Theology Evolved?

Today was a sad day in the life of Zach. It was one of those punch you in the gut maddening turned sad by then end of the day sort of things. I had a pretty good morning conisdering the 2hours of sleep I got last night, went to work, and worked a fine shift of 5 hours at the bux. After this I went home and played a couple hours of World of Warcraft since we had no internet yesterday I had to fill that addiction. Following that I did some laundry, bar-b-qued, and talked with friends, so day still going good. Even after this I went to the church and picked up my paycheck and thanked God I had budgeted because now I had a couple hundred extra dollars to survive on till next paycheck. I spent two hours setting up a nearly perfectly level 14 piece stage for the big July 2nd Service at Neighborhood Church and decided it was time for some dinner. Day still going good, sweaty, tired, and hungry... but good. So I got my wicked awesome sandwich and my iced tea and pulled out of the shopping center, got 150 feet down the road, and the saturn decided it was done for the day promptly dieing at he red light I was sitting at and not wanting to get going again.

So I pushed it around the corner, into a bus rest area, then when traffic cleared up into the shopping center gas station parking lot, past that into the parking lot ofr a lcoal video game store and called my friend SuperMatt to come to my aid. ANd like the Superman fan that he is he promptly came to my aid. We got almost to his apartment after my car magically started while we were trying to figure out what to do, when it died again. After nearly hitting a car with a runaway dead saturn I got it into a parking lot and it is now sitting there.

Matt remembers that I bought a battery a couple years ago and it might have run its course so we decide to take it to the local auto parts dealership where they test it, tell me its fine, and tell me that it could be a million things and talk to a mechanic about it. On 4th of July Weekend. So right now I am really scared because i have somemoney but not nearly enough to repair a car, I have Matt's car till tomorrow morning so I can get to work, but after that, life is unsure. So I am in a pretty stressed out place. I have confidence that God will come through, but man, life is tough waiting to see how things pan out. Please be praying for me.

So I was talking with an old coworker today, and I was telling him about how I have decided I am tired of second guessing myself and have decided to attempt to live life going big, because as they say... big risks lead to big rewards. And so after this conversation covering everything from work to relationships I took my iced venti 0 shot americano and hit the road.
As I was behind the california law enforcement I was pondering about how Jesus went big in various ways. I mean first of all Jesus was about as hardcore as hardcore gets. He not only violated about every social mandate possible, but he did it with flair, charisma, style, and he never looked back. Granted when you are God, it is pretty easy to be confident about your decisions.
I mean first of all Jesus did something then that many people still have a hard time doing today. He spoke out against his peers! It is acknowledged that one's superiors may be spoken out against, and there are consequences for such actions, and that one can teach those below them correcting them, and they may not appreciate it. But to speak out against your peers is often very dangerous. Why? Because they progress alongside you and the political and social ramifications are huge, to speak out against my peers scare even me... a little bit.
So Jesus, cruising around on his camel, talking about how he is the Son of God, even God himself, and how later he is gonna die and rise again contrary to the current Enquirer based Messiah prophecies was HUGE! He was going against the very grain of the social order!
So I have decided that once again I wanna be like Jesus. With flair, charisma, and never looking back I want to proclaim what is right and just, do what I feel is best, and suffer the consequences like a man. I mean hey if He accepted cricifixion a painful and embarrassing way to be executed, I think I can deal with rejection of employment or relationships. WOOT!

