Dead Goats

I know, I know, it's been 17 days since I last wrote. But if you think 'bout it, 17 days isn't that much. Maybe I'm trying to prove some philosophical point about how we are so expectant for things immediately. Or maybe I just forgot....

I rode back to school with a good friend yesterday. Usually the two hour drive is pretty boring, the same scenic fields, cows, and small po-dunk towns passing by. The mediocrity of that drive was replaced with some life-giving time talking with a friend.

It plunked (planked? plunk? had plunken?) a massive wad of thoughts into my lap, begging to be sort through.

Yesterday I was at Redeemer with my sister and her hubs (my sister wrote about Redeemer here, read it, she's incredible). Leviticus was the Pentateuch-al book they were in then, and this book is BORING. It's the book I avoid because it's all the rules the people were to follow, who wants to read about scabs and dead animals?

But as speaker-man went on, he began to talk about why this was important. Get past the whole "atonement for our sins" thing, that doesn't mean much to anyone because we're not Jewish (because I would rather write this way, I'm going to summarize what he said, I hate adding the "he said" to everything, I beg your pardon, this is not my own idea by ANY means). Back then sacrifice was watching a goat getting it's throat slit, and all the blood and gore that would come spewing out over everything. Sick right? The point of sacrifice was to be sicked out. It was to be able to look at that nasty, gutted animal and say, "that is me--oh boy" DAILY. They saw that every day, to be reminded of how much they did needed God.

Do I think I need God?

My mom introduced me to the concept of Functional Atheism a while back. In essence, it is our living day to day as if God doesn't really exist, talking up this big mantra of theology and feelings, but truthfully living as if God wasn't any part of me except for my "quiet time".

On the car ride home, Friend and I were talking about "witnessing" and how it's become a disturbing concept to us. It has become a means of showing people they need to be as good as us, to be saved so that they can have what we have. GAG. The point of even talking to people about Christ is because we NEED Him. The thought of telling someone that they need Christ to change them while I sit here and act as if He doesn't even exist in my life makes me sick. Who would want that? If I don't know how badly I need Christ in my day to day moody, arrogant, me-centeredness, then I have no reason to tell someone else they need Him.

I need Christ, and today I know it. I pray I come to know it everyday. I pray God puts some sort of dead goat in my path everyday as a serious reminder of my nasty-ness, and my absolute need for Him.

May we all come to find our need for Christ and may it come to change the core of who we are.