What happens to my college degree when I die?

Hope, purpose and a pleasure driven society.

I would like to make a disclaimer thatt in my writing blog posts I have no desire and no intention of being grammatically correct. You will read run on sentences and you will see words mis-spelled and incorrect punctuation. Oh well.



Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man.
-Nietzsche

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.
-MLK Jr.

If it were not for hopes, the heart would break.
-Thomas Fuller.

Many people have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification, but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.
-Helen Keller

I'm doing what I think I was put on this earth to do. And I'm really grateful to have something that I'm passionate about and that I think is profoundly important.
-Marian Wright Edelman

Everything--a horse, a vine--is created for some duty...For what task, then, were you yourself created? A man's true delight is to do the things he was made for.
-Marcus Aurelius

Say to yourself, ‘I’m here on purpose, I can accomplish anything I desire, and I do it by being in harmony with the all-pervading creative force in the universe.
-Wayne Dyer

Well there is certainly a variety of quotes you can find through the google search bar. Of course not all I agree with, but hope and purpose have been on my mind. Last night I was watching the news going over the immensity of Michael Jackson's memorial service. And then I saw a plug for a commemorative episode of Pitch Men for Billy Mayes, and I listened to some of the clips from celebrities and how they miss MJ. One that caught my ear in particular was Brooke Shields stating that "we must all be encouraged and happy to remember that Michael is up there sitting on his own crescent moon looking down on all of us." If you were not aware, Michael Jackson professed to be Jehovah's Witness. There were other short interviews of MJ fans that pointed out how wonderful MJ was and the greatness of his accomplishments. And then one man pointed out that it seems that the death of a person causes us to push aside all the controversy and the ridicule and the mistakes that someone dealt with in their life. He was right. Michael Jackson was a really weird guy with some great musical talent and he had a skin disease and problems with drugs and plastic surgery and perverted relations with children and all this stuff that is all tossed out the window when a the man dies. But this post is not about Michael Jackson.

After all the drama of celebrity deaths and the reaction of the worshipers of these people. Because it really is worship when you see 60,000 people at a concert that look more "slain in the spirit" of Michael Jackson than anything else. But it makes me wonder.

---How can anybody live without hope and purpose?"---

As a Christian, my hope is in Jesus Christ, but this hope is based on the realization that what Jesus Christ as done for me is significant. I would think that most people believe in right and wrong, but maybe the concept of sin is a little more vague. So Jesus died for my sins. Why did he even need to? It is sad to see mourners place their hope in lies. It is sad when Brooke Shields finds what seems to be hope and peace in the death of MJ because his religious beliefs told him he would be okay. But this same religion denies the very deity of Jesus Christ! And it occurred to me...of the many people in this world that do not know of the one true God and his Son Jesus Christ, or those that deny he exists, or those that deliberately ignore him...the only way of coping with life is to fulfill our lives with enough distractions to help us forget about purpose and life after death and our beliefs all together.

All kinds of distractions, anything that works! Anything that will prevent me from having time by myself when my mind and thoughts catch up to me and there is nothing to do but consider the meaning of life and the complexity of the world and everything in it and the realization that there is some sort of purpose to what we call "life". But what does it mean to REALLY LIVE?!?!? What fear would come over me! The kinds of knots that would tie up my guts! And to think that there are so many lies that try and suck us in. Lies that seem to have their own personality and attraction.

"Believe me! I will give you hope and purpose and you can be your own god while your at it."
"Believe me! There is no purpose accept to fulfill your own desires. Feed your own desires!."
"Believe me! I will make you FEEL! Make you feel good. Your senses with go wild, and you don't have to obey anyone or anthing but yourself."
"WORSHIP THIS, BUY THIS, TASTE THIS, SEE THIS, HEAR THIS, FEEL THIS, SMELL THIS! Stimulate your senses!"

Do we not live in a world that is enslaved to PLEASURE! And we flippantly throw hope around without meaning. I hope my car starts. I hope I don't have to work tomorrow. I hope they have the flavor I like. I hope they don't come over here...they are socially awkward.

The sin in my life sucks me into a life of pleasure. But as a Christian I think I am still driven by pleasure. But it is giving a new perspective to how we define pleasure.
Pleasure as most would define it is something that fulfills my desires, my selfish desires. Something or someone that pleases me. But because I follow Christ it is Him that I want to please. It is His desires that I want to fulfill. But this brings me back to why my hope is in Jesus Christ. My desire to please God is in response to my realization that there is phenomenal significance to the sacrifice that Jesus Christ has given to me. It is the realization that And this is the essence of being a Christian...to live a life of service and obedience to Jesus Christ, to please Him because we know that the Triune God is for our good.

