Home schooling

If you guys didn't know, I go to Sammamish High School.  If you didn't know, I have an English class there that gives me homework.  Also, if you didn't know, I used to be home schooled.  This was a writing project that I did, but I wanted to write more about it, because he only gave me one page to do it.  So here goes.

Up until my 9th grade when I joined Sammamish High School, I was home schooled.  I mostly liked it, because it was a chill environment and it was fairly easy.  Up until about 4th grade, though, I was oblivious to the fact that a couple socially awkward, nerdly home schoolers had spread myths  about the dangers of homeschooling.  It was then I recognized the confused, disgusted look on people's faces when I would tell them that I was, in fact, educated at home.

I would tell them about it, and then immediately try to cover up my sin with a "but it's pretty much the same as public school, just without other people, and my mom doesn't teach me, I have teachers, but if I need help I ask my mom, like public schoolers, and I even play sports and I have a life."

It was too late though.  Weird Al's "Amish Paradise" had already spread to their brain, and they suddenly realized the cause of my stupidity, awkwardness, and acne.  They then had three choices of how to act when around me: to be very liberal, conservative, or normal.

Occasionally, when I showed people my scarlet letter of regular society, they would drop a swear word, or tell me a joke about sex, or tell something involving technology, and  step back to watch the inevitable horror that would soon permeate my facial expression.  Surely I would be shocked that there were bad words in the world, or sex, or cell phones. 

At other times, they would walk on egg shells around me, carefully choosing their words and conversation topics, and never thumbing their PSPs in their pocket or asking me to come play XBOX with them, because I would surely be in question about what an XBOX was, and whether father Jebediah would approve of it.  The conversations somehow would drift towards plowing fields or churning butter, none of which I knew anything about, and they regarded me as incompetent, for I didn't even know how to do what I was born to do.  Attempts at avoiding my harsh judgment were made, so that we could still play basketball together.

Having now gotten past the pain of telling people that I am a nerd destined to be an outcast, whenever I meet a homeschooler, I try to lead the conversations to their life on an Amish farm.  As I notice their disconcerted facial expressions and squirming, I admit to them that I too was once a home schooler.

And then I pull out my cell phone.

Grace.

"You called and You shouted, broke through my deafness, now I'm breathing in, and breathing out, I'm alive again.  You shattered my darkness, washed away my blindness, now I'm breathing in, and breathing out, I'm alive again." - Matt Maher, Alive Again.

Dangle.  We were dead, hard-core.  We had no chance.  We were hopeless, and yet our darkness was shattered, our eyes were cleared, and life was given.  This is awesome.  

And we pass by it.  Everyday, we forget about it.  Just like our previous (or present) life (not talking reincarnation here, folks, more like regeneration), we blindly run to death.  In the words of John Donne, in his Holy Sonnet #1:

"I run to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday;

I dare not move my dim eyes any way,

Despair behind, and death before doth cast

Such terror, and my feeble flesh doth waste

By sin in it, which it t'wards hell doth weigh;

Only thou art above, and when towards thee

By thy leave I can look, I rise again;

But our old subtle foe so tempteth me,

That not one hour my self I can sustain." 

 

That's just it.  We may not chose death, but we're sure running to it.   "And when towards thee..I can look, I rise again."  Even though my blogs may sound like a broken record, this is it!  By Christ's power, people rise.  The lame are healed, the blind can see, and the dead rise from death. 

 

The dead rise from death!  We can't be good enough to work our way into heaven.  We can't earn God's love.  We will never be able to impress God.  We've grown accustomed to the thought that "God loves good little boys and girls."  And "if you are polite and don't kill people or do porn or lie, then God will love you." 

 

Something is wrong with that.   As Brennan Manning says in The Ragamuffin Gospel:

"Our huffing and puffing to impress God, our scrambling for brownie points, our thrashing about trying to fix ourselves while hiding our pettiness and wallowing in guilt are nauseating to God and are a flat denial of the gospel of grace."

When you read the Gospels, you will notice that Jesus never hates on the poor in Spirit, or the prostitutes, or the broken, but He comes and completely blows down the self-righteous doors of the hypocrites and the Pharisees.  

 

"For it is by grace that you have been saved, not by works, so that no man can boast."

 

"As Jesus was walking on from there he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and he said to him, 'Follow me.'  And he got up and followed him.  Now while he was at table in the house it happened that a number of tax collectors ad sinners came to sit at the table with Jesus and his disciples.  When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ' why does your master eat with tax collectors and sinners?'  When he heard this he replied, 'It is not the healthy who need the doctor, but the sick.  Go and learn the meaning of the words: Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifice.  And indeed I cam to call not the upright, but sinners.'

Dangle.  In finishing the sonnet of John Donne that I started before, here's the last couplet:

 

"Thy Grace may wing me to prevent his (satan's) art,

And thou like Adamant draw mine iron heart." 

