Poetic Crusade

What does it mean to be a lazy thinker?
What does it mean to be a tolerant thinker?

Is it when I set aside my convictions,
Or when I set aside my religious dogma?

When I elevate my law degree,
Or theories from Karl Marx and John Stuart Mills??

Tell me what does it mean not to be a lazy thinker.

I was told stating my stand based on what my Bible has convinced me to be true is being lazy.
I was told that I must argue intellectually without bringing in my beliefs.
I was told having a personal opinion based on my Bible is lazy thinking.

At least that is what they made me understand.
That the active thinker has no religious convictions.

That I am a lazy thinker and that the non-religious thinker is an active thinker.

But I have news for you.
I believe that the lazy thinker is the person convinced personal convictions based on faith have no place in the society.

The lazy thinker is too lazy to figure out how faith affects every facet of society.

The lazy thinker thinks that the best way to think is without conviction.

Yet a man without conviction is a spineless being. He has nothing to live for, no purpose.

The lazy thinker is mad when a Christian declares his faith and criticizes it as intolerence;
While yet celebrating an atheist when he declares his lack of any religious conviction and labels it as tolerant, an active thinker.

As if the two men have done two different acts.

As if the two bleed differently.

It is lazy to think without foundational conviction,
As if you are a dead leaf to be blown around by every wind of philosophy and doctrine.

Tell me, what does it mean to be a lazy thinker??

Miserable sacrifice

"When you come to church, when you worship him, you’re not doing it for God really. You’re doing it for yourself, because that’s what makes God happy. Amen?”  -Victoria Osteen

Before I start, let me introduce myself by saying I am a person called by God into music ministry and I am not ashamed of saying so. That is all you need to know for the purposes of this blog.

So who are the Osteens?? They probably need no introduction to a majority of Christians but to those who do not know, they are the most controversial preachers of our generation and they lead one of the biggest congregations in the USA. They do preach what I may describe as a self centered Gospel that really dwells a lot on me, myself and I, which is half the Gospel if you ask me. I do not listen a lot to them and I rarely talk about them because it would be wrong to make a conclusive judgement based on hearsay and stuff I do not have direct evidence of.

Anyway, back to the statement. It was probably, the most controversial statement made this August and the YouTube comments show why. This is because it touches on a sensitive area and that is worship. Worship is as close to God as any man can get, and I am not speaking just about musical or artistic worship. This is because you worship what you most closely relate to. If it is money, that is it. If it is fame, so it will be and if it is God, so shall it be. And for it to be worship, it has to involve some level of sacrifice meaning you have to give up something about yourself, no matter how small. Thus comes in the aspect of sacrifice.

Worship also in another funky way is the evidence of one's love and admiration for the object of worship. The love part may not necessarily apply for all deities but for the Lord, it does because love is His very essence and nature. You cannot simply worship God without loving God.

So far, out of the many elements surrounding worship I have decided to pick these two. And the third element that we often love to overlook and that is Joy. Joy is one of the least expounded on topics when it comes to worship because church today has taught us there is no joy in sacrifice. It always has to be painful and therefore, any feelings of joy should not be present.
Put in another way, if we derive joy from offering our sacrifices, then it has not cost us enough. The deeper the pain, the greater the sacrifice. And from the pain, we gain a sense of self righteousness which again is totally not the goal of worship.

David in psalms 122 says, I was glad when they said unto me, let us go up to the house of the Lord. They joy was there before the sacrifice came. Let me put it this way, his righteousness preceded his sacrifice. And what I am about to say next will cause me some trouble.
God is the object of worship but man is at the center of it. People believe worship starts with sacrifice but it actually starts with man's delight in God. God is not interested in the depth of the sacrifice if the Lord isn't the delight of the man offering it. Our own joy therefore comes into scrutiny here. God is not a sadist who lives off the praises of man. That isn't him. A sacrifice offered up with melancholy is in no way God's idea of worship. And this is not to say that deep sacrifice is bad. I am just saying if at the end of the day after offering up worship or a sacrifice and all that is left in your heart is anything other than joy; if it is just pain and sorrow, you need to check yourself again.

Most Christians misunderstand joy. Joy is a fruit of the spirit, not a reward for anything we have done. The fruit of the spirit is something that all Christians need to exercise for we all have the Holy spirit as a result of accepting salvation. If joy and delight are not the center of our worship then we are doing it wrong.

