Words

And if our God is for us, then who could ever stop us.
And if our God is with us, then what could stand against. - Our God

But when the world has seen the light
They will dance with joy
Like we're dancing now - I Could Sing of Your Love Forever

Where you go, I'll go
Where you stay, I'll stay
When you move, I'll move
I will follow you
Who you love, I'll love
How you serve I'll serve
If this life I lose, I will follow you. - I Will Follow

All amazing lyrics from some pretty awesome songs. I'm sure many of you have sung these words more than a few times. I have probably sung them hundreds of times myself. The reason I chose these three songs is simply that I've sung them in worship within the last couple of weeks. There are probably hundreds of other worship songs that would have fit the purpose just as well. So what is that purpose? While singing these words, a question has come to mind; How often do we sing these words without paying any attention to what we're saying?

Do we really believe the words we sing? I'd have to say no. We'll look at the three examples I used. For starters, think about the last time you sang I Could Sing of Your Love Forever. Were you dancing? Or were you little more than a statue? And if we were to truly believe the lyrics of Our God and I will follow, our world would be a vastly different place. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure God enjoys it when we sing. I just think that we need to pay more attention to the words we are singing. We need to be more intentional about living the words we sing. What would your life look like if you really believed that no one could ever stand against us, since we have God on our side? Where is God going that you need to go? Where will you stay? Move?

Whom are you meant to love? How are you meant to serve? And lastly, are you really willing to follow God even if it costs you your life? 

Now it's up to you. You can go on, living life like a statue, or you can really try to live the words you sing in worship.

Blog Rant

So, it's been a while since my last post (that seems to be the way I start a lot of these) and I figured what better way to come back then a good old fashioned blog rant. I've got several topics that I have thought about writing on, even started writing in some cases, but just never got the time or motivation to write a whole post, or didn't feel it was a good topic to come back with. So, this post will be just a short paragraph or two on each topic. If anything interests you and you want to hear more of my thoughts, let me know. Otherwise, here we go.

First, before getting into any of my thoughts, a quick update on life since the last post. A lot has happened, so I'll just try to do the quick version. I got an internship at a great little company that was actually in my field (and paid). I graduated from GVSU with a Bachelor's of Science degree in Computer Science. This led to my internship becoming a full-time job. Which in turn led to me buying a house. All of this has been interspersed with some amazing adventures with a wonderful young woman who I have the privelege to be dating, celebrations with friends of accomplishments and commitments, and many opportunities for growth in a community in Christ.

Now, on to the topics in no particular order:

The ever popular yoga pants/modesty issue.

I recently came across this article, shared by a friend on Facebook. To be blunt, I find it completely ridiculous. I understand that it's satire. And I understand the point she's trying to make. But it's just ridiculous. And there are many articles making the same or similar point. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for women being able to express themselves through their fashion choices and have the choice of being comfortable in what they wear. And I completely agree that a lot of the responsibility is on us guys to have self-control. But there's a big difference between something that looks attractive on a woman (as the author of the article insinuates is the main argument) and something that tightly hugs the contours of intimate areas.

The #charityChallenge craze
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for giving to charity and raising awareness. And I know these things do a lot of good for the organizations they're for. There's a few things about them, though, that I don't like. Here are some of them:
1. The idea that it's give money or do the challenge. I'm sure that it is meant to encourage people to donate, but so often it seems like people view it in the opposite way; that donating money is the "bad" alternative to doing the challenge.
2. It's all about me, me, me. I know this isn't true for everyone, but it seems like every time I see one of these videos it's someone trying to outdo the last one. Everyone tries to think of a new crazy way to make their video memorable or better than the rest.
3. It can get dangerous. With everyone trying to one-up each other, they come up with increasingly dangerous (and many times, stupid) ideas. Some of the original ideas themselves are pretty dangerous.

4. This. (I know statistics are easy to manipulate, but my point is that maybe donations should be proportionate to the number affected.)

