wordpress.com/</a>','Midwest Outlaw Preacher Winter Retreat 2012','','publish','open','open','','midwest-outlaw-preacher-winter-retreat-2012','','\nhttp://midwestoutlawretreat.wordpress.com/facilitators-speakers/','2011-11-16 08:25:48','2011-11-16 16:25:48','',0,'http://provoketive.com/?p=2255',0,'post','',0),(1910,0,'2011-11-08 08:00:06','2011-11-08 16:00:06','What about the English invent football championship?\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: elorbenry\nAUTHOR EMAIL: kosogorovaaurl494@mail.ru\nAUTHOR URL: http://viagravillage.com/\nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Blog List\nIP: 188.92.75.244\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; elorbenry\n    [Email] =&gt; kosogorovaaurl494@mail.ru\n    [Website] =&gt; http://viagravillage.com/\n    [Comment] =&gt; What about the English invent football championship?\n)\n','elorbenry - 2011-11-08 08:00:06','','publish','open','open','','4ae3af93fe9f2f0bb50545cdcb0d6c56','','','2011-11-08 08:00:06','2011-11-08 16:00:06','',683,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=1910',0,'feedback','',0),(1884,0,'2011-11-07 13:08:36','2011-11-07 21:08:36','Jonathan Brink\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Ally Spotts\nAUTHOR EMAIL: ally.spotts@gmail.com\nAUTHOR URL: http://allyspotts.com\nSUBJECT: Provoketive Magazine Writing For Provoketive\nIP: 50.43.14.75\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Ally Spotts\n    [Email] =&gt; ally.spotts@gmail.com\n    [Existing Blog or Website] =&gt; http://allyspotts.com\n    [List the topic you are interested writing about] =&gt; Jonathan Brink\n    [Current or New WordPress Login Name (We\'ll send you a password.)] =&gt; Ally.Spotts@gmail.com\n)\n','Ally Spotts - 2011-11-07 13:08:36','','publish','open','open','','1828a30b2f40536add103834ab7f3e64','','','2011-11-07 13:08:36','2011-11-07 21:08:36','',358,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=1884',0,'feedback','',0),(1887,98,'2011-11-09 08:00:45','2011-11-09 16:00:45','<em>This is the first post in the Series: Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage.</em>\r\n<h3>I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Saving sex for marriage isn’t that big of a deal.</h3>\r\nThink about it.\r\n\r\nIt’s a test of your will. That’s all. Just a line drawn in the sand that you tell yourself you’re not going to cross. You can walk up to the line, poke your toe over the edge, push it around a little and see if it will budge.\r\n\r\nYou might even jump over the line a couple of times but then you’ll chalk it up to a moment of weakness and jump back to the other side. The guilt you feel will keep you on the right side of the line, at least for awhile.\r\n\r\nThat what “saving sex for marriage” is about, isn\'t it? That’s how we’re all acting. I keep getting questions about this and can’t help but wonder what it is we’re trying to get at. What does it mean to save sex for marriage? What are physical boundaries all about?\r\n\r\n<em><strong><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Wedding-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" />Correct me if I\'m wrong, but here are the questions you really want to ask.</strong></em>\r\n\r\nIf I’m saving sex for marriage can I have oral sex? Is that wrong?\r\n\r\nHow much kissing is too much kissing? Can we sleep in the same bed?\r\n\r\nWhat about dry humping? What’s the verdict on that?\r\n\r\nWhen it comes to touching am I allowed to touch and be touched in whatever ways I want as long as it’s over the clothes?\r\n\r\nWhat if I get an orgasm from it? Is that wrong?\r\n\r\nWhat about getting naked? Can I take my shirt off as long as my pants are on? Can one of us be naked if the other one isn’t?\r\n\r\nWhat is the right combination of nakedness to clothes to prevent myself from being convicted of sexual sin?\r\n<h4>We’re talking ourselves in circles. We’re asking all the wrong questions.</h4>\r\nAnd we wonder why, at the end of the day - no matter where we set the boundary - we have a hard time keeping it.\r\n\r\nFollowing a list of rules like that is pointless. As in it <em>has no point</em>.\r\n<h4>No wonder we get tired and give up.</h4>\r\nI want to challenge us to stop asking the question “What’s okay for me to do or not do” and start asking this question instead:\r\n\r\n<em>“Why am I committed to this in the first place?”</em>\r\n\r\nHonestly. Consider this a free-for all in my comments section.\r\n<h3>Why are Christians waiting until marriage for sex?</h3>','Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage? Part 1','','publish','open','open','','why-are-christians-saving-sex-for-marriage-part-1','','','2011-11-11 11:43:42','2011-11-11 19:43:42','',0,'http://provoketive.com/?p=1887',0,'post','',10),(1888,1,'2011-11-07 13:45:06','2011-11-07 21:45:06','','Run_With_Me','','inherit','open','open','','run_with_me','','','2011-11-07 13:45:06','2011-11-07 21:45:06','',1869,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Run_With_Me.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(1889,1,'2011-11-07 13:41:10','2011-11-07 21:41:10','Have you ever wondered what your life would look like if told through a story?  Imagine if you had to chronicle your life up to this moment, what would it look like?  How would it sound?  What would you choose to include?  What would you leave out and why?  What would you highlight, and why would that be interesting to others?  What people would stand out as characters in the story?  What would be the plot?  How would the story rise to a climax and then end with every aspect coming together to complete the wonderful tale that is your life, all the while keeping the attention of the reader?  Seems a bit overwhelming, doesn\'t it?  Maybe a little humbling?  After all, most of us don\'t live crazy, exciting James Bond kind of lives, right?  So why would someone want to read \"our\" story?  Good question.  But rather than attempting to solve the seemingly impossible, let me tell you a little about a book and someone who seems to have figured it out.  And with near perfection, I might add.\r\n\r\nIn <em><a href=\"http://store.civitaspress.com/books/242\" target=\"_blank\">Run With Me: An Accidental Runner and the Power of Poo</a>,</em> my friend and author, Jennifer Luitwieler takes all of the ingredients listed above, tells her story in a way that instantly captures your attention, and all the while creates a cohesive narrative that remains adjoined in seamless perfection.  And she does this in one of the most simple ways possible: she takes you on a <em>journey</em>.  The vehicle she uses for the journey is<em> running </em>and the fuel that gets you there is <em>poo</em>.  Yes, poo!  Dog poo to be more specific.  But you\'ll have to read the book to find out why dog poo is so significant to this book.\r\n\r\nAs Jennifer states in the beginning of the book, <em>Run With Me</em> is not only a book about running.  And it really isn\'t, although in a strange way, it is.  Again, you\'ll just have to read the book to understand the dichotomy.  In realty, running is only the cohesive gel that holds the story together.  It\'s the common thread that keeps it going and unites aspects of a life, just like yours and mine and packages them together.  Although running has become a significant part of her life, she uses her passion to link ordinarily life together in an enjoyable story.  That is what is so powerful about this book.  Jennifer creates a story telling model that reveals that each and every one of us has a \"story\", we just have to find the vehicle that carries it.  If you\'re runner, you\'ll get it.  If you\'re not a runner, you\'ll get it.\r\n\r\nOne of my favorite aspects of the book is it\'s simplicity and holistic flow.  In a society that compartmentalizes every aspect of our life, Jennifer is able to blend life realities into a refreshing story that is intertwined at almost every point.  Each theme that she emphasizes and each point she makes, remarkably connects to the entire essential theme and leaves no loose ends.  The story is organic and flows naturally without confusion.  You never get lost in the story or find yourself wondering where a particular point is going.  Whether she is describing her spiritual journey and frustrations with the Church, or the details of her first half marathon, she makes her point while making sure that you\'re connecting with her.\r\n\r\n<em>Run with me</em> is fun, refreshing and uplifting.  In fact, having somewhat of a melancholy personality, at times I found it too uplifting!  Through the story, Jennifer is like the friend that keep telling you jokes or tickling you until you smile.  You do your best to remain in self-pity, but you finally submit, realizing that your attempts are futile.  You WILL smile.  You WILL laugh.  You WILL end up having a better outlook on life. Curse you, Jennifer, and your motivationally themed memoir!\r\n\r\nIn all honesty, Jennifer leaves it up to you.  She has no agenda and no preconceived notions that she will change your perspective on life.  She simply shares her journey.  <em>Run With Me</em> leaves you feeling that you just had a great conversation with a friend, she shared some good stuff with you and hopes you took something from the story.  You get the impression that if she made you laugh, at least for that moment, she accomplished her goal.  Although, if you want to run with her, just a little farther, she\'s ready to go!\r\n\r\nRead <em>Run With Me</em> and run with Jennifer!\r\n\r\n&nbsp;','Run With Me by Jennifer Luitwieler: A Retrospective Review ','','inherit','open','open','','1869-revision-7','','','2011-11-07 13:41:10','2011-11-07 21:41:10','',1869,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1869-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(1890,98,'2011-11-07 13:46:21','2011-11-07 21:46:21','<h3><img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4796\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;margin: 1px 5px\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Wedding-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" />I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Saving sex for marriage isn’t that big of a deal.</h3>\nThink about it.\n\nIt’s a test of your will. That’s all. Just a line drawn in the sand that you tell yourself you’re not going to cross. You can walk up to the line, poke your toe over the edge, push it around a little and see if it will budge.\n\nYou might even jump over the line a couple of times but then you’ll chalk it up to a moment of weakness and jump back to the other side. The guilt you feel will keep you on the right side of the line, at least for awhile.\n\nThat what “saving sex for marriage” is about, isn\'t it? That’s how we’re all acting. I keep getting questions about this and can’t help but wonder what it is we’re trying to get at. What does it mean to save sex for marriage? What are physical boundaries all about?\n\n<em><strong>Correct me if I\'m wrong, but here are the questions you really want to ask.</strong></em>\n\nIf I’m saving sex for marriage can I have oral sex? Is that wrong?\n\nHow much kissing is too much kissing? Can we sleep in the same bed?\n\nWhat about dry humping? What’s the verdict on that?\n\nWhen it comes to touching am I allowed to touch and be touched in whatever ways I want as long as it’s over the clothes?\n\nWhat if I get an orgasm from it? Is that wrong?\n\nWhat about getting naked? Can I take my shirt off as long as my pants are on? Can one of us be naked if the other one isn’t?\n\nWhat is the right combination of nakedness to clothes to prevent myself from being convicted of sexual sin?\n<h4>We’re talking ourselves in circles. We’re asking all the wrong questions.</h4>\nAnd we wonder why, at the end of the day - no matter where we set the boundary - we have a hard time keeping it.\n\nFollowing a list of rules like that is pointless. As in it <em>has no point</em>.\n<h4>No wonder we get tired and give up.</h4>\nI want to challenge us to stop asking the question “What’s okay for me to do or not do” and start asking this question instead:\n\n<em>“Why am I committed to this in the first place?”</em>\n\nHonestly. Consider this a free-for all in my comments section.\n<h3>Why are Christians waiting until marriage for sex?</h3>','What\'s The Big Deal About Saving Sex for Marriage? Part 1 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1887-revision','','','2011-11-07 13:46:21','2011-11-07 21:46:21','',1887,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1887-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(1891,98,'2011-11-11 08:00:37','2011-11-11 16:00:37','<em>This is the second post in the Series: Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage.</em>\r\n<h4>Trust means you have a firm reliance on the integrity and ability of a person or thing. Trust creates a foundation for strong relationship.</h4>\r\nIt’s no surprise that exercising self-control in a dating relationship builds trust.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse is the kind of person who can control his or her sexual urges.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values his/her sexuality enough to guard it until marriage.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values you and your needs above anyone else.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse understands the concept of self-sacrifice and delayed gratification.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-10-at-11.22.25-PM-210x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" />If you walk into marriage without trust in these things, you’re asking for trouble. And think of this: If you’re asking, “How far can we go?” you’re wasting energy that could be spent building <em>trust</em> in your relationship.\r\n\r\nGuarding sexuality in a dating relationship (or as a single person) is an opportunity to demonstrate trustworthiness to your future spouse.\r\n<h5>How much trust do you want to demonstrate? A little or a lot?</h5>\r\nIf you\'re single you might not know your spouse now. But think of how trustworthy you’ll seem when you say, “Yeah, it was hard. And there were times that I was lonely. But I wanted you more than I wanted anyone else.”\r\n\r\nIf you\'re in a relationship you might be dating your future spouse right now. How much does that person mean to you? Are your actions demonstrating that?\r\n<h3>Building trust takes time. You might as well start now.