Adoniram Judson (born 1788)

     So, as much as I can gather this guy was pretty much a genius. He was teaching adult sunday school classes when he was 12. His elders were impressed if not intimidated by his knowledge and wisdom. As he grew older he began to rely on his intellect and wisdom making the misguided assumption that whatever smarts he had were birthed originally within his own brain and not as result of a direct gift from God or common grace. Judson had abandoned his Christian beliefs for atheism by the time he was in college.

     While attending Providence College he struck a deep friendship with a his roommate Jacob Ames.  Their friendship was based on a mutual gift of highly above average intelligence. The future of these brilliant young students was common discussion among the faculty of the school. Even they were impressed and intimidated by Judson's intelligence. By the time they graduated Jacob Ames had also traded his beliefs for atheism stating Judson as the primary influence for opening his eyes to that truth. What need had they for a God, let alone a savior with their superior brilliance.

      Some years had passed when one night Judson, returning home on an out of town trip, stopped to take refuge from the stormy weather at a traveler's inn. The innkeeper explained to him that he would like to give him a room but the only room open was next to a sick man who cried and moaned in pain all through the night. Judson was desperate for a room so he agreed to suffer through the noise nuisance for the sake of a dry bed. For hours and hours Judson tried to sleep while the moans and coughs and wails from the next room kept him awake just as the innkeeper had warned. He tried to ignore it. He tried to burry his head beneath his pillow to no avail. Finally, late in the night, actually early in the morning, the man quieted and Judson was released into a brief slumber.

     The next morning upon checkout Judson made a passing comment about the man finally going to sleep and toning down the noise. The innkeeper, assumably somewhat distressed, informed the him that the man had not finally gone to sleep but had passed away in the night. Commenting that Mr Jacob Ames had finally found some relief from his pain even though it saddened him to think of his fate given that he did not believe in God. Judson was startled into attention and asked the innkeeper to repeat the poor man's name. It was as he had feared. The man who was wasting in decay and sickness was in fact his old friend and roommate; the very same Jacob Ames.

     Judson was deeply shaken. In a desperate fit to separate from that immediate reality he jumped on his horse and quickly fled. Suddenly his mind was flooded with guilt and self accusation. He was awakened to a new reality of the mortality of man. Then as he quickly trotted homeward the sounds of the horses hooves morphed into words and began to speak to him the very damning words he was trying to block from his mind. He heard only "Death! Hell! Death! Hell! Death! Hell! Death! Hell!" in place of a typical "clip, clop, clip, clop.

    This unfortunate event would be a springboard to a life devoted to the mission of Christ to go to the ends of the earth and share the gospel with those who had never before been reached. He is known now as America's first foreign missionary. He did have success. God used him to reach many people in Burma. However, it was a miserable road that could only be traveled by trusting in more than his own understanding. Judson faced tragedy after tragedy until his death.

     While in Burma his wife and second wife both passed away do to the conditions of life and three of his children also died while waiting seven years for his first Burmese convert. Eventually when there was some success in delivering his Christian message, he was arrested and imprisoned for years. Finally they chose to release him and send him on a boat home to America only because they knew his health was such that he would not make the trip. He didn't.

     He left quite a legacy. The people of Burma have a Bible because he learned the language and translated the entire thing in Burmese (his wife had translated it into Thai). There was, interestingly enough, a common Burmese folklore tradition that spoke of a foreign man who would come bearing a book to reveal the only truth to their people.

(I just thought this was interesting.)  My sources come from several different places, one being "On the Golden Shore the biography of Adoniram Judson.

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Memphis is the  "Leaving kids in the car to die in the heat" capitol of the world. ... Last week another worthless piece of trash excuse for a "parent" saddled up at a bar at one of the many fine establishments known for the procuration of some spirited libations and potations. ( I'm sure it was a very classy joint) The problem was, this heat rash on the inner thigh of humanity left their kid in the car to suffer miserably for the sake of a "parent's convenience. A child's death so they could get crunk in da club. It's disgusting, embarrassing and infuriating. 

