Velvet Elvis

So I started reading a new book today. It is called Velvet Elvis and it is by Rob Bell. So far, I have been entranced. He talks in his first chapter of trying to understand God. He makes the point that God has no boundaries, edges, or units. When Moses asked God for his name he replied, "I am." Moses was looking for something he could rap his mind around. Later Moses asks God to reveal himself, which in a way was asking to see God in a tangible way. Here is a quote from the book because Rob Bell says it better then I can:

"God's response? He tells Moses to go stand on a rock, because he's going to pass by. He explains to Moses that no one can see him and live, so he'll cover Moses with his hand (God's hand?) as he passes by, and then he says, "I will remove my hand and you will see my back."

"The ancient rabbis had all sorts of things to say about this passage, but one of the most fascinating things they picked up on is the part about God's back. They argued that in the original Hebrew language, the word back should be understood as a euphemism for "where I just was."

"It is as if God is saying, "The best you're going to do, the most you are capable of, is seeing where I . . . just . . . was."

"That's the closest you are going to get."

God is so beyond our thinking that we even have a hard time understanding where he has just been. We are called to follow a God that is so far above and beyond us. We are not serving something we made up, but something outside of our control. I'm sure this book will inspire more blogs to come. I recommend the book to anyone. Christian or non-Christian. His purpose in writing the book is to repaint the Christian faith. To take a fresh look at Jesus and what it means to live the kind of life he teaches us to live. Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell; check the book out.

It's good to be the King?

A chat with Stephen King about good and evil:
"I'm impressed by something C.S. Lewis said about Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy: 'As good as Tolkien was at depicting good, he was much more effective at depicting evil.' I think that's true, and I think that it's easier for all of us to grasp evil, because it's a simpler concept, and good is layered and many-faceted. I've always tried to contrast that bright, white light of real goodness or Godliness against evil."

I found this pretty interesting. How much easier is it to understand evil. It makes sense to us. Pride, envy, gluttony, lust, anger, greed, and sloth. Those 7 deadly ones and so many more. We all struggle with them. It is easier to do them then to not do them. It is just the opposite for good. It is not natural for us to do good. So many times we do good because we will benefit from it. Do our selfish desires motivate us to do good? If so, can we really call it good?

Luke 9:23
Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me."

Is the only way to do good by dieing to ourselves? (This questions are more retorical then literal.) The root of good I think lies in Love. Love for God or love for others should motivate us to do good. But good is hard to fully explain because our motives can be decieving. Anyway, something to think about...

I just got my picture taken....

I just watched this show called "The Man Who's Arms Exploded." All I can say is wow, that is not normal. It was all about steriod use and what it does to your body. I can't wait to try some. I can't wait to get the abnormally large muscles, heart attacks, strokes, pre mature aging, saggy boobs when I'm 60, major shrinkage, hair falling out, and the list goes on.... If anyone knows of someone who deals, hook it up! Give me the JUICE!!!

Congratulations to all Myspacers

Wow..... Just released in the news today.

"Online teen hangout MySpace.com ranked as the No. 1 U.S. Web site last week, displacing Yahoo Inc.'s (YHOO) top-rated e-mail gateway and Google Inc.'s (GOOG) search site, Internet tracking firm Hitwise said on Tuesday.

News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace accounted for 4.46 percent of all U.S. Internet visits for the week ending July 8, pushing it past Yahoo Mail for the first time and outpacing the home pages for Yahoo, Google and Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN Hotmail.

MySpace captured nearly 80 percent of visits to online social networking sites, up from 76 percent in April. A distant second was FaceBook at 7.6 percent."