Posts in Category: down to earth believer

“Some Random Thoughts about Quests”

On May 23, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Some friends and I are thinking about going on a quest or quests. I am not sure what a quest even is, but I have some ideas of what might be involved in a quest. Here are some random thoughts in no particular order.

  1. Perhaps God is on a quest, too.
  2. A quest is not so much planned as it is uncovered and recovered.
  3. I may be the hero in some measure and at some times. But many times, I am a servant and companion to others in their quest. This servant role is also part of my own quest.
  4. I need companions on my quest.
  5. There will be dangers in the quest.
  6. There will also be unexpected joys in my quest.
  7. There will be long spells of trudging. This is probably the most important part of the quest.
  8. There are no real shortcuts in any quest that is worthy of the name.
  9. Detours are also part of the quest.
  10. The quest changes both the questor and the world around him/her.

Of course, I may be interested in the idea of questing because I just finished reading through Tolkien’s Ring Trilogy for the umpteenth time. The idea of a quest is very ancient. Gilgamesh went on a quest for eternal life some 5,000 years ago. In the TV show “The Good Place” four sinners go on a quest to find the truly good place. Quest stories and movies and songs are all over the place.

But maybe the reason why the notion of a quest is so common in fiction is that it is so prevalent in real life. Most of us are on a quest for something: riches, honor, pleasure, meaning, power, control, we-know-not-what. The list goes on, but I won’t.

How does a person decide what is that person’s quest? I don’t know, but I intend to find out!

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“No Hopeless People”

On May 10, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

My Dear N______,

No, N______, you are most definitely not hopeless.

When I feel hopeless (as I often do), I try to remember that there is hope, and then there is the feeling of hope. They are not the same thing, as you seem to intuit, based on some things you said in your email report.

I was recently studying more deeply Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37:1-14. The people of Judah had been taken into exile by the Babylonian Empire, and they felt hopeless. They were just a bunch of very dead, dry bones that had not even had a decent burial. They were as good as dead—or as bad as dead. Even their hope was dead.

And then, God showed up and said, “Yep, you’re dead! You got that right!”

But that wasn’t the only thing that God said. God also asked a question to the prophet: “Son of man, can these bones live again?”

And the prophet threw the question back in God’s face by saying, “LORD God, you know.” Some people regard Ezekiel’s response as showing his trust in God’s power and intentions. I don’t. I think the prophet himself sounds pretty discouraged and skeptical. Maybe that is because I myself am often discouraged and skeptical.

In any case, in Ezekiel’s vision the bones came together, were covered with skin, breath entered them again, and they stood on their feet.

I frequently think that I know how Judah felt in exile. Exile comes in all shapes and sizes. Being exiled politically is a horrible thing. Being exiled from your own family is too.

But the worst form of exile, I think, is being exiled from your better self. That is exile indeed.

However, I believe (at least in my better moments) that there is a God who shows up in my/our exile and who is not simply the God of my hope, but the God of my hopelessness. I believe that God is also the one for whom there are no hopeless people or hopeless situations. I don’t always feel that it is true, but I will not allow Hope to be held captive by my feelings. In fact, Hope can’t be held captive by anything or anyone. Hope, like love, always wins in the end.

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“God’s Ultimate Rulership and Our Freedom”

On May 8, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Today’s post is adapted from an email I wrote to a former student. He was struggling with Calvinism and its approach to the Christian faith. I have changed my student’s name in order to protect his privacy.

My Dear David,

It is good to hear from you. You always ask really good questions that are not easy to answer. You may remember from our brief time in class at CCU (may it rest in peace), that I said, “I can answer any question that you ask, but my answer may consist of only three words: ‘I don’t know.’”

I have also struggled with Calvinism all my life. There have been times when I thought to myself, “I think the Calvinists are right.” And I still think so! At least I think they are partly right.

I believe it was Pascal who said, “Men are rarely wrong in what they affirm, but they are often mistaken in what they deny.” (I could not find the quote in Pascal, but I did find it attributed to H. Richard Niebuhr! So much for my memory. But no matter who wrote it, I believe that it is true.)

Here is the thing, David. I think that we all like simple truths, but the simple truth is that the simple truth is never simple. Truth always comes in twos—in couples, if you will. Since I assume that you are still moving toward your wedding this summer, I also assume that you can identify with the importance of the concept of couples!