Romans 5:6-8
For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die.


I find purpose and hope in a God that created me with gifts and passions that I can use to worship and bring pleasure to Him. And it is because this being what I was created for that I in return am pleased to do so. When we are fulfilling the purpose God created us for, we can be filled with joy and we are filled with new life. But it is not my life that I live, rather it is Jesus Christ who lives in and through me. Because my old, sinful self died with Him on the cross and it is through His resurrection that I have the promise of eternal life and the joy of fulfilling my purpose forever with God. It is s beautiful relationship and I am full of hope.

A desire accompanied by confident expectation of its fulfillment. Faith.



But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Relationship respect.

On Monday I was at church doing some stuff for my internship. I hate that title. If I graduated from college, feel like my job title should carry a little more respect. But while I was at church I ran into my old young adults pastor from the past few years. He sometimes reads my blogs, but I won't let that influence my thought process. I realized that there is this list of people in my life that I hold high respect for. It is the kind of person that when I talk to them I almost fumble my words through the conversation because of my respect for the person. I think Chris would fall into this category. It was really nice to see him again.

Some other people that fall into the category are the former senior pastor of Northshore, Jan Hettinga. He is a good shepherd. I suppose there are multiple pastors that might fall into the "respected good shepherd" category. There are many that are on my mental list of people I really respect, but this is a special category, and fumbling words is not the only indicator. So my encouragement to all my readers is to find those people in your life that you highly respect and ask some questions. What qualities do you appreciate and why are they so attractive.

Something I would like to tag onto this post is a census. If you are a frequent reader then it would be nice to know who you are. I know of a few, but I suppose there are others. Post a comment saying "present" or something.

Cheers!(Josh)

Place preferred title here. I figure I should not have to catch your attention with a snazzy title.

Well I think it's about time I change the music. Don't you think. I think. I have noticed that my appreciation for the songs I have posted are declining. I have made an interesting observation in looking at pictures of friends that have been in Europe. In addition to person experience, I have noticed that slowly but surely the fad of the mullet is working its way back into society. You know, Business in the front, party int he back. Yeah.Oh dear.

I do not plan on participating in the fun anytime soon.

If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you will notice that there are a few more links to the side--------------------->
stuffchrsitanslike is a blog written by a Christian who makes observations about the church and the ironies of Christian behavior. And the other is a blog that I found by searching "popular blogs" in my google search bar. "thehomelessguy" is just what you might expect...a homeless guy. His plug for the blog is as follows, "I am chronically homeless, having experienced several episodes of homelessness since the age of 21 - spending about half my adult life on the streets. On this blog I write about my experiences, and my opinions and knowledge of homeless life." (I do not take responsibility for any content in my links that you might find offensive.)

Some other observation I have been making recently may only apply to those who understand the phenomenon that is facebook. There were a couple times this past semester, my last semester(hmm), that I almost deleted my facebook. It tends to be time consuming, and there is a twitch in my conscience that tells me how facebook is typically misused. Or maybe it is being used as intended by the creators, but are those intentions that christ followers should be participating. I am speaking of our definition of gossip and slander. Maybe it is also important to consider how God views voyeurism. Some might suggest that God is the ultimate voyeur, but don't you think he is allowed to. There is nothing private about our lives when it comes to God. Although the story of the garden of Eden comes to mind when God calls out to Adam, "Where are you? What have you done?" Don't you think he already knows. Interesting approach.

But back to facebook. The issue for me is that I know how I use facebook. I cannot suggest that I know how others use facebook, but I would like to think that I am not the only one who scans through pictures and the status of "friends" just to get a peek of what interesting things are going on. It reminds me of the neighbor that some of you might have, that stereotypical old lady that sits in her front window and knits while keeping a watchful eye on the neighbor hood to see what her neighbors are up to and imagine what is going on in each house and juicy details of what could be happening. Oh my, the jones' are getting a new refrigerator today. I wonder why? And who knows where the imagination may lead. Is it possible that facebook has become our modern day device to be that nosy neighbor? And what a convenience that you can slide through all parts of the website undetected.

