There have been many times that I've felt guilty and lazy because I'm a stay at home mom. Not even so much because I'm a homemaker but because I don't do anything else. Most of my friends are stay at home moms as well. There's one main difference between them and me. Most of them home school and my other friend has gone back to college...all of which demands much of their time. I've often asked myself, "what do I do?" I don't home school, I'm not going back to school myself, heck I don't even volunteer my time or services anywhere.
I know that raising four kids is full time job but it however does leave time for other things. All my friends have four kids themselves and still have time for all they do on top of that. I don't have any inspirations for home schooling, or going back to school myself (as of yet at least). Lately I have been feeling a tug to offer what I can to those who do more then me...to serve others...to help support others.
How many times as mothers have we said to ourselves how nice it would be to every now and again have someone in our lives to help out. How many times have we envied those we see who have family close by that are evolved in their lives...in their children's lives...who are their to help and support them during one of the hardest and challenging times in their lives (which is the time in life of raising small children, heck even raising teenagers counts too).
I've felt for a while now how self absorbed I can be in my own life. God forbid if I have something on my calendar that I have to do. God forbid if I have something that requires an inconvenience on my part. That is not the heart of a servant or more important yet, the heart of Christ who was the greatest example of a servant.
I want to pull myself out of myself and be there for others who have fuller plates then I do...I want to become less self absorbed and more concerned with the difficulties and challenges others have to deal with...I want to fully give in to this desire to serve others.
I feel that God is calling me to help and support the calling He has on others lives. To serve...to help...to love and support them. That is my calling. God calls some to minister and calls others to minster to the ministers...make sense?
All this has been somewhat of a sigh of relief on my part. I had been feeling for a while that if I'm not called to home school, go back to school myself just yet, or work outside the home...then what the heck am I supposed to be doing?! There has been something missing since I've quit working and I believe that it's been the calling to serve unfulfilled.
It's time to open myself up to the needs of others...be less concerned with being inconvenienced or having something required of me. All my friends have an important role and job they've been called to do and it's my calling to help support them in their calling (that's alot of callings!)
I think about my one friend for just one example who is going back to school to be a school counselor. I think about all the children who are hurting so bad and I think about all the lives of those children that I know she is going to help and have an impact on. What better way to spend my time then to help support the calling of others.
The prayer I have for myself and my life is that God would open the doors that need to be opened for me to help...for me to give that well needed support...and yes at times that shoulder to cry on during times of discouragement and being over stressed.
By ourselves we can only accomplish so much but together, with someone having your back, the sky is the limit.
love, love, love...and thank you.
ReplyDeleteI think it interesting that you say that you feel guilty that you aren't doing anything in addition to being a homemaker, and later turn around and credit your inspiration to a calling from god. I think there is something obvious jutting out of landscape in the language of your post, showing that you already knew from where the impetus for your desire to do something more comes. That you want to is completely innocuous, and if you were to completely discard the imagined wishes of the petty and grotesque deity imagined from the superstitions of a bronze-aged tribe of illiterate peasents, you would find that just desiring to do more is enough cause in itself.
ReplyDeleteOut of everyone else in my family, besides myself, you are the only one who has said or did anything to make me think you might break the mindforged manacle of ridiculous superstitious religion and think for yourself. And continue to do so, most especially when sharing the things you believe. You do not accept the bible at face value, and readily discard or ignore the things in it that offend you morally. You make up god as you go along, saying you believe he thinks or wishes the very things you yourself find morally acceptable. The only description of god I've seen you put forward is the one that agrees with what you want or feel or cherish or despise, including your self-recriminations in "Drudgery".
Which is more likely? That god just so happens to be exactly what you expect him to be (even when this contradicts his reputation in the holy books), or that you are just inventing a god that is exactly what you expect him to be just like those bronze-aged peasents did for themselves? Tell me the truth.
Verbal bulldozing again. It's getting old, Bryan. If this life is all there is, why are you wasting your precious time talking smack to Christians and people who think differently than you? Do you think you have some special revelation of truth that others have missed somehow? Isn't that what you accuse people who believe in God of thinking?
ReplyDeleteI believe in God because faith and reason tell me He is real. I believe there is a first cause, a designer...why not God? He is "a priori." A first thing before all things. A solid, personal presupposition based on completely unprovable, but logically acceptable facts. Did Bronze-age peasants make God up, or did God reveal Himself to them? We have no empirical proof either way. Just as I can't prove God's existence empirically...you can't prove He does not exist empirically. He is neither scientifically verifiable or falsifiable. It is a matter of metaphysics, theology, philosophy, and faith. By God's grace, I have chosen to believe.