5. Does it really raise awareness? Yes there's a huge wave of people donating. Yes there's a lot more mention of the particular disease or cause. But there's a lot of people who don't even know what they're doing the challenge for. And the popularity (and donations) will die off. It won't be long before people forget about the challenge and what it stood for.

Bad Christians

What I'm talking about here is the people that call themselves Christians, but don't even begin to come close to living lives that represent Christ. These are the Bible thumpers on college campuses, so eager to tell the students they are all going to hell. These are the extremist "Churches", protvesting the funeral of a man who gave his life for the freedom for them to practice their religion. These are the "Sunday Christians", attending church every Sunday (or at least Christmas and Easter), yet living the rest of week in a completely different manner. They are the kind of "Christians" that turn people off to Christ. The world would be much better off if they would stop calling themselves Christians. If people could stop associating Christians and Christ with these types of people.

Complacent Christians

These are the Christians who see the problems in the Church, but sit idly by. They allow the Church to stray from Christ, unwilling to do anything about it. And I'll admit that I've fallen into this category. But this is what I'm going to focus on. It's part of the reason I was motivated to write this blog. I know it doesn't do much, but at least it's putting my thoughts out there. The next move is for me to write a letter to the leaders in my church. Some Churches are going the way of the Pharisees, falling away from following Christ due to focusing on their traditions and rules. Others are too far in the opposite direction, too willing to let things slide in the hopes of attracting more non-Christians. Take a good hard look at your Church and see how well they are following Christ. If you see things that aren't right, will you be willing to speak up?

Bad Drivers
I've added bad drivers here mainly just because it's my biggest pet peeve. I really don't have much to say about them, other than that if you can't drive, you shouldn't be on the road. Most of the people who fall into this category are the elderly folks who can barely see past the hood of their car and make up for it by driving 20 mph under the speed limit. I just feel like there's a lot of people on the road who should no longer be driving. Would it be that difficult to have a quick road test every 5 or 10 years after a certain age to make sure people are still capable of driving?

Anyway, that's that. If you want to hear more on any of these topics (or any others), let me know and I'll go into more detail. I'm hoping that my posting can start to be more frequent again and that this will be the starting point.

Back to the way it was meant to be

Well, it's been a while since my last post again. I've been busy. I'm not going to get into that too much, but it has made me realize something. My idea that I would post more frequently will probably not come to fruition. I think part of it may be that I'm giving myself deadlines. It makes writing too much of a chore. Then it's not that I'm writing because of something I thought of but because I feel I have to. Even if I don't really have anything I want to write about. So, from now on I'm throwing out the idea of posting every other week. It doesn't mean I won't. It just means I'm no longer giving myself that requirement. That way my posts will get back to being what I wanted them to be, ways of sharing my thoughts on things. Then, I think, I will be more likely to actually want to write them. 

So here's my quick recap of things from the last few weeks. Had a costume party to go to a few weekends ago, so leading up to that I spent a decent amount of my free time working on my costume for said party. So for less than probably $10 total, I had my costume:

If you can't tell, I went as Thor. I think that the process of making the costume was almost as much fun as wearing it. Though, my family would probably not agree. Bonus use of the costume was a super-hero themed service project the morning after the costume party. So, that was all a lot of fun. Since then, there's just been a lot of things that add up to taking up all of my free time. Parties of several varieties(barn, surprise, even Christmas), line dancing, spending time with friends and, of course, school. Oh, and I started a new puzzle. It's pretty cool and I like it a lot so far. But let's get on to the meat and potatoes of this post.

I've had a lot of ideas come to mind for what to post over the past few weeks, but every time I would sit down to write something, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. Whether it be the fact that I felt I didn't have enough to say about the topic or that I just couldn't find a way to start the post, the words just wouldn't come. Until yesterday. Yesterday, I realized what I wanted to write about.

