Love Wins.....

Some people have an amazing power to take their words and make you understand things in a way you never did before.....

The irony of these people is that they are often heavily criticized by others; even if what they are saying/explaining/writing is not new.

I love making connections b/w obscure and bizzare people you would NEVER think would ever have a thing in common. Last night, while at chruch, we discussed a book from Pastor Rob Bell called Love Wins; which examines our concepts of heaven and hell.

"A racist would be miserable in the world to come."

He goes on to discuss how every culture, every colour would be on earth as one; interacting in the way we were actually meant to; before the concepts of superiority and ethnic cleansing.

We discussed at church last night that we as Christians have a long history of believing what we are doing is right; as those that we must educate are "inferior" until they have seen the Grace of God. This is not a new concept, nor is it a dead or dying one; all we as Canadians need to do is look at the residential school system to see what assimilation of culture and Christianity can do to people.....go back 100 years before to examine what we thought of our fellow men, women and children we kidnapped, raped, and murdered to tend fields and grow cotton. 60 years ago we watched a man and a small group of his follows (Christians they called themselves) systematically slaughter six million people....people who's belief structure differed by a simple fork in the spiritual road.

To paraphrase Chris Rock.....

After 9/11 there was a lot of accepted racisim out there..."I'm American, f*ck all these Arabs, and f*ck the French, etc....but I started thinkin'.....n*ggers and Jews is next...that train's never late.....

Life lessons are imposed by many; criticzed by many more, but actually absorbed by few....

What difference can I make? What decisions should I make? Who should I be listening to?

I wonder what God thinks of those who simply entertain us to pass the time.....hmmm.....

Truth....

Remember when we were little and we were always told to tell the truth, no matter what? Well, as it turns out, the rules change when you grow up, except no one ever really tells you thoese new rules, you are left to fill in the gaps all by yourself.

There are litle ones that come over time; things like, "If you call in sick to work, and you're not really sick, then shut up about it." That's a mistake you only make once. Then, as we get better at it we learn to tell little unturths that everyone knows are untruths, like, "I'll call you," "the cheque is in the mail," and these are accepted as part of out culture. But what about those truths that people don't want hear, like, "you need to step up your game," "your parenting skills suck," or "you drink too much." And we avoid these because often, the reciver does NOT want to hear them.

So when one is back into a corner and forced to talk about an untruth, even the most assertive of us has been known to back down until they are backed into a place where they have to come out swinging.