Fatih

You really shouldn't read books. They mess with your mind and cause you to think.

Don't get me wrong. I'm all into thinking, but reading books, especially books with different perspectives than my right perspective, give me what psychologists call "cognitive dissonance."

I'm reading a book right now titled "The Irresistible Revolution" by Shane Claibourne. I don't recomend this book at all because it might just give you a clearer picture of God and church and life. And really, none of us want clearer pictures of those things. We are just content to keep the picture that we have put together in our heads. That way God looks more like us than us risking who we are by beginning to look more like him.

Shane talks about actually getting to know the poor and not just throwing money their way to appease our satisfied consciousnesses. He talks about a lot of other stuff as well that you don't need to read because after all, you are already satisfied with what you know and what you believe and why go and mess up what you've thought to be right your whole life?

Yesterday I was reading and he started talking about FAITH. No not the witnessing program, but faith in God. He defines faith as loyalty. I haven't been able to get that out of my mind. We usually think of faith as belief. We don't teach this, but for most of us faith is a head knowledge. We believe that Jesus died, rose, is coming back one day. We believe the Bible is true. We believe, we know, we intellectually affirm all this stuff. The problem is we don't do anything with what we know.

I heard Andy Stanley say one time that we don't need to know more. We need to put into practice what we know. Just do it, as Nike says. That's why I love thinking of faith as loyalty. Our alegiance, our loyalty is to a Jesus way of life. To follow him is to be loyal to living as he did and taught.

I'm still chewing on this whole faith thought, but what if the whole faith think is more than we've been taught or made up? I'll have to think about this for a little bit longer.

Until next time...