By Definition

I found out today that the American Heritage Dictionary defines "heresy" as:

An opinion or a doctrine at variance with established religious beliefs,
especially dissension from or denial of Roman Catholic dogma by a professed
believer or baptized church member.

it really made me chuckle . . . it is true, that I attended a catholic school when I was younger . . . and no I have no repressed memories of any of that . . . but to regard myself as having opinions that are different than RC dogma . . . well . . . yes . . . I sit here, guilty as charged. (and that really doesn't seem to bother my RC friends at all) But really folks . . . don't we really need to rethink what we "believe" from time to time??

I was listening the other day to a conversation about what it really took to have a vibrant walk with the God of the universe. And, to be honest, I was expecting at some moment to hear some of the "usual" responses . . . you need to : (need to read this in your head with your best Roy Clark/southern draw) Read your Bible ; Pray every day ; Go To Church ; Tithe to the Lord; Don't Cuss . . . but instead, one of the guys said something like this:

"To really walk with Christ well, you need, at some point in your life, to
ascribe, embrace and propose some type of heresy."

I lost it again . . . well, he had my attention . . . and he went on to say how we need to not think so highly of the things we say we believe in. The bottome line . . . unless you're Jesus Himself, you may be wrong.

So then what?!

Well, if we'd realize that we were wrong about something . . . and I mean something that we thought we were SOOOOO Right and righteous about . . . well, maybe then we'd need grace and mercy . . . and maybe then , we'd be right where He wants us to be . . . compassionate, humble, inviting . . .

provocative . . .

hmmmm, someone might take notice . . . and ask us . . .

Welcome

To you and to me . . . yes, I'm new to this part of the techno world . . . so bear with me. I was thinking some time back that I would love to be an author someday. I've read alot of other folk's thoughts and collections, but I've never really been able to pull off anything worth saying. So I guess, in part, this is an attempt to start. I'm not into really big words or intelligent speeches. I'm just a pretty ordinary human actually. One who does alot of "mental conversing" throughout his day. Ever do that stuff?? Just have these really short or long conversations in your head that seem to be pretty profound, however, you fear that if you really were having this conversation, you might be laughed out of the room or strapped away in a new office with no windows and just plain white walls. But I think I have some really good things floating around in there . . . some things that every once in awhile have made it out into the verbal sound world and another person has heard it and said something like: "you really should write a book" . . . hmmm, maybe I should . . .

But a "hairy tic"??

Yeah, I know, it's kind of "yucky" . . . but when I was labeled as a heretic, I began to believe I was . . . you know what I mean . . . when you hear crazy stuff about yourself, you subtly begin to believe that it may be true . . . it's those labels that we give folks or they give us that actually suck the very life-blood out of us if we believe them. But as I went over my "theological" file with some better spiritual folks than myself, I began to see that the label was really just a "tic" . . . something placed on me so that other's could keep their distance and my life would slowly disappear. Geesh, pretty sick of us humans isn't it?! But think about all the labels we use: democrat or republican, married or divorced, pregnant or aborted, saved or unsaved, hetero or homo, conservative or liberal, . . . man, the labels abound . . . and meanwhile - life is sucked away. He's always ___________ or she'll never _________ or you __________ . . . more "tics" . . .

It's supposed to be different you know . . . .

So one of the things my dad would do when he found a tic on us kids (or was it our dog - my memory fades on that detail) was he would take a match . . . light it . . . let it burn a bit . . . then blow it out and immediately stick it on the tic. Said it would kill the tic . . . kill any infection around the area . . . make the tic let go . . . dad wasn't a licensed physician btw . . . actually, he was from Alabama, so maybe you just want to ignore his ways . . . but, dad was a pretty sharp cookie actually.

so, how about sometime today or tomorrow . . . we take a match to a "tic" . . . maybe it's one we're carrying around on us . . . or maybe one that we've put on someone else . . . and burn that bad boy off . . . purify the area . . . let the blood remain . . . let life flow again . . .