So I was pondering my supposed arrogance today. I have been called or insinuated as arrogant more than a few times in my life. Usually in the workplace. Maybe its just my natural bias to defend myself, or maybe I am onto something, but I realized I am not arrogant, well at least not all the time. I think being very confident and very arrogant are two very different things.
I view arrogance as a negative thing first of all. Nobody ever really says, wow, his arrogance is one of his greatest qualities. A definition of arrogance says “Having an exaggerated view of one’s own importance or abilities.” This could be, and I usually believe a reaction out of insecurity. In order to instill a perception of importance, the insecure person will create it regardless of its existence.
Then there is confidence. I view this as a positive thing because well it is an admirable quality to be confident. A dictionary definition of confidence is “A feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s abilities or qualities.” Notice that this is simply being knowledgeable of one’s place in their surroundings. And even more, this confidence is usually instilled by others through affirmation.
For example: I have great confidence that I am a natural leader. Why? Because I have always been put in leadership positions or ended up there within a group. Leaders above me have put me there against my will to prove a point to me, and I have accepted that my actions and even emotions effect the whole of a group. If I am in a good mood, others around me tend to gain a good mood, if I side against something, others in my group tend to side against it as well. I encourage them to disagree with me keep in mind, and I don’t typically speak about this.
There is potential hazard in this confidence when an arrogant person is put in charge of a confident person. This has happened when I was in a group of mostly confident people, and we had an arrogant leader. The outcome proved to be disastrous, leaving a lasting resentment between both parties.
This leads to the issue of morale in a group. If there is an arrogant member of a group, in general, moods will tend to sour, and eventually the situation implodes on itself. A confident member, who is usually aware of their confidence, can alter a groups morale without even thinking about it. Both arrogant people and confident people are catalysts. Or “changers” of a groups morale. And the difference is this, an arrogant person tends to not realize that they are arrogant, they are trying to make themselves more than anything feel confident, and tend to overdo it and are more focused on maintaining that then the emotions of their surroundings. A confident person tends to be aware of their place and also their effect on their surroundings and emotions, so there is more responsibility in being confident because they know they are a catalyst for morale.
The biggest reason for me being aware of my confidence is, I cannot get rid of it, and hence, I have to watch my every action, word, and emotion projection so as to not dangerously affect the emotions of those around me.

Thanks for reading.

Zach

When I was in my teenage years I was something of a loose cannon in everything I did, good or bad. And sometimes I did things bad unknowingly and I could forgive myself of those things rather easily. However somethings that I did were bad, and I knew that these were sins, my personal choice to go against that which God has asked of me.
There were times when my choice to sin, and sin heavily, that when it was time for me to be alone with God I was sick, no real reason to be sick, but rather the sickness brought on by stress and anxiety. I would at the time tell myself that I deserved to feel sic over what I did and this was God convicting me of my sin.
How much more legalist could I get. Several years later I would really begin to comprehend the message of grace and love.
Now I begin to wonder of those moments where that sickness of stress and anxiety hit if perhaps, those are the moments when the Spirit, in triune nature with God and Christ, is grieving within, and I in turn am joining in with that grief. Not because I did something bad, but because I knowledgeably disobeyed my father knowing that there was no good thing ahead for me.
So my thought is this, when we sin, choosing to go against God’s commands, do we later join in the grief over those sins so that we better comprehend the grief that God undergoes when we sin. Not as a bad thing or punishment in this grief, but rather one of the few moments when God really meets with us to share with us.
Just a thought... Something to chew on.

So I was in a creative writing class my sophomore or junior year of high school and I decided to mimic my favorite genre of fantasy and wrote a very short story for our literary magazine and so hence this fantasy story.

