roykeely

My current heart condition & Why I am saying goodbye to Facebook forever

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 10:00:53 -0400

Things. Toys. Technology. And so our hearts and our affections are formed by these things. They compress the void in our heart into shapes like toys. The result is that we are easily moved and excited by things - computers, cars, appliances, entertainment media. They seem to the fit the shapes in our hearts. They feel good in the tiny spaces they have made. But in this readiness to receive pleasure from things, we are ill-shaped for Christ. He seems unreal, unattractive. The eyes of our heart grow dull.

The above words are from John Piper in his book “When I Don’t Desire God.” It has been a timely read and the title is the current synopsis of my heart. As I was journaling the other day I wrote ‘Distracted: the current one word descriptor for my life’. While I can’t blame the actual mediums or the messages my heart runs to, I can change my consumption. I am Lactose intolerant therefore my body doesn’t contain enough Lactase to be able to process the Lactose in foods. I must refrain or partake & get sick. Same holds true I am finding with certain pieces of technology and social conventions. My soul just can’t handle, I get sick. This sickness looks like narcism, jealousy, a contentious heart, and more.

I am not writing this to guilt you, but writing this to inform that this soul, mine, is on the wrong trajectory. I must change course and modify my diet in what seems to be the habits of the times, the accepted norms.

So if our ‘lives’ cross paths only in this online world (Facebook), I am saying Goodbye. Joy is from but one source and I pray that for you, and myself, we drink it up.

Suggested Readings are below if you are looking to investigate more as it pertains to how media effects the soul in both positive and negative ways. (some are obviously more media focused while others spiritually focused)

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
Medium is the Massage by Marshall McLuhan
The Disappearance of Childhood by Neil Postman
Bible - Various Authors
When I Don’t Desire God by John Piper (Free PDF download of the book)
Understanding Media by Marshall McLuhan

It is the cult of self that is killing the United States.

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:49:29 -0400

We have a right, in the cult of the self, to get whatever we desire. We can do anything, even belittle and destroy those around us, including our friends, to make money, to be happy and to become famous. Once fame and wealth are achieved, they become their own justification, their own morality. How one gets there is irrelevant. It is this perverted ethic that gave us investment houses like Goldman Sachs … that willfully trashed the global economy and stole money from tens of millions of small shareholders who had bought stock in these corporations for retirement or college. The heads of these corporations, like the winners on a reality television program who lied and manipulated others to succeed, walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses and compensation. The ethic of Wall Street is the ethic of celebrity. It is fused into one bizarre, perverted belief system and it has banished the possibility of the country returning to a reality-based world or avoiding internal collapse. A society that cannot distinguish reality from illusion dies.

This is from this article in Adbusters. The only end to the scenario in this article is when the Gospel is realized…period. There is no restored humanity and dignity without. I really ‘enjoyed’ the article, realizing that I, perhaps more than most get caught in the cult of self.

ATL Art - Krog Tunnel

Sun, 20 Jun 2010 09:55:39 -0400

ATL Art - Krog Tunnel

Non-Idiot Christian's in the media

Fri, 11 Jun 2010 19:50:48 -0400

it can happen….Christian’s actually giving well informed answers in the media.

watch it here: http://abcnews.go.com/US/video/face-american-evangelicalism-10744135

spent some time thinking about this. i think you should too.

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:48:09 -0400

spent some time thinking about this. i think you should too.

Given the weight of my post yesterday I had to lighten it up a...

Thu, 13 May 2010 15:17:03 -0400

Given the weight of my post yesterday I had to lighten it up a little bit today. This is a great parody of pop-culture.

cashier: 'How are you?' reply: 'Shitty' :: Perils of Quaint Moralism

Wed, 12 May 2010 09:28:00 -0400

A friend and I met yesterday to discuss life, longings, and present sufferings - it has become a weekly gift of grace given to me only in the last few months. As we talked he recounted an interaction he had with a cashier who asked the normal - ‘how are you?’.

My friend happens to be going through a season of investigation & suffering, so in a flash he responded honestly.