Here is an analogy: in a navigable river, you will see marker buoys on both sides of the river. They mark out the channel where the ships can safely travel. Imagine a ship’s captain who decided that he must decide which buoy he should pay attention to. He would come as close to that buoy as he could. I suspect that, before long, he would likely run aground.

Calvinism, quite properly, emphasizes God’s sovereignty—the fact that, ultimately, God is in control. I also believe that this is so. If there is a God who created the universe, I suspect that such a God would have a difficult time not being in control, ultimately.

However, the word “ultimately” is crucial in what I just wrote. A God who is ultimately sovereign could still give his creatures free will. Such free will would be real, but exercised within the limits of God’s sovereignty, and such free will (and those who wield it) would ultimately be answerable to God.

The example is sometimes given of parents who want their teenage young people to clean their bedrooms. This is the will of the parents. However, the teenager can pit his/her own will against the parents’ will. And the teenager probably will.

But ultimately, since the parent is paying the mortgage on the house, there will be consequences to the teenager’s decisions. The car may not be available for a date, or the internet may not be available until the room is cleaned up a bit.

Of course, there are passages from the Bible that, when read in isolation, support either God’s ultimate sovereignty or human free will. However, my question is this: Should the Bible ever be read in isolation? You may remember that I taught you a saying which I didn’t come up with, but which I liked a lot. “Context Is Everything!” This is true of individual biblical passages, but it is also true of the Bible as a whole.

To choose either God’s sovereignty or human free will as our mantra is to take a couple who belong together and to forcibly divorce them. Very intelligent people have done such things, but  this is never the way of wisdom.

I close this rather long response to your brief email with a long quote from C.S. Lewis. Lewis himself wrestled with the very question that is troubling you. I sometimes think that Lewis struggled with everything!

God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go either wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata—of creatures that worked like machines—would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.

. . . If God thinks this state of war in the universe [i.e., the war between good and evil, D.D.] a price worth paying for free will—that is, for making a live world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings—then we may take it is worth paying. (Mere Christianity, pp. 52-53)

 I hope that this rather long response actually gets at what you are asking.

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“Random Thoughts on my Seventy-First Birthday”

On April 10, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

I am seventy-one years old today. Here are some random musings.

  • I haven’t lived in a lively, life-giving manner for much of my time on this planet.
  • However, I have done a few good things along the way.
  • I have experienced a lot of love and kindness.
  • I have sometimes been loving and kind.
  • Someone has said, “It is never too late to become the man (or woman) that you want to be.” I believe that this is true.
  • Each day is another to celebrate life and to fully inhabit the day.
  • It’s not about me. It’s about appreciating and caring about God, other people, and this beautiful world I’ve been given.
  • Gratitude is one of the most important things that I can practice.
  • To refuse the good words and other gifts that others want to give me is to insult them, God, and life itself.
  • To refuse to pass along good words and other gifts to others is also to insult them, God, and life itself.
  • How I use my time is the story of my life. I want to write a good, interesting story with a happy ending.

I am so grateful for all of you who read my scribblings! May you be blessed and blessable today!

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“The Bible: The Good, the Bad, and the Just Plain Ugly”

On March 28, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

Rom. 7:21   So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” (Romans 7:14-24, English Standard Version)

Some of you are probably wondering about the title of this post. However, if you like old western movies, you immediately recognized my reference to the movie “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”. Yes, I do indeed admit that I like old Clint Eastwood shoot-‘em-ups. I’m not saying this is a good thing. I’m just saying that I do enjoy that movie.

However, when it comes to the Bible, I am not so attuned to the good, the bad, and the ugly. And let’s face it. There are all of those things in the Bible. I am currently reading through the book of Judges. There is a lot of evil and ugliness (along with some good) in that book.

Here is the problem, as I see it. The evil and ugliness (along with the occasional good) is not identified with discreet characters, as in the Clint Eastwood movie. The goodness, badness, and ugliness are in God’s own people.

This is not limited to the book of Judges. It is found throughout the Old and New Testaments. David was a man after God’s own heart, yet the Old Testament does not soft-pedal his ugly and evil actions.

In fact, I tend to gravitate toward the bad and the ugly in the Bible. Why is that so, I wonder? I was thinking about that question today when I went to church.

My church tends to put a lot of emphasis on miracles and “victory in Jesus” and such. While I recognize that these are biblical and important, I sometimes feel as if we don’t take seriously enough the bad and ugly. If we say that we believe that the Bible is God’s written word, we need to take seriously the entire Bible, not just the triumphant and miraculous bits.

