[As transcribed from my journal on 6/19/10 with a few revisions...]

Deuteronomy 9:5 - Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going to possess their land, but because  of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that He may confirm the word that the Lord swore to yoru fathers to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Many times I hear people object to the character of God, saying He is wrathful, vengeful, hateful etc.  They wonder how Christians can follow a God like this saying he is hardly compassionate, loving and just.  Many times they point to the Torah/Pentateuch  and the conquering of Canaan to justify this claim.  Until now, I've simply not had an answer to response for such claims other than "I don't know".  Now I think I actually have a partial reply to them.

The answer is because the nations being conquered were wicked in the eyes of the Lord.  And when wickedness is present, one of two thinks much take place.  1.) There must be forgiveness, which the price of the evil and disobedience is borne by the accuser (in this case God), or 2.) the evil must be paid for/punished.

We see later in the NT, in Romans specifically, that the wages of sin is death.  Sin is defined as disobedience/going again God's commandments.  Sin can be equated to evil, or in this case, wickedness.  The wickedness had to be paid for by someone.  The Isrealites had the Law to know how to pay for their transgressions - the Canaanites did not, and the Messiah (ie Christ) had not yet come to pay for them Himself.  (He hadn't even been prophesied yet).  So the Canaanites had to pay for their own wickedness with their lives as the wages of sin - ie wickedness, is death.

Born Again

I've grown up with the term "born again".  "You must be born again in order to get into Heaven."  I can't tell you how many times I've heard that said, and how many times I've said that to other people.  I've taken the whole concept for granted.

As I've read, studied, and talked with numerous people smarter than me, I've started to lean more and more towards God predestining people to salvation, instead of us choosing to go to Him.  Does this mean that humans have absolutely no choice in the matter of salvation?  I'm not 100% sure.  Both predestination and free will seem to be supported in scripture, so that makes me think that both, in some way must be true, but I do tend to lean more towards predestination.  I should say though, that I am still learning.

Loneliness

Today was kind of a weird day.  Earlier I tweeted that I was bitten by the lonely bug, and I really feel like I was.

Usually when I'm in a mood like this, I either want to be with people, or I want to be completely alone.  Today, I wanted neither.  When I was around my family and people at church, I was annoyed and irritable and just wanted to be left alone, and when I was alone, I felt extremely lonely and depressed.

The other day I wrote a blog (that I later later took down) about how there's nothing I get really excited about anymore.  While at BSU, the events I got most excited about centered around the relationships I had with the people I was going to interact with.  I don't really have many friendships now.  Sure there are lots people I interact with, family members, co-workers, other people at church and so on.

Extending Grace in the Workplace

If you know me personally or talk to me much at all you know that there have been problems with a certain co-worker for several month's now.  I don't want to go into a lot of detail about the whole ordeal for the sake of professionalism (I can be professional at times believe it or not!) but I am torn about how to deal with the situation at times.

I know Christ says to forgive someone not 7 times, but 70 times 7.  Now, I don't think that Jesus literally means we should forgive someone 490 times, but I think he means we should forgive someone continually.  That being said, I wonder how many times I should forgive my co-worker at work, and how I should handle/react to the situation going on.