Friend: ‘Shitty’

The interaction continued with an honest, yet gentle discourse between the two ending with the cashier hoping his season of suffering is over soon.

Honesty and suffering takes us back. We have grown not calloused but unconscious of the world that surrounds and the suffering, both subtle and overt, that life involves.

I, as a ‘southern’ Christian white male above 6 foot with a college degree and ‘opportunity’ have sought to rid life of suffering, inconvenience, and all forms of strife. Life is often relegated to sin management and pain avoidance within in the WASP circle, and I have signed up for it. Both consciously and unconsciously I have stood in the ticket line my whole life waiting for the day my ‘ticket gets punched’….only to learn the line leads to nowhere. The line promised to lead to happiness, righteous living, and moralism. I have spent my whole life getting in and out of this line, getting out only after truth graciously battered this ignorant soul into action. Others, yet not all, around clamor for position in the line only to learn there are thousands (millions) in front of them. Their satisfaction for the moment lies in the fact that they are in front of a few thousand (millions), but this soon too wears off.

So to be done with allegory and to say what I mean overtly: you and I both, knowingly & unknowingly, have sought comfort & convenience as our God. We have gone to great lengths to be thought of as moral and look to remove discomfort at any cost from our lives. That is not a life worth living. A community of people, wrestling with the ‘Truth’, is the only antidote to the ‘poison’ (another allegory, sorry).

Picture credit and shout-out: The Resurgence Blog posted an honest discourse regarding the ‘poison that is quaint moralism’ and I encourage the read. I also stole the picture above from their post. It influenced this post and allowed me to help make sense of current conversations.

Emotional Porn :: What say you?

Mon, 10 May 2010 13:35:00 -0400

I have been having this discussion for a # of years with the female friends in my life who persist, insist, and other ‘ists’ that what they engage in, throw gatherings for, and discuss over many a dinner is equally as damaging as me reading & watching porn. While I can see the extremism in my statements and don’t think it’s directly black/white….I do think it’s a fine line that all of us, not just women, have disregarded and chalked it up to cultural relevancy & ‘just entertainment’. I think guys can struggle with emotional porn as well, this is not just a women issue….however do believe that women have been targets for longer in this sense of the term while males are targets for the obvious porn we all define in the same terms.

I stole the pic from this article written by Relevant Magazine that can be found here : Link to Article. I highly suggest the read for a good perspective on the matter.

A good quote from the article:

We’re taught to crave the moment of romantic ecstasy or to live for the wedding day. We’re raised to think these are the real stories of love and relationship, and we’re confused when they are so few and far between that we aren’t sustained. So we turn back to that which led us to believe in this fantasy all along. And we’re left with an old woman sitting alone, in her love seat, in front of the television watching her “stories.”

A friend told me, which is of use here: men sin like dogs, women sin like cats.

It’s very obvious when we make an @ss out of ourselves. We are just dumb and sit there right next to where we crapped on the floor and in some cases go back and eat it…gross I know - analogy is correct though.

Women, often times, look much better in their sin and are far more savvy with it’s cover up. They are good image managers, much better than us dogs….they tend to come out smelling better than we do.

How emotional porn relates to the analogy above: it’s completely under the radar for the most part, it’s cat-like.

Hilarious video from Toyota. Well done, well done.

Fri, 07 May 2010 11:11:33 -0400

Hilarious video from Toyota. Well done, well done.

Blessed are the fat, the bald, and the old

Wed, 05 May 2010 20:39:25 -0400

As many who read this blog know I have a strong sentiment for a book called ‘The Divine Conspiracy’ by Dallas Willard. It is the book that if stranded on an island and couldn’t take the Bible I would take it (freakin sunday school statement I know).

Reading it sends shockwaves through my soul as I grapple with the truth it brings to the forefront. In my habits I find outright lies that have me believing I am better than most, that i deserve praise, and that I should have a good seat at the table.