</h3>\r\nIf trust builds a strong relationship, and you care about your future marriage, why wouldn\'t you embrace an opportunity to demonstrate and build trust?\r\n\r\nIf you knew your actions were a direct reflection of how much your spouse would trust you someday how would it change the way you act?\r\n\r\nAnd if you knew that the amount of trust you demonstrated before marriage would be equivalent to the amount of trust you have after the wedding day? What then?\r\n<h5>Would you still be asking “how far is too far?” or would you start asking “What more can I do to demonstrate my trust?”</h5>\r\nIf you’ve already messed up, it’s okay. <em>This is your chance to prove that you’ve changed</em>. This gives you an opportunity to prove your true identity. You are a man or woman of value.\r\n\r\nYou can be trusted.\r\n<h4>Do you believe that?</h4>','Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage? Part 2','','publish','open','open','','why-are-christians-saving-sex-for-marriage-part-2','','','2011-11-11 11:44:25','2011-11-11 19:44:25','',0,'http://provoketive.com/?p=1891',0,'post','',4),(1953,1,'2011-11-08 09:18:05','2011-11-08 17:18:05','<h3>I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Saving sex for marriage isn’t that big of a deal.</h3>\r\nThink about it.\r\n\r\nIt’s a test of your will. That’s all. Just a line drawn in the sand that you tell yourself you’re not going to cross. You can walk up to the line, poke your toe over the edge, push it around a little and see if it will budge.\r\n\r\nYou might even jump over the line a couple of times but then you’ll chalk it up to a moment of weakness and jump back to the other side. The guilt you feel will keep you on the right side of the line, at least for awhile.\r\n\r\nThat what “saving sex for marriage” is about, isn\'t it? That’s how we’re all acting. I keep getting questions about this and can’t help but wonder what it is we’re trying to get at. What does it mean to save sex for marriage? What are physical boundaries all about?\r\n\r\n<em><strong><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Wedding-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" />Correct me if I\'m wrong, but here are the questions you really want to ask.</strong></em>\r\n\r\nIf I’m saving sex for marriage can I have oral sex? Is that wrong?\r\n\r\nHow much kissing is too much kissing? Can we sleep in the same bed?\r\n\r\nWhat about dry humping? What’s the verdict on that?\r\n\r\nWhen it comes to touching am I allowed to touch and be touched in whatever ways I want as long as it’s over the clothes?\r\n\r\nWhat if I get an orgasm from it? Is that wrong?\r\n\r\nWhat about getting naked? Can I take my shirt off as long as my pants are on? Can one of us be naked if the other one isn’t?\r\n\r\nWhat is the right combination of nakedness to clothes to prevent myself from being convicted of sexual sin?\r\n<h4>We’re talking ourselves in circles. We’re asking all the wrong questions.</h4>\r\nAnd we wonder why, at the end of the day - no matter where we set the boundary - we have a hard time keeping it.\r\n\r\nFollowing a list of rules like that is pointless. As in it <em>has no point</em>.\r\n<h4>No wonder we get tired and give up.</h4>\r\nI want to challenge us to stop asking the question “What’s okay for me to do or not do” and start asking this question instead:\r\n\r\n<em>“Why am I committed to this in the first place?”</em>\r\n\r\nHonestly. Consider this a free-for all in my comments section.\r\n<h3>Why are Christians waiting until marriage for sex?</h3>','Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage? Part 1','','inherit','open','open','','1887-revision-10','','','2011-11-08 09:18:05','2011-11-08 17:18:05','',1887,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/08/1887-revision-10/',0,'revision','',0),(1892,98,'2011-11-07 14:28:19','2011-11-07 22:28:19','<img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4801\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;margin: 1px 3px\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-10-at-11.22.25-PM-210x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" />\n\nIf you didn\'t read yesterday\'s post you should start there. This is the second post in a series called: <a href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/sex1\">Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? </a>\n<h4>Trust means you have a firm reliance on the integrity and ability of a person or thing. Trust creates a foundation for strong relationship.</h4>\nIt’s no surprise that exercising self-control in a dating relationship builds trust.\n\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse is the kind of person who can control his or her sexual urges.\n\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values his/her sexuality enough to guard it until marriage.\n\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values you and your needs above anyone else.\n\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse understands the concept of self-sacrifice and delayed gratification.\n\nIf you walk into marriage without trust in these things, you’re asking for trouble. And think of this: If you’re asking, “How far can we go?” you’re wasting energy that could be spent building <em>trust</em> in your relationship.\n\nGuarding sexuality in a dating relationship (or as a single person) is an opportunity to demonstrate trustworthiness to your future spouse.\n<h5>How much trust do you want to demonstrate? A little or a lot?</h5>\nIf you\'re single you might not know your spouse now. But think of how trustworthy you’ll seem when you say, “Yeah, it was hard. And there were times that I was lonely. But I wanted you more than I wanted anyone else.”\n\nIf you\'re in a relationship you might be dating your future spouse right now. How much does that person mean to you? Are your actions demonstrating that?\n<h3>Building trust takes time. You might as well start now.</h3>\nIf trust builds a strong relationship, and you care about your future marriage, why wouldn\'t you embrace an opportunity to demonstrate and build trust?\n\nIf you knew your actions were a direct reflection of how much your spouse would trust you someday how would it change the way you act?\n\nAnd if you knew that the amount of trust you demonstrated before marriage would be equivalent to the amount of trust you have after the wedding day? What then?\n<h5>Would you still be asking “how far is too far?” or would you start asking “What more can I do to demonstrate my trust?”</h5>\nIf you’ve already messed up, it’s okay. <em>This is your chance to prove that you’ve changed</em>. This gives you an opportunity to prove your true identity. You are a man or woman of value.\n\nYou can be trusted.\n<h4>Do you believe that?</h4>','It Builds Trust: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 2 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1891-revision','','','2011-11-07 14:28:19','2011-11-07 22:28:19','',1891,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1891-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(1922,1,'2011-11-08 08:50:08','2011-11-08 16:50:08','<h3>I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Saving sex for marriage isn’t that big of a deal.</h3>\r\nThink about it.\r\n\r\nIt’s a test of your will. That’s all. Just a line drawn in the sand that you tell yourself you’re not going to cross. You can walk up to the line, poke your toe over the edge, push it around a little and see if it will budge.\r\n\r\nYou might even jump over the line a couple of times but then you’ll chalk it up to a moment of weakness and jump back to the other side. The guilt you feel will keep you on the right side of the line, at least for awhile.\r\n\r\nThat what “saving sex for marriage” is about, isn\'t it? That’s how we’re all acting. I keep getting questions about this and can’t help but wonder what it is we’re trying to get at. What does it mean to save sex for marriage? What are physical boundaries all about?\r\n\r\n<em><strong><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Wedding-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" />Correct me if I\'m wrong, but here are the questions you really want to ask.</strong></em>\r\n\r\nIf I’m saving sex for marriage can I have oral sex? Is that wrong?\r\n\r\nHow much kissing is too much kissing? Can we sleep in the same bed?\r\n\r\nWhat about dry humping? What’s the verdict on that?\r\n\r\nWhen it comes to touching am I allowed to touch and be touched in whatever ways I want as long as it’s over the clothes?\r\n\r\nWhat if I get an orgasm from it? Is that wrong?\r\n\r\nWhat about getting naked? Can I take my shirt off as long as my pants are on? Can one of us be naked if the other one isn’t?\r\n\r\nWhat is the right combination of nakedness to clothes to prevent myself from being convicted of sexual sin?\r\n<h4>We’re talking ourselves in circles. We’re asking all the wrong questions.</h4>\r\nAnd we wonder why, at the end of the day - no matter where we set the boundary - we have a hard time keeping it.\r\n\r\nFollowing a list of rules like that is pointless. As in it <em>has no point</em>.\r\n<h4>No wonder we get tired and give up.</h4>\r\nI want to challenge us to stop asking the question “What’s okay for me to do or not do” and start asking this question instead:\r\n\r\n<em>“Why am I committed to this in the first place?”</em>\r\n\r\nHonestly. Consider this a free-for all in my comments section.\r\n<h3>Why are Christians waiting until marriage for sex?</h3>','What\'s The Big Deal About Saving Sex for Marriage? Part 1 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1887-revision-4','','','2011-11-08 08:50:08','2011-11-08 16:50:08','',1887,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/08/1887-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1893,98,'2011-11-13 08:00:56','2011-11-13 16:00:56','<em>This is the third post in the Series: Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage.</em>\r\n<h3>I’ve interviewed hundreds of married couples over the past 12 months.</h3>\r\nThey say the same thing about marriage: “Friendship is the most important aspect of our relationship. Don’t marry someone unless they are your best friend.”\r\n\r\nSex creates passion and romance in a relationship but when sex enters the picture friendship takes second best. And for good reason.\r\n<h4><strong><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-11-at-12.37.27-PM-200x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" />Sex is fun. It was designed that way. We’re supposed to enjoy it.</strong></h4>\r\nSex in addition to friendship creates a really lasting bond in a relationship - one that is hard to break. Sex without friendship is fragile and explosive. It’s like an expensive vase set on an unsteady table. Just give it the slightest bump and it will tumble and break.\r\n\r\n<strong>Don’t just disagree with me. Think about it.</strong>\r\n\r\nRemember the last one night stand that you had? Even if it wasn’t sex? What did you feel when you “hooked up” with someone outside of relationship? Secure and steady? Or uncomfortable and confused?\r\n\r\nStrong boundaries create security in relationship - not chaos.\r\n\r\nFriendship takes time to build. But dating gives you space to do it. Stop wasting energy asking yourself “how far is too far?” and use that energy to create space to grow friendship in your relationship.\r\n<h4><strong>The bigger space you create the faster friendship grows. And the sooner you can get to the good stuff.</strong></h4>\r\n<em>Kidding. Kind of.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> laugh together and play.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> talk about things that matter to them. Fears and frustrations. The things that make them hopeful and excited.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> communicate with each other even when they\'re angry. They work through difficult conflict.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> assume the best about each other.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> learn about each other through shared experiences. They celebrate accomplishments.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> know the best and the worst parts of each other. They demonstrate love even when it\'s difficult.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> <a title=\"It Builds Trust: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 2 of 6\" href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/waiting-for-marriage-2\">trust one another</a>.\r\n<h4>Friendship like this takes work to build.</h4>\r\nCan you think of any friends you have like this? Give yourself time and space to build this kind of friendship. You\'ll be glad you did.\r\n\r\nIf you’re having a hard time redirecting your sexual energy don’t be discouraged. That’s a good thing. That means you’re human and you like each other. And when you’ve gone to a certain place physically it’s really hard not to go back.\r\n\r\n<strong>But don’t try to be a super hero. No one is expecting you to be that strong. Create boundaries will help you to accomplish your objective.</strong>\r\n\r\nHang out in groups. Go out on dates. Don’t stay in. Ask people to hold you accountable and ask you hard questions. Don’t try to manage your actions or justify them. Admit you were wrong and ask for help.\r\n\r\nLaugh. Talk. Play games.\r\n\r\nBe friends first.','Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage? Part 3','','publish','open','open','','why-are-christians-saving-sex-for-marriage-part-3','','\nhttp://www.allyspotts.com/waiting-for-marriage-2','2011-11-11 11:45:11','2011-11-11 19:45:11','',0,'http://provoketive.com/?p=1893',0,'post','',0),(1894,98,'2011-11-07 14:29:26','2011-11-07 22:29:26','<img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4812\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;margin: 1px 5px\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-11-at-12.37.27-PM-200x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" />\n\nIf you didn’t read Monday’s post you should start there. This is the third post in a series called: <a href=\"../sex1\">Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? </a>\n<h3>I’ve interviewed hundreds of married couples over the past 12 months.</h3>\nThey say the same thing about marriage: “Friendship is the most important aspect of our relationship. Don’t marry someone unless they are your best friend.”\n\nSex creates passion and romance in a relationship but when sex enters the picture friendship takes second best. And for good reason.