Jesus Goes Metal

Luke and I see eye to eye with most things. Except in our tastes of music.

We both have fairly eclectic tastes but that is where the similarity ends. 

I love musicals. My most played album is Les Mis (original London cast) followed closely by the soundtracks from 'Up' and 'LOTR'. Throw in a bit of Enya, Gregorian chanting, Adele and Dixie Chicks and I am a happy woman.

Luke on the other hand loves ambient music (Hammock) and metal music. His favourites are Periphery Trivium, August Burns Red...pretty much anything that is technical, loud, and has good break downs. I think understanding the lyrics is optional.

I do enjoy Killswitch Engage, Times of Grace, and various other metal bands but I very rarely listen to them, just as Luke appreciates Adele but it's not his first choice.

Luke is in a metal band called Lead Us Forth. I have been to some gigs, I support them completely, I am 100% behind these guys and their music. 

But I don't get it.

I don't understand music where you can't understand the lyrics. I don't get 'death pits' where young sweaty men run around smashing in to each other and 'dancing' in a way that looks strangely like punching the air. I don't understand cramming into a small dark room to listen to music that you have to wear ear plugs to enjoy.

It's a mystery to me.

I am intensely proud of my man and his band (collectively known as 'the boys').

There is something that I have noticed about metal bands. Apart from the mass facial hair, the tattoos, the stretched ears, and a lingo that only they understand, there is a movement that is happening in the metal scene that excites me no end.

There are so many Jesus freaks!

The Christian influence in the metal scene is massive and growing. 

The boys from NZ metal band 'Breathing Still'

If you have never seen a metal gig you are missing out. Even if you don't like music or sweaty teenagers, there is something so profound about the rawness of singing/screaming, the honesty of the lyrics and talks, and the complete abandon of the watchers as they go with the music.

I have watched young men yelling into microphones about injustice in the world. I have heard them talk about environmental issues. I have watched them scream with a raw pain about sickness, disease, and pain of others and of themselves.

There is something happening in the metal scene.

In a generation that is sick of people trying to sell them something, there are people who are being touched and reached by a music scene that doesn't paint issues to be pretty, doesn't avoid swear words in order to not offend others, that doesn't mince their words when it comes to the big issues. 

I may not understand it but it is happening.

And it is wonderful.

(This blog was inspired by the writings of Sam Hennesy. His blog can be here)

The Victimless Crime....

If you watch porn

You're an abuser of humans

May as well raise your fist

And make your partner the victim.

We hate rapists

And call porn a 'victimless crime'

No,

You just make it consensual in your mind.

You think those people 

get a choice in what they do?

You think they love

Rather than hate you?

Christ said to think

Is as bad as to do.

What have you done

To those people you view?

Would you be locked away

If you acted it out?

What would your parents say

If they ever found out?

You are a victim

Even as much as she

A victim of greed 

Of an industry

That takes and breaks

And destroy's all that is good

Making you a slave

When you know that you should

Walk away, run away

And never return

Yet instead you watch in secret

And in the darkness you yearn.

If you are ashamed

Then should it be done?

They are children of God,

As are you,

So run Child, RUN!

A Year On...

Last Monday me and my hubby celebrated one year. It was a glorious day to remember all the wonderful things that we learnt over the year. Here are some of the silly and serious things that I wanted to pass on to any who are in, or planning to be in, a relationship.

1. The best things are the silliest. One of my fav things about Luke is how we can be such goofs together. Things like crump battles to metal music, nose battles (yes nose) and pretending to be octupuses (octopi??) are the funniest and best things!

2. Nose battles are perhaps the funniest and most competitive battles out there. You start with foreheads and noses against each other and then try and get your nose under the other persons and push it up until it is squashed. You know you have won when you can kiss the other person and they can't breathe!

3. It's ok to be silent together. Sometimes Luke and I go a whole day without really talking but we are i the same room and we take 5 second breaks to get up and go say hi to each other. Real love is comfortable.

4. Secrets are worse than mess ups. This is something I learnt in my last marriage but it totally applies!! We try to be completely one hundred percent honest. Sometimes it takes a couple of days depending on how silly or guilty you feel but it is sooo much better to be hurt than feel lied to.

5. In-laws can be a blessing or a curse depending on how you decide to treat them. Luke has never met my parents for various reasons, but I have met both of his sets. At first I was awkward (it happens) but it was up to me to get over that. It is really your call whether they will be your best friend or worst enemy. (btw his parents are awesome!)

