Searching for Meaning and Purpose...

Paul said that no discipline seemed pleasant at the time and I can so vouch for that right now!  Workouts and dieting have been steady, with only a few cheats here and there during the Christmas festivities.  However, finding the desire to kick into gear again is a bit lacking.  I see the goal and I know where I want to go, but motivation is a factor... How do we push ourselves in the right direction when we don't really want to?  That's the question I'm dealing with.  I think Mark Driscoll has the answer in his forthcoming book, Who Do You Think You Are?   The major premise is that who we are in Christ must be our primary identity, not our successes, personality, stuff or otherwise.  While I know all of that to be true, I don't know that I'd thought about it as much as  I should!  Being overweight (especially to the degree I am- around 100 lbs., minus 17 as of today!) is a reflection on who I don't  think I am.  Just as Adam and ...

You know, it's amazing how little most critics seem to actually know about God before they pose a question. We've looked at hypocrisy and the problem of evil (why bad things happen to good people), but today we'll tackle my favorite: how can God say He is good and do the things He has done (like the Flood, the Israelites Canaan slaughter, etc.)? This question attacks the heart of faith itself. If God isn't good why would we follow Him? That is where many people get hung up. Especially reading through the Old Testament, we see God as seemingly capricious and extremely brutal. There is not much grace extended in the Old Testament while grace is the overriding theme of the New. How does all that make sense? Let's start in the beginning... First, we see God making everything and caring for it (sounds like a "good" and loving God to me!) with only one caveat: don't eat from this ONE tree. Sounds simple, right? But man eats from the one tree and is ...