There is one more thing about facebook that puzzles me. There is the issue of "friends". I put this in quotations earlier as well, but for a reason. Think about your definition of friends and now think about of the 500 friends you have(on average) are persons that you see on a weekly basis. Furthermore, when you see them is it a comfortable ineraction? When they pop up on facebook chat, how eager are you to chatter and lol your way into a completely non-audible conversation?

Yesterday I went to Costco for lunch, and while waiting in line I saw a guy in some stained painters clothes with long hair and some scruff on the face. It was not until I paid closer attention that I realized that it was a guy I went to high school with. he was only in the grade above me. So I knew who he was and I guarantee he would recognize me as well. We were in track and field together for a couple years and he had previously dated a friend that I had grown up with. There were certainly enough connections that if we made eye contact that we would acknowledge the other with a head nod. But any sort of conversation would be fairly worthless. What would there be to talk about? "Uhhhh, so remember that one time in high school? It was like 6 years ago.(while thinking that I have not talked to the guy at all in the that 6 years) How many "friends" fall in to a similar category, but we continue to keep as friends because it is a least interesting to see what they are doing with there lives? Is it any of our business? And shouldn't we really be concerned about how much time we are taking/wasting to be in the loop on facebook? I have found myself spending longer sessions on facebook than the amount of time it has taken me to think through and write this post.

Well, just a few things to think about. I think I will go check and see if there are any new pictures on facebook to click through. Wait, one more thought. What about the other side of the relationship? Why do we post pictures and update our status? I think it is a burning desire that every one of us has to be accepted, known and to be given attention. OOOO, someone just commented on my status and the pictures I posted yesterday! Gotta go!

Choir Tour

This is a link to a bunch of videos from our choir tour in the Netherlands. Any of the videos with a mass of bluish shirts is from tour. Enjoy!

www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=903CA27F34334347

Quick Update

Right now it is almost 12am here in Gouda. we are staying with host families and the family that I am staying is letting me use their computer to write this. We have only been here for a couple days and things are flying by. we had a full day of touring and traveling around amsterdam yesterday, and today we had 2 concerts in 2 cities.(Gouda and Dordrecht) Both went very well, but I am tired from how packed our days have been and it is not going to slow down. Tomorrow we go on to Delft, which is where the famous "Delft Blue" is made.

I am going to head to bed, but just one more thing. the first place we visited yesterday was the largest international flower auction in the world. it is quite the operation. There are millions of flower on tons of carts that are all in the most massive wherehouse I have ever been in. Mom, you would have loved it. More flowers than you can imagine. I would post pictures but that requires me to save them to the computer and it is not mine. But I cannot read the Dutch to save it in the first place either.

Weltrusten...(goodnight)

"Profound, enticing title followed by thoughtful , concerning and then hopeful blog post."

That's the way all blog posts are supposed to go...

Right?

No.

I am drowning in expectations, and it all has to do with Dordt. Grrrr. This post will fall into the category of venting, frustration, complainging and "everything kinda sucks and won't get better until it's all over".

I am not done with exams, I have a 10 page, 4 page, 2 page (x4) and a 1 page(in spanish) paper(s) due in the next day. I have a list of people that I am avoiding because they are somehow related to reminding me of the pile of things to accomplish, when my own thoughts cannot think about anything else anyway. I have yet to start packing. Then I am torn each night when I have friends ask if I want to hang out, go get dinner and some drinks or whatever, and then have to regretfully decline because of the work I am barried in. But then of course I go work on the papers and the studying and cannot help but mourn that fact that I want to be with my friends so badly.

I will ALWAYS value people over work! But survival instinct is preventing me from committing scholastic suicide. Talk about the most bittersweet week of my life thus far.

When conversations tend to end in
"so when will I see you gain?"
"I don't know" (thinking maybe never)
When it takes 30-40 minutes to fall asleep because the brain cannot be distracted from the list of responsibilities long enough to recharge.
When the goal of exams is to just finish and never mind the point of learning and retaining what has been learned because I value/ enjoy the material.
When my school comes to me with a promisary note to fill out so they can ring out my bank account for the next 10 years and make sure I don't flee the country/debt.(almost make me feel like a fugitive)
When the list of responsibilities and expectaions has precident on the sabbath and everything is crammed into one last week of "you better hope you can get it all done, or you fail the last four years of life"

I tend to thing..."something is wrong here. This is not the way it's supposed to be. How can we/ do we justify this? This is so wrong. This is not serving the purpose of our goals."

And I will leave it there. No resolve, no solution and suspended from a relaxed ending.