Infected?

This is my first-ever blog post. I'm wondering if it'll actually catch on and I'll get "infected" or if this blog will be like the thousands of other ones out there that just lay dormant for months after a couple of weeks of their master excitedly leaving posts (I completely forgot I had a blog called "Natural Blogarhythms" [it was a pun on natural logarithms] for the past 9 months... I never posted on it once, and when I found out today how terribly un-clever the name was, I deleted it immediately to start fresh with this one). We'll see. Hopefully I'll do better this time around.

The name for this blog, in case you're curious, comes from 1 Timothy 6:18-19. "Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life." 1&2 Timothy are my favorite books, I think, because I like to read them as Paul's letters to me, his son in the faith.

This is my final semester at ISU (graduating in December in psych) and it's turning out to be more challenging than I anticipated-- in more ways than one. Between working two other part time jobs, I wanted to kind of coast through this last semester. It's not quite happening that way with several papers I'm being forced to write. The other challenge is that three out of my five classes challenge my faith. I've dealt with one class or so every semester that tries to prove to me that I'm putting my faith in a lie, a fraud, an out-dated god, an irrelevant god, or an oppressive system of beliefs. This semester, I have three of those classes all in a row-- every Tuesday and Thursday (History of Christianity, then Social Dimensions of Religion, then Sociology of Intimate Relationships). I'm 4 weeks through it and it's been awesome. God is using all of these instructors and students who are trying to prove me wrong and, instead, has been building up my faith more and more. More than ever before, I am able to see that man's wisdom is foolishness in the eyes of God. These poor people are hungry for Him, yet they refuse to yield their lives and be filled. It breaks my heart to see, but almost every bit of the University culture pressures students and professors to look somewhere other than the Truth for their answers.

In the History of Christianity class, the teacher has been explaining to us how the Bible is not a historical book and cannot be read as such since it is biased from a faith-based perspective. I see her point, so I've decided not to read anything historical that was written from a biased perspective. I guess I won't be reading anything historical. Ever.

One of the cool ways God allowed for me to be really encouraged through that course was through learning the following about the groups of Jews that existed in Jesus' time:
1. Sadduccees- followed the Law to the "t". Extremely religious and saw sacrifice as important for obtaining righteousness (but they were probably the ones in the temple who were charging unfair prices for animals; this is where Jesus started turning tables), but did not believe a messiah would come.
2. Pharisees- saw themselves as separated from everyone else, avoided "unclean" people and things to follow the law to the "t". Keeping the law was their "righteousness".
3. Zealots- revolutionaries who struggled for self-rule and longed for messiah.
4. Essenes- Jews who took refuge in the desert and longed for messiah.
The above 4 groups make up only 10% of Jews in Jesus' day. The other 90%:
5. "People of the Land"- Craftsmen (including carpenters!), peasants, farmers, and shepherds.

As I was learning this in class I started smiling to myself and thanking God for being the God He is. He didn't reveal His Son through the elite men who didn't care about the people, many of whom were "unclean". He humbled Himself and started from the ground up. The KING, Jesus, was step-son of a lowly craftsman, not a high-up pharisee. And how many of Jesus' stories and parables could the people understand and relate to because they were farmers of the land and shepherds of their flocks?

In fact, if the story of Jesus was a man-made story, it would have necessarily been written by the top 10% of the Jews because almost none of the people of the land could even read or write. And, if it was made up by those top 10%, then it most certainly would not have used illustrations that resonate so deeply with the common man and make the religious elite look like a "brood of vipers"!

A truly awesome God, indeed.