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"Pain is weakness leaving the body" - Gatorade ad campaign "Discipline is the self coming to terms with the truth that pain is often good for you" - My 59th St. Bridge Revelation There were moments during my wilderness period where I was so keen to avoid pain that I would avoid my mentors and anyone who I knew would kick my ass about my mind's thoughts and my heart's desires. Then I realized that there's no growth without pain and if I let this become a pattern in my life, I will get nowhere. If spiritual growth, nay, if growth as a human being wasn't a priority to me, I could spend my whole life not facing the music. I am firmly convicted by the belief that every decision you make in life does two things: It takes you either farther along the road or backwards along that same road. On one end of the road is the likeness of Christ and on the other end is hell. Everything you do will cause you to move either up or down; there are no side-steps. It...

So I just finished reading Angels and Demons by Dan Brown. It took a little over a week, and reading it caused in me a similar sensation to eating crackers with vegemite spread; I felt disgust and nausea, but I just couldn't stop. Dan Brown is a good writer; there's no getting around it. He exploits the cheapest tricks in mystery writing to keep you hooked, and I still stand by my belief that there's nothing wrong with enjoying his anti-Christian, anti-organized religion fiction as long as you keep in mind that it is fiction. At first, I didn't really understand what was causing my upset intellectual stomach. I couldn't pinpoint what it was that he was doing that just made me feel so much outrage. It wasn't just how he mixes truth and fiction so well that even the blatantly unhistorical portions are mistaken as facts. It wasn't just his oversimplification of very complicated historical and philosophical ideas and trends. It wasn't the way in which he por...

It took me a really long time to realize that if something is desirable, even pleasurable, it doesn't necessarily mean it is a bad thing. How tragic is our state of fallenness, that we consider good things to be evil in a world that God created and called "good" on the first day? “Before the Lord God made man upon the earth He first prepared for him by creating a world of useful and pleasant things for his sustenance and delight. In the Genesis account of the creation these are called simply `things.' They were made for man's uses, but they were meant always to be external to the man and subservient to him. In the deep heart of the man was a shrine where none but God was worthy to come. Within him was God; without, a thousand gifts which God had showered upon him.” - A. W. Tozer, The Blessedness of Possessing Idolatry had from the beginning been humanity's sin. The heart of idolatry is mistaking gift for Giver. When we take the treasures around us and ele...