Christina Marie wrote:
ReplyDeleteIf this life is all there is, why are you wasting your precious time talking smack to Christians and people who think differently than you?
If you think that making an argument for the invalidity of chrisitianity is smack, that's what you think.
Christina Marie wrote:
Do you think you have some special revelation of truth that others have missed somehow? Isn't that what you accuse people who believe in God of thinking?
I'm not the one who has claimed there is any revelation. You are. All I claim is that yours is false and illusory.
Christina Marie wrote:
He is neither scientifically verifiable or falsifiable. It is a matter of metaphysics, theology, philosophy, and faith. By God's grace, I have chosen to believe.
Well, I've gotten you to say it. This is your faith, for which there is no evidence whatsoever. The problem is that we are not talking about leprechauns or unicorns here. We are talking about a cruel and capricious dictator who intervenes in the affairs of humanity, who can tell you what to eat or drink, or with whom you may have sex and in what position, or who you have to love and who you have to kill, and has the ultimate power to condemn a person's soul to eternal torture. And you wonder why I am not keen to take all this nonsense at face value? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and metaphysics is not evidence at all.
Christina Marie wrote:
ReplyDeleteVerbal bulldozing again.
I'm sorry, you've twice leveled this reputation at me, and it honestly does offend me. How can you say that arguing and demonstrating the fallacy of a religion is verbal bulldozing from the perspective of the religion that claims I will go to hell if you don't believe as you do? Who is really doing the threatening? Have I even once said that if you don't or my sister doesn't listen to me that there will be punishment on that scale?
I have no eternal condemnation for you, Bryan. You can choose to think for yourself. You have. We disagree. I am not your judge on that issue. I believe in God. You know He exists but you hate Him. Again...that is your personal choice. I do believe in final judgment. I do believe there is a hell. I have no idea if you will be there or not. But, I do care about it. I don't want you to face God with hatred in your heart towards Him. That makes me feel very sad for you and those who love you.
ReplyDeleteYou actually made me laugh out loud with your assertion that God tells us what sex positions to use. That is not in the Bible. Where did you "find" that?
You said, "Well, I've gotten you to say it. This is your faith, for which there is no evidence whatsoever." Yes. You "got me to say it." Good grief. Your self-worship is palpable. Does my faith threaten you? I have faith...it's difficult to prove...impossible really. Just like my love for my family is empirically unprovable...but real nevertheless.
Also, on a brighter note, I appreciate your thought process. You are an apologist for anything anti-God. You argue your points well. I don't think all of your premises are true. But, your arguments are basically valid. You seem to know a good bit about the Bible (except for the sex part...which is still making me lol!). I can't say that arguing with you is enjoyable, but it is challenging and personally profitable. Thanks for that.
I feel bad that I upset you with my verbal bulldozing comment. It was critical and a little mean, I know. I still think you do that though. It is a crummy thing to do to your sister especially. You have great communication skills...why not use words that build? Does Becky like to be run over by your words? Wouldn't others be more inclined to listen to your arguments if they were seasoned with kindness? I need to work on that myself.
Christina Marie wrote:
ReplyDeleteI have no eternal condemnation for you, Bryan.
I didn't think you had, or mattered if you did, but I thank you for the assurance. I have none for you, either.
Christina Marie wrote:
You know He exists but you hate Him.
I don't know if you've read my response to you on the other blog yet, but I don't mind repeating myself a little bit if you hadn't. If I was to say that the character Claudius from Shakespeare's play, Hamlet, might not be a very nice person, does that implicitly mean I believed in his literal existence as a real person rather then a work of fiction? I know you are a smarter person then than, but no thanks to your belief in god.
There are very many outwardly professing christians that I do suspect are complete frauds, and do not actually believe any of the nonsense they preach, not the least of which was the antisemitic bigot, Billy Graham. You aren't one, though. I think you are a morally normal person in spite of your religious beliefs and am quite happy that you keep company with my sister. I'm also quite convinced that you believe this stuff, too, but I take it as a sign of weakness that you can't discuss the validity that belief without the slanderous attempt to ascribe feelings you imagine I should have to support your own premise.
Christina Marie wrote:
I do believe in final judgment. I do believe there is a hell.
These beliefs are really only important to you. They are horrific artifacts of your faith, not mine, and not worthy of the attention of a thoughtful person.
Christina Marie wrote:
That makes me feel very sad for you and those who love you.
