Jonathan Musing

You know when you meet someone new and you totally jive with them. You want to ask them a million questions because you just met your new close friend. You can't wait to spend time getting to know them and could easily spend hours talking with them. You end up with quite a large collection of facts about them, but more importantly, you feel like you kinda know who they are to some degree. Over the course of getting to know them maybe your initial assumptions were proved wrong and you're all the happier for it. You find yourself trying to adapt their best qualities into your life thereby enriching yourself through them. I submit that studying theology could be, even should be like that. The pursuit of theology has a very different feel than sitting with your new friend, but why? I think the motivation behind it is key. If you like a person and simply want to know more about them, you have a natural hunger for knowledge, but also, experience. You want to experience things with th

           I've got an idea. Those four words usually mean change and in my case, everyone who knows me dreds those words from me. I get it... I have big ideas that eventually get tempered by reality. Ha,  not this time! This idea is pre-tempered by practicality... maybe. I'm gonna try to have a regularly updated blog. It'll be nicely presented and organized. I'm going to have my devotionals for my church appear here as well. If you like, you can support me on patreon.com. As far as topics go, it'll be mostly a thoughtful reflection on life and how faith and theology bring order and hope. I might pepper in some goofiness here and there, and potentially some music I find particularly moving.  I am co-authoring a sci-fi series with a good friend of mine, so potentially I could drop a few excerpts along the way. Thanks for spending your time here!

In the last few weeks i've been been pestered by this feeling of hopelessness. I'm going to be 29 this year and the passage of time will team up with my disability will surely confine me. Despite my best attemps to be optimistic Pesimism and honest realism can really paint a bleak picrture. I was trying to figure out where God's goodness is in my mortal future. There's no earning anything from God and we certainly don't have rights before God. The kicker is, we tend to shine the brightest when the heat is on. Why would God make me super successful and comfortable, when it could, and probably would, corrupt our character? See, bleak... What am i hopeing for? comfort, a good future, or just good things in general. Why? So that I can live at peace, with purpose and fullfilment. There are many "I"s in there... It's bleak because it's all about me! My comfort,my joy, my fulfillment, and my success! Of course God won't support that, it backwards. We

This entry is not a thought or idea i'm putting forth to be adopted or critiqued. This is a window into my struggles. I'm not pretending i got the perfect perspective or that my views are correct, this is possibly my most bitter longest standing battle.I'm writing this for two reasons, to gain a new perspective on my own situation. Also maybe such a struggle will glorify God, because ultimately he'll be the solution. In theory acceptance is super simple, it's just the acknowledgement of something. Ideally negative feeling will subside and just kinda go away. Well I woke up today and among the intelligible sludge of pre-coffee thoughts was this nagging sense that i still haven't accepted my disability. It's a super annoying feeling of emotional dissonance, two things in opposition to each other. One is this hopeful excitement for all the future possibilities coupled with a waxing and waning stubbornness. The other is this acute sense of limitations defiantly

I love science, it really jives well with my OCD, and who doesn't have a touch of OCD these days? Pure science is a logical process applied to something for the purpose of uncovering an unbiased truism. The truth can then be tested in every conceivable way and become well defined. Then you really got something! Science, in its innocence, is a beautiful thing and is to be aspired to. Unfortunately people can be better at the logical process than others, and so ensues the bitter sweet power struggle. Which brings all the fun of politics careening into the pursuit of truth. When people start lying about stuff and you get a bunch of people to agree to lie too, you have the monstrosity of popular science. Charismatic scientist can leverage their findings against ideas they deem offensive. Science and logic, like everything else, can be twisted into weapons to oppress. I thought too highly of science coming out of high school. I had my faith, which i could defend logically fair decently.

I've been thinking of the stark contrast between God's love and ours. It's true to say God's love is endless, but what does that mean? Well when i was a little boy i was sneaky and got away with all kinds of stuff and in one instance i reveled in doing something because it was evil. I stepped on my friend's hand and i did not let go until he cried. I did this in defiance of being good, i did it to be evil. For some reason i remember this super clearly, and since felt SUPER bad of my intentions. Well according to the old law, i should at least suffer for that particular betrayal. Sadly, i've dwarfed that offence with hundreds of hideous double-minded hypocrisies. If it weren't for Paul claiming his supremacy among sinners, i would be able to level a pretty good argument for my own. Jesus's blood nullifies my offences before the Father, like, all of them, even the future ones! The father does not hold my sin against me. I will never experience the wrath fo