I started playing my synth again, finally. Mainly because I have a show coming up, so I needed to practice, so I turned on my synth, but then I started messing around, and then I wrote something totally new, and it sounds like piano and twinkling bells and strange beats and strings, and that’s my run on sentance for the day.
Speaking of show…
Friday 09/19/2008 08:30 PM – Quixote’s True Blue
Denver, Colorado
Cost:$10
CD release party for Reqium in Black. Also featuring The Siren Project.
You should all come. Reqieum in Black will be realeasing their new album.
Now, would it bode well for me to go on a political rant? No. I don’t think so. I think it’s pretty ridiculous to mix politics with music. It’s tacky, and I REALLY don’t think the kind of change that matters is going to come through the next president. No. The whole world is driving as fast as it can towards a horrificly miserable end, and politics will not change that. I believe the best we can do is find out why we’re here and what we can do to fulfill that purpose and make our existence on the next plane a better one. And I believe Jesus can help with that.
Call now at 1-800-JESUSKICKSYOURBUTT. No, but seriously, call.
Okay, but seriously… Jesus.
AAAUUUUGHHHH! I can’t be serious! I just can’t do it!
Okay, in attempt to prove that I’m not totally crazy, I will put it out on the table, ironed, gaudy, and smelling faintly of your grandmothers old house.
*Disclaimer: This does not reflect Amber’s or Matt’s beliefs.*
This is something that I, as an individual, have been struggling with, and I think many others are as well. So I’m just going to put this out there. Faith… why do we have it? And trust me, you have it. To function properly in this world you must have some level of faith. Whether it be in a god, in yourself, in science, in humanity, or in your car, you have faith. Even if you don’t have faith in some sort of god or organized religion, you put faith in things like chairs and cars and people every day. Even though cars crash, chairs break, and people hurt each other, you decide to take the chance that they won’t because the alternative is barely even livable.
So let’s take my case. I said “Why do we have faith that God is there?” We can’t prove that He’s there. And for some reason he won’t even show his face, and I mean literally, like “Jesus came to my work today, just to check up, see how I was doing.” Yeah, doesn’t happen. Not even a phone call, not even a letter, not even a note in my lunch box. Just a voice in my head that may or may not be me having a conversation with myself. People say, “Well, you just have to believe.” and I say “Wait, what? If someone tells you to just believe shouldn’t you be a bit worried.” I mean, if there’s an eternity of existence waiting for us, and someone wants me to hang it all on just believing… That’s like handing me a gun and saying it may or may not be loaded (and that you don’t even know for sure), and that I need to put it to my head and pull the trigger to find out…
Why shouldn’t I just believe Allah? Why shouldn’t I just believe Shirley McClain? Why shouldn’t I just believe Tom Cruise? What? Because there’s all this evidence against Scientology and Islam and New Age you say? But if I shouldn’t believe something because of the evidence against it, why should I believe something without evidence for it?
Now, to be fair, if you’re not aware of the overwhelming amount of scientific and archeological evidence that supports the Bible then read The Case for Christ. It seems that there is defintely something powerful at work behind the Bible. But, to have faith that what the Bible says is true is another thing. It’s becoming more and more apparent that if there is a God, he is not who I thought He was. You may ask why I say that, and I may tell you. No, I will tell you.
All I can say is that I’ve believed in God and the Bible for, well, as long as I can remember, and I was told all the while that God should be your closest friend, closer than anyone else, He’s always there for you. Well, a couple years ago I thought to myself “…. um, no he’s not.” He’s supposed to be closer than my earthly father, but my Dad calls me all the time, and when I talk to him he talks back. I have NEVER heard God’s voice. And don’t even THINK about telling me its because my heart is hard or I’m in sin. I’ve come to tears on more than one occasion because I was trying SO HARD to seek God and obey God and seek to glorify Him in everything and open myself to him… and while everyone around me heard God speak to them audibly and began to speak in tongues I heard nothing and spoke nothing, and I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what I had done wrong. What was wrong with me? Nothing, I finally decided. If God is there, the Church has misrepresented Him. His is not close by. He is distant. He is a distant God.
Now, before all the Christians decide I’m going to Hell, hear me out. This is all just semantics, but think about our definitions of close and distant. My wife and I, we’re close. We talk with one another, we are physically with one another, we are close. Now think about how the Bible portrays a healthy realtionship with God. You may talk to him, but it is not a physical, two-way conversation. If you read the Bible it is EXTREMELY unlikely that God will actually audibly talk to you. And He loves you, but it is EXTREMELY unlikely that He will ever actually come to see you in this life. Ever. For whatever reason He chooses to not show up physically. With that said I don’t think its to far off to say that He loves us like the president of the United States loves his citizens. The president may love his citizens, but not individually enough to actually make a point of visitng each one personally. He’s very distant. Like God, if He exists, is very distant. To those of you who still aren’t convinced (that probably means you never will be, and yet, for some reason I continue) here’s something else to think about.
What if your father wrote a letter to you before you were born, detailing everything you would ever have to know about life, and then left, never to speak an audible word or spend a physical moment with you ever again. Growing up I could say that maybe my father loves me very much, but he’s not close. He’s distant. He never calls, he never writes, he’s distant.
That’s what the God of the Bible did.
So, I came to a place where I was very frusterated about my options… mainly because nothing can be proved 100%, so at some point you are just taking whatever you believe on faith. So, I could just choose to believe something or I could believe as little as possible until the truth revealed itself… which will probably never happen in my life time.
Then I realized, I can either refuse to believe nothing and live and die angry and disappointed and end up either disolving into nothing or roasting in Hell… or I can just choose to believe something and end up living and dying happy (thinking I’m communing with God and headed to Heaven) and then either disolving into nothing, burning in Hell, or living in eterarnal happiness.
So, I chose to believe. There’s still a voice in the back of my mind saying “What are you doing? A mind like yours can’t be forced into belief!” but I just push it down and keep hoping that I will either hear from God or brainwash myself into undisputed belief.
There is a man with his closed hand outstretched to me, and he says “Within my hand there may or may not be a cookie. If you say there is a cookie in my hand, then I will open my hand, and if there is a cookie you get to have it. If there is no cookie, then there is nothing to have. However, if you say there is no cookie, then I will open my hand, and whether or not there is a cookie in my hand, you won’t get to have it.” I’ve chosen to say there is a cookie.
Friends, believe in the cookie. Its better than the alternative.