I finally decided to take down my ugly profile picture, which I had put up after a random conversation with a Xanga friend. Here, in all its glory, is that photo one more time, with Seedsower's added photoshop:
 
It makes me look stupid and fat. It was annoying at times to have that as my profile picture. I fully expected to be blocked outright for posting on some newer Xangas with that profile picture, ha, given the bad first impression it gives. But I kept it up anyway. Why?

I feel that sometimes, we get tempted to play to our strengths all the time. If we're smart, we intentionally make each conversation about who knows the most, then back the other person down and walk away smugly. If we're beautiful, we try to overwhelm people with our good looks as soon as we walk in the room. This is the point where you should tell me "But Greek, you're not handsome!" and I would concur, ha. But still, on a good day, with a carefully chosen profile picture, I can pretend that I am rather dashing and charming:
   
And it's tempting to pretend that yes, I look that good all the time. I wish I could get your respect and admiration without working for it, just by being handsome or charismatic or witty. But that want has a pull to the dark side, when we want to substitute charisma for true character depth, and to take shortcuts to what we want. I am not quite suggesting that we intentionally hide our gifts. But I am suggesting that sometimes, we need to live life without our strengths.

One does not need to resort to the dictionary each time one feels intellectually challenged, or to the make-up box or studio each time one feels inadequate. Sometimes we need to intentionally live life with one hand tied behind our backs. It helps us develop our other skills, and it frees us from worshiping or worrying about our strengths. Please think about it.

Overall, blogging has been a nice source of entertainment and thoughtfulness in my life. But at times, it can also become a source of temptation. Here's a few examples of the types of sins that blogging encourages:
1. Lack of Self-Control. Blogging is often about sharing things that are hard to talk about and easy to write about. This is great when it's healthy expression of feelings...but then one gets carried away and talks about things that are better left unsaid. Or, one starts being that open in everyday life, and you end up offending people for the wrong reasons.
2. Pride. Yes, I went there, ha. After I've written a good blog and get comments telling me how great I am, it's easy to start to strut a little. Eventually a line is crossed between "Thanks for saying I write well" and "SACRIFICE TO ME YOUR FATTED COWS. I PREFER MEDIUM-WELL." Whenver I start talking about what I expect or deserve, I know it's probably time to shut the browser and walk away.
3. Time-wasting. Yes, it can be a sin to time-waste, if you're putting off important things like your family and close friends to blog. Priorities can quickly get blurred because of blogging.
4. Verbal slander and seduction. The more we write, the better we get at using words. Words can be used to encourage, educate, and edify. They also can be used to make people cry or to make people lust. As blogging makes our word usage more powerful, it also adds to the responsibility not to encourage cruel behavior.
5. Your own thoughts?

Being a Christian is weird because of the Christian belief in being born again and backslidding. On the one hand, you have new people joining who decide, at some point in their life, that they want to be Christians. On the other hand, you have people who were Christians quitting church and deciding they won't be Christians anymore. There's a constant flow of people heading in both directions.

When people leave church who, like me, also grew up in the church, I always wonder what made them leave. After all, we often have many things in common. Sometimes they were better at being Christians than I was. What convinced them to leave?

I once thought it was an issue with belief and logic. That they just felt that believing in something they couldn't see was too much of a stretch, and instead decided to return to the natural world. And being a Christian isn't easy when you don't have many friends who are Christians; you stand out, and one gets tired of defending oneself and getting up for church each Sunday. Thus, they leave the church, and after a while, they naturally fill the spiritual vacuum in their life with other things--food, sex, hobbies, etc.

However, I'm now more convinced that it has to do with pleasure. I'm struck by how many times "I'm having sex with my boyfriend" is followed by "I'm not going to church anymore." Jesus may be neat, groovy, and cool for teenagers in youth group, but they start longing for something more tangible to worship as they age, preferably with a nice tan and good hair. They may once have wanted to be a missionary or other ministry job, but they start longing for a different type of position, if you will. Rather than wanting to partake in communion, a different type of exchange of fluids and solids becomes more desirable. Jesus on a cross isn't as much fun to worship as body on a bed, and thus they stop looking up and start going down instead. I'll remove my elbow from your side now, I think you get my point. Anyway, they see the church's position on sex as being too difficult--why, it will be YEARS before they can have marital sex. So they leave the church to have sex freely, and then find logical reasons why they quit church afterward.