You might think the most unfortunate people in the world today are the fat, the misshapen, the bald, the ugly, the old, and those not relentlessly engaged in romance, sex, and fashionably equipped physical activities.

If I am honest I think this. So I wrestle with these thoughts, how to live, in light of the modern day Beatitudes:

Blessed are the physically repulsive,
Blessed are those who smell bad,
The twisted, the misshapen, deformed,
The too big, too little, too loud,
The bald, the fat, the old,
For they are all riotously celebrated in the party of Jesus.

Blessed are the crushed ones; the flunk-outs, drop-outs, and burned-outs. The broke and the broken.The drug heads and the divorced. The HIV-Positive and herpes-ridden. The brain damaged, the incurably ill. The barren and the pregnant too many times or at the wrong time. The over-employed, the underemployed, the unemployed. The unemployable. The swindled, the shoved aside, the replaced. The parents with the children living on the street, the children with the parents not dying in the ‘rest’ home. The lonely, the incompetent, the stupid. The emotionally starved or the emotionally dead. And on and on.

The condition of life sought for by human beings through the ages is attainted in the quietly transforming friendship of Jesus.

Another Facebook Video. What is FB good for?

Wed, 05 May 2010 09:03:49 -0400

Another Facebook Video. What is FB good for?

Facebook in reality….you have prob seen it.

Tue, 04 May 2010 23:30:00 -0400

Facebook in reality….you have prob seen it.

TV is a DRUG! I highly suggest watching this and sharing your...

Tue, 04 May 2010 16:16:02 -0400

TV is a DRUG! I highly suggest watching this and sharing your thoughts

Jesus + Darwin = Truth?

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:36:35 -0400

Could it be? It just may.

I just got done reading ‘The Language of God’ that goes into detail regarding the harmony between Science & Faith. Am I an evolutionist now?…..maybe. The term he puts forth to explain the perspective is called ‘BioLogos’ (www.biologos.org) and I would strongly suggest that you, no matter if you are an atheist, agnostic, Muslim, or a Christian, read this book.

Many times christians have these poster child arguments against evolution (fossil gaps, evolution = atheism, etc) and they are just old, dated, and faded. Evolution actually demands a beginning, a bang, a spark to start life on it’s course therefore the view is completely compatible with Theism. Could God use natural laws to create all things? Of course he could.

I find that I had to clean my mind of sorts from some terms I thought I knew or carried a certain sentiment about…you will have to do the same no matter which angle you approach it from. Happy reading, dig in!

Facebook kills your soul...slowly but surely

Fri, 23 Apr 2010 11:18:41 -0400

The statement seems extreme….but the more I wander into Social Media the more i am convinced it kills you. As I prepare a presentation applying social media for business use I grow more convinced that the amputations (negatives) outweigh the extensions (positives). (link to understand last terminology more)

I simply think humanity finds a way to create pseudo-significance via mediums presenting half-truths or fancy-faiths.

While science has dismissed the notion that earth is at the center of everything, philosophy continues to place man at the center, the reference point for all that is known.

*yes i understand the paradox here - i wrote this on a blog that posted message to both twitter & facebook

what brings you peace?

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:42:00 -0400

‘peace’ for the individual is often a simple formula:

no conflict + convenience + understanding = ‘peace’

so this ‘peace’ we often think about and assume is circumstantial, not rooted in anything outside of the moment at hand. I am guilty of it. you are guilty of it.

If so, this ‘peace’ shall pass us and we shall forever be chasing.

However

Peace predetermines war to be in the equation. Peace can only come after war….peace can not precede the notion of war. Have you been in a war? If you haven’t keep playing the above equation game.

For better words than mine click here

12 minute parking- these people know their service times (or...

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 12:31:45 -0400

12 minute parking- these people know their service times (or like to be random).

Montana: I like you

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:57:53 -0400

Montana: I like you

Wyoming: sunset

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:10:29 -0400

Wyoming: sunset

Wyoming: lots of deer & snow. Sunset coming up!

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:07:44 -0400

Wyoming: lots of deer & snow. Sunset coming up!