Alexis and I had a good weekend up in Monadnock with my friend John who was speaking at a youth retreat. John was my best man at my wedding last year! It was good to catch up with him and spend guy-time.

On Sunday evening, I was reflecting on some of the things I had processed with God over the weekend about my identity, my anger/bitterness issues, and this reckless life of His that I am pursuing. Here is my journal entry from that evening:

Sunday, 3/12/06, 6.45pm

I feel overwhelmed by the number of things/duties/tasks/goals/ambitions/desires/convictions/purposes for my life.

I feel tired and weary.

I feel burdened.

I feel like shutting down, going through the motions, the routine of life.

I feel reckless.

I think the key risk to living with reckless passion is being unsure of your identity - without an understanding of who God is shaping you to be, your reckless passion will only last as long as the first reckless discouragement.

And this is simply priceless

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4789650.stm

Apparently the British consider the phrase “so where the bloody hell are you?” to be offensive because it contains a mild swear word.

Asking different people *which* word is the swear word is a fascinating exercise in cultural relativity

identity… something we all wrestle with to varying degrees, whether we know it or not.

something often made fun of, so I feel slightly guilty even addressing it, but something important anyway.

I’m splitting this post into multiple parts because it’s long, but I want to write about identity: my own struggles with identity as a person who grew up outside India; my wrestling with identity now as I deal with the moronic Department of Homeland Insecurity over immigration papers; the importance God places on his people knowing their identity as His people (some key examples being Jacob, aka Israel, he-who-wrestles-with-God, and Nehemiah’s wall-building community-identity-exercise); and my growing understanding of the identity God is shaping me with.
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Alexis and her friend Allegra found this online, and they are following the Lenten reflections and prayers using the site’s guides:

http://www.sacredspace.ie

It’s pretty neat! I am trying to read these each day too. Once I get over my initial skepticism of Internet-based spirituality, I find it’s actually quite meditative and deeply insightful.

Most of the days I find the readings to be strikingly insightful to what I am going through that day, and today’s was no exception!

[Note: The following is part of my processing of various deep-seated anger/bitterness issues in my heart, not all of which are well-founded or even true. It's unfiltered and somewhat raw. This is how I see things and feel about them right now, which is not to say that the way I see things is the way they are. The words are strong, and bitter, and inflamed, and may be poisonous, because that's the state of my heart right now about American/modernized Christianity.]

So, as I’ve been praying and processing through various issues in my heart, one of the first things that came up was my intense dislike of conservative Christians, especially analytical pundits who dissect God and theology into neat packages.

Recently I realized my dislike goes deeper - I am intensely repulsed by American Christianity, or, more generally, westernized/modern Christianity. I am discovering that there are many facets of my dislike, some are:

• I am angered by the many evils committed by Christians against non-Christians throughout history and even today. Close members of my family have personally suffered greatly at the hands of Christians, some of them even respected pastors or priests.
• I am disgusted by the many hypocrisies and moral blindness of the church and churched peoples across the world. Christians actually believe they are living sinless lives and are incapable of evil. Conversely, they often believe everyone around them is in sin.
• I am dismayed by the thinking patterns of Christians who really think nobody can do anything good if they are not Christian. I am frustrated by the intellectual arrogance of Christians who think they know everything about God and that anybody who is not a Christian cannot know anything about God.
• I am saddened by the complete lack of unconditional grace in the church, where people have to behave and look a certain way in order to be accepted and loved by people that sing about the “amazing grace” of God.

But, beginning today I need to start processing my deep-seated disgust with the institution known as the American Church. God is encouraging me to start working through this disgust, to move beyond disgust to actually doing something constructive about it. I can either stand off to the side, scoffing at the failures of the church, or I can step into a deeper nearness with God, hear his heartbeat, and encourage myself and others to walk a more vibrant journey with God.
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