One of the things that has been a part of my busy life of late is a bible study called Real Men. Our goal is to figure out how we can be the men that God meant for us to be; Real Men as only He can define. At some point I would love to write about that. But not today. Maybe after we've spent some more time on it. Maybe sooner. Today, though, I want to write about something that came up while just chatting after our bible study one night. It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately and found that several of the other guys in the group agreed. I feel like the Church has not been the Church lately. By that I mean that the Church of today is not what it was meant to be from the dawn of Christianity. And when I brought this up, we started talking about getting back to the first Church, becoming like the early Christians. We talked about diving into the word and really trying to figure out how God wanted us to live as Christians within the Church. And that's exactly what I want to do. 

Now the reason I say that it wasn't until yesterday that I realized I wanted to talk about this is that we had had our conversation a few weeks ago, but the busyness of life buried the thought in the back of my head. Yesterday, my daily reading included Romans 12. The heading for verses 9-21 is "Marks of the True Christian"(ESV). This passage gives a pretty simple list of things that we need to do. But there's also a lot of other places in the bible that show us how we can live as true Christians. Then today, I read Romans 14. What that caused me to realize is this; we have many different beliefs when it comes to how we should serve God. This is evident in the fact that we have so many different denominations in the Christian faith. The only reason why we have different denominations is a difference in what we believe is necessary in following God. But as Paul says to the Christians in Rome; "Who are [we] to pass judgement on the servant of another?" It's not about the things we do, but the reasons behind it. So, in figuring out how to live as true Christians, we need to recognize that there are different ways to serve the Lord.

I am going to challenge myself to examine my life in comparison to that of the True Christian Paul writes about. And I am going to try to learn what the Church is meant to be and try to bring it to reality. And I am going to challenge you to do the same with your life.

Changed To Bring Change

I know, I know. I'm already off to a great start with my whole "post more frequently" thing. It's been over 3 weeks since my last post, but I have my reasons. Okay, they're more like excuses. Honestly, the first week since my last post, I didn't have too much happen, so that weekend I had pretty much nothing to write about. Since then, I've gotten super busy. Or at least busy enough that in the times that I do have free, I just haven't felt like writing. I think that part of it is that, at the time of my last post, I hadn't quite gotten into the routine of school quite yet and had underestimated the amount of work I would have to put into this semester. But that's not the only thing that has kept me from writing.

I have recently started to really work on my relationship with God. Part of that has led me to join my church's youth group as a leader of the freshman guys. It's not an incredibly huge time commitment, (a few hours every Sunday night) but so far it has been awesome. In the few short weeks that we've been meeting so far, we've started to get pretty open and honest with each other. And the opportunity to share with my co-leader and the guys has already presented itself as an opportunity for me to grow in my personal relationship with God, as well as being able to help in theirs. And there's lots of fun to be had. Like the weekly challenges before our Bible study - which the freshman guys (team name: Hot Tamales) are dominating in the scoreboards. And the trip to CedarPoint the Saturday before last.

Waiting in line for Millennium Force

And the picture brings me to my next little anecdote from the last few weeks. You may notice that it's not the same ninja from the previous post. Unfortunately, as ninjas are so good at doing, he disappeared the night that I took those pictures. I have a couple ideas where he may have gone, but I highly doubt I will see him again. So, when I was out for dinner with my family the night before the CedarPoint trip I checked the quarter machines on the way out. Lo and behold, they had the exact same ninjas. So, I quickly fished a quarter out of my pocket, inserted it into the slot and reached for my prize. So there's a new ninja to name (and frankly I kind of like the daggers this one has a lot more than the grappling hook of the previous).

I'll share just one more of my recent distractions with you before I get to some of my thoughts of the past few weeks. This July, I took a motorcycle safety course and got my cycling endorsement. Since then, I've been riding a Suzuki Boulevard S40 that my dad picked up for my mom and me to learn to ride on. A little over a week ago, I bought my own bike, a 1982 Suzuki GS850L. It needs a little work. So, I've been doing a little work on it. And that takes time.

