It's Almost Time To Do Something Crazy

College group at IBC was really good today. I brought my new "Jesus Loves Porn Stars" bible with me which has "The Message" translation in it. We read through James and then Curt asked us if anything stuck out at us. When I read the first part of James 5, a sleeping giant in my mind was awakened.

James 5 is a warning to the rich. A lot of times when the Bible talks about "rich" people - I think of people who live in Heartland or in the upper-class neighborhoods. But things get blasted into perspective when we realize that we young, middle-class Americans (many of whom are getting paid $8/hour at Starbucks,) are in the top 10% of the worlds richest people. The Bible isn't talking about Bill Gates in James 5, it's talking about me.

The harsh words from The Message translation read, "Your greedy luxuries are a cancer in your gut, destroying your life from within. You thought you were piling up wealth. What you've piled up is judgment... You've looted the earth and lived it up. But all you'll have to show for it is a fatter than usual corpse." I look at my typical-American lifestyle and see how closely it fits those verses. Consume, and consume is all we know how to do. Oil, paper towels, electricity, water - it's all taken for granted and we use it like it's unlimited. We eat way more than we need and we end up with nothing more than "a fatter than usual corpse."

For the past year or so I have been saving up money to possibly go to Film School in L.A. Film School doesn't look nearly as exciting as selling everything I owned and doing something crazy. I have two more semesters of school left and I will have a linguistics degree. I want to focus on teaching English as a second language - but I don't know where. I don't know what I will be doing in one year, but that is the time - the time I do something crazy - and do it all in the name of love.

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