Store up treasures in heaven

I had an enlightening thought the other day.  It centered around these verses in Matthews 6:

19 "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

I've always been taught that it is good practice to pay off your debt as quickly as possible.  For mortgages, there is usually a minimum payment you have to pay (which includes principal and escrow), but you can always pay more towards the principal every month.  While it is always good to pay off debt, I always wonder, "If I spend all my extra money on the payment, pay off the mortgage, but only to die the next day.... I can't take my physical house with me."

Where am I storing my treasures in this case?  It looks like I'm spending my extra money on a house payment when I could be spending it on humanitarian needs.  My money spent on missions, or the church, or local ministries, or a friend in need will carry more weight than trying to pay off a debt.  By doing so, at least for me, I'm storing up treasures in heaven, in seeing that people are treated like people with respect and dignity, and that goes a long ways than trying to pay off a house.

So, I'm not saying don't pay off your debt.  If you have debt, and can only afford so much, please make sure you make those payments first.  God doesn't want us to be a slave to debt (Proverbs 22:7).  But for those who make quite a bit of money, and are making the minimum payment for mortgage (or what have you) and have a bit of extra to spend, by all means, try to find ways to pay it forward and help others in need. 

The concepts of money and finances are different in each culture, and I'm certainly speaking from the American experience.  So, make decisions wisely based on your government laws and your cultural situations.

A Little Sabbatical

Unintentionally, I took a little sabbatical from church.

I took 4 weeks off. Actually, the intentional part was that I was battling a cold (which could have been COVID, however tested negative every time I tested the first week) and then the unintentional part is that I had some congestion and persisting cough for 3 more weeks.  I could have gone to church but I felt a break was much needed.  

It was a good break, actually.  I got to spend some time with family and friends.  But I think most importantly, re-gear my head and heart from a lot of thinking I've been doing this summer.  

There are a lot of questions I have about God, Christ, and Christianity.  And it is good to have questions about anything you believe and follow.  Blindly following a religion or anything can, well, blind you from seeing other things around you.  

I knew some folks in my Christian circle may say that is kind of dangerous, to unplug yourself from fellowship for that long.  But even Jesus left the crowds for period of time to just focus on God.  There were times he prayed to God fervently and there were times that he was tempted by Satan.  But during the whole time, he was focused on God.  

There are probably many reasons I shouldn't follow God.  But all those reasons led me to believe I need to follow God more.  Because whatever loopholes I can think of, God has answered, "Where else should you go?"

The Bible is a very interesting book.  It may be good to study other religious works to make comparisons.  Or find a chart that somebody already did the work.  

Anyways, thanks for reading my steady stream of conscienceness.  I'll be checking into church service too (san cold-like symptoms).

The Original Sin

Where did sin come from?  I'm not talking about The Fall of Man.  I'm talking about the "serpent" and where it got the idea to trick Adam and Eve.  Or a deeper question: who is this serpent, where did he come from?  And why?

In Christianity, we learned that sin came into this world through the decision of Adam and Eve in eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, in the Garden of Eden.  Eve had a conversation with "the serpent" who convinced her to eat the fruit so she will "be like God, knowing good and evil."  And then she eventually convince Adam into eating the fruit.  This is often call "The Fall of Man" in the Bible, where the story comes from the book of Genesis, Chapter 3.  Prior to this, God made a perfect world and a perfect universe, and He made man and woman, Adam and Eve.  There were no sin or evil at the time, but because of Adam and Eve's decision, sin came into the world.

But what do we know about this serpent?  Prior to The Fall of Man, nothing was said about the serpent or where he came from.  In Revelations 12:9, there is this one reference of an "ancient serpent" who is defined as the devil or Satan, so we can only assumed that this ancient serpent described in Revelations is the same as we saw in Genesis (Revelations 12:9 The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the devil, or Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.)   All throughout the rest of scripture, we learned about Satan and his characteristics (Matthew 16:23-stumbling block, 1 Peter 5:8-9 - prowling to devour, Genesis 3:1-5 - crafty), so we can summarize that Satan is evil.

But where did Satan come from?  How did he get to be the way that he is?  To understand where Satan came from, we must under where angels came from.  The Bible is a little clearer on where angels came from and when God made them.  Most Biblical scholars point to a few clues in the Bible, but the one sentence that perked my interest is actually in Genesis 1:26, 

"Then God said, 'Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness...'"