 

God's not giving up on the chase.  So as you go along your way to school or to jobs or whatever it is that you do, remember this:  Grace and mercy are the only ways to draw near to God, trying to do works after works isn't going to do anything.  God's drawing your heart.  Now go out and be drawn.

 

Hanging Up the Sneakers

Basketball has always been a huge part of my life, ever since my dad first took me out to the backyard for me to struggle to throw the ball all the way up to the rim.  Yes, without basketball, my middle school interactions with people other than my family would be minimal.  As sad and homeschooled that sounds, it's true.

It started when I was super little and my dad instilled a firm belief in me that basketball was the greatest sport in the world and all other sports were sadly inferior.  He then got me hooked on a lifestyle of me shooting hoops on the patio in the back yard whenever I got a little bit of spare time and the pavement was dry.

I turned into a basketball fanatic, constantly challenging people who came over to a game of 1-on-1 or H-O-R-S-E, and running my mouth about how I was about to lay a smack down on them.  Basketball was my identity, and I became a good shooter, with my dad constantly urging me to develop a jump-shot so that I wouldn't be able to be blocked by the long, lanky players who always seemed to get into the way.

I got on a team in the boys and girls club of Bellevue.  My 5th grade team was phenomenal, winning every game with the exception of the loss to The Rockets in the championship by 1 point.  Everyone was so happy that we did so well, that a loss did nothing to diminish the joy and pride of the after party pizza session.  With ten little fifth graders who were convinced that they were going to play on the same NBA team together, nothing was impossible. 

My hoop dreams soon turned to my first select basketball team.  Making this team and getting consistent playing time was amazing.  I played as well as I could, and was constantly clowning with the coach, Coach Bones. 

By this time, my dad had gotten me signed up for an Emerald City Basketball League in the summer.  If you don't know, Emerald City is definitely "the hood" for those kids who grew up in the suburbs.  Now we were playing basketball, and getting street cred.  We knew we were legit when we played basketball on Saturdays, and then went to Dick's burgers, win or loss, to give out the player of the game awards and have fun together.

 Last season, my team was awful, losing every single game in every single tournament and regular season match up except against our hated rivals, Interlake, in which we won both games.  I showed flashes of being ok at basketball, with a 25 point game, and a 19 point game, but the season was overall mediocre, and I was mainly used for my defense. 

Our coach was, for lack of a better term, a tyrant, continually setting us on the sideline to do a set of 17s with us confused about what we did to earn this horrible fate.  Basketball practice became something that I dreaded everyday, and to do basketball, I had to stay at my school for a 12 hour work day, leaving me to go home tired and needing to do homework.  It was about then that I realized that I wasn't such a fan of basketball, even in the games when I did well.

So this is all to say, my passions for basketball have faded.  My passion for music has strengthened.  Even though basketball has given me all these memories and stories, I've decided that it's not worth the time and energy.  So here goes a new concept for me: Specialization.  It's time for me to become good at a few things rather than a jack of all trades. 

And in case you just read all of this and you're wondering: "What the heck is the point of this note when you could've just said 'I'm quitting basketball?'"  You're right, there was no point to this note.  Except to specialize and increase my skill at writing.  Cuz I'm still a baller.

Christ in me

School starts tomorrow.

As I start weeping on the keyboard, I want to share what I've been learning lately.

Fact: I constantly try to please people.  Fact: I've been starting to realize that.  False: This is a good thing that I should nurture and strive to keep.

If you didn't notice that the last comment was indeed false, go ahead and re-read it.  If I'm in a group of people, I'm always trying to be the funny, smart, cool one whom everybody likes.  My time with people sometimes seems like it's Barnum, Bailey, and Ben.  I do everything in my power to be liked.  That's my goal.  That's not necessarily what my goal should be.  

When I look at the people who I admire, one of my role models is Bob Lee.  I like Bob.  He's a cool guy.  He doesn't strive for people's compliments, he doesn't strive for people's attention.  What Bob does that makes him special is follow God and His plan, and put God's goals before his own goals.  I want to be like that.  I don't want to be working towards people's liking, but I want to be working to be God's son, whose constantly working to serve Him.

Please note that this isn't a "screw it, no one likes me, so I'm just not going to try" kind of note, but this is a "there's a change in me, and I'm just going for Jesus, not your approval."

So what this means for the school year is this:  My goal isn't to "just be myself".  My goal isn't to be the perfect me that can be.  I can't be perfect.  I can strive for perfection, but I'm never going to be perfect.  My goal is to best let Christ in me work in me rather than try to win people's approval by what I can do.  I'm going to school tomorrow, and I know for a fact that Christ in me is going to rock it.

I make war.

In the movie, Braveheart, William Wallace is a man who is strongly convicted that freedom is a necessity for the people of Scotland.  Yeah, that's right, of course I'm talking about Braveheart!  Scotland is under the rule of Edward of Longshanks, and he's trying to weed out all of the Scottish people.  Then the story continues and William Wallace leads a giant rebellion and soon helps Scotland gain liberty and freedom.

