7 New Year’s Resolutions I Invite Others to Steal
The year we send the Hamburglar to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200.
December 31, 2012 - 4:12 pm
Thursday – Culture
4. Start Developing Some New Hobbies Beyond Internet Trolling. Something New Each Season Sounds Like a Good Goal.
Every three or four months my wife and I should both strive to learn something new together. Any suggestions for where we should start?
We’ve lived in the San Fernando Valley for almost three years but still have so much to explore and learn. If any local businesses are interested in demonstrating their services and appearing on PJ Lifestyle, please contact me at DaveSwindlePJM@gmail.com.
On Thursdays I’ll blog about my efforts to go out of my comfort zone and try new things that I never had any interest in before. Maybe it’s time to finally time to give sports a chance again? And to start exploring the rich mix of cultures that come together in Los Angeles?
In conjunction with my New Year’s resolution to express my gratitude to those who labor to make the world a better place, I would like to commend and thank you for a brilliant article and beautiful plan for 2013.
In order to pay it forward as suggested, one of my resolutions for the upcoming year that I started to do last year was to expand my definition of acts of charity to include targeted overtipping. Example: instead of giving money to the homeless guy weaving in and out of traffic at major intersections: I handed the guy who helped put the Christmas tree on our car a $20 bill. He was working his tail off and seemed to be in a bad mood, until he looked at the denomination on the bill and gave my a very hearty thank you. I looked him in the eye and said Merry Christmas, warmly, and he returned the sentiment.
Some charitable causes are more worthwhile than others, and it would be impossible to give to all the genuinely worthy ones. Nevertheless, why not recognize the efforts of the many hard-workers who do not have their hands out, but could use and certainly appreciate your sharing some of your hard-earned but not necessarily deeply missed good fortune. As far as redistribution goes, it certainly beats writing a check to some overpaid and underworked bureaucrat in DC.
Have to correct you there. You can’t be an evangelical Christian in the past tense. If you left the faith you never belonged to God to begin with. “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.” (1 John 2:19 ESV).
Your friend is wrong, there is a correct way to worship God. He inspired people to write it down in the Old and New Testaments. Examine yourself and pray that God would save you from His judgment. My guess is that you’ve been deceived by the dual tenets of rationalism (which wrongly puts human reason above God) and skepticism (which rejects truth and wrongly teaches that nothing is knowable). It appears as “open-mindedness” but in reality is a rejection of the sovereignty of God.
So which church or denomination practices the only correct way to worship God?
Depends on the individual church. Do they practice Sola Scriptura, Sola Fide, Sola Christus? If not it’s highly unlikely they are practicing Biblical Christianity. Do they draw people in using carnal means and entertainment (i.e. praise bands, feel-good topics, and overall trendiness)? Then those people must be kept using carnal means, and you will not likely hear Biblical preaching there. Personally I have avoided large churches because it is difficult to maintain a large body of churchgoers without resorting to those means.
Is the Gospel preached consistently and accurately? You should be hearing about the sovereignty of God, the inherent sinfulness and depravity of man, and the saving grace of God through His son Jesus Christ and Him crucified. It should not be a variation on having your best life now. The Gospel is inherently offensive to sinful people. If you don’t offend anyone with it you’re no longer preaching it.
It’s difficult to point to a particular denomination because even with oversight, individual churches may go off the reservation. That being said you will probably not find many Biblical churches within Roman Catholicism, the Methodists, or the ECLA Lutherans (much less cults like Mormonism and the Jehovah’s Witnesses). Again, each individual church should be judged against Scripture. Compare what their elders/pastors/ministers are saying in the name of God to the Word of God, and you’ll quickly find the false teachers. Non-denominational churches are especially dangerous because of the aforementioned lack of oversight.
I attend a small Baptist church whose elders are very careful to keep to Biblical instructions for church leaders, choose worship service content based on Scripture and not on entertainment, and keep to the three tenets i mentioned above. A church is a place where believers come to fellowship together and are fed and comforted on the Word of God, and where non-believers can hear the Gospel and through God’s grace might be saved.