\n<h4><strong>Sex is fun. It was designed that way. We’re supposed to enjoy it.</strong></h4>\nSex in addition to friendship creates a really lasting bond in a relationship - one that is hard to break. Sex without friendship is fragile and explosive. It’s like an expensive vase set on an unsteady table. Just give it the slightest bump and it will tumble and break.\n\n<strong>Don’t just disagree with me. Think about it.</strong>\n\nRemember the last one night stand that you had? Even if it wasn’t sex? What did you feel when you “hooked up” with someone outside of relationship? Secure and steady? Or uncomfortable and confused?\n\nStrong boundaries create security in relationship - not chaos.\n\nFriendship takes time to build. But dating gives you space to do it. Stop wasting energy asking yourself “how far is too far?” and use that energy to create space to grow friendship in your relationship.\n<h4><strong>The bigger space you create the faster friendship grows. And the sooner you can get to the good stuff.</strong></h4>\n<em>Kidding. Kind of.</em>\n\n<em>Friends</em> laugh together and play.\n\n<em>Friends</em> talk about things that matter to them. Fears and frustrations. The things that make them hopeful and excited.\n\n<em>Friends</em> communicate with each other even when they\'re angry. They work through difficult conflict.\n\n<em>Friends</em> assume the best about each other.\n\n<em>Friends</em> learn about each other through shared experiences. They celebrate accomplishments.\n\n<em>Friends</em> know the best and the worst parts of each other. They demonstrate love even when it\'s difficult.\n\n<em>Friends</em> <a title=\"It Builds Trust: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 2 of 6\" href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/waiting-for-marriage-2\">trust one another</a>.\n<h4>Friendship like this takes work to build.</h4>\nCan you think of any friends you have like this? Give yourself time and space to build this kind of friendship. You\'ll be glad you did.\n\nIf you’re having a hard time redirecting your sexual energy don’t be discouraged. That’s a good thing. That means you’re human and you like each other. And when you’ve gone to a certain place physically it’s really hard not to go back.\n\n<strong>But don’t try to be a super hero. No one is expecting you to be that strong. Create boundaries will help you to accomplish your objective.</strong>\n\nHang out in groups. Go out on dates. Don’t stay in. Ask people to hold you accountable and ask you hard questions. Don’t try to manage your actions or justify them. Admit you were wrong and ask for help.\n\nLaugh. Talk. Play games.\n\nBe friends first.','It Builds Friendship: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 3 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1893-revision','','','2011-11-07 14:29:26','2011-11-07 22:29:26','',1893,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1893-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(1931,1,'2011-11-08 09:05:52','2011-11-08 17:05:52','&nbsp;\r\n\r\nThis is the third post in a series called: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex?\r\n<h3>I’ve interviewed hundreds of married couples over the past 12 months.</h3>\r\nThey say the same thing about marriage: “Friendship is the most important aspect of our relationship. Don’t marry someone unless they are your best friend.”\r\n\r\nSex creates passion and romance in a relationship but when sex enters the picture friendship takes second best. And for good reason.\r\n<h4><strong><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-11-at-12.37.27-PM-200x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" />Sex is fun. It was designed that way. We’re supposed to enjoy it.</strong></h4>\r\nSex in addition to friendship creates a really lasting bond in a relationship - one that is hard to break. Sex without friendship is fragile and explosive. It’s like an expensive vase set on an unsteady table. Just give it the slightest bump and it will tumble and break.\r\n\r\n<strong>Don’t just disagree with me. Think about it.</strong>\r\n\r\nRemember the last one night stand that you had? Even if it wasn’t sex? What did you feel when you “hooked up” with someone outside of relationship? Secure and steady? Or uncomfortable and confused?\r\n\r\nStrong boundaries create security in relationship - not chaos.\r\n\r\nFriendship takes time to build. But dating gives you space to do it. Stop wasting energy asking yourself “how far is too far?” and use that energy to create space to grow friendship in your relationship.\r\n<h4><strong>The bigger space you create the faster friendship grows. And the sooner you can get to the good stuff.</strong></h4>\r\n<em>Kidding. Kind of.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> laugh together and play.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> talk about things that matter to them. Fears and frustrations. The things that make them hopeful and excited.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> communicate with each other even when they\'re angry. They work through difficult conflict.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> assume the best about each other.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> learn about each other through shared experiences. They celebrate accomplishments.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> know the best and the worst parts of each other. They demonstrate love even when it\'s difficult.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> <a title=\"It Builds Trust: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 2 of 6\" href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/waiting-for-marriage-2\">trust one another</a>.\r\n<h4>Friendship like this takes work to build.</h4>\r\nCan you think of any friends you have like this? Give yourself time and space to build this kind of friendship. You\'ll be glad you did.\r\n\r\nIf you’re having a hard time redirecting your sexual energy don’t be discouraged. That’s a good thing. That means you’re human and you like each other. And when you’ve gone to a certain place physically it’s really hard not to go back.\r\n\r\n<strong>But don’t try to be a super hero. No one is expecting you to be that strong. Create boundaries will help you to accomplish your objective.</strong>\r\n\r\nHang out in groups. Go out on dates. Don’t stay in. Ask people to hold you accountable and ask you hard questions. Don’t try to manage your actions or justify them. Admit you were wrong and ask for help.\r\n\r\nLaugh. Talk. Play games.\r\n\r\nBe friends first.','Why Are Christians Saving Sex for Marriage? Part 3','','inherit','open','open','','1893-revision-4','','','2011-11-08 09:05:52','2011-11-08 17:05:52','',1893,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/08/1893-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1895,98,'2011-11-15 08:00:54','2011-11-15 16:00:54','<em>This is the fourth post in the Series: Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage.</em>\r\n\r\n<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold;\">Relationships don’t always make us happy. I know. Breaking news. Big gasps. Etc. Etc.</span>\r\n\r\nSex and all the things leading up to sex make us feel good. We wouldn\'t be having this discussion if they didn\'t. But happiness isn\'t everything in relationship. Good relationships are good in part because of a commitment demonstrated even when things are difficult.\r\n<h4><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-13-at-2.41.42-AM-300x195.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"195\" />Relationships are more about holiness than they are about happiness.</h4>\r\nIs your relationship making you more holy? CS Lewis explains <em>holiness</em> like this:\r\n\r\nYour life is a continuum where <em>wholeness</em> is on one end and <em>destruction</em> is on the other. Each decision you make is moving you one direction. What direction are you moving because of this relationship?\r\n<h5>Are you becoming more broken or more whole? Holiness just means you’re becoming more whole.</h5>\r\nIs the relationship you\'re in moving you toward the good? Is it helping you become the person who God made you to be? Or is it hindering you from that growth?\r\n\r\nIf the purpose of my relationships is happiness then anytime I feel unhappy or uncomfortable the temptation will be to end my relationship. If the purpose of my relationship is holiness then I\'ll see every discomfort as an opportunity to work toward becoming more <em>whole</em>.\r\n\r\nIf I value a relationship only for the happiness it brings me then I miss the joy that comes over the long haul in relationship.\r\n\r\nIt takes strength to stick it out when you don’t feel happy. That strength is a muscle that needs to be exercised. Self-denial and self-sacrifice won\'t define every season of your relationship, but they do build a sturdy marriage.\r\n<h5>Do you want to work out now? Or later? Is there a difference?</h5>\r\nIf you’re asking the question “How far can we go?” you’re wasting energy that could be spent taking big steps toward wholeness, restoration and peace. The less energy you waste trying to draw an imaginary line the more energy you’ll have to take bigger steps.\r\n\r\nTrust me. I’ve tried to walk this line. I’ve stay in relationships too long where both of us were using each other to manage our own loneliness.\r\n<h5>It will either be hard now or hard later. Don\'t defer the difficulty. You are not stuck.</h5>\r\nYou have the power to change your circumstance. You have the strength to take the next step toward holiness - even if it means ending your relationship.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<strong>Which direction will you step next?</strong>','Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage? Part 4','','publish','open','open','','why-are-christians-saving-sex-for-marriage-part-4','','','2011-11-11 11:45:42','2011-11-11 19:45:42','',0,'http://provoketive.com/?p=1895',0,'post','',2),(1896,98,'2011-11-07 14:30:26','2011-11-07 22:30:26','<img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4842\" style=\"margin-top: 1px;margin-bottom: 1px;margin-left: 5px;margin-right: 5px;border-width: 1px;border-color: black;border-style: solid\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-13-at-2.41.42-AM-300x195.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"195\" />\n\nIf you didn’t read Monday’s post you should start there. This is the fourth post in a series called: <a href=\"../sex1\">Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex?</a>\n\n<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 15px;font-weight: bold\">Relationships don’t always make us happy. I know. Breaking news. Big gasps. Etc. Etc.</span>\n\nSex and all the things leading up to sex make us feel good. We wouldn\'t be having this discussion if they didn\'t. But happiness isn\'t everything in relationship. Good relationships are good in part because of a commitment demonstrated even when things are difficult.\n<h4>Relationships are more about holiness than they are about happiness.</h4>\nIs your relationship making you more holy? CS Lewis explains <em>holiness</em> like this:\n\nYour life is a continuum where <em>wholeness</em> is on one end and <em>destruction</em> is on the other. Each decision you make is moving you one direction. What direction are you moving because of this relationship?\n<h5>Are you becoming more broken or more whole? Holiness just means you’re becoming more whole.</h5>\nIs the relationship you\'re in moving you toward the good? Is it helping you become the person who God made you to be? Or is it hindering you from that growth?\n\nIf the purpose of my relationships is happiness then anytime I feel unhappy or uncomfortable the temptation will be to end my relationship. If the purpose of my relationship is holiness then I\'ll see every discomfort as an opportunity to work toward becoming more <em>whole</em>.\n\nIf I value a relationship only for the happiness it brings me then I miss the joy that comes over the long haul in relationship.\n\nIt takes strength to stick it out when you don’t feel happy. That strength is a muscle that needs to be exercised. Self-denial and self-sacrifice won\'t define every season of your relationship, but they do build a sturdy marriage.\n<h5>Do you want to work out now? Or later? Is there a difference?</h5>\nIf you’re asking the question “How far can we go?” you’re wasting energy that could be spent taking big steps toward wholeness, restoration and peace. The less energy you waste trying to draw an imaginary line the more energy you’ll have to take bigger steps.\n\nTrust me. I’ve tried to walk this line. I’ve stay in relationships too long where both of us were using each other to manage our own loneliness.\n<h5>It will either be hard now or hard later. Don\'t defer the difficulty. You are not stuck.</h5>\nYou have the power to change your circumstance. You have the strength to take the next step toward holiness - even if it means ending your relationship.\n\n&nbsp;\n\n<strong>Which direction will you step next?</strong>','Happiness isn\'t Everything: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 4 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1895-revision','','','2011-11-07 14:30:26','2011-11-07 22:30:26','',1895,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1895-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(1934,1,'2011-11-08 09:07:41','2011-11-08 17:07:41','This is the fourth post in a series called: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex?\r\n\r\n<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 15px; font-weight: bold;\">Relationships don’t always make us happy. I know. Breaking news. Big gasps. Etc. Etc.</span>\r\n\r\nSex and all the things leading up to sex make us feel good. We wouldn\'t be having this discussion if they didn\'t. But happiness isn\'t everything in relationship. Good relationships are good in part because of a commitment demonstrated even when things are difficult.\r\n<h4><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-13-at-2.41.42-AM-300x195.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"195\" />Relationships are more about holiness than they are about happiness.</h4>\r\nIs your relationship making you more holy? CS Lewis explains <em>holiness</em> like this:\r\n\r\nYour life is a continuum where <em>wholeness</em> is on one end and <em>destruction</em> is on the other. Each decision you make is moving you one direction. What direction are you moving because of this relationship?