I get frustrated not having anyone to talk with about spiritual matters down here. I don't think anyone I know, locally, even reads my blog. I want to know the truth and sometimes the best way to arrive at that is by hammering out your ideas. It's only by hammering something very hard that you find out if it endures under pressure, whether it has any weak spots that will crack. I get worried that I will come to a wrong conclusion because I do not have the peers to bounce my ideas off of.
I am seeking someone to live an examined life, locally, with me. Lindsay and I always seem to be on the same page, so she is not much help in this area. I get frustrated all the time that I am in a conversation with someone and realize that it is completely meaningless because they could care less. If you're interested in moving to the Antwerp area, I would love to have someone to hang out with and talk to about spiritual matters. I'm looking forward to getting together with Eric and Bob tomorrow at Applebee's in Ft. Wayne, but I thik people have to live in close proximity to one another to have really rock-crushing relationships.
On a side note, if you're interested in relocating to Antwerp and would love to plant a house church, I would love to prayerfully consider the situation with you.
I sometimes wonder if our community of bloggers is a band-aid that covers the wound of relationships in my life. I feel closer to people like Bob, Ben, Tom, Austin, and Jason (when he posts), then I do to anyone locally. I hear more from Sam in his brief replies than I do to anyone locally about any of my ideas. I guess I'm really lonely down here. There is one guy I'm getting closer to, but it has a way to go. I hope it will flourish into a friendship that will be a hammer to crack many of the crazy rocks I build.
Socrates once said, "The unexamined life is not worth living."
(Isa 6:8-10 NASB) "Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?" Then I said, "Here am I. Send me!" {9} And He said, "Go, and tell this people: 'Keep on listening, but do not perceive; Keep on looking, but do not understand.' {10} "Render the hearts of this people insensitive, Their ears dull, And their eyes dim, Lest they see with their eyes, Hear with their ears, Understand with their hearts, And return and be healed."
"If Mike and Mary Lunchbucket can sit in your church for sixty years and never have anyone come up to them and say, 'I really appreciated what you said in church today,' you're creating spiritual midgets. You're starving them to death in the pews. You're stomping on their hands as they grasp for a tiny shred of their share in the spiritual life of the congregation. Am I being overly dramatic? Sure. But if you're Mike or Mary and you're eighty years old and facing the end of your life and you've just come to realize you've only achieved a tiny fraction of your potential and you're sitting here reading about open churches for the first time in your life, you can probably think of some comments that are even more dramatic than mine."
Many people refuse to look at things critically. By doing that, I think they miss out on tremendous opportunities when we fail to see the faults in our lives and the systems we are part of. Many people sit in churches that are completely ineffective because they refuse to examine it. Is our church structured in a way that allows us to be as loving as we possibly can?
No dedicated Christian should live their life and not experience God's plan for their life. It saddens me to think that many "Christians" just go through the motions and don't struggle with what figuring out what God wants them to do and what is the most effective way to do it. We only have one life to live and we need to live it to the fullest. We should not waste a day without focusing on where our lives can be more of what God wants them to be.
However, we, as Christians, are called to live more than just an examined life. We are called to live out that examined life. If we live an examine life and figure out all of the mysteries of mankind, the church, and our lives yet fail to bring our findings into action, then our lives, although examined, were completely meaningless. I would say that the examined life is not worth living if not lived.
(James 2:17 NASB) "Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself."
If this was not enough for you and you want to read a discussion that happened on another blog concerning whether a Christian needs to have an examined life, then you might want to check out this blog. The blogger says a Christian doesn't. The comments go in a different direction.
Watch out for the potholes
