Just a quick note...

So I promise to try and make this quick... Yeah how many time have you heard that from people, only to have to conversation last for a couple hours. This may end up one of those depending on how I get talking (actually more correctly typing). I just want to drop a quick not saying hi to all the readers and to say that I am now to co-villain in writing on this blog. Where to start, that is the main question.

I am xtan.goth, as you can probably tell by my name, I am currently serving my country in the United States Marine Corps. I have probably only a couple more months left in the military, then I start on my life outside the day to day operations of the military. I am currently thinking about going to become a minister in LCMS. I am still very big into the Goth Subculture out here in the lovely Southern California Desert, I am probably the only Christian Goth per-say out here the only other ones I know of are Pagan. Which brings me to my next topic, my past.

Up until, October of this year, I have been a practicing Wiccan/Pagan. I have spent around the last 10 years to some degree or another in the occult. Some of it in groups, and also some of it solitary. But something changed in me around August of this year. I just felt like no matter how much I did magick it just plain and simple wasn't doing it for me anymore. I just felt like there was this gaping hole in me that nothing could fill. Then I started getting into something really dark. The only way I can really describe it is Demonic. I knew it was evil pure and simple, but at the time I thought I could control it. How wrong I was. I ended up talking to a really close friend of mine about everything, and she simply started telling me about Christianity. (On a side note, I grew up in a Lutheran household before I decided to rebel and get into Wicca.) I was completely cautious about this. I had just spent almost the last decade basically knocking down Christians to some degree or another. I didn't know that he could forgive me, so she invited me to go to church with her that following Sunday. I was nervous I had always thought that they were going to basically get ready for an exorcism if they saw someone like me walking in. I was used to the weird stares that comes with wearing the clothes.

I was actually surprised when I went there, I didn't get any weird stares or anything. I felt accepted. It was that day that I decided to turn away from Paganism, and became a Christian. It was the best decision I made in my life. It was also around that time that I felt like my true calling in life was to become a pastor for the goths. Ask anyone who knows me I have become outspoken about my religious beliefs.

I am going to post again here in a couple days more on some of my past experiences with Wicca and Paganism. I just wanted to drop by quickly and say what's up, and give a brief introduction. I am also currently writing a demo for the band I am the only member of, I will post a link to the downloadable album on here as soon as I finish up on everything.

Merry Christmas and God Bless,

xtan.goth

The Joy of Painting Creation

This isn't particular to the counter-culture and its relation to faith, but this is my blog and it's not irrelevant, either.

The Creationism vs. Evolution Debate popped up on a forum my wife frequents. The stance she's taken thus far is pretty much my stance: it's a pointless debate. To avoid inviting tangential debates, I'll only summarize that we believe each thesis to be rooted in fundamentally different presuppositions, which can only be changed by spiritual prompting beyond the exclusive influence of reason.

Anyway, we were discussing the whole matter, and my wife pointed out that the analogy of God to an architect is flawed. The implication is that God planned out His "blueprints," and merely finalized them on each of the six days. Genesis doesn't say that God sequentially executed a predetermined course of action. For example, after God created the man, He later decided that the man shouldn't be alone and created the woman. Perhaps God created more organically!

"Let there be light! ...hmm, now let's separate the light from the darkness - nice!" "Hey, let's put stuff in the water!" I was reminded of Bob Ross, from "The Joy of Painting," moving intuitively from a blank canvas, to a plane of light and dark, to an abstract land mass, to detailed landscapes. "Let's put a happy little tree here..."

"But God is perfect," some may object. I think we misunderstand perfection, especially as the ancient Hebrews understood it. To be perfect is to be complete, and has the same root word for peace. Perfection is to not lack anything. It's not necessarily that Does-Everything-Right-the-First-Time-Perfection we hate in high school, or an anal-retentive attention to detail. God is not necessarily a Type-A personality. If God can instantaneously create from nothing, maybe it took Him six days to create the universe because He was experimenting, playing around, trying things out, and only at the end of the day was satisfied enough to say it was "very good." Like Bob Ross used to say, "We don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents."

In the creative process today, there are generations of a single work. There are stages of Bob Ross' painting before he stops and calls it very good. If you chip away at the paint, you find evidence of the earlier stages - how the tree used to be a bush and the stream might have been a rock. Look at wikipedia, or collaborative documents, or computer programs, and you see the logs of even thousands of generations of revisions on a finalized work. Isolate one of those revisions, and it's a different work entirely. It's just natural in the course of the organic process to have traces and evidence of change little different than the evidences of evolution we find. (I'm not making any ostentatious claims on this, but only remarking on how natural such evidence is to creation at any level.)

This makes more and more sense to me as I think about it, which I've only done for a couple hours... maybe once I've thought about it a couple weeks or years, I'd feel confident enough to say more, but for now I'll let God be God and marvel at His wondrous works.

"Pink fluffy clouds..."

