Hi, and welcome to my blog. I am sure you are probably wondering what the II in Sabbath Breakers II stands for--I haven't posted in my original blog for some time now, essentially because I have spent the past 3 or 4 months getting engaged, married, and reoriented to all of the changes in a man's life that having a woman brings. I also felt that it was time to move from a purely self-reflective chronicle of my spiritual wanderings and issues into an online journal that was centered on the Bible.
With that in mind, I think I should share some of my personal history with the Bible and with the Christian faith. I began reading the Bible in 1996, partially as a result of a spiritual quest sparked in a class at Eastern Mennonite University called Faith and the Old Testament. The class was fairly unremarkable in terms of spiritual depth, but it was the first time I had ever attended a university-level course (or a course of any kind) in which the Bible was a textbook. I had tried to read the Bible several times before on my own, but to me, it was gibberish--it didn't make any sense.
With the historical understanding I had gained from Faith and the Old Testament, I began reading the Bible from the first chapter of Genesis in 1996 . . . and resumed reading 3 years later, midway through the book of Exodus. By early 2000, I had finished reading the Bible all the way through, and as a result, I had become a different person. I knew that the God of the Bible was real and that the Bible itself, due to the complexity of its origin and the fact that through all of the books collected in its canon one voice carried over all others, was divinely inspired.
I received Christ as my personal Lord and Savior in October 1999, and I wish I could say that my spiritual questions and dilemmas ended then (for more information on that, please see my original Sabbath Breakers blog). Sadly, it seems that the institutional churches of the United States are poor instructors of what it means to be a Christian. As a result, whenever I write online regarding anything spiritual, particularly anything Christian, I write as if I were corresponding with another soul who, like me, has encountered hurtful behavior from people whose faith should scream "peace."
In my blog, I will focus on the Bible . . . meaning that I will take it as my text. This blog will not be a commentary per se--God knows we have enough of those, and frankly, too many of them aren't collecting dust in a library somewhere, as far as I'm concerned. It will also not be a devotional--I find devotionals to be almost as interesting as the paper they're written on most of the time, with the possible exception of those little booklets from RBC ministries, and I am quite tired of the multimillion dollar cottage industry that has sprung up around the concept of the 365 day devotional.
Instead, this blog is . . . what I just called it--a blog that focuses on the Bible.
One warning, however: In this blog, I will not, repeat NOT, offer platitudes, easy to remember sayings, or half-baked spiritual home remedies. If you are here looking for some sort of quick fix to the issues that plague your soul, you've come to the wrong place. I can't heal your soul any more than I can make an alarm clock spin around with my mind, but I can point you in the direction of someone who not only has the ability to cure you of every spiritual disease, but who has been desperately waiting for you to give him a chance.
I'm speaking, of course, of Jesus Christ. Romans 10:9 says that if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Note that it doesn't say that if you mumble a few words along with a preacher during an altar call or recite all the right answers you remembered from summer Bible school, you will be saved. Confession here is the same as confession anywhere else--it is the act of admitting something you already accepted.
Receiving Christ as your personal Lord and Savior is a matter of the heart--and if I may ask, where is your heart as you read this blog entry?
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