the problem

The problem with saying almost anything about God, is that God won't fit properly into almost anything that can ever be said.
what i mean is, you say God is 'merciful', and the guy to your left says "but he is also just", because to SAY that he is merciful somehow cutts him down to only that trait, and whenever you hear someone saying that, you automatcally start thinking "yeah, but".
people who say "yeah, but" to everything are annoying as hell.
i know, i've been one of them, and i know them.
you start to say "God has been showing me that he is like 'this', and they say "but he's also like that"

maybe this happens because God is not like us, he is ultimate.

if someone says "bob is nice" i'm not dumb enough to think that bob is ALWAYS nice, but that merely in general, bob is nice.
Since God is an eternal being, and since i'm kinda locked into agreement with the way the ancient greeks talked about God, i tend to picture him having immutatble qualities, like never lying.
so if he is something, its not 'in general', its 'eternal.'

try to slip past a pastor that God is love, but only 'in general'.
"in general God is a loving guy"

because whatever trait you tack onto God must extend into eternity and a trait he can't have one second or another, its really hard to talk about him being only one thing.
if someone in a group is learning that God is 'calling us to obedience', someone else is learning the God 'accepts them the way they are, and calling them to hear that he simply loves them'

so, when you say God is wrathful, your friend will say "but he's also happy with us"

and we all grow weary of giving preludes to all our comments on God saying "listen, i know that God is wrathful and just, and that he asks us to follow Jesus and that he loves a contrite heart, but he has been showing me that he smiles at me today, even though i feel like a horrible sinner"

what a mouthful, when you just want to say that God is happy.

maybe i'm wrong, since we do react funny when someone says "mike is nice" and in our minds we are thinking of how much a jerk mike can be and we toss out "but he can also be a jerk"
but maybe that' different.

maybe we should see God as a changing person when it comes to certain qualities.
maybe it'd be better to say "God is patient, but don't piss him off"
or to say that "God loves us, in general" and leave open the implication that sometimes it changes.
it becomes hard to hold the two truths taught in the ancient scriptures that
1. God hates sinners (read the Psalms) and
2. God loves sinners.

can we just say "sometimes God loves sinners and sometimes he hates them"?

its seems wrong to go there.

we want a simple rule- "God loves sinners always" end of story.

if only the Bible and God both would just stop doing their own thing and just follow the simple rules we'd like to impose on them.

i think maybe its not as simple as "sometimes" with God, but that he has this eternal qualities that show up in or world in ways we can only read but as changing, or fickle.

I think this blog goes into the category of things i'll read lately and realize i didn't communicate it properly , or that i'm like "no no, thats all wrong" about.
thats what happens when you think about something, then right about it later. you end up writing when you're NOT thinking and how can that ever be good?

sometimes.

sometimes when i drive home, like late tonight, i can't imagine my life headed anywhere at all, and i just expect God to send some car flying from a side-street through a stop sign at me. i'd die in that automobile accident and pop up in heaven and be like "ok, THAT explains why my life has been like it has been lately"

but sometimes i don't feel like that.

alone.

loneliness is relative.
the nights spent in groups, alone.
the laying in bed, alone.
being alone is something you can do anywhere, with anyone, when you are not with the person you really want to be with.
i wish writing a blog could solve my lonely sum, where i always equal one
i wish understanding some concept could crash it into a pile.
i wish the issues i had four years ago weren't still the issues i have today.
i wish new romances would make me deaf to the sound of my own heartbeat that's not for them
i wish God had not waited me out, and proved me poor, impatient, impoverished, and revealed how weak my trust in him was.
i wish i could write enough songs to express it and pray through it and fight it, join it, feel it off of me
i wish i didn't have to try.
i'm so tired of trying.
i wish i could cry it out.
I wish God seemed more of an author and less of a editor.

i wish God would let my heart change, or that he'd change this world

i want to constantly apologize to my friends and family "i'm sorry i'm still such a sad stupid boy" when God wants me to be a man

I don't know if i know who i am anymore, and i don't think i like who i know myself to be right now.
i can read the christian type "find your identity in Christ"
which to me sounds like "create a black hole by blinking your eyes"
if i could find Christ, maybe i could find out who i really am, maybe i'd have an identity again.

i realized recently that the problem with being good with words at all is that no believes a single word you say.
The people i've ever said "i Love you" to haven't believed me.
and i find that all my poetic honesty is labeled dishonest simply because it is poetic.
no wonder poets are often so lonely - they are good with words, and we are afraid to believe them.

no one believes me when i talk anymore, and i feel like my mouth is wasted on such a life.
how can being good at communicating and connecting with others alienate you and cut out your tongue?
how does it cause you to end out alone?

it seems everyone i talk to knows a Tony that doesn't exist, and the sad thing is, is that the real Tony still does exist, as shy, alone, and thoroughly insecure about being alone as ever. If i had some arch-nemesis he'd find this out and play on it to lead me down a path of destruction.
maybe he already has.
i feel destroyed, the best parts of me have all but slipped away.

let me loose of this listless life and loneliness,
or perhaps i'll pretend to be OK

if you're lost in the woods long enough every free place to step looks like a path.
if you're lost in the woods there are no paths.

Obama interviewed by Rick Warren at Saddleback Church before the Election.

Convo

Tony "i used to date lots and lots and lots and lots of girls"

Kim  "was that when you had short hair?"

haahah