Preface, part two

I have long neglected this work for a few months for what I am going to call research. To be honest, only about 30 % of what I have been doing was research, and 70 % percent of it has been everyday complacency. I began this work with the hope of shaking up Christians into observing their Christian experience in a different light and then convincing them to walk down a path that has never, ever, been tread upon before, a path of their own. I have discovered that such a task is not only difficult, also it is most uncertain. I no longer seek to begin by instilling doubt into the minds of Christians walking down a familiar, long used path with the images of past saints who paved and tread the ground they walk. But to begin with a disclaimer; To step off this path means to loose all that is familiar to you, all that you thought, or were told, at one time or another, was true, and to walk as if you were ignorant to any other path. It would be much better in fact to never know of the former path you walked, the one that was paved nicely, had steady, organized traffic, and was easy on your feet, relatively speaking. Once you step off that path, you walk a windy dirt read, filled with painful uncertainty. You are never welcomed back unless you forsake all that you have discovered in a fit of self-denial. There is no way to walk them both at the same time, and truly be satisfied. No way to enjoy the comforts of believing what you have been told, and also disavowing aspects of this God that have been long since over looked. It is a lonely road, and frustrating road, a painful, unbearable state of realization. But, there is satisfaction, there is hope for satisfaction in that admitting all that bothered you about this belief structure, in the absence that reality, truth can be found. There can be a relating to God that has only been seen in the lives of those who chose to stop off the paved path before them, walk a winding dirt road before them and have paved the roads we choose to walk down today. I choose to no longer walk down such roads. This is an account of what I have discovered, am discovering, and hope to discover.

Where It All Begins

It was either J.M Barry, or at least Johnny Depp’s character in the movie, "Finding Neverland," That said every good writer begins with a good leather-bound notebook, and a good title. I don’t really have a leather bound, and I doubt that in today’s world, Barry would have continued to use one for more than taking notes, but as I sit here with my hp pavilion ze4300 laptop, I am only lacking a good title. Maybe something like, The Race for Meaning, or maybe, The Truth about the Human Condition, but than again if that was the title would you really have purchased this book. I don’t want just a good title, I want a great title. I want a title and intrigues the passer by of all ages, sizes, and philosophies as they walk past either the best seller list, or bargain ben at borders. I do believe I will steal from my good friend Evan and mix a couple of his ideas to come up with, "Paradoxes along a windy dirt road - a passionate attempt and understanding the misunderstood." Sounds like a title to me.
I began today with a change of heart. It began last night as I sat beneath the painful florescent reading light that came with the dorm room I live in. I was reading a book by Don Miller called Blue like Jazz where he tells a story of a meeting with a friend from a soup kitchen who never received any thanks for the hard work he put into helping people. Don asked him if he ever got tired of working so hard with no thanks and his response was, Don if we are not willing to get up each morning and die to ourselves, we really have to question if we are true followers of Jesus. And at that moment late into the night, it struck me. Nathan, you are not dying do yourself each day. You take things to be your own and you don’t submit all of your wants and desires beneath my feet. In order to understand how with was in fact a change of heart we have to begin much further back in my history than this. I would love to walk you though the various transitions that God has brought me though in the past 19 years of my life, but I do believe after finishing the chapter about how I peed my pants in 1st grade and thus my understanding of humiliation began, you would probably start looking to put your copy of this book up for sale on amazon. No, rather, I think I will begin with today and look no more to yesterday.