My new baby

 One of the things I've been paying a bit more attention to as of late is worship songs. Or rather, the lyrics of the worship songs. One common theme I've noticed in worship songs is the idea of darkness and God's power over it. I love the ideas that these songs portray to us, but the truth is, they aren't completely true. Don't get me wrong, I know that God has power over the darkness. I just think that some of the things we sing don't really hold up. There's probably many other songs that talk about darkness, but the two examples I had come to mind are both by the Newsboys. The first is I Am Free, in which there is a line that says, "Through You the darkness flees". This is beautiful.And I believe one hundred percent true. The only thing that the darkness flees from is God. And it is only through Him that it flees. The second song is a different story. He Reigns. Another beautiful song. Another mention of darkness. But this one I have a little bit of a problem with.

"And all the powers of darkness

Tremble at what they've just heard

'Cause all the powers of darkness

Can't drown out a single word"

This is such beautiful imagery. I love the way it sounds. I love singing it. But the last time that we sang it in church, I had a different thought come to my mind. The truth is that the powers of darkness can drown out our words. They do it all the time. If it weren't for the powers of darkness, everyone would be brought to Christ. How else could someone hear the Gospel (the Good News) and not come to Christ. But there are powers of darkness that drown out the words of truth. Even in those who have come to Christ, we see the powers of darkness at work. We know the things that we ought to do, but we do not do them. And the things we do not want to do, we do. That's the powers of darkness drowning out the words of truth in our hearts. But the fault isn't in the words of truth. Nor is it in the powers of darkness. It's in ourselves. We are the ones that allow the darkness to defeat the truth. Yes, for most, it isn't a conscious choice. People don't typically think Today, I want to do something wrong. Something evil. But we are sinful in nature and that is what gives the darkness power over us. And it takes a conscious choice to battle that. We must decide to do good. And that is only possible through God.

Which brings me to another song that made me think over the past few weeks. I'm not exactly sure what the name of it is. I've even tried searching for it, but to no avail. The lyrics that I want to focus on though are "I have been changed, to bring change, to bring change." I think this is a great thing for us to remember. And it ties in to the idea of darkness. When we encounter Christ, especially when we decide to live our lives for Him, it changes who we are. And what we need to remember is that it can't stop there. We are changed to bring change. We have to be a light to the world or else the powers of darkness won't even have anything to drown out. 

If we aren't bringing Christ to the world, we have basically surrendered to the darkness.

New Plan

So, here's the deal. I've said that I was going to try to write more frequently, but I've still only managed a few posts over this summer. So, I've decided to do an experiment of sorts. I'm going to attempt to write a new post every week (possibly every other week). It will most likely be toward the end of the week, as a kind of week-in-review sort of thing. I'm a little worried that more frequent posts will equal less interesting posts. This will be my attempt to resolve that before it becomes a problem:

1. I'm thinking about starting to add pictures to my posts (or at least one picture per post). My idea for that was something like this: 
 
Last week Tuesday I hung out with some really cool guys and we played some intense board games. We went for a snack run and they had these little ninja guys in the 25¢ machines. So, a few of us got them. My idea is to take a picture of him somewhere throughout my week that has significance to my post. Here he is hanging out at the fire we had this weekend. But, he's going to need a name and for that I turn to you all. Leave a comment with your suggestions for his name and I'll choose my favorite.
2. Since one of the main reasons I don't write more often is a lack of topics, I'm turning to you for that, too. Any topic you can think of that you'd like to hear my thoughts on - post it in your comment, send me a message on facebook, text me, talk to me in person - let me know any way you can and I'll add it to my list. This doesn't mean I won't still be coming up with my own ideas, I'll still have things to write about if I don't get any feedback. But without your ideas, my posts will probably have a lot more about what I did this week and a lot less about the deep, sometimes profound, thoughts I have.
3. As I previously alluded to, I'm probably going to have a few more details on what is going on in my life. I'm hoping that this doesn't make my posts too boring and that people will still enjoy reading them. But we'll just have to wait and see.