\r\n<h5>Are you becoming more broken or more whole? Holiness just means you’re becoming more whole.</h5>\r\nIs the relationship you\'re in moving you toward the good? Is it helping you become the person who God made you to be? Or is it hindering you from that growth?\r\n\r\nIf the purpose of my relationships is happiness then anytime I feel unhappy or uncomfortable the temptation will be to end my relationship. If the purpose of my relationship is holiness then I\'ll see every discomfort as an opportunity to work toward becoming more <em>whole</em>.\r\n\r\nIf I value a relationship only for the happiness it brings me then I miss the joy that comes over the long haul in relationship.\r\n\r\nIt takes strength to stick it out when you don’t feel happy. That strength is a muscle that needs to be exercised. Self-denial and self-sacrifice won\'t define every season of your relationship, but they do build a sturdy marriage.\r\n<h5>Do you want to work out now? Or later? Is there a difference?</h5>\r\nIf you’re asking the question “How far can we go?” you’re wasting energy that could be spent taking big steps toward wholeness, restoration and peace. The less energy you waste trying to draw an imaginary line the more energy you’ll have to take bigger steps.\r\n\r\nTrust me. I’ve tried to walk this line. I’ve stay in relationships too long where both of us were using each other to manage our own loneliness.\r\n<h5>It will either be hard now or hard later. Don\'t defer the difficulty. You are not stuck.</h5>\r\nYou have the power to change your circumstance. You have the strength to take the next step toward holiness - even if it means ending your relationship.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<strong>Which direction will you step next?</strong>','Why Are Christians Saving Sex for Marriage? Part 4','','inherit','open','open','','1895-revision-4','','','2011-11-08 09:07:41','2011-11-08 17:07:41','',1895,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/08/1895-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1897,98,'2011-11-17 08:00:30','2011-11-17 16:00:30','<em>This is the fifth post in the Series: Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage.</em>\r\n<h3>Do you have any idea how valuable you are? I don’t think you do.</h3>\r\nIf I had known how valuable I was I wouldn’t have wasted so many years offering myself for such a cheap price to so many undeserving men.\r\n\r\n<em>No wonder I didn’t feel valuable.</em>\r\n\r\nNo wonder men didn’t see the value I was desperate for them to see in me. Value is like a mirror. The way I see myself in the mirror impacts the way I present myself. The way I present myself impacts how I\'m perceived. When I feel less than valuable I project myself as less than valuable and that is how I am received.\r\n\r\n<strong>It\'s a vicious cycle.</strong>\r\n\r\nStrong physical boundaries in relationship speak to your value. They speak the message that you want others to hear. You are worth more than a movie ticket or a cup of coffee or a couple of dinners out. You are not that easily accessible. It takes more than that.\r\n<h4><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-14-at-1.06.33-AM-300x273.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"273\" />Let your physical boundaries speak to the value you place on your sexuality.</h4>\r\nThank goodness for people in my life who helped speak to my value. We need people who hold up a mirror and say, \"Look! This is what you really look like! Remember how valuable you are?\" I have a ton of people like that. Who does that for you in your life?\r\n\r\nPeople who <em>value</em> you love you not because of the things you do or what you offer them but just because you are you. They want what is good for you even if it isn\'t good for them.\r\n\r\n<strong>I don’t have to prove earn my value or prove my value to these people. I am valuable. I just am.</strong>\r\n\r\nWhat would happen if you eliminated all the people from your life who care more about what you have to offer them than they do about your well-being? What would happen if you stopped caving in to them?\r\n\r\nI spent years of my life searching for security, significance and belonging in the wrong places. It was like looking in a broken mirror. I didn’t realize that I already had all of the things I was trying to find.\r\n\r\n<em>I needed someone to hold up a mirror to show me who I really was. I had those things. I was valuable. I am.</em>\r\n\r\n<strong>You will not find the self-value you are looking for in a physical relationship. I know it feels like you will but you won\'t. You\'ll feel less valued than you did when you were alone.\r\n</strong>\r\n\r\nDo you believe me?\r\n\r\nDo you know how much value you have?','Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage? Part 5','','publish','open','open','','why-are-christians-saving-sex-for-marriage-part','','','2011-11-11 11:46:18','2011-11-11 19:46:18','',0,'http://provoketive.com/?p=1897',0,'post','',0),(1898,98,'2011-11-07 14:31:01','2011-11-07 22:31:01','','Auto Draft','','inherit','open','open','','1897-revision','','','2011-11-07 14:31:01','2011-11-07 22:31:01','',1897,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1897-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(1899,98,'2011-11-19 08:00:41','2011-11-19 16:00:41','<em>This is the sixth post in the Series: Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage.\r\n</em>\r\n\r\nIf you think that you can entertain lust in a dating relationship (or as a single person) and stop when you get married you’re in line for a rude awakening. Lust does not have a light switch.\r\n\r\nSome of you know this. Your trigger response is lust and you’ve tried to turn it off and it hasn’t worked.\r\n\r\n<em>You’re addicted to porn. </em>\r\n\r\n<em>You’ve tried to stop hooking up with guys but it hasn’t worked.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>You can’t fall asleep without masturbating.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>You can’t keep your hands out of your girlfriend/boyfriend’s pants.</em>\r\n\r\nYou think this will go away when you get married? It won’t. There is not a magic button that turns lust off when you walk down the aisle. If you want to get rid of your lustful thoughts and feelings you have to decide you’re going to do it now.\r\n<h4><strong>Wouldn’t you rather get rid of these thoughts and feelings before you get married?</strong></h4>\r\nYou have a choice. Do you want to get rid of lust <em>now</em> or <em>later</em>? What if I told you that the faster you got rid of your lustful thoughts the more quickly you would have a really satisfying sex life with your spouse? What then?\r\n\r\nDon’t try to manage your lust or moderate it. Lust is not manageable. You can’t “sort of” get rid of lust. You have to decide to kill it completely.\r\n\r\nIf you don’t kill lust, lust will kill you.\r\n\r\n<em>I promise. </em>\r\n\r\nI once had a friend tell me that whatever you feed lives and whatever you starve dies. Do not feed your lust. Kill it.\r\n\r\nLooking at pornography <em>feeds</em> your lust. Masturbating <em>feeds</em> your lust. Silently ranking guys or girls you see on the street, or undressing them with your eyes, or messing around with them outside of a married relationship feeds your lust.\r\n\r\nPushing the boundaries with your boyfriend or girlfriend feeds your lust.\r\n\r\nLust is incredibly self-serving. It is also self-destructive.\r\n<h4><strong>If you’re asking yourself “how far can we go?” your giving lust room to grow.</strong></h4>\r\nWouldn’t you rather kill lust now, while you’re dating, so that you can have a really satisfying sex life in marriage? Wouldn’t you rather kill lust now?\r\n\r\n<strong>There’s a difference between lust and sexual passion.</strong>\r\n\r\nSexual passion should exist in your relationship - even if you’re only dating. If you don’t feel passion in a sexual way toward your significant other you should ask yourself if you’re really interested in marrying that person.\r\n\r\nSexual passion is not a bad thing. Sex is a gift from God. Sexuality is healthy. The difference between lust and sexual passion is that you have control over your sexuality.\r\n\r\nThat’s why it says in Song of Solomon: “Do not arouse or awaken love before it is time.”\r\n\r\nYou get to decide when to arouse sexual passions and when to put them to sleep. That’s now what it’s like with lust. You’ve been controlled by your lust but when you put lust to sleep, you control your sexuality. It does not control you!\r\n\r\n<em>Did you catch that?</em>\r\n<h4><strong>You control your sexual desire. It does not control you. </strong></h4>\r\nIt’s like a craving for good food. Your body craves food and that’s a good thing. If you never got hungry you’d wonder if something was wrong with you.\r\n\r\nBut when you get hungry you get to choose when you eat and when you don’t. You make decisions about what kind of food to put in your body.\r\n\r\nAre you going to choose good food? Don’t satisfy yourself with a McDonald’s cheeseburger when there is a gourmet dinner waiting for you just around the corner. Stop asking yourself, “how far can I go” to manage your hunger.\r\n\r\n<em>Let yourself be hungry. Hunger is a good thing. The gourmet dinner will taste even better. </em>','Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage? Part 6','','publish','open','open','','why-are-christians-saving-sex-for-marriage-part-6','','','2011-11-11 11:47:05','2011-11-11 19:47:05','',0,'http://provoketive.com/?p=1899',0,'post','',0),(1940,1,'2011-11-08 09:12:14','2011-11-08 17:12:14','This is the fifth post in a series called: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex?\r\n<h3>Do you have any idea how valuable you are? I don’t think you do.</h3>\r\nIf I had known how valuable I was I wouldn’t have wasted so many years offering myself for such a cheap price to so many undeserving men.\r\n\r\n<em>No wonder I didn’t feel valuable.</em>\r\n\r\nNo wonder men didn’t see the value I was desperate for them to see in me. Value is like a mirror. The way I see myself in the mirror impacts the way I present myself. The way I present myself impacts how I\'m perceived. When I feel less than valuable I project myself as less than valuable and that is how I am received.\r\n\r\n<strong>It\'s a vicious cycle.</strong>\r\n\r\nStrong physical boundaries in relationship speak to your value. They speak the message that you want others to hear. You are worth more than a movie ticket or a cup of coffee or a couple of dinners out. You are not that easily accessible. It takes more than that.\r\n<h4><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-14-at-1.06.33-AM-300x273.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"273\" />Let your physical boundaries speak to the value you place on your sexuality.</h4>\r\nThank goodness for people in my life who helped speak to my value. We need people who hold up a mirror and say, \"Look! This is what you really look like! Remember how valuable you are?\" I have a ton of people like that. Who does that for you in your life?\r\n\r\nPeople who <em>value</em> you love you not because of the things you do or what you offer them but just because you are you. They want what is good for you even if it isn\'t good for them.\r\n\r\n<strong>I don’t have to prove earn my value or prove my value to these people. I am valuable. I just am.</strong>\r\n\r\nWhat would happen if you eliminated all the people from your life who care more about what you have to offer them than they do about your well-being? What would happen if you stopped caving in to them?\r\n\r\nI spent years of my life searching for security, significance and belonging in the wrong places. It was like looking in a broken mirror. I didn’t realize that I already had all of the things I was trying to find.\r\n\r\n<em>I needed someone to hold up a mirror to show me who I really was. I had those things. I was valuable. I am.</em>\r\n\r\n<strong>You will not find the self-value you are looking for in a physical relationship. I know it feels like you will but you won\'t. You\'ll feel less valued than you did when you were alone.\r\n</strong>\r\n\r\nDo you believe me?\r\n\r\nDo you know how much value you have?','Why Are Christians Saving Sex for Marriage? Part 5','','inherit','open','open','','1897-revision-7','','','2011-11-08 09:12:14','2011-11-08 17:12:14','',1897,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/08/1897-revision-7/',0,'revision','',0),(1906,98,'2011-11-07 14:30:02','2011-11-07 22:30:02','<img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4812\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;margin: 1px 5px\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-11-at-12.37.27-PM-200x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"200\" height=\"300\" />\r\n\r\nIf you didn’t read Monday’s post you should start there. This is the third post in a series called: <a href=\"../sex1\">Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? </a>\r\n<h3>I’ve interviewed hundreds of married couples over the past 12 months.</h3>\r\nThey say the same thing about marriage: “Friendship is the most important aspect of our relationship. Don’t marry someone unless they are your best friend.”\r\n\r\nSex creates passion and romance in a relationship but when sex enters the picture friendship takes second best. And for good reason.\r\n<h4><strong>Sex is fun. It was designed that way. We’re supposed to enjoy it.</strong></h4>\r\nSex in addition to friendship creates a really lasting bond in a relationship - one that is hard to break. Sex without friendship is fragile and explosive. It’s like an expensive vase set on an unsteady table. Just give it the slightest bump and it will tumble and break.\r\n\r\n<strong>Don’t just disagree with me. Think about it.</strong>\r\n\r\nRemember the last one night stand that you had? Even if it wasn’t sex? What did you feel when you “hooked up” with someone outside of relationship? Secure and steady? Or uncomfortable and confused?\r\n\r\nStrong boundaries create security in relationship - not chaos.\r\n\r\nFriendship takes time to build. But dating gives you space to do it. Stop wasting energy asking yourself “how far is too far?” and use that energy to create space to grow friendship in your relationship.