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.

Will You See God??

Last night I preached (prought??) at a church on Matthew 5:8 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God."

I had soooo much fun; there was laughing, I pretended to be a sneaky Jesus, and there was even reference to the Trinity doing a Jewish dance with one of them held up on a chair. Nearly heretical but not quite and that makes all the difference :p

Anyways, here is the transcript. Have a ready if you would like :)

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Blessed are the pure in heart for they will see God.

I know you have been looking at the beatitudes for the last few weeks, which I think is great! I love the beatitudes, they make me feel pretty good when I am in pretty bad places. Like knowing that I am blessed when I mourn, when I am persecuted, when I am struggling to make ends meet with money. It makes me feel good, makes me happy to know that God has an eye out for the weak and suffering.

Like I have this friend Albert who is a homeless guy. He lives in the city and use to sit outside where I would work. I got to know him pretty well as I would sit and share my lunch with him and it made me feel good that God had his eye on this young man whose life had been so hard. I would walk away each day knowing I left him in the best hands possible – God’s.

But this one, this verse, I find harder to talk about, harder to feel good about.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Being poor or mourning or persecuted are easy to see, easy to feel that those people deserve their blessing.

But who of us are pure in heart??

I mean really? Can any of you say that during an average day you don’t have naughty thoughts? That you don’t think of that guy or girl in a way that you would be embarrassed to share about? That you don’t think nasty thoughts about teachers or people who pick on you? Can you honestly say that those thoughts don’t sneak up on you in a ninja attack in such a way that you hope no one can read your mind?

Being pure in heart is a really big ask, and how can anyone actually be pure or even know that they are? 

Does that mean none of us will see God?

Maybe looking closer at what Jesus was saying will help us. Maybe if we step into 1^st century Israel there will be a loop hole or something.

So let’s go back in time a little.

We are standing on a hill by the sea. The air is warm with the multitude of bodies that surround us and press into us. Everything is dusty, dust hangs in the air and clings to our clothes. The smell of salt and body odour fills your nostrils and all around you is the noise of people murmuring and being shushed, bodies shifting their weight from foot to foot, children crying, and above it all, the sound of a lone male voice calling out that those that are pure in their hearts will see God.

His statement shocks you. You look around and see your own shock on the faces of those around you. You have been a good Jew for years, gone to the temple to atone for your sins, prayed and given tithes. And you know with certainty that no one at the temple or synagogue preaches like this. The holy men that you get out of the way for in the street are pure because they keep the hundreds of purity rituals. But you can’t do that, you have to work, you have to get your hands dirty and sometimes you break the rules a bit even though you try not to. You know you aren’t pure.

And this claim that people like you could see God is laughable!!! Not even the priests get to see God, because seeing the face of God, as every good Jew knows, means death. It is because no one is pure that God cannot be seen. So what this preacher man is saying doesn’t make sense. He makes it sound like that there are people who are pure in heart and, even more astoundingly, that people can see God!

What Jesus said that day in front of the crowd wasn’t just nice sayings that made people feel good. They were radical statements about the nature of humanity and the person of God. He effectively was turning the religious teaching of the day on its head. He couldn’t have been more radical!

But since then we have had 2000 years of people explaining Jesus’ words to us so the impact has worn off a little bit. Now his words seem like nice, feel good sayings to remind us that everyone is valuable.

But what if it meant something much much more? What if this simple saying could changes lives?

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Many of the things I read around this passage went something like this: “Live life seeking purity, living well and holy, and you will end up seeing God when you die.” Nice sentiment, but I think this is really off the mark.

For example, has anyone thought about how totally ironic Jesus is being here?! Think about it. There he stands, God incarnate, telling people who are sinners, who are broken, that the pure in heart will see God. Yet he is God! The very people who are impure are looking at God! What seems impossible is happening that very day!

How is this possible? The thousands that came to hear him are not all pure in heart! And yet there they stand looking at the face of God.

There must be something that they, that we, are missing, some vital link that Jesus forgot to explain.

Jesus, as he often does, is drawing on a story that is much bigger than the time and place which he finds himself in at that moment. Underlying all his words is the great story of God and his people. We can see that throughout the Bible story people try to see God.

They build a tower at Babel and get scattered over the earth.

The wrestle with a man from heaven and are given a lifelong limp.

They ask to see God’s face and are given only a glimpse of God’s back.

They try to be pure through their actions, their laws, their words when the temple is rebuilt.

 And they fail over and over and over again.

They are like us.

We try hard to do our “Sunday best”.

We try not to swear, to think badly about others.

We try to forgive and to love.

And yet we fail, repeatedly and often in a spectacular fashion! No one has managed to get it right, to live pure.

We are so good at trying to make rules and laws about how we should live in order to be pure that we miss the bigger picture. We forget that no matter how hard we try we will fall down. We forget that to love is much more important than to follow social conventions. We forget that it is not about keeping up appearances before each other.

We forget Jesus.

God took the initiative in something that he knew we would never accomplish. God stepped down into our history as a man that told people that it wasn’t about their actions, it was never about the actions, it is about their hearts.

And because we will never get our hearts right, Jesus sorted that out to. It is through him that we are made pure. It his through his life, death and resurrection that our broken sinful nature is made clean. Paul tells us that we are now holy, yet still being made holy. We have been proclaimed pure, and yet still striving for purity.

It is the miraculous and wondrousness of God that through his Son he sees us as sinless though we are still sinful!

Wow! That sounds totally complicated and ridiculous. At best it sounds like I am talking in circles, at worst that I am a crazy person!

