Air Purifier (or No Guilt in Life, No Fear in Death...)

In Jr. High I was always negative. I didn't go out of my way to be happy. Getting a taste of 6 different schools from 1999 to 2003 made me tired of change. I didn't want to make any new friends. The friends I did have told me I was negative and complained a lot. I didn't take them seriously until my mom expressed the same concern one day driving me home from school or something. Then I started to wonder...

Then I had an experience in July of 2003 that changed my life. It was Church Camp. Everyone gets saved at Church Camp, every year. It's just what you do. I did it. In fact I didn't just do it at Church Camp I did it at home too--that's how holy I was.

But it was only it was because I was scared.

Before July 2003 I couldn't go to sleep some nights because I was afraid. I'd hear a noise and wonder if it was someone trying to break in and kill us to death. I also had sinus problems so I couldn't breathe very well through my nostrils and breathing through my mouth made my my mouth dry. And I didn't want to breath through my mouth because I had heard in class that breathing through your mouth doesn't catch germs on your mucous trail like breathing through your nose did. So I was afaid that if I slept with my mouth open, I would die. And I was afraid if I fell asleep with my mouth closed and my nose suddenly got too stuffed up for me to breathe while I was sleeping I would die.

My dad had sinus problems too. My family decided to invest in an air purifier for our home in efforts to help clear our nasal passages. So we went out and bought one of these air purifiers:



Now keep in mind this was way back in the late part of the last millenium, so it was a very noisy air purifier. After a while, my parents decided it would be okay to keep it in my room. And that's when something miraculous happened.

I would turn it on every night and it would make this very loud "white noise" that drowned out all other sounds. A nuclear reactor or two could explode in our trash can outside, and I wouldn't even notice. Also, after a while, I could start breathing through my nostrils again.

It was wonderful. I started getting sleep. It seemed as though I had overcome my paranoid obsessive compulsivities* and entered into a life of peace. Problem solved right?

This did not keep me from fearing death.

Some nights I would wonder, "What if there really isn't such a thing as eternal life, and when I die my existence just stops? And then what? Nothing? Forever?" It was quite unnerving.

Each time that happened though, I looked out the window and saw the moon was still there. Then I would remember how the moon's placement keeps us from dying. And then how the solar system works. And then how the water cycle works and how plants work and how human bodies work. That's when I realize we had to come from somewhere.
Problem solved, right?

This did not keep me from fearing hell.

My day consisted of waking up, going to school, doing my homework, eating, getting in fights with my brother. Going to bed I would renew my insurance and ask God for forgiveness, just in case my interactions with my brother were selfish or impure enough to be classified as a sin that would send me to eternal damnation. I didn't want to experience eternal damnation.

It was like this every night for years - "God, I love you, forgive me, I'll never be mean to my brother again."

Until Communion made sense to me for the first time ever.

Before then salvation was appealing a $120 speeding ticket because I didn't want to pay the fine, not feeling guilty about it at all.

Then I realized salvation was about the power of grace. It is accepting grace that makes atonement possible.

It is grace that empowers a man to pick up his mat and walk. It is grace that gives a woman caught in adultery free from a stoning. It is grace that, when Jesus tells her to go and sin no more, gives her the power and the ability to live life without sin.

And it is grace that gives me the power to live life without sin.

And that same grace lets me live life without fear.

Grace is an even greater air purifier that lets me go to sleep at night.

So then what about the old negative boy that I was? What happened to me? I began a process where I became an optimist. I began to believe living without fear was possible, and good things were going to happen. Idealism crept into into my mind. And stayed a while.

But then I was told I needed a better balance of realism and idealism. All my positive thoughts were too ambitious. God doesn't go according to our plans, he will surprise us with negative things. And nothing ever works perfectly, you must count on this.

So I made an effort to find the balance, and at times the realism outweighed the idealism. But I think I am rediscovering some things I can be optimisitic about.

Maybe it is idealistic to believe in a life free from sin. Does that mean it is impossible? Does that mean I shouldn't believe God's grace can make it happen like he says it can?

And maybe dreams don't always come true. But I know one thing: My dreams will never have the chance to come true if I don't dream in the first place.


-bennett


*I spooned this word myself, I think.

just a big ball of poop

I thought about making a note on my facebook to tell everyone about how I am feeling right now about it being the end of my freshman year. I thought I could tell all of the fun stories. Or maybe I could write about how I met many of my friends at mvnu. I may still do the latter.



But that would all be just cute for facebook's sake.


I thought that would just be making something fun for the reader. I wouldn't be typing what I really want people to know.


And what I really want people to know, I don't think I want everyone to know.


This is dedicated to my guy friends, who are mainly the ones who look at this as far as I know. Not many look at this yet, I'm still new and hidden.


I don't care if women read this as well.


Because then people would just look at my post and leave flowery comments that may or may not hold much substance. I know that the people that look at this blog are only going to look at it because they actually want to read it. And even if no one except me reads it, then that's fine with me.