Hunters and Travelers -- Zach Tanksley

The lake, calm and serene, cast an eerie listlessness on the group as they trudged east. The light of the sun danced along the ripples cast by pieces of flying grass and dirt. The rolling plains and hills were endless in their unoriginality. This was obviously the efforts of a procrastinating god who needed filler. Clouds floated across the screen, the only purity in this bloody hunting ground. The sky was a tormented crimson as it reflected the blood of the grounds beneath. Probably the work of some great moon mage so long ago to hide the mangled bodies of warriors who died in great battles.
Their leather armor cracked from months out there hunting. The boots were worn thin, and the once brilliant sheathes were now nearing black their hilts tainted by blood and sweat and grime. Determined looks looked for the next Glutinous Lipopod, those odd jelly like humans who had no real form but rather oozed about eating their victims. Or perhaps a water sprite, whose enticing movements had been brought to an abrupt end by scimitars, broadswords, and maces.
They were an odd group comprised of HUmans, Elves, Dwarves, Gor’Togs, Prydaens and even few Kaldarans. The human hunters of average height and build used their broadswords well not having the greatest of any one attribute but rather more well rounded. The Elves ever agile carried lighter blades such as sword swords and stilettos that could be used quickly and with minimum strength. Th Dwarves, short and compact, wielded mighty axes that cut down their opponents like the trees they removed from their homes. The Gor’Togs who mighty in strength and stamina were not the brightest on earth wielded their mauls and war mattocks, splattering or crushing their opponents. The Kaldarans, great in ego and brutality, were more of a glorified human though more or less on average disliked, wielded nearly any weapon they could get their hands on. And finally the Prydaens whose furry bodies encompassed philosophical minds and survival built reflexes. These people were a small hunting party, but a well equipped one with strengths of many races. Their was a common link among this group though. They all detested the use of of magi and instead leaned on their own abilities as warriors to help them survive the murderous world of Elanthia.
The landscape around them rarely shifted keeping a seemingly endless plain of grasses, reeds, and the occasional hunter and his kills surrounding him. Soon the group separated into pairs. A Gor’tog went with an Elf, a Kaldaran went with a prydawn, and Humans with a Dwarf.
They took their separate paths, and the first to come upon a spot worthy of hunting was the Kaldaran and Prydaen. The Kaldaran, known as Raleeth smiled at his partner, Alaynya, giving her a savage grin. He unsheathed his heavy-bladed scimitar and rested on his heels waiting for opponent. Alaynya watched the lands and gave a short hiss as a rustling in the grasses came into view. She drew her razor-edged cutlass and the both moved to a hiding spot. A group of two wood trolls and three field goblins came into view and the two warriors descended upon the goblins cutting them down with easy strokes. The goblins moaned and shuddered before ceasing all movement. Turning to face their new opponents each took a defensive stance, both knew the trolls were more difficult opponents than the goblins. The trolls hissed menacingly at Raleeth and Alaynya as they beat their war clubs against their bucklers chanting loudly.
Raleeth drew his silver-edged broadsword tossing each weapon into the opposite hand and flung himself at the troll as Alaynya parried a club with her cutlass and the battled waged on...

Not a blog about the Darlene Zschech song that has infiltrated and become a mainstay of the pop worship circle. But rather a wondering of the word “Shout” used so often in the Psalter.
Looking specifically in Psalm 66 we find the first line of the poetry saying:

NIV - SHOUT with joy to God, all the earth!
NASB - Shout joyfully to God, all the earth;
KJV - Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands:

The word for “shout” or “making a joyful noise” in Hebrew is: Rua’ - 1.Raise a shout.

Various definitions from the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon lend to both cries of distress or those of extreme joy. My thoughts on this are when we come to the Lord to give praise it is coming to a point where we cannot hold back. Either from the flow of emotions or because to give any less would defeat the purpose. When we shout whether in happiness of the US scoring a goal in the World Cup, or in the sudden dramatic loss of a loved one, there is a point where we forget our barriers and inhibitions and allow ourselves to be in the moment.

So should we not when we come before God, put everything else aside, and simply feel free to be in the moment? Easier said then done, but worth the effort any day of the week.

Wheels turning, progressing towards home
Thoughts jumbling, eyes straight ahead
A single goal, A lifelong pursuit
To live life fully, to life passionately

The downfall of the narrow road
The hideous doubts plague the mind
Little respite of self, Little life in love
To love life fully, to love passionately

I am struggling, Reaching out
Have I grasped too hard, broken the reed...

Hi, my name is Zach and I thought I deserved to let you know why I ponder all things theological and wonderful.
I have a zeal for understanding God in whatever form I can atke it, I doubt... no I know that I will never fully comprehend God but that does not deter me from pursuing him wholeheartedly. He is my God and I seek to be able to know him the best that I can.
I am a graduate of Simpson University with a degree in Bible & Theology -- Old Testament Concentration and I hope that my studies there will only be a benefit here.
I believe that God is here and present in our daily lives through many forms and I hope to be able to expound more on that later. Thank you and please enjoy future Blogs.