   All that is to say that I was having a conversation with someone about it who brought up the question, "Will that baby be a baby in heaven? Will it be a mature age? Will he or she age and grow up over time in heaven?" I have heard several different schools of thought on the subject and i'm not sure how i feel about it. But I do somewhat have an issue with the idea of age and growing up in heaven. I'm not saying we won't. I'm just saying I have issue with the concept. Our idea of getting older is really maturing and then decaying.

     Everything we can experience in this physical realm is shaped by our fallenness and by time. ... First off, think about the fall of man. Our bodies, our minds and all of creation is stricken because of sin. We are fallen. Our world is fallen. Thus, everything is in a state of decay. So if there is aging, if there is growing up, it will not involve decay. So it is not aging or growing as we know it. Also, one cannot say we will grow to physical maturity if we are reborn with perfected resurrected bodies. We will be perfect because we will be sinless. So there again, the growing and aging process is different than our concept.  

     Now, think about our concept of time. As Christians we know our afterlife is eternity. This isn't a state where time goes on forever. This is a state where there is no time. God does not exist in time. He is outside of time. In our eternity, we have no more time. We can't really speak of age or getting older at least as we know those terms or concepts to be. I don't know how it will be to live without time obviously. Will we be able to say sentences like, "I'm doing this now, then I'll do that and I already did that earlier." ??????? This is a sentence dealing with past, present and future. These are positions of time. If there is no time, do we still speak like this? Seems like we could still say that just for practical reasons. But this comes from a mind that can't really grasp the concept of the inexistence of time. (inexistence? yeah I'm pretty sure that is not a word) So anyway, I just think this is a fascinating concept to roll around. I think our view of heaven is very limited. We can not even imagine the entirety of it because there are so many concepts we can't grasp or even originate them in our minds to begin with.

   The whole point of this is to bring up what came to mind during our conversation. Ravi Zacharias was speaking on the topic of time recently and made some of the coolest remarks I have heard on the matter. (I'm gonna be paraphrasing all this big time. He said it more eloquently than I ever could.) He said we say things like, "wow, time is flying by." or "I can't believe how old you are now." or "It seems like only yesterday we were in highschool." or a million other statements made about the strangeness of how fast or slow time moves. When you think about it, those are absolutely absurd statements. We live in opposition to time much of the ... well, much of the time. hehe. Why?  Why does time seem to have such an unnatural effect on us. Why make observations such as, "I can't believe time is moving so fast. It's 2008 already?!" Saying we cant believe time keeps moving forward is like saying "WOW, I can't believe that the sky is acting so much like a sky these days." So why question it? Why does it seem strange to us? Why do we find it so unnatural? It's absurd and ridiculous. ..... unless.....        Unless time is a constraint we were not designed to exist in. If our eternity does not have time it would make sense for us to feel forced into a role we are ill-equipped for. It makes sense to feel like we are struggling against the world we live in. It makes sense to feel at odds with time if we are not designed to be under that constraint.     It really is a good argument for the afterlife.  That just makes so much sense to me.

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Gal. 6:2 - ..."bear ye one another's burdens."...

Gal. 6:5- ..."for everyman shall bear his own burdens."...   (both king James version)

   This is one seeming contradiction that has troubled me over the years. It's something people have brought up to from time to time by some who do not believe scripture to be the inerrant word of God as a huge glaring contradiction that proves it's falability. To there credit, usually when i hear someone say "the Bible is full of contradictions," if I say "ok, give me one," they cannot. Or perhapse they give a response such as well, there are so many I don't know where to start. There are many people say there are lots of mistakes or historical inaccuracies or contradictions in the Bible. There are very few who can actually tell you what they are when called out on the matter. This is one such "contradiction" that has been brought to my attention on occasion.

     There certainly seems to be contradiction here. It seems to say we need to help each other with our problems and then three verses later, we gotta handle problems ourselves. Which is it? The New American Standard  has a different if not better translation here. (sorry to any hard core KJV guys who may read this) It makes a distinction from the word "burdens" in verse 2 and uses the word "load" in verse 5. In the original language and author's intent, there is a difference. (By the way I do not perscribe to the postmodern idea of interpreting something to mean whatever it means to me or in the way that is most relevent to culture, so the author's intended meaning is what it means. That is just ridiculous to say, "Well here is what it means to me".)