\r\n<h4><strong>The bigger space you create the faster friendship grows. And the sooner you can get to the good stuff.</strong></h4>\r\n<em>Kidding. Kind of.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> laugh together and play.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> talk about things that matter to them. Fears and frustrations. The things that make them hopeful and excited.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> communicate with each other even when they\'re angry. They work through difficult conflict.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> assume the best about each other.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> learn about each other through shared experiences. They celebrate accomplishments.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> know the best and the worst parts of each other. They demonstrate love even when it\'s difficult.\r\n\r\n<em>Friends</em> <a title=\"It Builds Trust: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 2 of 6\" href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/waiting-for-marriage-2\">trust one another</a>.\r\n<h4>Friendship like this takes work to build.</h4>\r\nCan you think of any friends you have like this? Give yourself time and space to build this kind of friendship. You\'ll be glad you did.\r\n\r\nIf you’re having a hard time redirecting your sexual energy don’t be discouraged. That’s a good thing. That means you’re human and you like each other. And when you’ve gone to a certain place physically it’s really hard not to go back.\r\n\r\n<strong>But don’t try to be a super hero. No one is expecting you to be that strong. Create boundaries will help you to accomplish your objective.</strong>\r\n\r\nHang out in groups. Go out on dates. Don’t stay in. Ask people to hold you accountable and ask you hard questions. Don’t try to manage your actions or justify them. Admit you were wrong and ask for help.\r\n\r\nLaugh. Talk. Play games.\r\n\r\nBe friends first.','It Builds Friendship: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 3 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1893-revision-2','','','2011-11-07 14:30:02','2011-11-07 22:30:02','',1893,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1893-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1903,98,'2011-11-07 14:30:35','2011-11-07 22:30:35','<img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4842\" style=\"margin-top: 1px;margin-bottom: 1px;margin-left: 5px;margin-right: 5px;border-width: 1px;border-color: black;border-style: solid\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-13-at-2.41.42-AM-300x195.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"195\" />\r\n\r\nIf you didn’t read Monday’s post you should start there. This is the fourth post in a series called: <a href=\"../sex1\">Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex?</a>\r\n\r\n<span class=\"Apple-style-span\" style=\"font-size: 15px;font-weight: bold\">Relationships don’t always make us happy. I know. Breaking news. Big gasps. Etc. Etc.</span>\r\n\r\nSex and all the things leading up to sex make us feel good. We wouldn\'t be having this discussion if they didn\'t. But happiness isn\'t everything in relationship. Good relationships are good in part because of a commitment demonstrated even when things are difficult.\r\n<h4>Relationships are more about holiness than they are about happiness.</h4>\r\nIs your relationship making you more holy? CS Lewis explains <em>holiness</em> like this:\r\n\r\nYour life is a continuum where <em>wholeness</em> is on one end and <em>destruction</em> is on the other. Each decision you make is moving you one direction. What direction are you moving because of this relationship?\r\n<h5>Are you becoming more broken or more whole? Holiness just means you’re becoming more whole.</h5>\r\nIs the relationship you\'re in moving you toward the good? Is it helping you become the person who God made you to be? Or is it hindering you from that growth?\r\n\r\nIf the purpose of my relationships is happiness then anytime I feel unhappy or uncomfortable the temptation will be to end my relationship. If the purpose of my relationship is holiness then I\'ll see every discomfort as an opportunity to work toward becoming more <em>whole</em>.\r\n\r\nIf I value a relationship only for the happiness it brings me then I miss the joy that comes over the long haul in relationship.\r\n\r\nIt takes strength to stick it out when you don’t feel happy. That strength is a muscle that needs to be exercised. Self-denial and self-sacrifice won\'t define every season of your relationship, but they do build a sturdy marriage.\r\n<h5>Do you want to work out now? Or later? Is there a difference?</h5>\r\nIf you’re asking the question “How far can we go?” you’re wasting energy that could be spent taking big steps toward wholeness, restoration and peace. The less energy you waste trying to draw an imaginary line the more energy you’ll have to take bigger steps.\r\n\r\nTrust me. I’ve tried to walk this line. I’ve stay in relationships too long where both of us were using each other to manage our own loneliness.\r\n<h5>It will either be hard now or hard later. Don\'t defer the difficulty. You are not stuck.</h5>\r\nYou have the power to change your circumstance. You have the strength to take the next step toward holiness - even if it means ending your relationship.\r\n\r\n&nbsp;\r\n\r\n<strong>Which direction will you step next?</strong>','Happiness isn\'t Everything: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 4 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1895-revision-2','','','2011-11-07 14:30:35','2011-11-07 22:30:35','',1895,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1895-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1901,98,'2011-11-07 14:32:27','2011-11-07 22:32:27','If you didn’t read Monday’s post you should start there. This is the fifth post in a series called: <a href=\"../sex1\">Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex?</a>\n<h3><img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4853\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;margin: 1px 5px\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-14-at-1.06.33-AM-300x273.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"273\" />Do you have any idea how valuable you are? I don’t think you do.</h3>\nIf I had known how valuable I was I wouldn’t have wasted so many years offering myself for such a cheap price to so many undeserving men.\n\n<em>No wonder I didn’t feel valuable.</em>\n\nNo wonder men didn’t see the value I was desperate for them to see in me. Value is like a mirror. The way I see myself in the mirror impacts the way I present myself. The way I present myself impacts how I\'m perceived. When I feel less than valuable I project myself as less than valuable and that is how I am received.\n\n<strong>It\'s a vicious cycle.</strong>\n\nStrong physical boundaries in relationship speak to your value. They speak the message that you want others to hear. You are worth more than a movie ticket or a cup of coffee or a couple of dinners out. You are not that easily accessible. It takes more than that.\n<h4>Let your physical boundaries speak to the value you place on your sexuality.</h4>\nThank goodness for people in my life who helped speak to my value. We need people who hold up a mirror and say, \"Look! This is what you really look like! Remember how valuable you are?\" I have a ton of people like that. Who does that for you in your life?\n\nPeople who <em>value</em> you love you not because of the things you do or what you offer them but just because you are you. They want what is good for you even if it isn\'t good for them.\n\n<strong>I don’t have to prove earn my value or prove my value to these people. I am valuable. I just am.</strong>\n\nWhat would happen if you eliminated all the people from your life who care more about what you have to offer them than they do about your well-being? What would happen if you stopped caving in to them?\n\nI spent years of my life searching for security, significance and belonging in the wrong places. It was like looking in a broken mirror. I didn’t realize that I already had all of the things I was trying to find.\n\n<em>I needed someone to hold up a mirror to show me who I really was. I had those things. I was valuable. I am.</em>\n\n<strong>You will not find the self-value you are looking for in a physical relationship. I know it feels like you will but you won\'t. You\'ll feel less valued than you did when you were alone.\n</strong>\n\nDo you believe me?\n\nDo you know how much value you have?','','','inherit','open','open','','1897-revision-2','','','2011-11-07 14:32:27','2011-11-07 22:32:27','',1897,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1897-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1900,98,'2011-11-07 14:32:21','2011-11-07 22:32:21','<em>This is the last post in a my series about <a href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/sex1\">physical boundaries</a>. The post went out in my newsletter last week but several of you missed it so I\'m being nice and giving you a second opportunity to read it here. </em>\n\n<em>I promise you don\'t want to miss it future newsletters! If you haven\'t yet registered, please <a href=\"http://eepurl.com/fZi4j\">click HERE</a>.</em>\n<h2>Lust is Not Manageable: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? (Part 6 of 6)</h2>\nIf you think that you can entertain lust in a dating relationship (or as a single person) and stop when you get married you’re in line for a rude awakening. Lust does not have a light switch.\n\nSome of you know this. Your trigger response is lust and you’ve tried to turn it off and it hasn’t worked.\n\n<em>You’re addicted to porn. </em>\n\n<em>You’ve tried to stop hooking up with guys but it hasn’t worked.</em>\n\n<em>You can’t fall asleep without masturbating.</em>\n\n<em>You can’t keep your hands out of your girlfriend/boyfriend’s pants.</em>\n\nYou think this will go away when you get married? It won’t. There is not a magic button that turns lust off when you walk down the aisle. If you want to get rid of your lustful thoughts and feelings you have to decide you’re going to do it now.\n<h4><strong>Wouldn’t you rather get rid of these thoughts and feelings before you get married?</strong></h4>\nYou have a choice. Do you want to get rid of lust <em>now</em> or <em>later</em>? What if I told you that the faster you got rid of your lustful thoughts the more quickly you would have a really satisfying sex life with your spouse? What then?\n\nDon’t try to manage your lust or moderate it. Lust is not manageable. You can’t “sort of” get rid of lust. You have to decide to kill it completely.\n\nIf you don’t kill lust, lust will kill you.\n\n<em>I promise. </em>\n\nI once had a friend tell me that whatever you feed lives and whatever you starve dies. Do not feed your lust. Kill it.\n\nLooking at pornography <em>feeds</em> your lust. Masturbating <em>feeds</em> your lust. Silently ranking guys or girls you see on the street, or undressing them with your eyes, or messing around with them outside of a married relationship feeds your lust.\n\nPushing the boundaries with your boyfriend or girlfriend feeds your lust.\n\nLust is incredibly self-serving. It is also self-destructive.\n<h4><strong>If you’re asking yourself “how far can we go?” your giving lust room to grow.</strong></h4>\nWouldn’t you rather kill lust now, while you’re dating, so that you can have a really satisfying sex life in marriage? Wouldn’t you rather kill lust now?\n\n<strong>There’s a difference between lust and sexual passion.</strong>\n\nSexual passion should exist in your relationship - even if you’re only dating. If you don’t feel passion in a sexual way toward your significant other you should ask yourself if you’re really interested in marrying that person.\n\nSexual passion is not a bad thing. Sex is a gift from God. Sexuality is healthy. The difference between lust and sexual passion is that you have control over your sexuality.\n\nThat’s why it says in Song of Solomon: “Do not arouse or awaken love before it is time.”\n\nYou get to decide when to arouse sexual passions and when to put them to sleep. That’s now what it’s like with lust. You’ve been controlled by your lust but when you put lust to sleep, you control your sexuality. It does not control you!\n\n<em>Did you catch that?</em>\n<h4><strong>You control your sexual desire. It does not control you. </strong></h4>\nIt’s like a craving for good food. Your body craves food and that’s a good thing. If you never got hungry you’d wonder if something was wrong with you.\n\nBut when you get hungry you get to choose when you eat and when you don’t. You make decisions about what kind of food to put in your body.\n\nAre you going to choose good food? Don’t satisfy yourself with a McDonald’s cheeseburger when there is a gourmet dinner waiting for you just around the corner. Stop asking yourself, “how far can I go” to manage your hunger.\n\n<em>Let yourself be hungry. Hunger is a good thing. The gourmet dinner will taste even better. </em>','Lust is Not Manageable: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? (Part 6 of 6)','','inherit','open','open','','1899-revision','','','2011-11-07 14:32:21','2011-11-07 22:32:21','',1899,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1899-revision/',0,'revision','',0),(1937,1,'2011-11-08 09:11:27','2011-11-08 17:11:27','This is the fifth post in a series called: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex?\r\n<h3>Do you have any idea how valuable you are? I don’t think you do.</h3>\r\nIf I had known how valuable I was I wouldn’t have wasted so many years offering myself for such a cheap price to so many undeserving men.\r\n\r\n<em>No wonder I didn’t feel valuable.</em>\r\n\r\nNo wonder men didn’t see the value I was desperate for them to see in me. Value is like a mirror. The way I see myself in the mirror impacts the way I present myself. The way I present myself impacts how I\'m perceived. When I feel less than valuable I project myself as less than valuable and that is how I am received.\r\n\r\n<strong>It\'s a vicious cycle.</strong>\r\n\r\nStrong physical boundaries in relationship speak to your value. They speak the message that you want others to hear. You are worth more than a movie ticket or a cup of coffee or a couple of dinners out. You are not that easily accessible. It takes more than that.