6. Talking about past relationships can be awkward but needs to be done if you are ever gonna be able to move past things. Sometimes the best thing for both of you is to talk about the stuff that is the hardest to say.

7. If you are broke, like we are, then make sure you don't put every cent away for savings or bills. You need time out for both of you! We try and go out for dinner when we can. We can only afford the same place every time (which means we know the staff pretty well) but it gives us a place to feel like we are still dating.

8. Sex is a wonderful thing! Enough said.

9. Just cause you're married don't think that your issues before married will go away. If anything it will accentuate them. So talk about them! Even if you don't talk about them they are gonna become obvious really soon so don't think anything is gonna get hidden after the vows.

10. Chores suck so make them fun. Do them together, put on some music. Have a crump battle while vacuuming (if only I had videos). Don't fight about them, just get them done.

So that's my top ten. I have had the best year of my life. For the first time I feel I have memories I can cherish and love that I would really fight for. Marriage is a wonderful thing. It can be bloody hard too but at the end of the day you should be with your best friend and having the time of your life. Luke makes me laugh like nobody else. He also drives me crazy like nobody else. Like he told me on our anniversary, there is no one else he loves annoying more than me. 

But there is also serious stuff. There is the facing up to your own issues and seeing your faults highlighted by your relationship. There is so much humility that goes into relationships. A lot of honesty too. And putting up with snoring and people stealing the blankets (not that I am pointing the finger :p). 

I also realised that after spending years checking out the potential dating market, it is really hard to retrain your brain.

Bear with me here, I am not saying that I am scoping out other men when I am with Luke. I don't need to, Luke has the sexiest buns I have ever seen (don't blush baby hahah). But for years being a single woman, every man you meet is a potential until otherwise friend-boxed. It's true of boys and girls who are single. We can't help it. We want to be with someone so there is always the radar out there.

When you start dating and get married then it is all suppose to change. And it does. But it is hard to retrain your neurones after years of following the same path. So at work a nice looking man comes in and you find yourself flirting. Or someone gives you the eye on the bus and you preen a little. Or, and it happens, you find yourself attracted to someone else.

This happened to me this year. A guy at work was flirting with me and I felt pretty and quick as that the idea was planted in my head. I fought it, but it is like a worm that gets in and is hard to get out. I felt so bad that I could think about someone else, even if only a little bit, in my first year of marriage!! I felt guilty. I didn't want to tell Luke, I knew it would hurt him.

But we got some amazing advice when we had premarital counselling. They said to us that the best way to kill desire is to bring it out into the open with your spouse. And it's true. Secrets can only grow as long as they stay secret. So I told Luke, and within a day or two the ideas were gone and I was viewing this dude in a totally different light.

People sometimes ask why I put this stuff up here, why I tell the truth so much. I guess because if I do then it gives other people permission to be honest too. Seriously, these topics need to be discussed, if not with others then in your relationships.

This year has been amazing. I have never felt so loved and wanted by anyone before. I am sure there will be years that won't be as amazing but for now, life is pretty damn sweet :)

The Lie of Death, the Death of a Lie

I originally wrote a post with this title that was about a lady that was dying. It was a hard time for the family and they requested that I take it down. I honoured that request.

However, I still feel that a lot of what I had to say in that blog is applicable to many people. I am not gonna reference the same lady again but I still want to talk about the topic.

The topic is death.

I am writing an essay at the moment about euthanasia and the ethical issues surrounding it. It is a say essay to write; reflecting on the pain and dying of people doesn't exactly put you in the best mood.

But I also think that we as a Western nation do not talk about death enough. We are afraid of it and so try to control it. We buy things to make our skin look younger to trick ourselves into thinking that we are putting off the inevitable. Those of us rich enough get our body's cryo-genically frozen in the hope that one day we will live again. We use death itself to control death, committing suicide or euthanasia to dictate when we die rather than leaving it up to chance.

We are deathly afraid of death.

The thing is, we were never meant to die. We were never meant to face the fear of our bodies failing, of pain and dementia, of losing children and loved ones. Death came into the world because we invited it. Because we thought that we could control our own lives, and in the process destroyed them. 

Death is a force that destroys Gods creation. The price of humanity choosing to live outside of God is death. It is an unstoppable force that touches all of us and destroys all we hold dear. It lies to us and tells us that it is forever, that there is nothing after this life, that this life itself is meaningless.

Death is a lie.