The rest is for you to figure but that is the pinnacle of my thoughts regarding the statement by Victoria. I truly and shamelessly believe that man is also a priority in worship. Man's delight and joy are priorities in worship. Sacrifice in worship is important but that is not what God is essentially looking for. He wants to be the delight of our hearts. No delight, no joy, no worship.

War.

The topic of war is one of particular interest to me. It is a fascinating concept, and has been one of the more consistent marks of society. This fascination is not a result of sadism but of curiosity. The whole concept of life in itself is something astounding because life goes beyond mere existence. Something that the big bang cannot explain.

War from the earliest of ages has been associated with religion and mistakenly, more often than not, blamed on religion. Atheism has made us believe that religion is the main cause of unrest while if you study history carefully, this notion is disapproved.

Religion is one of the social bonds of society. Other social bonds include location, common ancestry, tribes and the like. These points of social organization give us common goals and functions and more importantly, common economic goals. Economy has been at the center of man's existence since God commanded man to bear fruit, multiply and fill the earth. Religion serves as a tool to push man towards this end. That is why we have all these religions in place today. Freemasonry being a good example of one. Our hip hop artists worshipping the devil being another and the most widespread being worship of self. For you see, religion is supposed to be a tool that enables one to tap into the spiritual realm of power and economics. If you do study prosperous men, they might have all not been Christians, but they were religious in one manner or the other.

If in doubt, check all the so called "religious conflicts". Each conflict had an economic angle to it. The conquest of Canaan being one of the examples in point. The current Middle East chaos with Israel, the Jewish Holocaust, the Vikings and others. All these conflicts were and are centered around economic power. What most people misunderstood is that religious conflicts are for the sole purpose of religious conversation. I find this notion funny because as much as you may put a knife to someone's throat and make him profess worship to your preferred deity, if it does not happen in his heart, then it is not real. This would in essence beat the whole purpose of a religious conquest.

Now, some people do argue that the crusades were religious. I do not know much about them but what I do know is that the church leadership then was not just a religious docket in the society but a political seat. Politics is designed to manage economies, not personal religious beliefs. You can fill in the blanks from there.

So what about an instruction to kill in war yet God says do not kill??
This is like the most tricky question to answer because the wisdom of God here surpasses mine but nonetheless, I shall elucidate further on my understanding of this.

Fatherhood is a strange spiritual concept. This is because you are the copy of your father since his blood flows in you, regardless of whether you know him or not. You most likely have character traits and habits from the man that you never knew where they came from whether or not you have met him. And it has nothing to do with genes. Some mothers try to hide their children away from their biological fathers in an effort to "protect" them from their father's flaws only to realise later on in life that their children do act like their fathers in spite of the conditioning they have attempted. This is because fatherhood is first spiritual then physical. To kill children and women in war is a statement of intent. That you do not intend at all for the legacy of the father to continue. That is why in war, it is not merely enough to kill the men because the children will grow up to be twice the man their fathers were. Twice the passion, twice the hatred and anger, twice the economic dominance if given the chance.
Another whole interesting diversion from this is rape in war. In wars, sometimes instead of killing we see rape. The children born out of rape in war grow up to be full of hate, malice and anger just like their fathers; the soldiers who raped their mothers. They grow up into bloodthirsty men with an unexplained insatiable hunger for conflict and war. It is not out of lack of a father while growing up, but actually as a direct result of the father's action leading to the child's conception. That is why much of Africa is still embroiled in conflict and war. With each new generation of children comes a young army with an unexplained thirst for war. People think it is the minerals in Congo that have led to such a long conflict but there is so much more to it. That is why death in war is such a necessary feature.

To the simpleton, it may look like I am making a justification for religious conflicts and even the Zionist movement. To the average, it may look like I am trying to reconcile conflicting Bible verses. To the more advanced mind, indulge me more. I am still learning anyway. Your pick....

To my atheist colleagues, I love the way you provoke me to thought. I hope I have in someway returned the favour.

This post is dedicated to a certain blogger whose name I have forgotten, but whose shallow sentiments about war and religion really annoyed me. In fact I shouldn't have justified her comments with a blog but there is no use in wasting sleep in order not to publish this.