I was thinking about these things on the way to church. I did not know that it was going to happen, but our pastor preached on Romans 7, the Scripture that leads off this post.

Romans 7 deals with Paul’s struggle with the sinful ugliness within his own heart and mind. Some biblical scholars have argued that Paul is not speaking of his own experience since becoming a Christ-follower, but I respectfully disagree. Paul sounds pretty anguished to me. And he does not speak of his anguish as something that was in his past, pre-Christian life.

So, I was glad to see my pastor balancing the church’s (quite biblical) emphasis upon victory with the ugly badness within Paul. And, as my pastor pointed out, this is a struggle we all have in one form or another.

But I was left with several questions that I need to answer for myself. One of them is this: Why do I gravitate toward the ugly badness in the Bible my own life? Here were some of the thoughts that came to me. Some “reasons” are reasonably good and true, and some of my “reasons” aren’t so good or reasonable or true.

First, for the good reasons for my preoccupation with the bad and the ugly:

  • As I’ve already stated, the bad and the ugly is part of the Bible. If I say that I believe the Bible, I need to take it all seriously. Not literally always, but always seriously.
  • If I become too enamored by the miraculous and the triumphant, I will be unable to relate to struggling people. And there are a lot of them around.

But there are some bad and ugly reasons for my emphasis (preoccupation?) with the bad and the ugly:

  • I don’t think that I deserve the good bits. But then, who says that anyone—including I myself—deserve anything. Perhaps life, in every sense, isn’t about deserving?
  • Sometimes, I gravitate toward the bad the ugly because I want to hang on to those things. If I don’t want to give up doing wrong things and taking unhealthy approaches to life, I may want to justify this by saying, “Oh well, even God’s people in the Bible were a pretty flawed bunch.” However, a depiction is not a prescription, and explanations are not excuses for shoddy living.

Paul doesn’t end on a note of anguished defeat, but of grateful triumph. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”

Considered in my merely human reality, there is lots of badness and ugliness, but God sent Jesus to deal decisively with our uglies and evils, and to free us to be grateful for the victory that God’s love gives us in Christ.

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“An Angel Named Charley”

On March 19, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“The old TV show “Charlie’s Angels” came to mind. My angel named ‘Charley’ is not as lovely as the ladies on that show were. However, he got the job done!” (Down to Earth Believer)

I had an encounter with an angel named “Charley” early one morning last week. The encounter was not a pleasant one. Encounters with angels are not always fun. This one was decidedly not fun.

I have a fast and firm rule that I sometimes follow about getting up in the morning. The rule is this: When I wake up, I get up. When I don’t follow this rule, when I lie to myself and tell myself that I need to sleep some more, my runaway mind runs away to places it does not need to go.

So, the other day I woke up and lay in bed. I also lied to myself in bed. “I don’t need to get up right now,” I said. Sure enough, my mind started down a thought pathway that was not good for me.

“Help, God!” I cried internally.

No sooner had I said this rather pathetic prayer than I had a terrible charley horse in my right leg. I got up, the charley horse quickly went away, I made my coffee, and got on with my day.

Most of us are naturalists and materialists, even if we don’t want to admit it. We don’t really believe in anything we can’t see, feel, taste, or buy. This is probably one of the reasons why we no longer have encounters with angels or God. We are not expecting to have such encounters.

But angels come in all kinds of shapes, sizes, and flavors. One of my angels is named “Charley”.

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“When You Can’t Hit Unsend”

On March 18, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“Social media sites offer quick and easy ways to share ideas, crack jokes, find old friends. They can make us feel part of something big and wonderful and fast-moving. But the things we post don’t go away. And they can come back to haunt us.” (From the “Hidden Brain” podcast introduction to a great posting by Shankar Vedantam, which you may read of list to at https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/you-cant-hit-unsend/, accessed 03-18-2022.)

I love Shankar Vedantam’s podcasts called “Hidden Brain.” Today’s post made me cry, but it also made me think.

It was about a young man who had been admitted to Harvard. He sounds like a really fine young man. But he made a very bad decision. He was part of a group of incoming freshmen who sent out some really racist and sexually offensive memes. The entire group had their invitations to Harvard withdrawn.