So what does your theology teach is the way to get to heaven, believing the right thing about God or worshiping God in the “correct” way?
And I assume that you believe that all Roman Catholics, Methodists, Mormons, Jews, etc. are going to hell?
First off, it’s not “my theology”. There’s no such thing as individual truth, a product of our postmodern thinking. It’s Holy Scripture, written by men who were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). You don’t earn heaven, because all have fallen short of God’s standards and none are righteous (Romans 3:10). You are saved by God through His grace, made possible by Christ. And despite many Christian churches reliance on “altar calls”, you can’t even choose to be saved. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day”. (John 6:44). Mankind is inherently and totally depraved, and therefore men cannot save themselves.
I’m unable to make blanket judgments on groups of people. Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, Judaism, etc…they don’t preach the Gospel (or preach a perverted form of it), which is the means by which God saves people. There have been thousands of people saved out of those and other religions and have subsequently left. So yes, it is possible for a former Muslim or Mormon to be saved, but through hearing the Gospel, not the heresies those religions teach.
Inspirational. Two I am going to steal – more dog walks and read some of those books!
Happy New Year to you!
Running is not the way to gain muscle. At least not any significant amount. You can do a lot with pushups, situps, pullups etc, but gyms are full of lots of ways to move heavy weights for a reason.
Yes, moving to the heavier weights is on the to-do list this year. Any advice would be appreciated.
I like the focus on each area one day a week. I’ll look forward to it.
Personally, I have found that many of us got caught up in the trap of “chasing politics” this last four years and especially in the election. We baked candidates we didn’t really feel that great about out of desparation. Maybe we are now seeing the fruits of that wasted labor.
I am resolving to focus more on culture change than on politicians. I believe that if we saw the culture turning back to stronger values and refusing to put up with the cultural junk food we’ve been fed for so long, the politicians would change, too. After all, they are mostly chameleons that will turn whatever color they need to, to get re-elected.
Dave,
I like the idea of this, but I know myself too well and I will have trouble doing the same – so, I will watch your progress and live vicariously through you.
As far as christianity, that’s a sticky wicket indeed. As a former elder in the church of christ, I know first hand the situation you have run into with church and religion.
Religion is a very personal thing and I am a strong believer that Jesus basically taught LOVE. Not sex love, or the love you have for your wife, but love of mankind. Loving your neighbor (not next door neighbors, but anyone you run across…) and that the ten commandments are still great ideas to follow and certainly do not make you a bad person for following them, but the bit about the “sabbath” is a difficult one to overcome, unless you take it to mean a day of worship and focus on your relationship with god.
Anyway – I look forward to reading about your plan and resolutions.
Thanks for sharing!
Saying that Jesus taught love only tells a portion of the story. “I come not to bring peace, but to bring a sword” (Matthew 10:34). Jesus through his life, death, and resurrection, highlighted the condemnation of man because of man’s sin but also brought with him man’s only hope for redemption.
Read through Revelation, and you will get a very different picture of Christ. When He returns, He returns to judge. It will not be a particularly pleasant day. Even those whom He’s saved will be well aware that it was not through any works they did, but through God’s grace alone.
One aspect of God that usually makes people run for the door is His sense of justice. If you accept the Biblical notion of mankind’s utter and complete depravity, then there is a due penalty for that unrighteousness. The bill must be paid, and through His grace He sent His son to pay the penalty for those whom He’s saved.
And you’re right, following the Ten Commandments doesn’t make you a bad person. It would make you a good person if you were capable of following them. No one is, thus the need for the Savior.
Jesus summed up the Decalogue perfectly as recorded in Mark Chapter 12: “And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength…and you shall love your neighbor as yourself”. Can you truly say that you follow that perfectly? I can’t.
Thanks for the kind words, Dave!