Confessions of a Quirky Christian Artist

I learned how to be grateful a couple of years ago. I think it may have had a lot to do with who I was spending time with. (Or NOT spending time with.) Attitudes are infectious, and I'm embarrassed how easily I was infected by so many bad ones. In retrospect I can see that ungratefulness is the result of a basic outlook on life, and I think it's impossible to be grateful while one holds that outlook. It goes like this… "Life is so unfair to me. I never get what I deserve. People always treat me unfairly. No one is looking out for me." Having been in a house that was saturated with those thoughts, and having come out of it into a better attitude, I can see some big advantages to being thankful. Here are the ones I have recognized. The single most important part of being thankful is that is points to God. Once one gives thanks, the question must be asked: to whom are we giving our thanks? It keeps us humble. If we a...

Here is one of those verses that polite Christians always skim by and try not to think too hard about: Romans 9: 21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour? It's been several weeks since my ex wife has called. That always puts me a little on edge. I get to wondering what it would be like if she never called again. I think of the relative peace that my boys experience without the crying on the other end of the line, and broken promises made again and again. Empty proclamations of love with no action to back them up. I don't see how that can be good for my sons. But then, there are a lot of things I can't see, and isn't that what faith is all about? It brings to mind the scene in Lord of the Rings where Frodo first finds out that Gollum is tracking them… Frodo: [Frodo sees something some distance away. He hurries towards Gandalf, and sits beside him.] [To...

Here's what I find most interesting about the times we live in. No, it's not the moral decline or scary political climate. History has seen far worse before. It's the information availability and its societal distribution. In other words, who has the info and who doesn't and why. Here's the weird part: anyone with internet access has access to a virtually unlimited supply of information. And yet, with this overwhelming supply comes an interesting reaction. Rather than absorbing as much of it as we can we tend to ignore it because take it for granted. I don't know how a T.V. works, but I know I could find out in less than a minute. Exacerbating this issue is the fact that no one could conceivably learn even a fraction of what there is to know about so many fields of study. So we rely on experts to tell us what to think about any particular field. Our technology has grown so immense that we have no other choice. Food production, medi...