He does not come across as evil. Quite the contrary. He was just a young man who made some really bad decisions in order to fit in. These bad decisions cost him Harvard. It cost him more than that. Of seventeen schools that he applied to afterwards, he was turned down by fifteen. He was waitlisted at three schools.

But he kept trying. One of universities for which he was waitlisted said that they had a slot for William. He and his dad rushed to the university. Here is the transcript from the Hidden Brain podcast about what happened next. (Jeffrey is William’s dad. Vedantam is, of course, the interviewer.)

“JEFFREY: We were wandering around, and there was something about an open house, and it turned out, we’d missed it. And so I was very disappointed. And then this professor just wandered in and said, can I help you? He looked like he was picking up something from a printer. And we said, well, we’re visiting and William has to decide by 5 o’clock. And he said, please, come to my office. So we went to his office, and I just sat there, too, with them. He and William had this wonderful conversation about physics and music and all kinds of things for about an hour. And it was just an amazing conversation. I was very impressed. He was giving us so much of his time.

And then the moment that I’ll never forget was, at one point, he just gets out of his chair, he gets down on one knee, he puts his hands together and he says, please, come here. And then he just got back in his seat and kept on talking. And I thought, oh, my God, that is the sweetest, most wonderful thing in this whole year. I mean, God, I’m starting to tear up now. But I just – it was amazing. I love that guy.

And I thought, you know, when I get back home, I’m going to write the chair of the physics department, and I’m going to say what a wonderful professor that guy was. And I got home, looked up who this guy was, and that was the chair of the physics department. I said, oh, my God, you know, what a wonderful place. So anyway, as you can tell, I don’t think I’ve gotten emotional about this since then, but I just want to thank that professor.

VEDANTAM: And what do you think is evoking this feeling in you? What do you think that professor was doing? What was he communicating to William that makes you so moved?

JEFFREY: He was being good to my son.”

I have made my own share of really bad choices. I’ve lost more than Harvard. I’ve lost my family, some friends, my self-respect, and a calling that I had come to love. The greatest loss of all was my own better self. I’ve spent the last nineteen years trying to recover that better self. By God’s grace, I’ve made great progress, but Shankar Vedantam is absolutely right: You can’t hit unsend—or un-sin.

The story goes that God had a bunch of sons and daughters who had made terrible choices. They had forfeited more than a shot at attending Harvard University. They had forfeited their souls.

But that’s not the end of the story. The story says that God didn’t give up on his children. He came to earth, in the form of his own Son, to redeem his lost sons and daughters. And his Son didn’t get down on his knee. No, he did not. Instead, he went to the cross.

Ya gotta love a God who would do that.

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“What Makes My Heart so Cold?”

On March 17, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

“And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.”(Matthew 24:12, King James Version)

My hands are awfully cold these days. It doesn’t take familiarity with the Eagles song, “The Cheatin’ Side of Town” for me to recognize this simple fact. I am old, and even though my “hands are [not] as cold as ice”, they are pretty cold. Before I hug my wife in the morning, I need to get in the habit of heating up those little microwavable bean bags and hold them in my hands for a minute or so.

But there is another and much more serious problem: Sometimes my heart grows cold. That is not simply a problem in relation to my sweetheart. Of course, it is quite serious there, but a cold heart affects my entire life and all my relationships. It also affects my enjoyment of life.

Jesus said that, in the last days of the world, iniquity would abound and the love of many would grow cold. However, I suspect that Jesus would agree that it wouldn’t take the end of the world for this to be true. In the context of Jesus’ saying that leads off this post (Matthew 14), Jesus tells his disciples about the signs that precede the end of this world. However, the signs are the kinds of things that are always occurring. I think that this is precisely one of the points that Jesus is making: Be ready all the time. The end could come at any time. This is precisely the point of the parables in Matthew 25, so I think that I am good ground here.

I used to think that Jesus was warning his disciples (and us) about other people’s sins and their effect on us. I don’t think so anymore. I think that Jesus was warning his original disciples—and us—about the chilling effects of our own sin.

It is no fun to take Jesus’ words that way. It is much easier to point out and condemn the sins of other people. It’s more fun too.

But my sins are the ones that will freeze my heart. The evil things I think and do, the good things I don’t do—these are the optional winter that I generate. I need to stop opting for spiritual winter. I can’t do a lot about my cold hands, but the temperature of my own heart is in my own hands.

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“The Vastness of the Universe and God

On March 9, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Versus the Smallness that is Me”

I learn a lot from my dog, particularly about philosophy and theology. No, I’m not joking; I’m dead serious.

