Day: August 23, 2012

Prone to Wander

Jon Acuff had a great post yesterday on his blog about why people think Christians are fake. Check it out and then come back.

Ok, good. You’re back.

In his piece, Acuff talks about a worship leader changing the words to “Come Thou Fount” when he performs it. I agree with Acuff’s point in the post. The words this leader changes are in my opinion a beautiful description of a sinner that knows where they’ll be given their natural proclivities, and offers what matters most to the God he loves to hopefully mitigate his chance of wandering.

Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for thy courts above

Like Mr Acuff, I would love to be able to say that when I became a Christian, I stopped making mistakes. It would be great if I could say that with the advent of Christ in my life came the departure of sin, but that isn’t what happened at all.

Rather, I still mess up. All the time. I get angry, or sometimes lustful. Or maybe I curse, or use the Lord’s name in a way it was never intended. Sometimes I am neither loving nor helpful to the least of these.

And I doubt, and wander.

But I love God, and I acknowledge that only through he can my heart be sealed from it’s natural proclivities.

So when people do things like change lyrics or words because they feel it indicates a more positive message or maybe because they feel they don’t wander anymore, it conveys the message that with God comes an absence of struggle with the things of earth.

That’s not true, and people need to hear that. So that when they still want to do dumb stuff after beginning a relationship with Christ they don’t just think they’re doing something wrong and walk away from the only thing that can deliver them.

I think we need to be real with our worship and our testimony. Heck, sometimes when you’re a leader, the song is your testimony.

Pretty pictures of a life without struggle don’t show Jesus to people. If I wanted that I’d move to Texas and hang out with Joel Osteen.

We need to show people there is hope for deliverance. We do that with honesty about our lives. We share in the struggle. We let people who don’t know Jesus (and also people who do) know they aren’t alone in their tendency to wander. All have sinned and fallen short.

I know I have.

Come thou fount of every blessing
Tune my heart to sing thy grace

Todd Akin, and Good From Bad

You can’t turn on your television or look at most websites these days without hearing about Rep Todd Akin’s dumbass 17th century remarks about women conceiving from rape. Clearly, Mr Akin doesn’t possess any depth of knowledge about basic human biology.

I get that. I just think most people would belay their tongues while being interviewed, unlike the unfortunate Mr Akin.

Idiot. I’m a conservative, but that type of stupidity doesn’t deserve anyone’s vote.

I read an interesting article on CNN this morning (here) by a Chicago lawyer named Shauna Prewitt, who was raped while in college and conceived a child.

The article goes into some depth about how rapists who “father” children with their victims are legally able to sue for visitation rights in many states. To me, this is a wrong of such staggering profundity if defies both description and comprehension.

I have no idea whether or not Todd Akin will continue in his quest for Senatorial glory. I believe he’s likely not the only person with such a ridiculous opinion, and hopefully his remarks were little more than a few misspoken words.

In any case, good can come of this whole debacle. We can start talking about both rape and the consequences resulting from it, and people can “unlearn” so much of the nonsense they’ve come to believe.

Rape is a terrible crime, and the rape itself is just the beginning of what the victim will have to face. There’s also embarrassing and even humiliating legal battles. Judgment from people based on stupid and errant thinking regarding who is to blame. And the always enjoyable PTSD- post traumatic stress disorder.

That is a real and terrible disorder. During my tenure at my old church in San Diego, I was part of a prayer ministry that dealt with a great many people with sexual brokenness issues, and quite a few that had been raped. PTSD affects lives in so many ways and has so many far reaching consequences.

As a society, we need to talk about that kind of thing. We can go miles toward dispelling falsehoods and errant beliefs about rape just by creating dialogue.

It’s somewhere to start. Perhaps some good can come of Akin’s remarks after all.