joel osteen is NOT a part of mainstream Christianity.....just that it has been hijacked by joel.

the book cover thing is extremely weird....the following eyes. i think i know my Halloween costume, a joel osteen book cover.

the sad thing about christianity seeming to be "happy all the time" is 1-when christian are fired/kicked out of/from christian groups because they are not happy all the time and promote honest instead of deceit.

another sad thing, even sadder, is that this is nothing new. the same crap has been around since charles spurgeon was a kid. he almost killed himself because he wasn't as good and happy as those around him. the thing that saved his life is the book by John Owen called "
on the mortification of sin in believers; with a resolution of sundry cases of conscience thereunto belonging"

today we call the book "the mortification of sin in believers

That is one thing about BS2 and later FIF songs...the willingness to embrace topics traditionally too 'dark' for 'good' little Christian musicians.

I was talking to a friend of mine who goes to a Christian university in southern California and she suffers with depression...anyway she was terrified about getting any actual help because of fears of being kicked out school and thought of as being inferior spiritually speaking.

What is this crap?

It makes me agitated enough to want to stab someone in the face...and everyone of these heretical leaders that shove this facade down people's throats are going to have the blood of people on their heads.

Ugh... that's just sick! We're supposed to be helping people, not judging them! It's no wonder mainstream Christianity has such a bad rep with so-called "leaders" like this. How can they claim to be "pure" when they're rejecting the very thing Jesus told them to do?!

That's why I left my last church... they were doing things that would, instead of embracing everybody, would alienate so many people that they could reach just because they didn't conform to their "standards".

We're supposed to love and help everyone, no matter what. It doesn't matter where they are on their spiritual walk, what problems/struggles they might have or what they've done, they're all created by God and all need Him.

People like that make me angry. I'm human, prone to human emotions... I don't know how Jesus forgave everyone so easily. *sigh*

Yeah, my previous church experiences make me very upset at the idea of quote unquote "witnessing."

Going up to a random stranger and explaining that if they don't accept Jesus immediately, they're probably gonna go to hell.

It's a wonderful way to spread Christianity and make disciples. ::sarcastic::


My old church showed us two wonderful videos on the matter.

One was The Letter, a wonderful video describing a letter from someone who ended up in hell, written to his friend who didn't witness to him. It was a nice, frightening video to show a room full of varying ages, including children.

The other was a video describing who can be reached for Christ, a video basically declaring that it's more likely to convert younger people and to not go for the older people so much.




It's no wonder why my Christian faith is on the brink these days...

That's one of the reasons I love Reese, most of his messages make absolute sense

I've been reading this book recently:

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Loves-You-T ... 0801013291

One of the coauthors is Craig Gross, founder of xxxchuch.com which is a ministry that reaches out to those with porn addictions and those in the porn industry. It's a good read that hits on a lot of the things in this post, on the board and in BS2 music.

For those who read and try to live like Jesus...we should be outraged to see Wolves in pulpits trying to lead people astray...but my biggest problem is forgetting that Jesus loves the religious and law obsessed hypocrites just as much he loves gay people, drug addicts, soccer moms, Christian Record Label owners, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and myself.

From a pure human perspective God offering grace makes no sense...we're either too self absorbed to realize we need to be saved from ourselves or we become so self absorbed we forget Jesus died for all of humanity and not the church.

This struggle has been around since the church began in A.D. 33.
As one of my mentors best said "The reason why God allowed the Christians to be persecuted in Jerusalem was to get them off their butts and to go to the world. Jesus told them to go to the whole world...not just down the street to share the love of a savior they saw DIE and RAISE back to life. Is it any wonder we have so many problems?"


Another good book to read in order to give perspective to the Bible is a book by Rob Bell called "Jesus Wants to Save Christians"

http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Wants-Save- ... 0310275024


Never give up hope.
The task is impossible but Jesus knew that when He made a silly as a people as humans...what matters is that we realize we need help and do our best to love and never stop loving.

=)