Hi, guys. Let's get the formalities out of the way first, and then I'll go ahead and move along with the reason that brought me back to this blog tonight.
I've really been neglecting this thing. Neglecting it, not forgetting it. I've gotten a lot of new friends since the last time I posted and this will probably be seen by more people on Facebook than on Xanga itself. If you're interested, click the link that brings you to the original post at the bottom of this message on Facebook. There are extensive archives of me running my mouth at the main site. Anyway, I'm going to start a legitimate effort tonight to post at least once a week, hopefully with something fairly meaty each time. This is too good of an outlet for me to let it go to waste. That and I've had my laptop back with a working keyboard now for about two weeks. I got tired of having to use that plug-in piece of crap when the onboard broke. It made me look really geeky to have to carry that thing around with me to class. Made my backpack really uncomfortable too. But anyway.
On to the reason that I came back tonight.
That's what she said. Anybody ever said that? That's a really funny joke- or at least it was. I have the kind of personality that gets addicted to something easily. The first time I heard a joke involving the "TWSS" factor, I was shocked beyond belief. I couldn't believe that someone could tell a joke that was potentially very dirty without actually saying anything dirty! The thought intrigued me. All I had to do was wait until someone said something that could be interpreted as nasty and then tack TWSS on the end of it, and it was an instant laugh riot. I didn't have to feel guilty because I hadn't actually said anything bad in and of itself. The first time I dropped one I was so proud of myself. It went over well. I enjoyed the laughter of the people around me and so I kept on with it. Eventually the mild ones were boring, so I set out to find the most off the wall, nastiest ones I could. It was a very taxing job, and so I had to listen for them constantly, through which I ended up finding even more mild ones. What the heck, if they were there I may as well call them out. But the times when I found a juicy one...oh man. Those seemed like the best ones, but the problem with them was they were easily recognizable, so I couldn't shout them out like I could the mild ones. I had to retreat back into a trusted few people to whisper them and hope that no one else heard me. I guess somewhere along the way peripheral dirty jokes allowed themselves in; being able to laugh at other course things like bad language and being desensitized to coarse humor in general. Eventually we didn't even have to say TWSS at all. All we had to do was pass a look across the room. The others got it because it had become part of our mindset.
Yesterday, I was woken up. I was knocked back to reality by a movie that is full of knocks. Fight Club.
It's been a couple of years since I saw Fight Club on DVD. The last time I saw it was on TV. What happens to an R rated movie when it comes on TV? It gets cleaned up; language-wise mainly. I was with a couple of my friends last night, both of whom are great Christian guys. Neither had ever seen the movie before and since it was just guys, we figured we'd watch a guy-type movie, involving explosions and fighting and such. Fight Club fit the bill. Since I'd seen it before, they asked me about content. The last time I saw it was on TV, so that's what I judged by for some reason. I told them it had the F-bomb in it a couple of times, but probably not more than 3. Then I proceeded to rent the movie from Movie Gallery and bring it over. Our ears were graced to 3 hours of the F-bomb. 3 Hours! I had taken something dirty and brought it into the light, and had the chance to see what it really was. I began to question myself. The last time I saw the movie was it edited, or was I just so desensitized to the content that I didn't notice it? I started feeling sick to my stomach. The thought of all the language hurt me physically. The thought of all the coarse jokes I had been telling suddenly struck me as disgusting. I felt dirty.
I described the feeling I had as this. I'm terrified of cockroaches. Most people I talk to have similar feelings, and even if they're not scared of them, they at least aren't fans of them. Maybe I'm scared of them because one fell on my head one time and then jumped off onto my chest. Oh well. Anyway, Imagine being in the center of your house, and your house is infested with cockroaches. Every room is full of them up to neck height except for the room you are standing in. They're trying to get in, but you fight them back. There is a constant flood of them. As long as you stay awake, you can fight them off, but eventually you start getting tired. The more tired you get, the more creep in. Eventually you fall asleep and begin to sleepwalk. Luckily for you, you sleepwalk right into the next room and are now neck-high in cockroaches. And then you wake up, not knowing how you got there but still vibrantly aware that you are buried up to the neck in cockroaches. Would you panic? Get sick? I'd probably do both.
That's what it felt like. I snapped awake after falling asleep and burying myself in filth.
"Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." 1 Corinthians 6:19-20
So let's break this down. My body, my physical self, is a temple of the Holy Spirit, the Most High God. We'd been talking on Wednesday nights about communicating with God and hearing from God and how all of that works. I think this is another way He communicates with us. Christ sent the Holy Spirit to indwell us, seal us, and teach us. It only makes sense that if we start allowing His temple to get dirty, then He's going to react. It makes perfect sense to me that I would start feeling physically sick every time I watched or said something that offended Him. The jokes weren't funny to me anymore. The language wasn't bearable anymore. They disgusted me.
Don't take what I'm saying wrong. This is just where I'm at in my relationship with Christ. This is what He's teaching me. Maybe everybody doesn't struggle in this area and so it's not as big of a deal. But for me, I live my life through words and verbal expression. That's how I witness. It's my strength. I think the Holy Spirit convicted me in this area because it's both my strength when I'm pure and my weakness when I allow impurity to contaminate how I express myself, mainly words. I don't want anyone to think that I'm condemning them for anything. I'm honestly writing this from an internal perspective, not based on what anyone else has said or done. This is just me trying to express an internal dialogue between me and the Spirit. I really don't want anyone to think that I'm judging them. I hope that's coming across as clear.
I also don't think that this is a legalistic view. I hate legalism with every bone in my body. I don't know who's idea it was that Christianity is a list of do's and don'ts and if you don't follow that list to the letter you're going to hell, but it wasn't Jesus' idea of the faith. I feel like from now own I'll be abstaining from letting these things come out of me because they hurt my relationship with Christ. They take my joy away. He doesn't love me any less for my mistakes, but I feel bad for defiling His temple. The regenerate part of me has the mind of Christ and is appalled at these things, but the flesh part of me thinks they're hilarious. That's a conflict that I don't have to be in. It's miserable. Legalism is when you do or don't do something just because it's on some hypothetical list. There's not really a reason behind it. Maybe there was at some point, but it's so long in the past that nobody remembers it. Kind of like one of those old family feuds down here; the people have been at it for so long that nobody even remembers what they're fighting over. My abstention comes as a reaction to the Mind of Christ in me. It upsets Him, and therefore I'm upset and miserable. I feel that. It's not some arbitrary thing.
I think that just about wraps it up for tonight. Ben got a Myspace tonight and I told him that would be really cool because not only could he upload his sermons, he could simulpost his blog posts to the HBC website and to his Myspace. I think I'm going to take my own advice and simulpost this. Also, I'll leave you with a verse that Christ stuck in my mind while I was writing this. It makes a lot of sense with everything else that has been said tonight. The Pharisees accused Jesus of being wrong for letting his disciples eat without ritually washing their hands. The Pharisees said because they didn't wash their hands they were impure, unclean, defiled. Jesus told the Pharisees off and then later explained to the disciples what His comeback meant.
"So Jesus said, 'Are you also still without understanding? Do you not yet understand that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and is eliminated? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile a man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies. These are the things which defile a man, but to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a man.'"
Comments (1)
Hello Mr. Mosley,
Your site is so simple yet elegant but I see that you don’t write here much anymore!
I want to help people to really get to know what Jehovah God’s plans are for us, especially in these troubled times: 4You refused to answer when I called out; you paid no attention to my instructions. Instead, you did what I hated, knowing it was wrong. Now I will punish you in a way you dread the most. (Isaiah 66:4) (CEV)