I'll never have to experience it myself, but I am told that childbirth can be a living hell for the mother.It must be an intense experience for the newborn as well, but we don't talk much about it mainly because we don't remember it. If we did remember it, I suspect it still wouldn't be as painful as the labor a mother goes through.
Funny how this concept defines many other things in life: can't play the game if you can't take the pain.
It seems like all the easy and fun things in life don't produce much at all and that it always takes some willingness to experience pain to get stuff done.
I suspect this is the cause of laziness: it's too hard to put in the effort.
The same thing applies to religion, especially Christianity (Satanism would be an exception).
Christianity demands tough things from believers. At it's toughest times, it seems to demand an outright denial of human nature and even a kind of suicide of one's own ego.
Being Born Again requires as much pain as a biological birth does; the only difference is that it's the person or child who feels the pangs of labor and not the parent.
Also, the parent in this case is not the mother, but the Father, with a capital F.
I was born into a Roman Catholic family and has stayed with the religion ever since.
And yet, I often think of myself as a Born Again: it's one thing to learn about the faith in Catholic School, it's another thing to actually learn about it from life experiences.
I've had at least two Born Again Experiences in my life: two experiences that woke me up from a self deception and showed me the true ways of the world and Christ.
This finite blog will be the story of my latest Born Again experience, which will hopefully serve as enlightenment for any other reader who is also in need of learning what Christianity is for real.
I do not write this for narcissistic reasons, nor do I claim to have heard God's voice command me to write this as some kind of "mission"; but sometimes I simply can't contain things that happen to me.
Perhaps, one reason is because I still haven't quite figured it out.
Atheists (of whom I know many personally) often claim that Religion is the easy way out.
I can understand why people become atheists (more on this will be written later), but I do not understand why they make this claim that they are roughin' it and we believers are "opiating" ourselves.
As I said before, we religious people believe that God wants us to deny our human nature and rise above it, with no scientific proof to His existence or obvious reason to resist the ways of the world.
Believe me, this is not easy.
I understand that Atheism tackles the frightening concept of a godless universe, an complete void beyond existence and total oblivion after death. When compared to the promises of eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven, I suppose Atheism does seem easy.
But such a thinking overlooks the belief in Hell: we Christians believe that if we deny God and His ways we'll wind up in a place of eternal pain.
Believe me, blinking out into nothingness after death is quite a welcoming thought in comparison to Hell; and you get to do whatever you want until then too!
Every believer goes through a Crisis of Doubt.
Thanks to the onslaught of scientific extremism, atheist reasoning, and the increasing difficulty to stick to God's ways, all believers wonder if religion is all a fairy tale and that there is no God.
It's a scary time for a believer; no matter which persuasion they end up with, they have to at least entertain the idea that their entire life has been resting upon a lie and that there is no other system to replace it.
Doubt strengthens faith; it's spiritual growing pains we believers must go through to make that leap from believing because Mommy and Daddy told you so, into believing because of personal conviction due to one's reasoning.
Been there, done that.
That is not what this blog will be about.
Wasted Efforts: The Discovery of Grace is about the opposite: The Crisis of Faith.
It is about the crisis of realizing what you are actually believing in, and what consequences such a belief has on you.
It is much much more frightening than the Crisis of Doubt, and I would guess much more frightening than the conviction of not believing in God.
A Crisis of Faith is realizing that because you really believe in God, you must really believe what He says, which sometimes can be a bit confusing due to the rhetoric of the Bible and His mysterious ways of speaking to you otherwise.
The consequences of this are grave. Where the consequences of Doubt leads to one anticipating that they are free from inhibitions; the consequences of Faith leads to anticipation of being told by God "I never knew you; go away from me, you evildoers," when the big moment comes (Matthew 7:23).
This fear comes from the confusion over what God actually wants of you.
As I said before, the Bible can often be confusing; even downright self-contradicting. One is in for a wild adventure when he decides to clarify something he doesn't quite get in the Bible.
Wasted Efforts: The Discovery of Grace starts at this very moment: the moment of confusion; the moment of fear; a moment way after the ability to stop believing is an option.
I will not attempt to prove the existence of God with this blog; this story will be written from the point of view of a believer, and you must read it from that point of view if it'll make any sense to you.
It is another story all together about how I became convinced that there is a God. I will not write about it here. Just understand that when one has gotten this far into belief of God, they can't stop believing and make it genuine. It would be a cop-out, a way of saying "I don't like what God wants of me, so I'll just stop believing in him to get off the hook."
On the title...
I will not explain right now the meaning of "Wasted Efforts". It'll become clear at the end of this story.
What I can say is that is has to do with the relationship between Grace and Works; perhaps the most confusing thing I find in the Bible.
And I should also make this clear: it is not a snide title. I can see where you may think that; there is a negative connotation to "Wasted Efforts". Do not think that I'm grinding an axe to say that religion is a waste of time.
You'll see what I mean.
I approach this blog as if it was more like a short book or a long short story.
Hence, each entry is more like a chapter, and each chapter will fall under a certain volume in the overall work.
Besides this Introduction, the volumes are:
Mugged by Reality or the Conservative Crisis
All You Need is Agape
Confessions
Mugged by Faith or what it Means to Believe
Blessed are the Poor in Spirit
A Serious Epilogue
I hope to update frequently; I'd like to get this story written down before it starts to fade from my mind.
But don't hold me to strict expectations of what days or times I will update for I make no claim to ahead of time.
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