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Great quote...

March 06, 2005

Well, not much time to update today - been swamped. Say a prayer for my wife Shannon - she is pretty sick with the flu right now. As of last check here temperature was 102.3... needless to say, she isn't feeling to great.

I picked up a copy of Blue Like Jazz the other day, and have pretty much flown through it. It's nice to have a "quick read" mixed in with some of the more heavy lifting type stuff I've been reading. I've been thinking a lot this week about how we add so many of our own ideas and traditions to the cross, dictating what it means to "really be a Christian". Matt Chandler refers to it as becoming "defenders of the list". We make our list (have a quiet time, don't smoke, don't see R-rated movies, don't listen to secular music, etc.) and then defend it as if they were the Gospel. While none of these things are necissarily sinful in and of themselves, when we defend them as part of "what it means to be a Christian", we are committing a HUGE sin - we are negating the cross of Christ.

Wanted to leave you with a quote from Don Miller in Blue Like Jazz - hope it makes you think...

At the time I was attending this large church in the suburbs. It was like going to church at the Gap. I don't know why I went there. I didn't fit. I had a few friends, though, very nice people, and when I told them I wanted to audit classes at Reed they looked at me as if I wanted to date Satan. One friend sat me down and told me all about the place, how they have a three-day festival at the end of the year in which they run around naked. She said some of the students probably use drugs. She told me God did not want me to attend Reed College.

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