     So there is a difference. V.2(burden) speaks of a special difficulty or big problems while V.5 (load) speaks more of our own responsibilities. Our daily little things fall into the v.5 category. Our personal issues and hangups yes, but more specifically it pertains to our responsibilities. We need others' help always, but we must take responsibility for our own load. I shouldn't need my Christian brothers' to call me everyday to get me up and make sure I go to work on time. If I lose my job, however I may need support.

    I think the christian community can be bad about not bearing the burdens of one another in times of extreme need or tragedy and simply offering a pithy little saying like "Just let go and let God." or saying I will pray for you and never doing it. On the other hand there are always people eager to make simple issues they face or their own load (or basic responsibilities) seem like huge burdens. They can be very dissatisfied about the level of compassion they recieve from others and demand a Willy Loman type eulogy for themselves. In this self centered life where the purpose of God and the Church is to cater to our every whim and sympathize and patronize our over dramaticized "loads" we are never ever satisfied.   John Piper once said "Mental health is the gift of self forgetfullness." I believe this is true. When self is the center and the focus (and we need our church to be a mall with all the perfect ammenities) we are never treated faily enough. We are never satisfied. We are never adequately stifened for our cries of look at me! "Attention must be paid!"

     This is one way we can fall into traps of inadequacy and depression that are built on foundations of old fashioned selfishness and pride. The only cure is brokenness and a switch from inward self-focus to outward other-focus. Drawing near to Christ and putting off the old man and putting on the new life in christ means we "fulfill the law in christ" (V2) It is only possible to fulfill the law of christ through those means.

The law of Christ as defined earlier in Galations 5:14 is "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." This is the Christian virtue. This is the Biblical approach to life. On the contrary, self centeredness, self reliance, self preservation, self esteem, self confidence etc... these are NOT Christian or Biblical virtues. They are poison that draws our worship away from our holy creator and puts it and our focus on ourselves. No matter what Joel Osteen says, every promise in the scripture is not contingent on how much we love ourselves. All our problems are not solved when we quit our stinkin thinkin and decide I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. This is when we begin to believe the evil lie that we deserve something. As Christians we recieve life abundantly guided by the Holy Spirit in relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. We recieve eternity. We receive it, though we could not and do not deserve it. We could not and have not earned it. Frankly, we deserve hell. We have chosen it. We can look back at the sin in our lives and see it there as a receipt, a bill of sell showing that we have chosen and paid for it. We have earned it. Yet we receive Eternity of heaven and the presence of God.

     So what do we have to complain about?   

Seriously?

Currently Listening Modern Guilt By Beck see related

Thats a new statue of Tom Lee down at Tom Lee Park by the river. Tom Lee was some guy that rescued a bunch of other guys from a sinking riverboat a hundred years ago or something.

Surprise Amanda! I have uploaded pictures. So I went out downtown and took some pictures the day before my surgery since it was a beautiful day and I could still walk.

So now I am recovering from knee surgery. It kinda sucks. I have heard some terrible horror stories about it though so i guess i'm not doing that bad. Still hurts alot of course. But i'll make it.

Currently Watching The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Two - The War Years By Sean Patrick Flanery see related

Yeah, so I'm having surgery tomorrow (monday, march 3rd)

    They are gonne put a couple of screws in my knee and some other stuff to it. I'm probably gonna be out of work about 8 weeks. I'm somewhat nervous, but not too bad. It's just knee surgery. Not like i can die, right? RIGHT? ...  I'm just hoping my recovery isnt too painful. I'm not big on pain.  I'll watch a lot of movies and Tv shows on DVD and read a lot of books and play a lot of wii.  So, it's not all bad.  ... I do kinda wish I had that certain person here to take care of me and keep me company.

     Speaking of that certain person: You should go HERE and vote for her pictures.

Currently Watching The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones, Volume Two - The War Years By Sean Patrick Flanery see related