Who is "us" and who is "our"?  Was God talking about himself, and giving himself the pronoun "us" or was He talking about the angels?  Job 38:7 could also referenced angels.  Leading up to this part of Job, Job is complaining to God about his situation, and God answers in a rhetorical question, "When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"  Reading between the lines, God is just saying that when the stars were created, sons of God (angels) shouted for joy.  (The overall big picture of the book of Job, God was pointing to Job of His glory and to remember God and His creation, not for Job to dwell on his own lost of his riches, and brag about how much he has done for God.)  

Satan was thought to be a fallen angel.  Ezekiel 28:12-18 is probably the only passage of Scripture in the Bible that I have found that could be talking about Satan, although Ezekiel addresses a "king of Tyre".  (It is thought that the "king of Tyre" is actually Satan, as God sometimes refer to rulers as "prince" to emphasize that God is the only King.)  Satan used to be a guardian cherub and a cherubs are like angels, or is an angelic creature.  So Satan may or may not have been a full angel.  Satan was described here as "full of wisdom and perfect in beauty."  He was blameless, and he was full of splendor.  But Satan became too prideful because he was beautiful.  Because of this, God banished him from His mountains.  

Satan worshipped himself.  He had an important role of guarding the precious stones and gems of heaven.  God made him beautiful.  God made him wise.  God made him blameless.  But Satan thought of himself as more important than God, and probably did not appreciate all that God has done, as Creator of the world and of the angels.  

Which actually leads me to a number of other questions and thoughts:

• Why isn't this the original sin story in the Bible?  (The only explanation I can think of is because God wanted to tell us a story we can relate to in Adam and Eve, and eventually through Jesus Christ.)
• Why did God placed the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden, knowing that man's curiosity will eventually lead them to eat the fruit of the tree?  It was in plain sight.  
• Why did God made angels in the first place, before he made man?  Did God made a mistake in creating angels?  Were the angels some prototype until Satan's fall?  In Genesis 1:26, God did say, "Let us make mankind in our image..."  
• The act of Satan just goes to show, God did not make robots.  The angels were created to have free-will.  And just like angels, people have the same free-will.

These are questions and thoughts that can make even the most scholarly Bible theologians crazy.  But I've learned to accept that it's a mystery of the Bible that may still remain a mystery until I get to heaven.  

Too Pure: My Experience with the Purity Culture

In the 1990's and into the early 2000's, a subculture arise within the evangelical church called the Purity Culture.  What is the Purity Culture?  It is a term used for a way of practice in an attempt to promote Biblical purity.  (1 Thessalonians 4:3-8)  Think about no sex before marriage, no "dating" (called courtships), and even no kissing, hugs and holding hands.

Although I can't speak for other churches and other people, I can share some of my experiences and some heartaches I've been through over the years.  The definition I provided above sets up the basics, but each denomination and church has practiced this differently.

My Experience and Thoughts

When I first became a Christian, I was a part of a church that follow the Purity Culture.  I was a freshmen in college, so my brain was a sponge especially in my new faith in Christ.  With the growing of my faith in God, I became a part of this purity culture.  I learned a lot about how to relate (and how not to relate) to men of the opposite gender as my brothers in Christ in the realm of the purity culture.  I also learned that women should dressed modestly and not provocatively because men are driven by sight and women should not encourage them to think immoral thoughts.  Many of us have read I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris.  Often times, couples are in a "courtship," not dating.  Many of these couples also did not hold hands, and reframing from kissing until their wedding day.  On paper, that sounds dandy, right? A model for sexual purity... 

Some of these practices lead to an unintentional divide in the church I was attending.  It puts us into silos: male on one side, female on the other side.  We were taught that a man is to pursue the woman in the relationship and make the first move (because God initiated the first relationship between Adam and Eve, and Adam came first), and people shouldn't just date around just to hook up but to pursue the relationship in a courtship with the goal of a potential marriage.  So, you could imagine, a bunch of college students in a church, learning and practicing all of these things, we were deathly afraid to talk to the folks of the opposite sex because we didn't want to give the wrong message that we were interested or go into sin of even thinking about the opposite sex.  Often times, we have accountability groups of the same gender, just so we keep ourselves pure and of course, out of trouble.  

And how did we know if someone is the right one?  It was highly encouraged to be a part of a homegroup (later called small groups) which are often co-ed, so we can pray and share in our faith.  But we still would be separated.  We were encouraged to volunteer in ministries, reach out to others, share the Gospel in small groups, and so on and so forth.  And as we pursue God and serving Him and serving in our college community through ministries, we would eventually meet someone within these ministries that has the same passion for God and that particular ministry.  As someone has described to me once, it's like running up a pyramid.  The guy is on one side and the girl is on the other side.  You're running the same race to get to the top and eventually, you'll meet each other at the top.  (Or maybe not quite like that, but you get the picture.)

