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Dear Tumblr.

Yes, I just called you inane. You’ll live.

If you are spoiling the Hunger Games for me, I’m unsubscribing.

In response to the “Really” conversation.

As I was trying to convey, I am sorry. I was not trying to make assumptions about what you value, or to say that you don’t want to bring others to Christ. I think that there were some misunderstandings there. I am sorry, and the point of the post was to bring up the point the everyone should try not to make assumptions, or be hurtful.

I ask questions simply to know more, or share perspective. I’m sorry it came off as mean or hurtful or critical. Really that’s not what I wanted, or what my purpose was.. So again, I apologize and I will stop. It’s not productive between us. You don’t have to forgive me, but I’m sorry.

-_- Really?

silencestepford:

oldwordsnew replied to your post: I hate getting into conversations about the Bible with people who haven’t read the Bible. It’s such a colossal waste of time to listen to them spout a bunch of second hand nonsense like its theologically significant.

Is witnessing ever a waste of time?

Theological arguments are 99% of the time completely useless. Did he have a beard? Did he not have a beard? Were the nails in the hands or the wrists? Who cares? I’m actually surprised I have to explain that a theological argument if different than sharing the love of God with someone. 

I don’t think any of those questions were theological. Theology is the study of the nature of God and religious belief, not (necessarily) guesswork on Christilogical historical details that, as you rightly have said, really have no bearing on anything important.

However, I think that real theological discussion can be really important as theology is integral to witnessing. An extremely basic, but vital theology (your basic John 3:16) is necessary to accept Jesus. So yeah, I think that getting into conversations about the Bible and theology with people who don’t understand it, even if they “spout secondhand nonsense” is extremely important, even if it gets into unimportant details. If we can’t respect the questions or opinions of those curious or even hostile towards Christianity, than how on earth are we ever going to expect the to respect our answers? That is a way that we can show the love of God in witnessing to someone.

I find conversations with people who have not read the bible to be difficult and frustrating as well. But I don’t hate it, and I don’t find it a waste of time, because we are called to spread the good news, not to avoid that.

Alexandra, I’m sorry for offending you with my question, if that is what has happened. My question came our of confusing and concern, as I it seemed that you were devaluing that which I have just demonstrated my perceived value, and I didn’t want to misunderstand. However, your response seems rash, hasty, unloving to me, as well as fairly disconnected from both your original post and my question. Is this what you were going for? Do you want me to feel stupid for asking for clarification and trying to understand your position better?

Really is right. I’m surprised as well. Your words don’t feel in the spirit of “sharing the love of God with someone.” I apologize for the public nature of the rebuke, but I feel like it needs to be said.

My perpective as of late:

I’ve have seen too many Christians jumping down people’s throats while talking about spreading God’s love in general, to many different degrees. People are being driven away from Christianity in droves when our actions contrast our words. We need to be better about keeping each other accountable to showing God’s love to others, Christian or non-Christian, even if accountability is falling out of vogue. I’ve endured the sorrow of many Christian peers becoming disenfranchised with our own community because we simply become hypocritical without accountability. Now that I’ve hit a large and long enough wave of it from many people, I’m starting to understand this from a first-person perspective as well.

That said, I do not believe that this is the desire of the hearts of those who are inhabited by the Holy Spirit, but sometimes we act without thinking, and we lack discipline of the tongue (and fingers, on the internet). We all do this, me included. Therefore I don’t believe that overall, what you responded to me was what you really intended or meant. Correct me if I’m wrong.

Again, I apologize for this big reaction, but hopefully you, and my readers understand where I’m coming from. This is not just a challenge I am posing for you, but for myself and all of my Christian peers.

Also, (and I am not saying this to try and be high and mighty or demeaning, but rather because I’d like to live what I am saying,) I forgive you for the way your response made me feel. I know that this discussion will help me think before I speak, because I know I have been guilty of speaking in haste, speaking with judgement and anger, speaking without wisdom, and even just speaking without common sense, and it has hurt people around me, even when speaking of God’s love. I do not enjoy realizing how ironic and hypocritical I can be, but I can learn from it. Since we are all guilty of it, it is my hope that we can all try and find time to recognize this and repent, forgive ourselves, and forgive others. I believe that thatis part of our witness of God’s love to others.

Blessings, oldwordnew. 

Are You Well-Read?

barefootcomposer:

Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety.

Italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read only an excerpt.

(I’m gonna strike thru the ones I’m jus never gonna read.)

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird– Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman Note: I may change my mind here.
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier - I’ve head it’s terrific!
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger - *adds to list*
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald - Stupid…
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams - Awesome
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows– Kenneth Grahame - I think?
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis - Favorite
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis - Because once wasn’t enough?
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini - In my stack
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown - On the list…
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery - In progress…
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding - THEY KILLED PIGGY!
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert - REALLY want to read this.
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen Can you tell I’m not a fan?
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men– John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov - hrrrmmmm…..
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold - *adds to list*
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince– Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo - Someday….

There are a lot of great books missing from this list! As for the list it self, some overrated, some underrated. Am I well read? Fairly. Not necessarily off of this list, but I have plenty of books under my belt, and many more coming.