Hot off the presses…It’s my thoughts!

hey. Real quick one today, cause I think I want to go to bed at a reasonable hour instead of staying up and telling you everything that’s happening in my head. Let’s see…I played Settlers of Catan with some of the guys in my small group (which we call medium group…cuz it’s bigger than small). I didn’t win. But it was good to see them anyway. Then I came back to the floor and played Mario Kart 64 for about an hour. I lost every single race. Most of them I was 4th place. The few that that didn’t happen, I was third place. I am not a champion at that game. It was fun to be real loud and dramatic when I lost alot though. Sometimes it’s nice to just be overly angry when people don’t take it to heart because they’re doing the same thing. There was a lot of smack talk during the game. Courtney Milan came in and saw me doing badly at the game and I desired to do better to show her that somehow I was good at videogames (as though girls are really impressed by my skills there)…but I still sucked. Better luck next time I guess. Courtney, if you’re reading this…I guess you know now that I’m not good at Mario Kart.

Jake Morris on my floor has this beaver skin on his wall. His roommate Todd hunts. He musta killed him a beaver. Because there’s one on his wall. It’s really soft. I think I know why people used to kill them for their skin now…Seriously, they’d make a wicked comfy blanket or some such nonsense.

I was in Will and Wayne’s room earlier dubbing over the TV while it was muted. There was a demonstration of sorts about health, safety, and education in the Seattle community. I imagined/spoke as though the delagates were arguing about whether or not bears existed and what do do about the menace or lack thereof. The guy with the neatly trimmed beard didn’t think bears were real, another guy kept emphasizing that they’d rip your face off if you weren’t careful, and overall my imagination was a bit out of control.

It’s time for bed now. I don’t have much to say really. I went to Quest Church today…Pastor Eugene talked about hipocrisy and how it’s something that we all need to be wary of because its something we all deal with. It was good. But I’m going to take a moment to talk about my feelings with regards to contemporary worship. I can’t get into it very easily. I don’t like singing words to God that are lies. The line “in all I do, I honor you” is not something I can say to God without having serious qualms with myself. I am not perfect, so the assumption that everything I do honors God is false. I am probably not honoring God when I call people I play Mario Kart with sluts during the game when I am losing. Furthermore, it’s interesting to see what exactly we’re singing about. Ususally it’s about me. Or about us coming places just as we are. Or about us feeling like dancing. I don’t feel like dancing, I always come as I am (can I be anything else?), and frankly I want the songs I sing in praise of God to be about God. I like giving God encouragement. I don’t like singing about myself to God and expect to count it as praise. Is he gung-ho about that? I dunno, but I sure am not.

Another thing. This is something you can help me with. Can we call worship music praise music? My problem is this, all my life people have been telling me that I can “worship God through anything I do” but in church the only thing that gets called worship is the music. It would seem that the only way I can worship God is when a guitar is present…hmmm…Well, to solve the problem my friend Ian and I decided that singing in church should be called praise. We praise God through music. But here’s the kicker, worship is anything that gives glory to God. So we can worship God though praise, but praise and worship are not the same thing. Praise is one expression of worship… Do you get it? Good. Let’s try it on for size. If you don’t like it then you should do it anyway because sometimes parts of the body of Christ confuse me when I get mixed signals. I can worship God through anything, but only when there’s a guitar is it called worship. God values honesty but we’re scared of calling things what they are: Passing on instead of died, growth areas instead of weakness, saying “good” when you really mean “shitty”. I think you get the idea. Let’s try and do one thing, as far as we’re able let’s try and make sense with each other as Christians. Let’s love each other for real and not just say we do it. Let’s say truth that costs us something. This is for me too guys, not just you. Let’s say we’re playing ball, and really play ball. Anything else is just hard to understand.