        Our lives are a lot like William's.  In our lives, satan is trying to weed out Christ-followers.  He's trying to turn people away from Truth, away from Jesus.  Satan cannot win in a war against God, so he makes war against the people who were made in God's image.  He is constantly trying to make us follow him and the world and our flesh, rather than the one being who is worthy of being followed.

        Our job is Christians is not to stand passively and watch this happen.  Our job as Christians is not to let ourselves be deceived.  Our job is not to say that we love Christ and yet watch as people are lied to, corrupted, and recruited to work for satan.  Yet so often we stand on the sideline and watch this war work itself out. 

      There are no innocent bystanders.  Jesus says that "if you aren't for me, you're against me".  We need to be active participants in the fight against sin.   Then why does it seem like we are constantly falling for decoys?  We often don't put up a fight in temptation, we don't put up a fight for other people, we don't put up a fight for anything.  Romans 8:13 says that " if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live".

We are in a fight for our lives.  As John Piper says, "Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you."  Now is not the time to be passive.  Now is not the time to be apathetic.  A war for our lives is being fought.  Freedom is near.  Christ gave us a chance, now let's fight for Him.

Don't let satan get a foot hold in your anger, in your lust, in your lying, in your cheating, in your jealousy.  Don't give satan a chance at destroying your life.  When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, we accept the notion that we're in a war, and that we need to fight.  So why then do we live with our sin, and accept it as it is?  Make war with it!

My anger?  Is being fought every time I come across it.  My lust?  Is being fought, for "me and my mouse will serve the Lord".  My flesh?  Dies daily because of Jesus' ultimate sacrifice. 

My challenge to you is to make war with your sin using the Sword of the Spirit which is the Word of the Lord.  Be thinking of God.  Focus yourself on God.  Be delighted in God and His Word.  God has given us armor, and the Sword of the Spirit is the only offensive weapon.  So fight with it.

I feel like Thriving

    The Lil Wayne song "Feel like dying" has been stuck in my head  lately.  The song  chorus says "Only once the drugs are done, do I feel like dying, I feel like dying."  This is a super depressing song, and even though I've never done drugs, I feel a strong connection to it.

    The Bible has many instances where a sin life is known as death, or spiritual death (Romans 6:11, Romans 8:10, Colossians 2:13), and following Christ is true life (Matthew 7:14, Matthew 18:8, John 6:47).  Jesus offers us life to the full, and says that one who follows Him has life. 

    Yet so many times do I choose death over life.  So many times I'm prideful.  So many times do I lust.  So many times do I worship myself over God.  So many times I feel like I've failed completely. 

    Yet so many times I choose Jesus.  I choose to rejoice in the fact that I have a choice, that Jesus died, and rose again, and that I can have a relationship with Him.  I'm like a modern day Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, constantly changing and twisting into a seemingly different person.

    There have been times where I've been purely wallowing in death with seemingly no growth.  I worshipped myself, I worshipped the female body, I worshipped anything except Jesus.  And still, I was never satisfied.  I was never happy.  I was never content.    I was in a constant state of a semi-depression, wishing I could find contentment. 

    Fortunately, it doesn't end there.  Jesus offered me life and I took it, in which I am eternally thankful for the grace and mercy.  Now I have life in Jesus, I have life in knowing that there is something that is more worthy of worship than me.  And yet so often I have placed my joy in something that is not God.  Our mantra when we don't live for Christ often looks like this:

    "Only once the drugs are done, do I feel like dying, I feel like dying.  Only once the money is gone, do I feel like dying, I feel like dying. Only once the porn is done, do I feel like dying, I feel like dying.  Only once the popularity is gone, do I feel like dying, I feel like dying."

    Once we stake our happiness on something that is finite, our happiness will end.  Once we place importance on something that will die, our joy will die.  When we put something of less importance than Jesus (everything) in more of a priority than Jesus, surely we will realize the depravity of our wading in death.
 
    But there is more.  Jesus offers us life, and life to the full (John 6:27, John 6:63).  When we choose to accept it, Jesus replaces our old song with one that goes like this:

    "Even when the drugs are done, there is still life, there is still life.  Even when the money is gone, there is always grace, there is always grace.  Even when the porn is gone, Jesus offers mercy, Jesus offers mercy.  Even when the popularity is gone, Jesus is alive, Jesus is alive."

      We no longer have to suffer in the hopelessness of death.  We don't have to bet that something finite will give us joy.  We can stake our happiness on something everlasting.  When Jesus died, He gave us the opportunity to be cleansed us of our sin.  When He rose, He was metaphorically saying that we no longer have to be dead in our sins.  Jesus offers freedom.  Jesus offers hope.    Jesus offers life, and my prayer is that I will constantly accept it.