So here's the actual body of my post:


What have I learned about myself this year?


a) I am jealous


b) I am inadequate



c) I am unconfident


d) I am confident


e) I am a loser


f) I am a winner
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Jealousy (a), I think, is one of the ugliest words in our language. Jealousy--often stemming from pride and selfish ambition--drives people insane, causes them to think illogically, and can change their attitude so that they change who they are and how they are and what they are. Jealousy stinks worse than the insides of a one of the shop-vacs we use in the cafeteria.


Why have I been jealous? Because I have constantly been making, changing, and editing a list of all the things I wanted in life and decided that I would pursue them. And when I failed at times to accomplish simple things that I saw other people succeeding at, it made me feel crappy about myself. I never thought I would be the one who would be jealous of people that had dating relationships. But it happened. Several times. Not because I originally put on my list, "Hey, I want a girlfriend, I'm a gonna go out and get me one," but because I found myself in situations that looked promising, and they turned out to just be dead ends. This has happened multiple times.


I couldn't figure out why this kept happening. And I got bitter at times. I said to God, "I know I'll learn something from this, but when am I going to learn it? I know what I'm doing God! Haven't I've learned all I can learn from this! It's not getting any easier!"


And that's when I felt him say, "When you feel like you've learned all you can learn, that's when you haven't learned enough."


Geez. It seems like I would have learned by now. . .


That's when I realize how inadequate (b) I really am. How many times on the way back from spending time at my bench have I stood at the bottom of that little flame monument thing and stared at the words "APART FROM ME YOU CAN DO NOTHING" and cried out, "That's how I want to live! I know I can't do anything! I'm too weak, too fragile, too frightened to try to do anything on my own." And yet I still find myself trying to walk on water to Jesus and then the winds and the waves that have been distracting me and causing me to fall are the winds and the waves that I have created myself. Well shoot. How am I supposed to get to Jesus when I'm letting my own ideas and ambitions get in the way?


I don't know enough about God to say I know how everything works. If that information was fed into my brain it would probably explode and I might die or something. That's how the supernatural works. Our brains haven't experienced enough to understand it or handle it. We ask so many questions about God, expecting there to be tangible answers that we would understand--when I think most of the answers we would never be able to understand because our laws of science, logic, and reasoning cannot fit with them. That's because the supernatural world was not created based on our laws of science, logic, and reasoning, but the supernatural world is what created our laws of science, logic, and reasoning. Who said the heavens have to conform to our rules? Who knows that the idea of creation was just created for our creation? Okay, I'm getting dizzy.


I gotta speed it up. If I make this entry too long, not even the Rain Man will want to read it.


I've considered myself a confident (d) person for a while now. But then I found out that confidence comes in different categories of life. I think a person who is confident in all aspects of life is a rare find. I am confident that my personality is for the most part the way it needs to be, and will be effective throughout life. But I have also found myself becoming unconfident (e) in many areas such as dealing with the opposite gender and using words to defend my ideas and beliefs in person (in other words I don't feel like I'm a good debater). But in the past few days I've been taking steps to overcome that, and look at how the things that I am confident about in my life can fit into those things that I am not confident about, and help them along. If my personality is the way God wants it to be, I don't need to put so much pressure on myself about girls. Let my personality do the work, in whatever bizarre way it can.


So yes, sometimes I am a loser (e). A big one. And I don't mind that. I'm pretty sure that a lot of the losers win in the end. I'm not very good at competing though. Which means I have a higher risk at being a loser more often. I hate competing with other guys, and so I end up not doing very well at it. So that happens.


But yesterday in Sociology an idea was presented to me by Tony Campolo that I found very encouraging:


Back before I was born, before I was even a zygote, I was a sperm (well, the manliest part of me was anyway). And I was a sperm among literally millions and millions of other sperm. I was participating in one of the greatest tests of manhood of all time--a race to see who could get to the egg.


It was an intense battle, with many obstacles, tricks, and traps--what else could we expect from a woman? And of all the mighty sperms fighting through to reach this goal, only one could be victorious over all the others. And you know who that one was?


That was me.


I am already victorious! I'm already a winner (f). I beat all those other guys. I got to make life! And we can all say that.


And we all are already victorious in Christ! We've already won (A Collision by David Crowder*Band). Have you read the Book? We won when Jesus rose from the dead and conquered sin and death and hell. Have you read the Book? In the end, guess who wins?


God wins. And he let's all of us losers down here be on his winning team.


We just have to put on the jersey and play for him.


So, that's what I've learned this year. Well part of it anyway. Some people have to learn the hard way, I guess I'm the type of guy who has to find out for myself (Free At Last by dcTalk).


I may be just a big ball of poop. But I'm not a big ball of poop that can't do anything. Because there is a glorious dung beetle named Jesus that comes and picks me up and molds me and uses me so that something good can result.


That's one kind of big ball of poop you can be.


The alternative is one that just gets flush down the toilet. Just a big ball of waste.


I think I want to be the one that the dung beetle gets to mess with. Apart from him I can do nothing. . .