I couldn't describe how little I think of this. I am not troubled by what nightmares others imagine for themselves. I also think it would be incredibly dishonest and despicable of me to profess belief in something that I don't just to ease the minds of people who love me and are credulous enough to believe in this rubbish.
Christina Marie wrote:
ReplyDeleteYou actually made me laugh out loud with your assertion that God tells us what sex positions to use. That is not in the Bible. Where did you "find" that?
Let me be the one to rush to the common ground you've just discovered, and am incredibly happy that you can empathize with me. I also find the prospect of prohibiting sexual positions on divine authority as hilarious as you do. Now you know exactly how I feel when I hear the faithful tell me of their concerns about hell and final judgment.
But, I don't think I am the most appropriate person with which you should place your question. You are right, I also find no scripture describing any prohibition on sexual positions, but this in no wise prevented St. Augustine from inventing them and inflicting them on believers, even to the extent of promising hell to those who dared to enjoy sex, and burning people at the stake if they were discovered copulating in unauthorized ways.
If you don't believe in such prohibitions and that those punishments were wicked, that's progress of a kind.
Christina Marie wrote:
Yes. You "got me to say it." Good grief. Your self-worship is palpable.
It's an important point to have said, and genuinely hard to get a faithful person to admit. I think its strange that in a religion that professes faith as one of the most if not the most important character trait a believer should have, that it isn't the very first thing that a believer will claim as the reason for her belief.
When a person tells me that she will believe something as absurd and preposterous as christianity solely on faith, I feel like she is arguing against herself. It tells me that she might be willing to take absolutely anything suggested to her without evidence of any kind.
Christina Marie wrote:
I have faith...it's difficult to prove...impossible really. Just like my love for my family is empirically unprovable...but real nevertheless.
I'm not sure I would say that the love we have for others is unprovable, but I'm willing to assume it isn't just for this argument. The problem with comparing your faith to the love you have for your family is that it isn't terribly important to the rest of the world whether you actually love someone or not, and I see no good reason to doubt that you do. But, according to christians, if you can't take god on faith then you'll go to an eternity of torture, which any intelligent person has excellent reasons to doubt is true.
Christina Marie wrote:
You seem to know a good bit about the Bible (except for the sex part...which is still making me lol!).
I didn't say that christian prohibitions on sexual positions was biblical, though I can't blame you for making that assumption. I happy knowing you don't think its true, but the largest recognized authority on christianity did make those prohibitions. Who am I to say they are wrong when they say their faith makes those prohibitions and you are right when you say that your faith doesn't?
Christina Marie wrote:
Wouldn't others be more inclined to listen to your arguments if they were seasoned with kindness?
How would you say, "Christianity is an exceedingly wicked and depraved belief that wholly misrepresents the origins of the universe and humanity, is ultimately grounded on wish-thinking, and faith in it has made the lives of countless people in history very much more worse then it would have been if christianity never existed." in the kindest manner possible?
Please stop slandering me with the description "apologist". I have never argued in support of any faith.
Christina Marie wrote:
ReplyDeleteI can't say that arguing with you is enjoyable, but it is challenging and personally profitable.
I do enjoy it, quite a lot. You never know what a person of faith will say next in the defense of the indefensible. Because of that unpredictability, it almost always keeps one's critical thinking engaged or at least isn't very boring. When you aren't trying to slander me, and have stopped to think about what you want to say, I think you provide the most valuable and engaging discussion.
Bryan, Thank you for your kind words. I am an emotional person, passionate about what I believe. That gets in the way when I'm talking to someone, such as yourself, who is analytical, logical, and smart. I have to rethink my thought process and communicate with purpose.
ReplyDeleteMy point about love for others being unprovable wasn't to place love for family on equal footing with faith in God...as far as content is concerned (I Cor. 13 does say that love is greater than faith...amazing). My point was to show that, just like love, faith is a heart issue that can not be physically measured by others. Sure, others can observe behavior that indicates the probability of love, but they can not prove that I have actual love in my heart. So too with faith. I can not prove that my faith in God is real. I can only show outward signs of its probability in me. Add to this the thought that faith is a gift from God (Eph 2) and you have a most interesting scenario. Even I am not completely aware of the power of faith at work in me. And, I have not even begun to talk about grace...I could talk about that forever.
Setting the concept of proving faith aside, however: The existence of God is not dependent on my faith, nor is proof of His existence limited to my faith. Science teaches that there is a beginning point to our universe. Some say a "big bang;" others say our ancestor molecules/atoms/whatever rode into this stretch of space on the backs of crystals(!), others say aliens started the human race, etc... I say, God made all of it. Why is the existence of God so threatening to some?