I just find it so strange to be born into this age. Everything is permissible. Whether or not it's profitable, I think the best human thing to do is just let everybody do their thing. I understand the whole theory that you can't have total freedom, that's total chaos. But restrained freedom can be practiced. A basic human need- Isn't it to do what you want with whom you want, if it doesn't hurt anybody?

Anyway, I just finished 'Blue like Jazz' by Donald Miller with some insistence from my twin. It is a best-seller.

An excerpt which totally hit my heart:

"The real issue in the Christian community was that it (love) was conditional. You were loved, but if you had questions, questions about whether the Bible was true or whether America was a good country or whether last week's sermon was good, you were not so loved. You were loved in word, but there was, without question, a social commodity that was being withheld from you until you shaped up. By toeing the party line you earned social dollars; by being yourself you did not. If you wanted to be valued, you became a clone. These are broad generalizations, and they are unfair, but this is what I was thinking at the time. Bear with me, and I will tell you what I learned. ...

The problem with Christian community was that we had ethics, we had rules and laws and principles to judge each other against. There was love in Christian community, but it was conditional love. Sure, we called it unconditional, but it wasn't. There were bad people in the world and good people in the world. We were raised to believe this... Christianity was always right; we were always looking down on everybody else. And I hated this. I hated it with a passion. Everything in my soul told me it was wrong. It felt, to me, as wrong as sin. ...

The problem with Christian culture is we think of love as a commodity. We use it like money. ...If somebody is doing something for us, offering us something, be it gifts, time, popularity, or what have you, we feel they have value, we feel they are worth something to us, and perhaps, we feel they are priceless. I could see it so clearly, I could feel it in the pages of my life. This was the thing that had smelled so rotten all these years. I used love like money. The church used love like money. With love, we withheld affirmation from the people who did not agree with us, but we lavishly financed the ones that did."

Thank God for honesty.