\r\n<h4><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-14-at-1.06.33-AM-300x273.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"273\" />Let your physical boundaries speak to the value you place on your sexuality.</h4>\r\nThank goodness for people in my life who helped speak to my value. We need people who hold up a mirror and say, \"Look! This is what you really look like! Remember how valuable you are?\" I have a ton of people like that. Who does that for you in your life?\r\n\r\nPeople who <em>value</em> you love you not because of the things you do or what you offer them but just because you are you. They want what is good for you even if it isn\'t good for them.\r\n\r\n<strong>I don’t have to prove earn my value or prove my value to these people. I am valuable. I just am.</strong>\r\n\r\nWhat would happen if you eliminated all the people from your life who care more about what you have to offer them than they do about your well-being? What would happen if you stopped caving in to them?\r\n\r\nI spent years of my life searching for security, significance and belonging in the wrong places. It was like looking in a broken mirror. I didn’t realize that I already had all of the things I was trying to find.\r\n\r\n<em>I needed someone to hold up a mirror to show me who I really was. I had those things. I was valuable. I am.</em>\r\n\r\n<strong>You will not find the self-value you are looking for in a physical relationship. I know it feels like you will but you won\'t. You\'ll feel less valued than you did when you were alone.\r\n</strong>\r\n\r\nDo you believe me?\r\n\r\nDo you know how much value you have?','Why Are Christians Saving Sex for Marriage? Part 4','','inherit','open','open','','1897-revision-5','','','2011-11-08 09:11:27','2011-11-08 17:11:27','',1897,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/08/1897-revision-5/',0,'revision','',0),(1902,98,'2011-11-07 14:32:34','2011-11-07 22:32:34','<em>This is the last post in a my series about <a href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/sex1\">physical boundaries</a>. The post went out in my newsletter last week but several of you missed it so I\'m being nice and giving you a second opportunity to read it here. </em>\r\n<h2>Lust is Not Manageable: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? (Part 6 of 6)</h2>\r\nIf you think that you can entertain lust in a dating relationship (or as a single person) and stop when you get married you’re in line for a rude awakening. Lust does not have a light switch.\r\n\r\nSome of you know this. Your trigger response is lust and you’ve tried to turn it off and it hasn’t worked.\r\n\r\n<em>You’re addicted to porn. </em>\r\n\r\n<em>You’ve tried to stop hooking up with guys but it hasn’t worked.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>You can’t fall asleep without masturbating.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>You can’t keep your hands out of your girlfriend/boyfriend’s pants.</em>\r\n\r\nYou think this will go away when you get married? It won’t. There is not a magic button that turns lust off when you walk down the aisle. If you want to get rid of your lustful thoughts and feelings you have to decide you’re going to do it now.\r\n<h4><strong>Wouldn’t you rather get rid of these thoughts and feelings before you get married?</strong></h4>\r\nYou have a choice. Do you want to get rid of lust <em>now</em> or <em>later</em>? What if I told you that the faster you got rid of your lustful thoughts the more quickly you would have a really satisfying sex life with your spouse? What then?\r\n\r\nDon’t try to manage your lust or moderate it. Lust is not manageable. You can’t “sort of” get rid of lust. You have to decide to kill it completely.\r\n\r\nIf you don’t kill lust, lust will kill you.\r\n\r\n<em>I promise. </em>\r\n\r\nI once had a friend tell me that whatever you feed lives and whatever you starve dies. Do not feed your lust. Kill it.\r\n\r\nLooking at pornography <em>feeds</em> your lust. Masturbating <em>feeds</em> your lust. Silently ranking guys or girls you see on the street, or undressing them with your eyes, or messing around with them outside of a married relationship feeds your lust.\r\n\r\nPushing the boundaries with your boyfriend or girlfriend feeds your lust.\r\n\r\nLust is incredibly self-serving. It is also self-destructive.\r\n<h4><strong>If you’re asking yourself “how far can we go?” your giving lust room to grow.</strong></h4>\r\nWouldn’t you rather kill lust now, while you’re dating, so that you can have a really satisfying sex life in marriage? Wouldn’t you rather kill lust now?\r\n\r\n<strong>There’s a difference between lust and sexual passion.</strong>\r\n\r\nSexual passion should exist in your relationship - even if you’re only dating. If you don’t feel passion in a sexual way toward your significant other you should ask yourself if you’re really interested in marrying that person.\r\n\r\nSexual passion is not a bad thing. Sex is a gift from God. Sexuality is healthy. The difference between lust and sexual passion is that you have control over your sexuality.\r\n\r\nThat’s why it says in Song of Solomon: “Do not arouse or awaken love before it is time.”\r\n\r\nYou get to decide when to arouse sexual passions and when to put them to sleep. That’s now what it’s like with lust. You’ve been controlled by your lust but when you put lust to sleep, you control your sexuality. It does not control you!\r\n\r\n<em>Did you catch that?</em>\r\n<h4><strong>You control your sexual desire. It does not control you. </strong></h4>\r\nIt’s like a craving for good food. Your body craves food and that’s a good thing. If you never got hungry you’d wonder if something was wrong with you.\r\n\r\nBut when you get hungry you get to choose when you eat and when you don’t. You make decisions about what kind of food to put in your body.\r\n\r\nAre you going to choose good food? Don’t satisfy yourself with a McDonald’s cheeseburger when there is a gourmet dinner waiting for you just around the corner. Stop asking yourself, “how far can I go” to manage your hunger.\r\n\r\n<em>Let yourself be hungry. Hunger is a good thing. The gourmet dinner will taste even better. </em>','Lust is Not Manageable: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? (Part 6 of 6)','','inherit','open','open','','1899-revision-2','','','2011-11-07 14:32:34','2011-11-07 22:32:34','',1899,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1899-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1904,98,'2011-11-07 14:34:00','2011-11-07 22:34:00','If you didn’t read Monday’s post you should start there. This is the fifth post in a series called: <a href=\"../sex1\">Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex?</a>\n<h3><img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4853\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;margin: 1px 5px\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-14-at-1.06.33-AM-300x273.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"273\" />Do you have any idea how valuable you are? I don’t think you do.</h3>\nIf I had known how valuable I was I wouldn’t have wasted so many years offering myself for such a cheap price to so many undeserving men.\n\n<em>No wonder I didn’t feel valuable.</em>\n\nNo wonder men didn’t see the value I was desperate for them to see in me. Value is like a mirror. The way I see myself in the mirror impacts the way I present myself. The way I present myself impacts how I\'m perceived. When I feel less than valuable I project myself as less than valuable and that is how I am received.\n\n<strong>It\'s a vicious cycle.</strong>\n\nStrong physical boundaries in relationship speak to your value. They speak the message that you want others to hear. You are worth more than a movie ticket or a cup of coffee or a couple of dinners out. You are not that easily accessible. It takes more than that.\n<h4>Let your physical boundaries speak to the value you place on your sexuality.</h4>\nThank goodness for people in my life who helped speak to my value. We need people who hold up a mirror and say, \"Look! This is what you really look like! Remember how valuable you are?\" I have a ton of people like that. Who does that for you in your life?\n\nPeople who <em>value</em> you love you not because of the things you do or what you offer them but just because you are you. They want what is good for you even if it isn\'t good for them.\n\n<strong>I don’t have to prove earn my value or prove my value to these people. I am valuable. I just am.</strong>\n\nWhat would happen if you eliminated all the people from your life who care more about what you have to offer them than they do about your well-being? What would happen if you stopped caving in to them?\n\nI spent years of my life searching for security, significance and belonging in the wrong places. It was like looking in a broken mirror. I didn’t realize that I already had all of the things I was trying to find.\n\n<em>I needed someone to hold up a mirror to show me who I really was. I had those things. I was valuable. I am.</em>\n\n<strong>You will not find the self-value you are looking for in a physical relationship. I know it feels like you will but you won\'t. You\'ll feel less valued than you did when you were alone.\n</strong>\n\nDo you believe me?\n\nDo you know how much value you have?','You Are Valuable: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 5 of 6 ','','inherit','open','open','','1897-revision-3','','','2011-11-07 14:34:00','2011-11-07 22:34:00','',1897,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1897-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(1905,98,'2011-11-07 14:33:15','2011-11-07 22:33:15','<em>This is the last post in a my series about <a href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/sex1\">physical boundaries</a>. The post went out in my newsletter last week but several of you missed it so I\'m being nice and giving you a second opportunity to read it here. </em>\r\n\r\nIf you think that you can entertain lust in a dating relationship (or as a single person) and stop when you get married you’re in line for a rude awakening. Lust does not have a light switch.\r\n\r\nSome of you know this. Your trigger response is lust and you’ve tried to turn it off and it hasn’t worked.\r\n\r\n<em>You’re addicted to porn. </em>\r\n\r\n<em>You’ve tried to stop hooking up with guys but it hasn’t worked.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>You can’t fall asleep without masturbating.</em>\r\n\r\n<em>You can’t keep your hands out of your girlfriend/boyfriend’s pants.</em>\r\n\r\nYou think this will go away when you get married? It won’t. There is not a magic button that turns lust off when you walk down the aisle. If you want to get rid of your lustful thoughts and feelings you have to decide you’re going to do it now.\r\n<h4><strong>Wouldn’t you rather get rid of these thoughts and feelings before you get married?</strong></h4>\r\nYou have a choice. Do you want to get rid of lust <em>now</em> or <em>later</em>? What if I told you that the faster you got rid of your lustful thoughts the more quickly you would have a really satisfying sex life with your spouse? What then?\r\n\r\nDon’t try to manage your lust or moderate it. Lust is not manageable. You can’t “sort of” get rid of lust. You have to decide to kill it completely.\r\n\r\nIf you don’t kill lust, lust will kill you.\r\n\r\n<em>I promise. </em>\r\n\r\nI once had a friend tell me that whatever you feed lives and whatever you starve dies. Do not feed your lust. Kill it.\r\n\r\nLooking at pornography <em>feeds</em> your lust. Masturbating <em>feeds</em> your lust. Silently ranking guys or girls you see on the street, or undressing them with your eyes, or messing around with them outside of a married relationship feeds your lust.\r\n\r\nPushing the boundaries with your boyfriend or girlfriend feeds your lust.\r\n\r\nLust is incredibly self-serving. It is also self-destructive.\r\n<h4><strong>If you’re asking yourself “how far can we go?” your giving lust room to grow.</strong></h4>\r\nWouldn’t you rather kill lust now, while you’re dating, so that you can have a really satisfying sex life in marriage? Wouldn’t you rather kill lust now?\r\n\r\n<strong>There’s a difference between lust and sexual passion.</strong>\r\n\r\nSexual passion should exist in your relationship - even if you’re only dating. If you don’t feel passion in a sexual way toward your significant other you should ask yourself if you’re really interested in marrying that person.\r\n\r\nSexual passion is not a bad thing. Sex is a gift from God. Sexuality is healthy. The difference between lust and sexual passion is that you have control over your sexuality.\r\n\r\nThat’s why it says in Song of Solomon: “Do not arouse or awaken love before it is time.”\r\n\r\nYou get to decide when to arouse sexual passions and when to put them to sleep. That’s now what it’s like with lust. You’ve been controlled by your lust but when you put lust to sleep, you control your sexuality. It does not control you!\r\n\r\n<em>Did you catch that?</em>\r\n<h4><strong>You control your sexual desire. It does not control you. </strong></h4>\r\nIt’s like a craving for good food. Your body craves food and that’s a good thing. If you never got hungry you’d wonder if something was wrong with you.\r\n\r\nBut when you get hungry you get to choose when you eat and when you don’t. You make decisions about what kind of food to put in your body.\r\n\r\nAre you going to choose good food? Don’t satisfy yourself with a McDonald’s cheeseburger when there is a gourmet dinner waiting for you just around the corner. Stop asking yourself, “how far can I go” to manage your hunger.\r\n\r\n<em>Let yourself be hungry. Hunger is a good thing. The gourmet dinner will taste even better. </em>','Lust is Not Manageable: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? (Part 6 of 6)','','inherit','open','open','','1899-revision-3','','','2011-11-07 14:33:15','2011-11-07 22:33:15','',1899,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1899-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(2484,20,'2011-11-24 09:29:06','2011-11-24 17:29:06','It seems pretty clear that the most determining fact of our existence is <em>when</em> and <em>where </em>we are born, and into what family or social class.  This makes all the difference. Obviously there are exceptions and stories of social mobility that are part and parcel of the American identity, but the vast majority of the possibilities for our lives on average are nonetheless limited or expanded by these conditions.  