The fear of death is so strong because we have lost faith in the one that is in control. We want to control our lives and believe that we are autonomous and so when faced with a force that is outside of our control, we panic. We don't want to think of ourselves feeding worms, but when we have asked God to stay out of our lives for so long, that is the only image we are left with.

And God knows this.

God knows that we fear that which we cannot control. God knows that we face the end with shaking and crying. And God wanted to save us from this. So Jesus put himself through it.

Jesus is God. Jesus died. This means that God chose to die, in an horrific and bloody way. God faced the fear of death with us. But something incredible happened. Jesus rose back out of his gave! God faced the lie of death and came out the winner.

Jesus put to death death.

Through his actions he showed us that death is not the end, that there is life after it. We follow a God who we know will give us life after death because Jesus went through it first. Death cannot be final in the face of God's love and power. The lie of the permanence of death is over.

So now we can face death without fear because it is not the end.

I know people who have died. I have watched two people die in pain from illness. One was a believer, the other was not. One went knowing that her pain would soon be over, the other went in fear of what lay beyond.

Do not underestimate the amount of influence that your view of death can have on your life. It tells you the worth of your life now. It tells you what awaits you after. It leads you to fear getting older and leads to things like YOLO (you only live once) and FOMO (fear of missing out) mentalities that promote selfish living and stupidity.

You need not fear death, you can experience the freedom that comes with knowing where you are going. 

And if you are a believer and afraid of age and death, then look at where your hope is found, why you are scared, and know that your God has already put to death the lie of death.

Alex Cross kicks some ass

I am an avid book reader. I can read through an average size 300 page book in a day, stopping for meals, if I am in the zone. And I am in the zone fairly often. These Christmas holidays alone I have read ten novels and a bunch of books and articles for my thesis study. I love love love books.

One of my fav authors at the moment is James Patterson, especially the Alex Cross series. If you don't know them then let me give you the run down (SPOILER ALERT):

Alex Cross is a big black dude. He is over 6 feet tall and built like a mac truck; all muscles. He is a detective who lost his wife to a mindless killer and has got a bit of a saviour complex out of trying to deal with that one. A workaholic, he goes through relationships like they are going out of fashion and seems to be so blinded by pretty woman that, in one case, he doesn't notice that they are a serial killer. 

He loves his kids and his Nana Mama (his grandmother who raised him after his parents were killed), is a Dr of behavioural psychology and attracts psychos like bees to honey. 

He is bad ass.

I love it!

The thing is, my thesis is on morality and ethics in video gaming and the biblical viewpoint on violence in these games. I am being convicted about the glorification of violence and death in media.

So the last time I read an Alex cross novel (about a week ago) I spent most of the time wondering what God thinks of it. I have to admit it, it kinda ruined the experience a tad for me.

Only a tad.

Because when I think about it, Alex Cross hates violence but works with people who are violent and so ends up in situations where violence happens. The great thing about the novels though is it shows the emotional impact that this violence has on him.

Instead of him being the hero who walks calmly away from the destruction all around him, he weeps when his friends die, he goes into shock when he has to kill people, he panics in moments of craziness and protects his family out of desperation more the heroism.

He acts, in short, like a real person would.

And something about this really appeals to me. The violence isn't glorified in the books, even though it is there in bucketfuls, it is more seen as part of a messed up world that people have to do something about.

And when it gets a bit nasty, I just switch off my imagination, or skim read the descriptions.

I am not gonna go to the film.

Firstly, movies ruin books (except maybe in the case of LTR).

9 times out of 10 what the producer imagines from the book is not what I imagined and I come away disappointed. And then I can't read the book again without imagining the producers characters. It annoys me, coz I like to re-read books until the pages fall out!

Secondly, movies glorify  violence in a way that books don't. In a book you can 'hear' what the character is thinking about a situation, 'see' the emotional impact, and grieve with them.

The movie for Alex Cross is going to be a Hollywood extravaganza focusing on the badges getting taken down, the gunfights, and Cross's huge biceps. The books are action filled, the movies will use that.

In the gruesome bits it will show it in detail. My mind is still innocent enough that it can't imagine the scenes that are described in the book, or it does so in a way that it doesn't see it happening to real people. On screen the reality of the violence is that much more real. It isn't imagination anymore, it could have happened to your next door neighbour. And as my husband can testify, I get upset and cry for the families of the extra's  in films let alone the main characters.

And once those images are in my head there will be no getting rid of them. The emotional Alex Cross, who tells his bff Sampson that he loves him, will be lost to me forever.

I am just not prepared to let that happen.