For those of you who are no longer practicing Christians (i.e.., believe Christ is real and can have a relationship with him, attend a church service most weeks, etc.), which story is true for you? Sex followed by disbelief, or disbelief followed by sex?

Something a little different for this Sunday devotional. Thankfully I only do this about once every year. Apologies in advance.

My pastor glad
My pastor good
My pastor praise God like ya pastor wish he could
[repeated]
My pastor glad, gladder (gladder) than yours
My my pastor glad, gladder (gladder) than yours
My my my pastor glad, gladder (gladder) than yours

[Verse 1]
Listen I'm saying my pastor glad
My pastor good
My pastor preach word like your pastor wish he could
My pastor glad, gladder than yours
My pastor show love that I can't even put in words
His message don't stop
His smile won't quit
So you pipe down, my pastor is a hit
My pastor glad, not going to say error
He always bring the gospel like Peter and Aquila
All big smile, all smooth talk
and all pure truth, preaching smooth as silk
He quick to care, he's on the phone
My pastor glad, tell your pastor he be owned

[Chorus]

Now your pastor might be sweet but my pastor sweeter
He cleans the church and he talks to the greeter
Knocks on your door juuust right
Saying all good things like Jesus Christ might
Yeah he could get a little hasty
Sinners better repent of their sins like crazy
Couple deacons and they all a little 'mazing
Coming down the aisle like a per-ophet, 'lisha

He fills me up by noon
He pray and people fall down like cartoons
Thud!, but I aint talking about Elmer
Pastor wife kind the whole church wanna phone her

Yo, yo now (now, now, now, now) all these brothers wanna try and be the pastor
But I clip my mic and leave them quiet like a master
Preach truth to them then I put em in a corner
Flying down the aisle I got them praying like a mourner
They going down, cement, Sunday is imminent guess who's playing M(n)ason
Tuck yourself in you better hold tight to your hymnal
Revival Sunday morn and guess who's playing Billy
(My pastor glad)
TBN talking 'bout me, they say my style is crazy
Joel Osteen not smiling, he 'fraid of me,
You a student to me
I'm in dat wam bam Jesus Man 'fess up Piper you're a fan.

And When We All Alone (I might just tithe him) I listen to his advice (Like a little child, I am)
(Repeat 4x)

(See here for the Luda joke, it fits with Christ).

Warning: Some mention of eating disorders and/or porn may appear. If you have easily-triggered addiction issues, you may want to skip.
Also, please forgive my lazy time-stamping. Too busy to write a good post today for Sunday Devotional, so this Saturday post got bumped.

This post is only for patient people with long-winded attention spans, but go read this article and tell me what you think. I definitely think the point about appetites for food and sex being surprisingly interchangeable are good.

My brief thoughts on it is that I feel that for many women, food is the new boyfriend. After years of being told by ladies magazines that they would have amazing boyfriends if they would just follow 5 simple rules and 50 new ways, many women seem fed up with sex and love. They are too burned out or stuck in bad relationships. So food becomes a sort of escape. They become fascinated and obsessed with food. And as such, food becomes the source of pleasure for them. I know otherwise well-meaning, pleasant women who would KILL ME if I dared shut off the Food Network on TV. How did this craze occur when as few as ten years ago, cooking seemed to be a nuisance? It's at the point where I feel like I have to up my cooking skills to continue to be the shining paragon of boyfriendable material I am (chuckle).