And almost every story you hear that defies this has a back-story that illustrates how all these divergent pieces had to come together at just the right time for that person’s “rags to riches” dream to come true.  The most significant thing about our birth though is that we have absolutely nothing to do with it.  Contemplating this truth alone can bring even the most pretentious of us to our knees before God.  Yet we take so much pride in our accomplishments and are very quick to think that what we have is earned and achieved… is somehow ours to claim – despite that the very basis of those accomplishments is grounded in something utterly contingent and beyond our control.\r\n\r\nAt the same time, it’s also common to hear people in the church admit that everything is God’s and that we are just stewards of our money, but there can be a strong dose of superficiality even in this seemingly humble statement.  In fact, this idea can very easily serve to justify doing exactly what we want with 90% of our possessions, rather than to encourage us to take our God-given <em>collective</em> responsibility seriously and to make legitimate sacrifices.  Why?  Because this statement is almost always followed by a disclaimer like, “it’s not a crime to be ‘successful’ . . . as long what I’m doing doesn’t harm anyone, or as long as I give a tithe to my church, etc.\" etc.  But is this view not oblivious to why some “have” and others “have not”?  What are the social conditions that permit us to live in relative peace and to have the chance to accumulate wealth?  What is the history that gave us access to prosperity?\r\n\r\nWith all things held constant, with “perfect competition” as economists like to say, if all of us begin with relatively equal access to opportunity, and all basic resources are available in relative plenitude, than it might just be true that to accumulate excessively is not a crime.  The complication is, no such constants exist.  The point – which is definitely not a new one – is that in today’s world, it is <em>never</em> enough to just give money away and avoid “doing harm.”  We must work to transform the societal structures that perpetuate poverty and disability in the first place.  If our standard of living is at a level such that everyone in the world could feasibly live at that same level, then our wealth might be justified – as long as we are doing our part to create that kind of world.  If most or all of our charitable donations go to a church, for instance, then additionally we’d better ask what our churches are doing to build such a world.\r\n\r\nSo yes, I submit that if there are those who are oppressed and dying by no fault of their own <em>at the same time</em> that there are Christians living in the world abundantly, then this situation itself is a crime.  But here is the key: our culpability for the death and destruction going on around the world is not primarily individual in nature.  Individuals ought not be exonerated, but I am not pointing to any one prosperous person and accusing them of ill intent.  Rather, there are structural and systemic forces at work that have long histories that have led us to this particular moment.  These forces amount to more than the mere sum of their parts and take on a self-preserving life of their own at the expense of the interest of society as a whole.  Great transfers of wealth occurred during the slave trade and various European (and more recently American!) colonial conquests whose consequences are still being felt today.  Generational sins are passed down, and we come into this world already conditioned by a past with which we are not very familiar and constantly take for granted.  This shortsightedness is kind of like what the philosopher Martin Heidegger liked to call “the forgetfulness of being.”  Christians everywhere, in the U.S. especially, are suffering from a fatal case of this forgetfulness.  The lesson to be learned is this: the essence of human life is one of thorough interdependency.  The second we fail to remember this, a foolish sense of entitlement creeps in, which, I suggest, produces the single greatest blind spot in American political and economic ideology.  Consequently, the most counter-cultural imagination available to Christians in the 21st Century is one that runs directly against the current of individualism - individualism being understood here as the values of liberty and independence gone awry.\r\n\r\nNow, it should go without saying that individual responsibility and the potential weight of the choices we make can still be affirmed.  Choices matter – just not nearly as much as a lot of people think they do.  Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the choices and the options with which we are presented are all-too-often already narrowed down before they get to us.  Our horizons are anything about limitless.\r\n\r\nWe <em>are</em> our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers, and we don’t get to ask, “oh but what did you do to end up in this situation?  Did you work hard like me?”  The arrogance of this sort of question is equal to the ignorance of the sinner who says to Jesus, “but when did we see you hungry?”  Admittedly, Jesus did not seem terribly concerned about necessarily changing the power structures of his day, but he was very intent on subverting and exposing them for what they were – especially when it came to social hierarchies.  He did this every time he healed or forgave people who were unclean and who, in the eyes of society, had brought certain misfortunes upon themselves.  What we’ve learned since Jesus, however, is that human beings are capable of being transformative agents in history working toward either a more just social order or a more disparate gap between classes.  The Bible doesn’t answer all of our contemporary questions when it comes to matters of faith and practice.  It does, however, give us the foundational principles, not the least of which is to plead the case of the afflicted and needy (Jeremiah 22:16).\r\n\r\nIn sum, individualism is not just one worldview to choose from among others with neutral value.  Individualism is an inherently illusory, naïve and pernicious perspective.  We must diagnose ourselves by taking off the rose-colored glasses handed to us by unmerited privilege - with their lenses that would otherwise give the status quo the benefit of the doubt.\r\n\r\n<em>Photo Credit: Oddsock</em>','The Myth of Individualism','','publish','open','open','','the-myth-of-individualism','','','2011-11-24 17:45:33','2011-11-25 01:45:33','',0,'http://provoketive.com/?p=2484',0,'post','',2),(1911,0,'2011-11-08 08:16:56','2011-11-08 16:16:56','typo in the third sentence of the Gun\'s &amp; Roses addiction story. Image should be imagine\n<!--more-->\nAUTHOR: Wayne Rumsby\nAUTHOR EMAIL: wayne@rumsby.ca\nAUTHOR URL: \nSUBJECT: [Provoketive Magazine] Party Rock Halloween House\nIP: 69.168.144.137\nArray\n(\n    [Name] =&gt; Wayne Rumsby\n    [Email] =&gt; wayne@rumsby.ca\n    [Website] =&gt; \n    [Message] =&gt; typo in the third sentence of the Gun\'s &amp; Roses addiction story. Image should be imagine\n)\n','Wayne Rumsby - 2011-11-08 08:16:56','','publish','open','open','','1a5696c387828de9c3bd5f967402581a','','','2011-11-08 08:16:56','2011-11-08 16:16:56','',1207,'http://provoketive.com/?post_type=feedback&p=1911',0,'feedback','',0),(1912,1,'2011-11-08 09:00:39','2011-11-08 17:00:39','<h3>I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Saving sex for marriage isn’t that big of a deal.</h3>\nThink about it.\n\nIt’s a test of your will. That’s all. Just a line drawn in the sand that you tell yourself you’re not going to cross. You can walk up to the line, poke your toe over the edge, push it around a little and see if it will budge.\n\nYou might even jump over the line a couple of times but then you’ll chalk it up to a moment of weakness and jump back to the other side. The guilt you feel will keep you on the right side of the line, at least for awhile.\n\nThat what “saving sex for marriage” is about, isn\'t it? That’s how we’re all acting. I keep getting questions about this and can’t help but wonder what it is we’re trying to get at. What does it mean to save sex for marriage? What are physical boundaries all about?\n\n<em><strong><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Wedding-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" />Correct me if I\'m wrong, but here are the questions you really want to ask.</strong></em>\n\nIf I’m saving sex for marriage can I have oral sex? Is that wrong?\n\nHow much kissing is too much kissing? Can we sleep in the same bed?\n\nWhat about dry humping? What’s the verdict on that?\n\nWhen it comes to touching am I allowed to touch and be touched in whatever ways I want as long as it’s over the clothes?\n\nWhat if I get an orgasm from it? Is that wrong?\n\nWhat about getting naked? Can I take my shirt off as long as my pants are on? Can one of us be naked if the other one isn’t?\n\nWhat is the right combination of nakedness to clothes to prevent myself from being convicted of sexual sin?\n<h4>We’re talking ourselves in circles. We’re asking all the wrong questions.</h4>\nAnd we wonder why, at the end of the day - no matter where we set the boundary - we have a hard time keeping it.\n\nFollowing a list of rules like that is pointless. As in it <em>has no point</em>.\n<h4>No wonder we get tired and give up.</h4>\nI want to challenge us to stop asking the question “What’s okay for me to do or not do” and start asking this question instead:\n\n<em>“Why am I committed to this in the first place?”</em>\n\nHonestly. Consider this a free-for all in my comments section.\n<h3>Why are Christians waiting until marriage for sex?</h3>','Why Are Christians Saving Sex For Marriage - Part 1','','inherit','open','open','','1887-autosave','','','2011-11-08 09:00:39','2011-11-08 17:00:39','',1887,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/08/1887-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(1915,1,'2011-11-08 08:47:24','2011-11-08 16:47:24','<h3>I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Saving sex for marriage isn’t that big of a deal.</h3>\r\nThink about it.\r\n\r\nIt’s a test of your will. That’s all. Just a line drawn in the sand that you tell yourself you’re not going to cross. You can walk up to the line, poke your toe over the edge, push it around a little and see if it will budge.\r\n\r\nYou might even jump over the line a couple of times but then you’ll chalk it up to a moment of weakness and jump back to the other side. The guilt you feel will keep you on the right side of the line, at least for awhile.\r\n\r\nThat what “saving sex for marriage” is about, isn\'t it? That’s how we’re all acting. I keep getting questions about this and can’t help but wonder what it is we’re trying to get at. What does it mean to save sex for marriage? What are physical boundaries all about?\r\n\r\n<em><strong><img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Wedding-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" />Correct me if I\'m wrong, but here are the questions you really want to ask.</strong></em>\r\n\r\nIf I’m saving sex for marriage can I have oral sex? Is that wrong?\r\n\r\nHow much kissing is too much kissing? Can we sleep in the same bed?\r\n\r\nWhat about dry humping? What’s the verdict on that?\r\n\r\nWhen it comes to touching am I allowed to touch and be touched in whatever ways I want as long as it’s over the clothes?\r\n\r\nWhat if I get an orgasm from it? Is that wrong?\r\n\r\nWhat about getting naked? Can I take my shirt off as long as my pants are on? Can one of us be naked if the other one isn’t?\r\n\r\nWhat is the right combination of nakedness to clothes to prevent myself from being convicted of sexual sin?\r\n<h4>We’re talking ourselves in circles. We’re asking all the wrong questions.</h4>\r\nAnd we wonder why, at the end of the day - no matter where we set the boundary - we have a hard time keeping it.\r\n\r\nFollowing a list of rules like that is pointless. As in it <em>has no point</em>.\r\n<h4>No wonder we get tired and give up.</h4>\r\nI want to challenge us to stop asking the question “What’s okay for me to do or not do” and start asking this question instead:\r\n\r\n<em>“Why am I committed to this in the first place?”</em>\r\n\r\nHonestly. Consider this a free-for all in my comments section.\r\n<h3>Why are Christians waiting until marriage for sex?</h3>','What\'s The Big Deal About Saving Sex for Marriage? Part 1 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1887-revision-3','','','2011-11-08 08:47:24','2011-11-08 16:47:24','',1887,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/08/1887-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),(2156,1,'2011-11-11 11:41:12','2011-11-11 19:41:12','','Saving_Sex_For_Marriage','','inherit','open','open','','saving_sex_for_marriage-2','','','2011-11-11 11:41:12','2011-11-11 19:41:12','',0,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Saving_Sex_For_Marriage1.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(1914,1,'2011-11-07 14:27:06','2011-11-07 22:27:06','<h3><img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4796\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;margin: 1px 5px\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Wedding-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" />I don’t understand what all the fuss is about. Saving sex for marriage isn’t that big of a deal.</h3>\r\nThink about it.\r\n\r\nIt’s a test of your will. That’s all. Just a line drawn in the sand that you tell yourself you’re not going to cross. You can walk up to the line, poke your toe over the edge, push it around a little and see if it will budge.\r\n\r\nYou might even jump over the line a couple of times but then you’ll chalk it up to a moment of weakness and jump back to the other side. The guilt you feel will keep you on the right side of the line, at least for awhile.\r\n\r\nThat what “saving sex for marriage” is about, isn\'t it? That’s how we’re all acting. I keep getting questions about this and can’t help but wonder what it is we’re trying to get at. What does it mean to save sex for marriage? What are physical boundaries all about?\r\n\r\n<em><strong>Correct me if I\'m wrong, but here are the questions you really want to ask.</strong></em>\r\n\r\nIf I’m saving sex for marriage can I have oral sex? Is that wrong?