Now, onto the other meaning for the title. I'm going to try to start something new in my personal life as well. Earlier this week, I was talking with a really good friend about life, relationships, God's plan and pretty much anything else. He said "Why can't we just be straightforward with each other?" I'm pretty sure he meant this mostly in regards to relationships, and possibly slightly in jest, but it really is a good point. Why do we always have such trouble with telling people how we really feel. It seems like it always boils down to fear. We're afraid of the reaction we'll get. Either we really like someone and we fear the possibility that they may not feel the same, or we don't like someone and fear hurting them. But the thing is that we know that people feel differently about each other. There are some people that I like and others not so much. And I know that those on both ends have similar feelings toward others. So, if we could only realize and accept that, we can get past these childish fears. We can tell people what we actually think of them. Tell that girl that you think she's pretty awesome. Tell your buddy what he does that bugs you. But there's another part to it. Take that feeling that you get when you tell someone how you feel and remember it for when someone tells you how they feel. If you don't feel the same about each other, than you don't feel the same about each other. It really is nothing more than that. Anyway, I feel like I'm starting to lose myself on this. My whole point is that this is something I feel I need to apply to my life. I'm going to strive to be more open and honest with people. It's going to be tough. It might cause rifts in friendships. I hope and pray that it doesn't change things.

I'll wrap this post up with a quick summary. I'm going to try to be more frequent with my blogposts. I need topics (and a name for the ninja) from you guys, my readers. I'm going to add a few more personal tidbits. And I'm going to try to be more straightforward with people. And I challenge you to do so as well.

Puzzles

Why is it called puzzles? That's the puzzle!

So, I recently finished a puzzle I've been working on for a while now. A 2000 piece puzzle of a harbor in France. It was a really fun puzzle to do, but I'm also kind of nerdy like that. It probably took me at least three times as long to finish the sky as it did to complete the rest of the image. This was partially due to my frustration with the fact that almost all of the sky pieces looked nearly the same. The majority of the time was just me looking at it sitting on my floor, not able to motivate myself enough to finish it.

Anyway, while I was finishing up the last few pieces, I started thinking as I sometimes do. I was thinking about how life is like a giant puzzle. We're all just trying to put the pieces together to form a complete image, a complete life. We find that our lives are full of gaps, missing pieces. Naturally, we try to find the pieces that fit. We just want to feel whole. Maybe we try out a new sport. Or try our hand at painting. Read a book. Learn something new. Build something. Accomplish something. But it doesn't work. At least, not in the way we hope. Sure, there will be some pieces that fit, some gaps filled. We'll begin to feel a little more complete. But it won't be enough. There will still be gaps. Empty spaces remain. We've tried every piece that we have, but nothing fits, nothing fills the hole. So, what do we do? We pick a piece and cram it in there, force it to fit. After all, it's better than feeling empty, right? All too often we have pieces in our lives that don't feel quite right, that we know shouldn't be a part of our lives. But we prefer it to the emptiness, so we pursue it. We hold on to these things in a desperate attempt to feel whole.

But even after all of that, even after cramming in the bits and pieces that you know don't belong just so that you can say "Look at me. I've got it all figured out. I don't need anything else.", you realize that there's still a lot of emptiness. But you also find that you have a lot of extra pieces. A lot that you can give. And guess what? So does everyone else.

Now, I kind of feel like I write a lot about relationships. Maybe too much (especially since I'm probably for sure not the best choice for advice on the matter). But I promise this won't be all about the ooey-gooey, lovey-dovey relationships I've written about in the past. Believe me, they have their place in this, too. But this idea applies to the good old friendship relationships, the tight (and not so tight) familial relationships, and even the special man-beast relationships we have with our cats and dogs. Okay, maybe not so much that last one. That's a different story. But one thing about human beings is that we thrive on relationships. In the words of Sanctus Real, "We need each other, so what's the fighting for?" Our relationships that we form with each other are a huge part of who we are. It's not so much that we all have our own individual puzzles, but more like someone took a whole bunch of puzzles, mixed all the pieces together and then divided them up between all of us. We need each other if we ever want to feel complete. And maybe there's something about you that helps fill someone else's life. In turn, they may just make your life more complete. And remember those pieces in your life that really don't belong, the ones you just crammed in there? Someone will come along and help you see that they shouldn't be there and help you find something that should. You need to get rid of those pieces and trust that the spaces will be filled by others in your life.