Also, I'm intrigued by how men and women have opposite attitudes towards overdoing food and sex. I feel that stressed men binge on sex/sexual materials, while stressed women binge on food. Thoughts as to why this may be so? I have a theory that there is a weird correlation between eating disorders for women and porn addictions for men. I'm not able to quite describe it, but I believe it. The cruelest correlation of all is that women don't want to admit they have a porn problem; those are for men! Men don't want to admit they have an eating problem; those are for women! And yet I believe a significant minority of men and women suffer in silence with the "wrong" type of addiction, while thinking they are the only ones in their gender who suffer from this. News flash: you aren't.

Programming note: Posts will be put up on Sundays at 5PM and Thursdays at 7PM regularly (EST). Other times are fairly unlikely. Christian stuff on Sundays, Friends series on Thursdays until it is done.

A few nights ago I talked to a friend on IM. In some ways, I really didn't want to. I had a lot of other things to do, and it was already late. But she opened by saying it had been a while since we talked, and so I didn't want to run off. I randomly asked her about her religious state. I knew she was somewhat agnostic, but has some Christian roots. It was a casual question, just as a throwaway. Quite honestly, I usually don't like to ask about people's spiritual condition anymore.

I don't want to say too much about what transpired afterward. But what happened was that she was able to share some spiritual phenomena that happened to her that she had kept a secret for a while, fearing that she would be shunned if she told. And it turns out, I was familiar with some of those phenomena, and was able to explain to her why it happened. Together, we both learned a lot. And I think that she has hope now, where she had none before.

I once failed my friend by not asking her enough questions when she was struggling with a dark secret. I asked her after that, what could I have done to know? She said "Ask more questions, I would have told you if you had just asked." This time I asked...and it made all the difference. I want to use this event to push more, to ask more deep questions. I know all the trivial ways to generate small talk. But I want to risk getting slapped in the face or pushed away in order to ask the questions that must be asked, questions that people long to answer if only someone would ask. The power of questions, as journalists and teachers know, is that they start a process of contemplation and action that is amazing to observe. Tap that power...and ask more questions about faith, love, and hope.

Recently I've been reading some blogs and talking to some people who are very impulsive. They take big risks and tell people how they really feel. They assert themselves boldly into situations even if they don't have all the facts and are just acting on instinct.

Awful, right? Bad Christians? They should be more quiet? More self-controlled? Less likely to randomly interact with strangers?

But reading the Bible, I think that their personality trait of being impulsive or assertive at times is a God-given gift. I see how impulsive and passionate David was...I see Nehemiah, impulsively telling the king of the needs of his people...I see Jesus in the temple, throwing out the moneychangers. I see Paul, once impulsive by dragging Christians to their death, then impulsive by being willing to speak the Word of God to anyone, at any cost to himself. Repression, by itself, is not a spiritual virtue! Self-control is. Listening is. But sometimes, God wants us to be impulsive and aggressive, wants us to be outspoken and honest.

Our culture sometimes punishes people who are impulsive, who don't fit societal norms of how to talk or interact. I see the pain this causes some of my friends (especially women, who seem to be crushed to fit the mold of what is acceptable to society). But if it wasn't for impulsive people, who would randomly hug us? or send us silly texts "just because?" Or decide that this year, our group of friends should go on a cruise so we can re-connect and get closer to each other? Your impulsiveness helps spur us less impulsive people on to catch up with you, and often, we need to do so!

If your impulsiveness and passion is based on good things, like love for your neighbor, a desire for honesty and truth, or, most importantly, a wish to serve God and do his will, don't beat yourself up too much over the small mistakes it can cause! Don't miss the blessing that your spontaneous acts bring to others. I look at myself, and I want to be more like you impulsive, assertive people, ready to do what needs to be done even if it embarrasses me a little, or looks silly at first. I don't want to be analyzing when I should be doing. I hope you can see that God gave us all our normal personality traits! They all need to be mastered and tamed, but who we are is given to us to bless others, to serve God, and yes, even to amuse ourselves, haha. Please don't think your emotions are this curse you have to overcome so you can be a boring robot. Value the way God made you, and ask him how to use it better.

Eh, this post was rough-cut, but I don't want people beating themselves up for what is really a gift in disguise. Impulsive people for God are the only way his work ever gets done, and I have a lot to learn from you all!