:-D

Let Rome Burn

Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.

-Jesus Christ, Matthew 22:21

This should be a familiar quote, usually taught to distinguish Church from state.

Jesus demonstrates the difference, but to teach only that is too simplistic.  Immediatley before this, Jesus is talking up the Kingdom of God, and the Religious Establishment (aka, Pharisees) are trying to trip Him up.  "Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?"

Essentially, Jesus is saying the question is irrelevant - Caesar is irrelevant - Jesus is interested in the Kingdom of God.  And the Religious Establishment doesn't get it...

...neither does today's Religious Establishment in the United States. 

Perhaps the greatest challenge to Christ's Church has not been persecution, but establishment.  Under pagan rulers, Christianity thrived.  Jesus says, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me."  The Christian Way is a way of suffering, of being a "living sacrifice," St. Paul says.

Except in rare instances, Western Christians have gone without real, physical persecution for about 1700 years.  A millennium after Christianity was legalized in Europe, the Religious Establishment again turned against Christ's Gospel when they fought against Reformation.  Nearly a century of bloodshed finally came to peace, and the Outlaw (Lutheran) Christianity was again assimilated into the Establishment.  This is where we find ourselves today.

As the people wake up from superficial modernism and begin to question presuppositions, the Religious Establishment again feels threatened - and it is threatened - because it is less Christ's Church than a bulwark of society.

Christ's Church transcends society, because Christians are called to be holy.  "Holy" reads "set apart."  Christ said "the gates of hell shall not prevail against [my Church]."

Jesus answered [Pilate], "My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from the world."

-John 18:36

Therefore, we Christians should not be unnecessarily concerned with government.  We should not be unnecessarily concerned with the United States.  The Scriptures tell us to submit to our authorities, which we must - and that was written under a persecuting pagan regime!

Legislating morality helps no one, much less spreads the Gospel!  Even un- or anti-christian legislation should be of no real worry to you, because it has no effect on your soul, faith, or piety. Neither Republican nor Democratic party government is any more "Christian" than the other.  Neither the Green nor libertarian party are any less so.  And if you are a Christian, you are no less so under a Muslim, a communist, democratic or despotic government.

So if Rome is burning, like so many pundits are screaming from the rooftops, let it burn.  "But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness..." wherever you may be.  Under whatever government you may be.

Sinners Smoke Cigarettes

Sinners smoke cigarettes
The righteous smoke cigars

Sinners smoke cigarettes when and where they can
The righteous smoke cigars in hidden enclaves and at special gatherings

Smoking cigarettes is a disgusting habit
Smoking cigars is relaxing and flavorful

Sinners are addicted to cigarettes
The righteous have no reason to give up cigars

Sinners are enslaved to immoral tobacco corporations
The righteous indulge immoral tobacco corporations

Cigarettes cause cancer, disease, and death
Cigars cause cancer, disease, and death

There is no difference between sinners and the righteous,
except how honest they are with themselves
--der_m, 03.May 2009

i smoke Pall Malls, by the by ;)
yours in Christ

alt.Lutheran?

A Christian is perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.
A Christian is perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all. -Luther

What does that mean? The first phrase means that at the end of the day, you only have to answer to God. It doesn't matter what crabby ignorami have to say about your business, tattoos, what you do with your time or money - ultimately, it's between you and God, and they're putting words in God's mouth to say otherwise! It's called "personal piety." It's you living your faith according to your conscience, personal conviction, and relationship with others and with God.

As a Christian, you are saved by faith in Christ - which is trusting that Christ's work in the world has made you right with God - which has nothing to do with your good works, or even your sins! The long and short of it is that you'll be a sinner until you die - the difference is that if you have faith, you're saved despite your being a sinner. Therefore, as long as you have that faith in Christ - that He has lived, died, and rose again to make you a saved heir of God - you only have to be concerned about sin insofar as it hurts your faith, others' faith, or others in general!

That's what the second phrase does. It teaches us how we are supposed to live. St. Paul talks about this in his letter to the Romans:

Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.

Because we are free from sin and its consequences, we are actually free to live the way we were created to live, which is "the law" in Christian circles. This starts getting into a lot of complicated theology I'll spare you, but what it boils down to is that you put others before yourself. It's the "Golden Rule." The Bible and Lutherans call this "loving your neighbor." Most alt folks do this already, and sometimes do it a lot better than many Christians!

Jesus explained it "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." (Luke 10:27)

It's pretty simple. And as you live it, you begin to realize that sin has more to do with hurting our relationship to God and hurting other people than it does with breaking apparently arbitrary rules.

Thus a Christian is both righteous and a sinner, holy and profane, an enemy of God and yet a child of God. -Luther

Amen.

simul iustus et peccator

"Thus a Christian is both righteous and a sinner, holy and profane, an enemy of God and yet a child of God."

emphasis added. Martin Luther's commentary on Galatians. this is the heart of the Christian faith I love - holy and profane!