MattSpeak

Revelation: Are We Fans of God? Or do we worship Him?

2009-06-02T19:44:00.000-07:00

I saw a mock Jesus-fish bumber sticker on a car today -- you know, those one's that kind of look like a Jesus fish, but are really just mocking, whether it's a Darwin fish (or Aliens, or whatever, I've even seen a Linux one). This one was "Thor" - the Norse God. This car also had several "Raiders" stickers on it, so obviously the owner is a Raiders fan as well.

It got me thinking...

First I was thinking "Yeah, right, that person probably doesn't really believe in Thor...they're just busting Christians chops".

And then I thought, what if they really do think that Thor is all that, and they would get heated defending Thor as a god worthy of people's devotion? What if they had a whole list of reasons why Thor was worthy of your consideration for that?

... You know, kind of like being a fan; Like if you happen to be a really big Raiders fan.

Do we Christ followers do that with Jesus? Do we know all the pertinent 'God-stats', and do we know all the reasons why people should be a fan of Team God?

"There's a difference
between worshiping God
in our hearts,
and being a fan"

There is a difference between worshiping God in our hearts, and being a fan. Fans know things; worshipers know the person. It's the difference between the state of our hearts reflected toward Jesus and knowing lots of "stuff" about why - in theory - following him (or being a fan) is a good thing.

I myself, have been guilty of being a Jesus fan. My prayer is that I will continue to learn to be a worshiper "in Spirit and in Truth" (John 4:23-24)

Rant: Email Spam telling me I am Rich

2009-05-23T11:01:00.000-07:00

OK, so I know this isn't new, But....

I get spam in my spam box almost every day. It's not a lot really. But since Spam filtering isn't perfect, I check it so that I don't end up blinding emptying the spam folder whilst deleting an actual message that ended up there by mistake.

I get spammed almost every day by scam artists with offers of money from nearly every conceivable venue on Earth. I've gotten the nearly ubiquitous offer of money from Nigerian Royalty (which has it's own Wikipedia page, and a .org website devoted to alerting people about it, amongst others for crying out loud), been notified of winning the UK Lottery, Microsoft Lottery, Yahoo! Lottery, Powerball, New Zealand, Australia, EU, people claiming to be lawyers, and so on. I almost (almost but not quite) wish that I had saved all these spam emails in their own folder so I could tally up all the different places, and the total number.

"There must be people who are using email for the very first time today"

The irony is that I'm broke. Or maybe it's just regrettable circumstances? I've been confused ever since Alanis Morissette released that song... So it would be funny if, in fact, I had won some ridiculous amount of money from a sweepstakes or lottery I had never even entered.

There must be people out there that are using email for the very first time today. Or have maybe been in a coma for the last 4 years. Or are just so unbelievably retarded that they fall for this, because the spammers keep sending it. It must work for someone, or you would think that they would move on to a new scam. Or perhaps, just maybe, all of the spammer-scammers in the world are just that retarded, and it doesn't work, but they keep sending it anyway.

My First Blog Post (Second to follow soon)

2009-05-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

Technically, this isn't my "first" blog post. I did write some posts on MySpace, but mostly as a curiosity. I remember writing about my astonishment over how much one can spend on a new bed - up to $5000 as of 2006, no kidding. I also blogged about how blogging is kind of dumb. But I've changed my mind. Some blogging is dumb, but some is hilarious, and oh-so-highly entertaining, and sometimes even informative and interesting.

Ruhiyyih has been asking me to blog for months, and I even did a guest post on her blog. I also considered doing one with my friend Ryan that never panned out. But today, it just sort of hit me with the thought that will be the post soon to follow this one.

So for to anyone who happens to come by, link to me, comment, or find my ramblings amusing, Thank You for not finding my blog to be dumb.