The other morning, I awoke with some very disturbing thoughts. The universe is so big, and God (if God exists) is so much bigger than the universe that God created, how could God be at all interested in the smallness that is me? And how could the smallness that is me possibly understand such a big God?

However, even when you have huge doubts, the coffee still needs to be made and the dog still needs to go out to do her business. So, I put the coffee on and took the dog out. She got down to the business of doing her business very rapidly. This was good because it was raining cats and dogs.

But when she came in, she started acting really weird. She wasn’t interested in a Pup-Peroni treat. She adores those things, so I began to worry when I gave it to her, and she just let it lie on floor.

And then, she didn’t want to go back and lie on the bed with my wife. That is as special to her as enjoying her dog treats. So, I let her sit on my lap as I worked at my desk. She usually likes that. She had to be picked up and put on my lap. Almost immediately, she hopped down, went down on her front haunches, and looked at me appealingly, with her eyes looking at me with this pleading look. “Do something!” her eyes seemed to be saying. Like babies and very small children, pets can’t tell us what is wrong. Or perhaps, they can talk, but we can’t listen. In view of our difficulty in understanding other human beings, I think that this might be so.

I didn’t know what to do, so I did the only thing I could think of in that moment. I carried our little dog downstairs and lay her on mama’s bed and woke up my wife at 6:10 a.m. “Something is wrong with Laylah,” I said.

As it turned out, there was nothing seriously wrong with our little girl. She curled up at my wife’s feet. They went back to sleep, and when Laylah woke up, she was herself again. My sweet wife forgave me for waking her, realizing how worried I was.

What has this got to with my questions about the vastness of the universe and of God? Absolutely nothing. Or so I thought until God brought my earlier questions to my mind again. It felt as if God was saying to me, “Child, your little dog only weighs about seven pounds. Yet you love her so much and are so concerned when she isn’t feeling well. Don’t you think that I can love you in the same way?”

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“My Biggest Problem . . . And Yours”

On March 8, 2022 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

My biggest problem dogs me wherever I go. That’s because my biggest problem is me. I’m not sure how to solve this problem. Perhaps, as with many problems, there is no solution. There are only better (or worse) ways of living with the problem.

Well, to be perfectly honest, two-thousand years ago, Jesus gave me the solution to my problem, but I don’t like it. Here it is:

“18 And it came to pass, as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him: and he asked them, saying, Whom say the people that I am? 19 They answering said, John the Baptist; but some say, Elias; and others say, that one of the old prophets is risen again. 20 He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God. 21 And he straitly charged them, and commanded them to tell no man that thing; 22 Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day. 23 And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. 24 For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it. 25 For what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world, and lose himself, or be cast away? 26 For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own glory, and in his Father’s, and of the holy angels. 27 But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.” (Luke 19:18-27, English Standard Version)

“The one who saves his life will lose it, and the one who loses his life will save it.” This stands all of my ideas on their head. If this is true, I don’t dare live a life that is based on my own thinking about things. Why? Because, in my own mind, it is the one who saves his life who saves his life, and losers are just losers. Either Jesus was right, or I am. And, even if Jesus wasn’t the Son of God—which I believe he was and is—I am hesitant to say that he was full of crap.

Jesus said a lot of really hard things here. He talked about denying ourselves and taking up our cross. And then, he added a really difficult word: daily. We are to take up our cross daily! The Christian faith, as someone has said, is not an initial spasm, followed by a long lethargy. Rather, following Jesus is my/our daily task.

So, it turns out that there is a solution to the problem that is me. Furthermore, I do know what it is. I need to deny myself today, pick up my cross, and follow Jesus.

Someone has said that God doesn’t call us to a picnic, but to a battle. It’s even worse than that, I’m afraid. In a battle, we might have the exhilarating and awful experience of killing someone else. We might end being a hero in someone’s eyes.

The awful truth is that God calls us, not to a battle, but to an execution. And it turns out that we’re the ones that are being executed.

But perhaps, if for just one day, I could deny myself, take up my cross, and follow Jesus, I might begin to solve the problem that is me. There is only one way to know. And Jesus’ execution was followed by a resurrection. He said that his disciples would experience the same things he did. They would experience a cross, but also resurrection. If I don’t choose to do the cross thing, I can’t very well experience resurrection.

Today is the day.

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