It may still all look good on the surface but this also created an unintentional set of legalist rules to follow:

• No dating
• No kissing
• No hugging
• No holding hands

So, you have to do Christianity this way to find your soul mate.  And if you don't do it the right way, you won't find your soul mate:

• Did I become a Christian? Check.
• Did I go to church? Check.
• Did I sign up to do XYZ ministries? Check.
• Therefore, I will find my future husband or wife... If I do all these things...

And when I went through all these things, and graduated from college, I always felt I would find my special someone... If I do all these things to please God.  And I would marry and become a missionary and we would do missions together.  But that's not what happened and I started to wonder, "Did I do something wrong?"  I started to doubt myself, thinking I must have done something wrong, that I didn't measure up to God.  

Don't get me wrong.  For some people, this worked out for them.  But for me, because I was very much a rule follower, it gave me a sense of worthlessness.  So, it took a good bit of years before I realize this is not what God intended.  God was starting to unravel a bit of my beliefs system that was untrue.  It took me the last several years to realize:

• God truly loves me, regardless...
• He knows that I'm doing my best for Him.
• He knows that I will fail.  But He reassures me that it's okay.
• And that I need confidence in Him.

God does want me to be obedient, trust Him and love Him.  What that looks like, to me, is to follow God and know that He wants my whole heart.  Creating a system to remain pure may be okay, but if this system replaces God and His intentions for our relationship with Him and others, than the system is legalistic.  Because the purity culture says, "I'm in control of my relationship with the opposite gender," instead of proclaiming, "God, you're in control of this relationship.  You're in control of everything."  

There were various degrees that played out after this sub-generation of the purity culture.  We see Joshua Harris's marriage fell apart.  We saw Josh Duggar got arrested and sentence for having child pornography on his computer (his parents were proponents of the purity culture teachings and Christian family models).  I have read many marriage fall apart because the coupled learned that "Sex is not good...." but after the wedding, how do they now become intimate?  Christians of the Purity Culture have gone in many directions.  "I'll look good on the surface, but nobody will find out about my deepest darkest secrets."  Except God knows everything and sooner or later, things will come into light.

It took God's ultimate grace to get me to this point of understanding my experiences.  There are a lot of things I can't fully explain about them either.  There are a lot of ways my life could have gone a different direction.  From the romance side, I don't know if I can relate to men.  But I do have a lot of male friends.  I may not get married.  In my early 40's, I'm starting to see changes to my body, so having children may not happen.  But God still loves me and God still wants the best for me.

In God's Grace 2022

This past year has proven to be yet a challenging year for most of us.  We are still technically in a pandemic.  Some of us are still in a quarantine/lock-down/isolation.  Some of us are still struggling to connect.  Maybe some of us are trying to find work.  Many businesses are still struggling to hire.  And although there are a lot of great highlights in 2021, there was sadness as well.  I knew more people over the past year who came down with COVID-19, and many recovered.  But sadly, two friends have passed away from complications.  

I've started to write down in my journal the things that has happened in 2021.  I thought it wasn't much but I just started summarizing, bulleting, writing short sentences of what I remember.  And a lot has happened.  I had some struggles.  I went back to working in the office two days a week while still working at home 3 days a week.  I've learned that I am more introverted than I thought.  God brought to light a lot of things I need to deal with and work on.  God taught me a lot of things I didn't think I need to know.  I realize I listen too well (or maybe that's not the right description, but I will listen to you...)  I made new friends and got to know folks through Zoom, email, WhatsApp, etc.  I have some anger issues too.  

And all these things, it made me realize that I don't write enough. I don't share enough.  

Even though I have no set resolution this year, I thought maybe a great way to put my thoughts in writing is in a blog.  

I know what you might be thinking, "Josey, you've had this thought to blog for a while."  

I actually wanted to start last year in 2021 but never had any concrete idea or path of how to do it.  But this time around, going back through my journal, writing down those things I've did and thoughts I had over 2021, I think I might have enough material to write some things.

I would like to at least write once a week, or 3 times a month.  I don't really know if I have enough material for that.  But now that businesses and restaurants have opened up more, I think I will sprinkle some of the serious topics with some light hearted things (like eating and sports).  

In the Christian circle, sometimes we pick a word to define our year.  And while sitting around today, watching TV, I heard God saying, "grace."  So, in God's Grace, I'm looking forward to having a meaningful and purposeful 2022.