I went to church today.

It has been over a month, due to work, since ive gone, and it was a bit of a culture shock. I've been struggling with my faith lately. Well not really with my faith, I belive in Christ, and that he is the Son of God, so that parts good. But still, I have many, many, nagging questions in the back of my head that I want answers for. Alot of them have to do with church. Why do we do worship the way we do? why do we have the sermon a certain way? Why does my church have such a redicuously large facilty? Why are so many christians, seemingly detatched from this world, and utterly un-relatable? How come the Christian Church has become comercialized, and made pretty, and happy, and self-contained?

Tangent: I beleive that one of the reasons, that so many twenty somethings run from the faith that they once had, is because they had a shabby, christian bubble constructed for them. That they grew up "pleading the blood of Christ" and "asking for forgiveness" and walking in "fullness" and "living in grace" and even praying, without ever thinking what those things actually mean. They get the rough idea in their head and go with it. But when the proverbial number two hits the fan, they fall back on a loosely based beleif system. "Why the hell did my mom get cancer?" or "Whys dad dead?" can throw a rock through glass faith. And a decision you make, or beleifs you have that have not been thought out as to what you are actually doing, or actually beleiving, crumble when trouble comes. Been there.
End Tangent.

Back to me at church. So I realized how jaded I am. I didn't even want to listen to the guest speaker because he was talking about "financial freedom" and stuff like that. And I have huge issues with the church and money... that I won't get into now. I have about twenty walls up between me, and God using my church to speak to me, and to work in me. I'm fine with the Holy Spirit doing things. He can work in my spirit during worship, and speak through my friends, and my pastors just fine. But, when the pastor, or guest speaker, is just really cheesy, or is little...off, or I just don't agree with, or I feel im on the other side of the body than him, (like the toes in the body of christ, and he's the frigging hair or something.) well, just forget about me listening to God speak through that. Cause I just won't let that happen. And I see this as BAD. This is trouble. I realize that God gave me a brain that likes to think everything through, and thats who I am. But when I get snobbish and start picking and choosing what I'll accept as a worthy messanger of God's Word... well I can go too far.

I was at the book store with Andy today and we were looking at all the christian books n stuff. Well I see this Joice Meyer book, and I say to him "look at this! She called her book Knowing God intamately! I mean, Its obvious shes ripping off J.I. Packer! Goodness gracious!" I glared at the book angrily. And andy says, "Tom, I think your taking this jaded thing a little too far, I mean, Not even I go that far! and I'm Andrew Russo!"

And thats a terribly good point. He is Andrew Russo. I'm out of control. I need to stop critisizing the church, and freaking participate. "Why pluck just one string? what good is just one note? Well, one note is fine I guess, but we were all once one notes." (aaron weiss)
To all the people I thought suck, I'm sorry, I'll put that down if you'll put up with me some more. There are far more important things to do that to critisize my fam for not being my style. Lets get to that.

"Why play one note, when you can strum the guitar?"