By now you’ve probably heard BoB song Airplanes featuring Eminem and that girl that other people seem to know but I remain in the dark about. It came on yesterday while I was shuffling music on the way to an appointment. It occurred to me that it’s actually a fairly unique song, conceptually.

All of the verses focus on looking backwards in the past. But where most songwriting and art looks at current failures and searches the past for different choices that might have led to success, this one does just the opposite. It looks at the current success and wonders what little things might have been different to lead to an entirely different life.

I thought that was pretty cool.

This is Eminem’s verse which, besides stealing the show from BoB, also happens to illustrate what I’m talking about most clearly:

alright lets pretend Marshall Mathers never picked up a pen
lets pretend things would have been no different
pretend he procrastinated had no motivation
pretend he just made excuses that were so paper thin they could blow away with the wind
Marshall you’re never gonna make it makes no sense to play the game there ain’t no way that you’ll win
pretend he just stayed outside all day and played with his friends
pretend he even had a friend to say was his friend
and it wasn’t time to move and schools were changing again
he wasn’t socially awkward and just strange as a kid
he had a father and his mother wasn’t crazy as sh-t
and he never dreamed he could rip stadiums and just lazy as sh-t
f-ck a talent show in a gymnasium bitch you won’t amount to sh-t quit daydreaming kid
you need to get your cranium checked you thinking like an alien it just ain’t realistic
now pretend they ain’t just make him angry with this sh-t and there was no one he could even aim when he’s pissed it
and his alarm went off to wake him off but he didn’t make it to the rap Olympics slept through his plane and he missed it
he’s gon’ have a hard time explaining to Hailey and Laney these food stamps and this WIC sh-t
cuz he never risked shit he hopes and he wished it but it didn’t fall in his lap so he ain’t even here
he pretends that…

I’ve been thinking this morning about our access to God. I take it for granted. Praying openly without thinking about how incredible it is that I am able to simple speak to God. That I’m not immediately swallowed up because of my sin.

There is a Catholic notion of the tabernacle. It’s a space where the Catholic church places the eucharist—what Catholics believe to be the actually body of Christ used during communion. The tabernacle can only be accessed by a priest and it is treated as holy ground. This is a concept borrowed from the Jewish concept of the same name.

God commanded Moses, in excruciating detail, just how to build the tabernacle. Once a year could the high priest enter into holiest of grounds. It’s even said that a rope would be tied to the ankle of the priest who went in, just in case he was struck dead for some reason, they would be able to drag his body out, since no one else would be able to enter.

But the Catholic sect of Christianity seems to have a corporate denial of the complete message of the Gospel. The tabernacle is among the traditions eradicated because of the fulfilling work of Christ. We are all priests and we all have full access to God, to the holiest places, because of Christ.

Christ became the true high priest, he entered the holiest of places, bore all the wrath due to mankind, not with the blood of animals, but with his own all sufficient blood and once and for all removed the curtain that kept us out. Not to mention, by drenching us in his own blood, we are now protected from the wrath that would lash out and destroy us should we approach on our own.

Hebrews 9:11-12

When Christ appeared as a high priest… through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

Placing anything between us and God is an absolute neglect of what God has done in Christ to bring us to himself. This is among the paramount messages of the Gospel. To deny this would be like insisting to send word of your child’s birth by messenger pigeon, rather than email.

It’s an incredible thing that we can approach God. And it’s almost just as dumbfounding when Christians will not exercise this incredible privilege.

Oh Friedrich, you always seem to say what I’m thinking before I can articulate it.

"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!"

I am one of those people who needs to resolve philosophical and theological problems before I can move on from them. What I mean is that when someone says, “what do you think about so and so”, if the question is of some consequence, or even extended debate, I cannot let it go until I have solid ground on which to place an informed opinion.

For example, some of the major topics of the last several years were the place of spiritual gifts in the church—I mean their operation as it stands today. Or the election of certain people to salvation and the passing over of others. Alcohol and social and medical drugs was another.

Some times these topics pervade my spiritual and personal life in such a way that my conclusions follow me everywhere I go. The ground on which my opinion was formed my opinion is forever under me. Other times, more frequently in fact, the topic is important but not forever around me. These times, although I will work hard to form my opinions with integrity, in time my opinion will remain clear, but how I landed there becomes foggy.

I am an opinionated person. In social situations, I’m one of those obnoxious people who, if asked (and sometimes unasked), usually has something to say. But I discover often times that I can’t say exactly how I got to my opinion.

I’m with Friedrich on this one. I have my opinions. Isn’t that enough? No, I guess it’s not. Oh well.

I have to be honest, usually I find these annoying. The whole make a digital poster, fill it with seemingly witty, funny, sarcastic, insightful, fear mongering, or otherwise inconsequential sentiment and dress it up with edgy typography in an attempt to make a point seem worth hearing. Yeah, I usually don’t care much for that.

This one however, in spite of it essentially being a hip guilt trip, I found pretty good. Mostly because reminding ourselves of our blessings is important.

This was originally posted on DeviantArt by whatshername13.

Over the last few weeks I have become a big fan of the RSA Animate clips from theRSA.org. Most of them are based on philosophical concepts and research on human behavior. It’s challenging and fascinating all at the same time. The clip may be somewhat long, but I find it fully worth watching.

I was in the back yard watching my dog Mikey as I drank my coffee this morning. Like most dogs, Mikey has a real obsession with squirrels. It’s impossible to say if his excitement is sporting or a true bloodlust for the furry rodents. But one thing is for sure, he wants to get his jaws around them and tear them to shreds at every possible opportunity.

Mikey will spend hours tracking squirrels through the back yard. He’s part beagle. That little nose of his will stay pretty close to the ground all the time. Going over and over the squirrels tracks. He knows where they come in and where they go out. He’s even wise to the squirrel nest in a tree tree twenty feet above the yard.

Yet still, in spite of all his hard work and constant ‘research’ of squirrel behavior, he’s never caught one. And still, when one dares to come in our out of the yard, invariably, Mikey isn’t ever close enough to put an end to the trespasser.

Rationally, with all this constant investigation, you’d think that he’d be honing in on the critters. Like a police detective, Inching closer and closer to capturing them. But that never happens. You know why? Because he’s a dog. His memory span is about 15 seconds. He can’t employ reason, just instinct, and some element of habit. But never reason.

This all got me thinking—we kind of do this too.

Who has done more research and investigation of my own habits than me? No one. Yet I will consistently walk into my own pitfalls.

Just think about it. Have you ever been to a party, drank way too much, puked your guts out, then throught a hazy hang-over said, “I drank way too much. I’m not going to do that again.” What happened a month later? Too much drinking. Puking. And dehydrated resolves to reform your habits.

So maybe not the drinking. But how about dating someone who’s bad for you? I’ll bet you’ve gotten into that (kind of) relationship more than once. How about speaking carelessly and hurting people’s feelings? How about pornography? Yeah. I see all this and a lot more in the people around me—and of course my own ludicrous failure to learn from the mistakes I’ve made. I think most people can relate to the apparent inability to learn from our own personal research of ourselves.

Problem is, you’re not going to be able to fix this. Even with a massive resolve to do so, the best you’ll ever do is push the problem into some other context.

Enter Jesus. Problem solved. On so many levels—though perhaps not the ones you’d expect—problem solved. Problem so very, very solved.