I haven't written in foreverrrr. But not much has been going on in my life. Just kidding. I spent a month in Rwanda, I graduated medical school, made the move to Columbia, SC to start residency, bought a house, etc. Right now I'm loving life. I miss my family and friends
(and taco tuesday) a lot, but I LOVE my job, love my new friends up here, and love my house so much! And I have Finn to keep me company/busy. I woke up this morning to find a destroyed magazine and tea bag in my living room. I deserved that though. I ignored him when he tried to come wake me up at 600 on a Saturday morning off. Oh well.
There's been a lot of hoopla that's come about from the president of Chickfila backing marriage between a man and a woman. He was asked, he shared his views. Put in a really bad position, make a lot of people angry or deny your beliefs? What can you do? But it is CRAZY what this has turned into, people from 'both sides' going way too far with things. I saw something depressing on facebook yesterday, someone's response to a Dr. Laura who had said that homosexuality was an abomination and unacceptable. This response to her took all these laws from the early Old Testament about having slaves and being unclean on your menstrual period and trimming your hair, etc and basically mocked the Bible. I don't want to add the whole thing but here's an example...
"
Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev 19:27. How should they die?"
So first response is to why this is not right... The Old Testament does seem pretty weird sometimes, it was a totally different culture than today. But more than that, before Christ in order to atone for sins a sacrifice had to be made in our place. And in order to give such sacrifice, one had to be 'ceremonially clean' to come to the alter. Hence, some of the weird rules that we read about in leviticus and other books. Lucky us, we have a Savior in Christ who came to die for our sins in our place! He is now the atonement of sins, and all we have to do is accept him into our hearts. And we are then seen as ceremonially clean and we can come to God whenever we want! He doesn't see us for our sins, but he sees us as an image of Christ. So wonderful...
So why are we as Christians so often driving people away from this saving grace? God forgave us for all our mess and loved us unconditionally, does we deserve that more than someone else? Why are we judging someones lifestyle instead of loving them with Christ's love as we're called to do? Yes, the bible does say that homosexuality is a sin on numerous occasions. But it also says that a sin is a sin... James 2:10 says 'for whoever keeps the WHOLE law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.
" Its the obvious things... hate, greed, jealousy, envy, etc etc. And then there's all the things we should be doing that we aren't doing... in one bible verse I can sum up all my failings, and its the first commandment!
"love the lord your god with ALL your heart and with ALL your soul and with ALL your mind and with ALL your strength."
So I am breaking that pretty much every second of every day. Reason to feel like a failure? No. We are living in a fallen world and we will sin. But we are hopefully learning to know Him and love Him more and more and are moving in the right direction (2 steps forward, 1 step back?). BUT you cannot forget it either. Each and every one of us is a rotten sinner, destined for eternity away from Christ without accepting him. So why should we judge one sin worse than another? I do it too! But we are all in the same exact boat, no one is more or less welcomed by God, he rejoices the same way every time someone decides to come to Him. The next verse says...
"love your neighbor as yourself. There is NO greater commandment than these."
So all this drama is just a great reminder of what I need to be doing. Loving God, Loving People. Simple but not easy at all! Need Jesus to help me do it!