I spent ages trying to figure out how to explain this better, and really I can’t do it by telling you all the theological who-ha, but more through examples.

The Message Bible states this verse like this: “You are blessed when you get your inside world – your mind and heart – put right. Then you can see God in your outside world.”

There is the story of Princess Catherine of Hungary who took pity on those who were poor and dying and so gave up her life of luxurious wealth to feed the hungry, clothe the poor, and wash the dead in preparation of burial. She believed in Jesus as the Christ and his message changed her heart. And through that change she started to see God in the faces of the poor and starving that lived in her country.

Then there is the story of the black woman in South Africa whose son was killed during the years of apartheid by a young white man. At the trial later she asked not for retribution but rather that the young white man would come live with her and receive the love that she would have given her son. She said that the message of Christ changed her heart towards the young man.

See, she had let God s message of love and forgiveness change her heart and as a result she saw God in the face of the man who killed her child. Forgiveness for the senseless act that ripped her family apart meant that her heart and her mind weren’t filled with hate and anger. She had forgiven those who had hurt her and, though the hurt was still there, saw that everyone, even the man who had hurt her the most, was a child of God, someone whom she could love and who could learn to receive that love.

She saw reconciliation where others saw retribution.

She saw God where most people would see despair and death.

She saw love where others saw hate.

Or even my own story, one that has been filled with anger and hate to the point where I was at the point of drinking myself to death. And then I decided to give Jesus a go to see what he could make of me. I am no longer angry, no longer hate filled, and I have learnt to love those that I meet and see around me.

When the message of Jesus and the Spirit enter your life change just happens. When you let go of the need to be in control and let a man who loved and who forgives get inside your head with his ideas then your heart starts to change; towards God, towards others and towards yourself.  When you begin to accept the idea that God has proclaimed you pure, your actions begin to reflect that purity.

Although it is impossible for us to have a pure heart in and of ourselves, we can have a pure heart by the grace of God. What is impossible for man is possible for God. A pure heart is a gift from God, and it comes by a new birth, by a new creation, and by the Spirit living in us. We will never be perfect. But the message that Jesus gives us isn’t that we have to live to a strict set of rules to makes us perfect.

The greatest blessing and the noblest goal of the Christian life is to know God, to experience His presence in our daily life, and to live for His glory. Paul made this the goal for his life, as he said:

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him … I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming like him in his death (Philippians 3:7-10).

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are you, for Christ died to make you pure, and through him, you can see God.

Blessed are you for accepting Christ, for it will change the way you view your world.

Blessed are you for acting out of the faith in your heart and seeing the image of God on the faces of others.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Let’s pray

May God help us to strive for a purity of heart that transcends the division between interior and exterior that we so readily construct in order to guard our true selves from others and to appear different than we really are.  May God help us to live honestly and transparently before others.  Most of all, may God help us to acknowledge and depend upon him as the only one who is truly pure, the one in whom we place our trust and in whom our hope is found.

Act of Murder

I just walked out of a movie.

I don't do this often, as I usually am interested in what a movie has to say, even if I don't agree with it.

The one I walked out of however made me so angry that I couldn't stand to watch it anymore.

The movie is called "Act of Valor" and is about real life situations that the Navy Seals have found themselves in. Though I respect the fact that the Seals are the elite of the elite and they have fine tuned their craft until it is an artwork, the fact that their artwork is that of death is something that I find hard to swallow.

In the movie one of the situations is an extraction of a CIA agent that has been captured and is being tortured. The agent is a young woman and will no doubt be tortured until death. The Seals have to infiltrate and extract the woman.

They efficiently get the woman out but in doing so kill many of the workers on the other side. Do I agree with the fact that they were torturing a woman? No at all! But do I think that somehow the Seals are justified in killing people for one of their own people? No!

I find war, or violence between countries, the height of hypocrisy. We tell someone that they are not right in hurting our people so we spy on them. They say we have no right to spy on them so they capture the spy. We say they have no right to capture our spy so we kill untold numbers of their people to get our spy back. They retaliate to the killing of their people...and so it goes on.

Martin Luther King Jnr said once that you cannot murder murder, you cannot stop violence with violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness, only light can do that. 

Too often the ideas of 'an eye for an eye' are taken to the extreme on a world stage to the point where even Christians think that it is noble and right to fight and kill others for the sake of the ones they love and protect?

What about the family of the person you are killing? What about the fear/anger/passion they are fighting with/for? How can you justify their death if it means saving your own?

Jesus taught us to forgive our enemies. If we take that from not just in our own lives but to a global stage, then forgiveness and love cannot lead to violence! They cannot co-exist! How can you shoot someone whom you love and whom you have forgiven? Even if it means the death of those you love? Even if it means your own life?

No one life is better than another, even if that life has been used to hurt and manipulate and destroy. Even if that person's actions are evil, who are we to judge whether or not they should die? Is that not for God to decide? Is it not good enough to live out of Jesus' words to love and to forgive?

As I watched the movie I was struck by the amount of money and effort that is put into making machines that sole purpose is to seek and kill people. It made me think about how that money could be used to support countries where most terrorists are made. If there was nutrition, schooling, safety then maybe less children would grow up with so much hate that they needed to kill. Maybe their parents would teach them to hate others but to love those that helped them.

I see no justification for money and people to be used to kill others. I see no justification for war of any kind. I see no correlation between the story of the Bible and violence. I would give my life to stop others being hurt, but I would never take another's or kid myself that by doing so somehow I would achieve peace through violence.