Sometimes you'll think you've found the right pieces. Sometimes a piece will fit if you just remove a few neighboring pieces. Sometimes they'll even fit with the pieces that are already there. But sometimes when you're making a puzzle, you don't realize that a piece isn't right until you try to fill in the surrounding pieces and can't. You'll have pieces that you know belong that will make it obvious that the one you thought was meant to be there belongs elsewhere. Sometimes people will leave your life and take some of their pieces with them, leaving you feeling empty where you once felt whole. But just as puzzle pieces aren't all the same, there is variety in the figurative puzzle pieces of life. Some are tied to a person and leave when they do. A listening ear, a helping hand, a caring heart. But others become a permanent part of your life. You'll always have the memories, the impressions left on you. Nobody can take all of their pieces when they go. Everyone you meet effects your view on life.

But even with all of your friends and family, even with all of the people that you'll ever meet, even with all of the people that you'll never meet, you won't be able to complete your puzzle. Because there are some things in life that no person can ever give you. No person can. But God can. The perfect love that we all seek, the inconceivable forgiveness that we all need, the matchless sacrifice that none of us deserve. The grace, mercy and salvation that only Christ can offer us, these are the things that are absolutely necessary for completeness. Without Him, you will always be searching for a way to fill the void in your life. It amazes me how much this idea is evident in the mainstream secular world. We see it in the way that society treats money, marriage and morals. "You aren't happy? Well, that's because your husband doesn't love you enough, your job doesn't pay well enough, your social life isn't fun enough. You need to leave him and get a better one. You need to work harder and get that promotion. You need to loosen up and get crazy" But nothing we can do will ever match what Christ does for us. We will never feel completely whole without Him.

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So, I made the mistake of trying to write this post from my phone. I managed to lose nearly all my work twice before I finally decided to write it down on paper and then type it up on my computer. So, it's not quite what I wanted it to be in the beginning, but hopefully it can still speak to someone. Like always, comments, critiques & responses are more than welcome.

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All men are created equal... or are they?

** I got busy again, so this post took me a bit longer than I had hoped. Sorry.**

Alright. Here it is. The super controversial post that I've been putting off writing for a while now. I'm not entirely sure of why I haven't taken the time to put down my thoughts yet. It might be that I'm a little worried about how people are going to take it. It might be that I'm still trying to get back to "normal" after losing my grandpa. Or maybe it's just that I've been so caught up in day to day life that I've not really had the time. Most likely it's a little bit of each and probably some other stuff too. Anyway, I know this is going to be a tough read for some people. Hopefully others will love it. I will probably lose some respect over this, but I may just gain some, too.

Now before you go and take my title the wrong way, let me just straighten that out right away. What I meant is that we aren't all cookie cutter replicas of each other and I think that's something that needs to be better addressed in the Church. But I'll get back to that.

I'm sure that you've heard all about the whole homosexual rights movement thing that's been going on lately. I just thought I'd put my position out there. I personally haven't been following the movement all that closely, but I continuously see it pop up on the news, on social media and just in everyday conversations. I also recently had a conversation with a friend about the issue of homosexuality and whether or not it is a sin. One thing she said was that she couldn't understand my argument because she didn't see it as sinful. So where do I go? To God's word:

"Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable." ~ Leviticus 18:22 

"If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads." ~ Leviticus 20:13 

But Alex, that's Leviticus, the laws for the Israelites. Didn't Christ come and basically say that the old law was fulfilled and that he was the new law? Yes, but there's also New Testament verses that still say that homosexual acts are wrong. For example:

"Don't you realize that those who do wrong will not inherit the Kingdom of God? Don't fool yourselves. Those who indulge in sexual sin, or who worship idols, or commit adultery, or are male prostitutes, or practice homosexuality, or are thieves, or greedy people, or drunkards, or are abusive, or cheat people-none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. Some of you were once like that. But you were cleansed; you were made holy; you were made right with God by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." ~ 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

I thought about doing the whole ellipses shortening of that verse thing, but by leaving the entire passage, it helps to demonstrate my view. First off, notice that he doesn't say those who are homosexuals, but rather says those who practice homosexuality. This is one of the huge things that points to the act being the sin, not the orientation. Secondly, I want you to notice that he doesn't just say those who practice homosexuality, but includes the idol worshipers, drunkards, greedy, adulterous, abusive, etc. in the list of those who will not inherit the kingdom. And last, but most definitely not least, reread those last couple of sentences. You were once like that. But you were cleansed, made holy and made right with God by calling on the name of Jesus. By calling yourself a Christian, you choose to put off your old ways. You no longer practice homosexuality. Just like you no longer steal. Or cheat. Or become drunk. Or beat your wife. Or [insert your own personal struggle here]. Yes you may will still struggle with the desires. But the desires lead to sin (James 1:14-15) and we need to learn how to deal with those desires. But that's a whole different discussion.

 The problem is that many people think that being a homosexual is sinful. That if you have an attraction to the same sex, you are sinning. I personally do not believe that. I believe that acting upon those feelings, attractions, desires, is what constitutes the sin. Another part of the problem is that when people share this view, many homosexuals believe it to be the other view. If they are told that what they are doing is sinful, they believe they are being told that they are sinful just for being who they are. 

The truth is, we are all sinful just for being who we are. It's a fact of life. Which leads me to the my next topic, the Church. I feel like the Church as a whole hasn't been doing all to great with the idea that we are all sinners. Now, I can't speak for every church, but I have been to a few of them in my area. Quick clarity point; by Church I'm talking about Christ's bride as a whole, whereas church is an individual church. I believe it is every church's responsibility to accurately portray the Church. Christ laid out quite a bit of what we are supposed to look like as the Church, and I think I can honestly say that I have never been to a church that completely looks like the Church. Of course, that's probably because the Church is full of sinners. At least some churches are attempting to portray the Church. The church I go to now is really into the idea that we are all sinners, we all fall short of the glory of God. We're a very come as you are kind of church. I like that,  because it encourages people to not put on a mask of perfection when they come to church, only to take it off again as they leave. But one thing I've seen at many churches, mine included, is the failure to notice that we aren't all the same. We don't all struggle with the same sins. Some of us face vanity issues. Some of us face homosexual desires. For some it's alcoholism. For some it's pornography. Envy. Hatred. Lying. Cheating. Gluttony. The list goes on and on. Sin is sin. And God has said that anyone who sins, which is every last one of us, whether it be sexual immorality or not honoring our parents, is in the same boat. It is all a direct defiance of His law. The problem I see is that in many churches, we fail to remember that. I've heard of churches who excommunicate members who were caught in an affair. Who are we to decide that one sin is worthy of excommunication and another is not? The truth is that if we kick sinners out of the church there wouldn't be a church left. Though my church doesn't go so far as to excommunicate people (as far as I know) I still see this failure to recognize that we are not all the same but our sins are. There are certain things that are viewed as more acceptable sins than others. I recently talked with someone who said he felt ostracized by the church for something he did. While I hear stories of others who are blatantly disobeying God, but through our wanting to be accepting of all no matter the sin, we almost give approval of a sinful life.

I guess it's all just been bothering me a bit lately. I've been trying to take the faith that I've been raised in and make it into my own. My own personal relationship with Christ. I guess that's what's been getting me to think about this kind of stuff more. But I do believe that this is something that our churches need to work on. We need to stop being churches and become the Church.