\r\n\r\nHow much kissing is too much kissing? Can we sleep in the same bed?\r\n\r\nWhat about dry humping? What’s the verdict on that?\r\n\r\nWhen it comes to touching am I allowed to touch and be touched in whatever ways I want as long as it’s over the clothes?\r\n\r\nWhat if I get an orgasm from it? Is that wrong?\r\n\r\nWhat about getting naked? Can I take my shirt off as long as my pants are on? Can one of us be naked if the other one isn’t?\r\n\r\nWhat is the right combination of nakedness to clothes to prevent myself from being convicted of sexual sin?\r\n<h4>We’re talking ourselves in circles. We’re asking all the wrong questions.</h4>\r\nAnd we wonder why, at the end of the day - no matter where we set the boundary - we have a hard time keeping it.\r\n\r\nFollowing a list of rules like that is pointless. As in it <em>has no point</em>.\r\n<h4>No wonder we get tired and give up.</h4>\r\nI want to challenge us to stop asking the question “What’s okay for me to do or not do” and start asking this question instead:\r\n\r\n<em>“Why am I committed to this in the first place?”</em>\r\n\r\nHonestly. Consider this a free-for all in my comments section.\r\n<h3>Why are Christians waiting until marriage for sex?</h3>','What\'s The Big Deal About Saving Sex for Marriage? Part 1 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1887-revision-2','','','2011-11-07 14:27:06','2011-11-07 22:27:06','',1887,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1887-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1916,1,'2011-11-07 14:28:27','2011-11-07 22:28:27','<img class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4801\" style=\"border: 1px solid black;margin: 1px 3px\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-10-at-11.22.25-PM-210x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" />\r\n\r\nIf you didn\'t read yesterday\'s post you should start there. This is the second post in a series called: <a href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/sex1\">Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? </a>\r\n<h4>Trust means you have a firm reliance on the integrity and ability of a person or thing. Trust creates a foundation for strong relationship.</h4>\r\nIt’s no surprise that exercising self-control in a dating relationship builds trust.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse is the kind of person who can control his or her sexual urges.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values his/her sexuality enough to guard it until marriage.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values you and your needs above anyone else.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse understands the concept of self-sacrifice and delayed gratification.\r\n\r\nIf you walk into marriage without trust in these things, you’re asking for trouble. And think of this: If you’re asking, “How far can we go?” you’re wasting energy that could be spent building <em>trust</em> in your relationship.\r\n\r\nGuarding sexuality in a dating relationship (or as a single person) is an opportunity to demonstrate trustworthiness to your future spouse.\r\n<h5>How much trust do you want to demonstrate? A little or a lot?</h5>\r\nIf you\'re single you might not know your spouse now. But think of how trustworthy you’ll seem when you say, “Yeah, it was hard. And there were times that I was lonely. But I wanted you more than I wanted anyone else.”\r\n\r\nIf you\'re in a relationship you might be dating your future spouse right now. How much does that person mean to you? Are your actions demonstrating that?\r\n<h3>Building trust takes time. You might as well start now.</h3>\r\nIf trust builds a strong relationship, and you care about your future marriage, why wouldn\'t you embrace an opportunity to demonstrate and build trust?\r\n\r\nIf you knew your actions were a direct reflection of how much your spouse would trust you someday how would it change the way you act?\r\n\r\nAnd if you knew that the amount of trust you demonstrated before marriage would be equivalent to the amount of trust you have after the wedding day? What then?\r\n<h5>Would you still be asking “how far is too far?” or would you start asking “What more can I do to demonstrate my trust?”</h5>\r\nIf you’ve already messed up, it’s okay. <em>This is your chance to prove that you’ve changed</em>. This gives you an opportunity to prove your true identity. You are a man or woman of value.\r\n\r\nYou can be trusted.\r\n<h4>Do you believe that?</h4>','It Builds Trust: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 2 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1891-revision-2','','','2011-11-07 14:28:27','2011-11-07 22:28:27','',1891,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/07/1891-revision-2/',0,'revision','',0),(1920,1,'2011-11-08 08:58:31','2011-11-08 16:58:31','If you didn\'t read yesterday\'s post you should start there. This is the second post in a series called: <a href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/sex1\">Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? </a>\r\n<h4>Trust means you have a firm reliance on the integrity and ability of a person or thing. Trust creates a foundation for strong relationship.</h4>\r\nIt’s no surprise that exercising self-control in a dating relationship builds trust.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse is the kind of person who can control his or her sexual urges.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values his/her sexuality enough to guard it until marriage.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values you and your needs above anyone else.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse understands the concept of self-sacrifice and delayed gratification.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-10-at-11.22.25-PM-210x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" />If you walk into marriage without trust in these things, you’re asking for trouble. And think of this: If you’re asking, “How far can we go?” you’re wasting energy that could be spent building <em>trust</em> in your relationship.\r\n\r\nGuarding sexuality in a dating relationship (or as a single person) is an opportunity to demonstrate trustworthiness to your future spouse.\r\n<h5>How much trust do you want to demonstrate? A little or a lot?</h5>\r\nIf you\'re single you might not know your spouse now. But think of how trustworthy you’ll seem when you say, “Yeah, it was hard. And there were times that I was lonely. But I wanted you more than I wanted anyone else.”\r\n\r\nIf you\'re in a relationship you might be dating your future spouse right now. How much does that person mean to you? Are your actions demonstrating that?\r\n<h3>Building trust takes time. You might as well start now.</h3>\r\nIf trust builds a strong relationship, and you care about your future marriage, why wouldn\'t you embrace an opportunity to demonstrate and build trust?\r\n\r\nIf you knew your actions were a direct reflection of how much your spouse would trust you someday how would it change the way you act?\r\n\r\nAnd if you knew that the amount of trust you demonstrated before marriage would be equivalent to the amount of trust you have after the wedding day? What then?\r\n<h5>Would you still be asking “how far is too far?” or would you start asking “What more can I do to demonstrate my trust?”</h5>\r\nIf you’ve already messed up, it’s okay. <em>This is your chance to prove that you’ve changed</em>. This gives you an opportunity to prove your true identity. You are a man or woman of value.\r\n\r\nYou can be trusted.\r\n<h4>Do you believe that?</h4>','Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 2 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1891-revision-4','','','2011-11-08 08:58:31','2011-11-08 16:58:31','',1891,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/08/1891-revision-4/',0,'revision','',0),(1917,1,'2011-11-08 08:52:46','2011-11-08 16:52:46','If you didn\'t read yesterday\'s post you should start there. This is the second post in a series called: <a href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/sex1\">Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? </a>\n<h4>Trust means you have a firm reliance on the integrity and ability of a person or thing. Trust creates a foundation for strong relationship.</h4>\nIt’s no surprise that exercising self-control in a dating relationship builds trust.\n\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse is the kind of person who can control his or her sexual urges.\n\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values his/her sexuality enough to guard it until marriage.\n\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values you and your needs above anyone else.\n\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse understands the concept of self-sacrifice and delayed gratification.\n\n<img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-10-at-11.22.25-PM-210x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" />If you walk into marriage without trust in these things, you’re asking for trouble. And think of this: If you’re asking, “How far can we go?” you’re wasting energy that could be spent building <em>trust</em> in your relationship.\n\nGuarding sexuality in a dating relationship (or as a single person) is an opportunity to demonstrate trustworthiness to your future spouse.\n<h5>How much trust do you want to demonstrate? A little or a lot?</h5>\nIf you\'re single you might not know your spouse now. But think of how trustworthy you’ll seem when you say, “Yeah, it was hard. And there were times that I was lonely. But I wanted you more than I wanted anyone else.”\n\nIf you\'re in a relationship you might be dating your future spouse right now. How much does that person mean to you? Are your actions demonstrating that?\n<h3>Building trust takes time. You might as well start now.</h3>\nIf trust builds a strong relationship, and you care about your future marriage, why wouldn\'t you embrace an opportunity to demonstrate and build trust?\n\nIf you knew your actions were a direct reflection of how much your spouse would trust you someday how would it change the way you act?\n\nAnd if you knew that the amount of trust you demonstrated before marriage would be equivalent to the amount of trust you have after the wedding day? What then?\n<h5>Would you still be asking “how far is too far?” or would you start asking “What more can I do to demonstrate my trust?”</h5>\nIf you’ve already messed up, it’s okay. <em>This is your chance to prove that you’ve changed</em>. This gives you an opportunity to prove your true identity. You are a man or woman of value.\n\nYou can be trusted.\n<h4>Do you believe that?</h4>','It Builds Trust: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 2 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1891-autosave','','','2011-11-08 08:52:46','2011-11-08 16:52:46','',1891,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/08/1891-autosave/',0,'revision','',0),(2155,1,'2011-11-11 11:40:40','2011-11-11 19:40:40','','Saving_Sex_For_Marriage','','inherit','open','open','','saving_sex_for_marriage','','','2011-11-11 11:40:40','2011-11-11 19:40:40','',0,'http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Saving_Sex_For_Marriage.png',0,'attachment','image/png',0),(1919,1,'2011-11-08 08:51:42','2011-11-08 16:51:42','If you didn\'t read yesterday\'s post you should start there. This is the second post in a series called: <a href=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/sex1\">Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? </a>\r\n<h4>Trust means you have a firm reliance on the integrity and ability of a person or thing. Trust creates a foundation for strong relationship.</h4>\r\nIt’s no surprise that exercising self-control in a dating relationship builds trust.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse is the kind of person who can control his or her sexual urges.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values his/her sexuality enough to guard it until marriage.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse values you and your needs above anyone else.\r\n\r\n<em>Trust</em> that your spouse understands the concept of self-sacrifice and delayed gratification.\r\n\r\n<img class=\"alignleft\" src=\"http://www.allyspotts.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Screen-shot-2011-10-10-at-11.22.25-PM-210x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"300\" />If you walk into marriage without trust in these things, you’re asking for trouble. And think of this: If you’re asking, “How far can we go?” you’re wasting energy that could be spent building <em>trust</em> in your relationship.\r\n\r\nGuarding sexuality in a dating relationship (or as a single person) is an opportunity to demonstrate trustworthiness to your future spouse.\r\n<h5>How much trust do you want to demonstrate? A little or a lot?</h5>\r\nIf you\'re single you might not know your spouse now. But think of how trustworthy you’ll seem when you say, “Yeah, it was hard. And there were times that I was lonely. But I wanted you more than I wanted anyone else.”\r\n\r\nIf you\'re in a relationship you might be dating your future spouse right now. How much does that person mean to you? Are your actions demonstrating that?\r\n<h3>Building trust takes time. You might as well start now.</h3>\r\nIf trust builds a strong relationship, and you care about your future marriage, why wouldn\'t you embrace an opportunity to demonstrate and build trust?\r\n\r\nIf you knew your actions were a direct reflection of how much your spouse would trust you someday how would it change the way you act?\r\n\r\nAnd if you knew that the amount of trust you demonstrated before marriage would be equivalent to the amount of trust you have after the wedding day? What then?\r\n<h5>Would you still be asking “how far is too far?” or would you start asking “What more can I do to demonstrate my trust?”</h5>\r\nIf you’ve already messed up, it’s okay. <em>This is your chance to prove that you’ve changed</em>. This gives you an opportunity to prove your true identity. You are a man or woman of value.\r\n\r\nYou can be trusted.\r\n<h4>Do you believe that?</h4>','It Builds Trust: Why Are Christians Waiting for Marriage for Sex? Part 2 of 6','','inherit','open','open','','1891-revision-3','','','2011-11-08 08:51:42','2011-11-08 16:51:42','',1891,'http://provoketive.com/2011/11/08/1891-revision-3/',0,'revision','',0),