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Digital Life

Recently I was sitting in church listening attentively to a sermon my pastor was giving on prayer when I was struck with the idea for this post. As much as you all want to believe that my attention span went (pun intended) to Hell, you're wrong! I actually focused more on what my pastor was saying during the sermon because he was adding substance to my idea. I probably looked like a complete heathen during services when this happens. I can't help it though when God hits me with an idea, He really hits me with it. It takes all my attention off what else is going on until I write it down, so for all of you who think I'm facebooking, tweeting or texting during service you're wrong (most of the time).

I have been thinking about technology, and how much our lives are run by the different devices and contraptions that we own. My newest idea is called the iPray (Apple Inc. probably has this under development already) and it's a device that you can carry around and have it pray for you. Using this device will completely change Christianity by ultimately completely changing our relationships with God.


The Pitch:

Do you find yourself too busy to pray? Does communicating with God seem like a burden? Is it hard to find the right words to say when you pray? Do you feel awkward when asked to pray at big events or even small evening dinners? Then the iPray is for you!

The iPray takes all the guess work out of prayer. All you have to do is set it and forget it (oh... sorry that's a RONCO slogan). There are hundreds of settings for every occasion: Easter, Christmas, Dinners, Weddings, Youth, Old People, Healing, Strength, Patients. You can even record a prayer that you've said to use again! Don't forget to set your prayer alarms to pray for your day when you get up in the morning and thank God for your day before you go to sleep. If you don't have the time to talk to God don't worry, you don't need time you just need an iPray!


The Reality:

How much do we let technology take the place of us actually doing work? What devices do we place in our lives that we don't need? How much technology is too much technology? Can technology actually take the place of God? Has technology become an idol in our present society? Whoa, Whoa, WHOA!!! Slow down, we need to look at all these questions as being the same one: What should we let technology help us with? The more technology that is injected into our society is supposed to be helpful to us... but what has happened to personal relationships? I'll be the first to admit that I use Facebook, Twitter and Blogger (both on my computer and my phone), and have noticed that I have friends, followers and readers that I might not even consider acquaintances. Our social network is way too big, we (as a society) now feel uninformed if we don't know what someone we haven't talked to in 10 years is thinking. Not only is our social network distracting us from the reality of the world we live in, but music is another huge problem because it is so accessible. I can't tell you how many times I have seen kids walking through schools, malls, stores, homes with a pair of headphones hanging from their ears. I honestly feel the choice to constantly have music in your ears is borderline disrespectful. I know that my parents would have definitely smacked those headphones outta my ears if I would've tried to walk around (anywhere) with music in my ears. The answer I hear most often to this behavior is that society has changed and kids have changed with it. Is that answer good enough? Should we just accept that this is the way our society is thus our kids will be this way? Sounds bad when you hear it put that way, doesn't it?


Sorry I have to cut this post short, my pizza just got here. I just set my iPray for reverent dinner prayer, listen in:


Thank you Lord for this bountiful feast of pizza. Please bless and keep Little Caesars pizza. Send your Holy Spirit before us at we eat to have an open heart to your voice. Thank you for this abundance of pepperoni and cheese. As we break this bread, bless this time with your presence, be in our midst. Amen.


Wow! I've never sounded so good!

AJ Teaters | 1 comment

Innocent Bystander

As much as I wanted to get away from youth related problems and youth related topics I just can't stop talking about youth. Obviously the story hasn't changed from the beginning of parenthood: the younger generation is always rebelling against the older generation that doesn't understand why the younger generation is so confusing and why both generations don't seem to do anything right. Plus you go where the stories are, and youth are full of more drama than Shakespeare's pantaloons! Two stories stick out in my mind, both happened within a week of each other and when both happened I was lucky enough to just be a bystander. This is what I learned:

1. Youth should care about sports more than our environment.

I was driving somewhere... and it was night time (I'm not trying to keep anything a secret, I honestly can't remember where I was headed, I feel so old when that happens). Anyways, I was driving somewhere at night and I happened to notice two, let's call them adolescent type people, walking down the sidewalk. One was a girl and the other was a boy and the boy was drinking something in a very large cup, probably a 'Big Gulp'. Just so you know this is all exposition, I need to set the stage. So, youth boy and girl walking down the street at night (sometime around 8-ish on a weekday...er... weeknight) and the boy was drinking something out of a large cup, hopefully you're keeping up. What grabs my attention as I'm driving down the road is that I notice that there are two “kids” out walking down the street (on the sidewalk) during a weeknight.


Side Note: It always interests me to see youth aged kids walking around town at night, for some reason I would have never thought to ask my parents if I could walk a mile down the road to go get a 'Big Gulp' around 8 o'clock at night. Actually to tell you the truth it always interests me to see anyone walking around town at night. When my wife and I took a short anniversary vacation up toward the White Mountains (Show Low/Pinetop area in AZ) this summer, which ironically enough is the “rainy season”, we saw multiple people walking around town at night ,and not just at night but when it was also raining. Neither my wife or I could explain this phenomenon.


So, again: youth boy and girl walking down the street at night (sometime around 8-ish on a weekday...er... weeknight) and the boy was drinking something out of a large cup, however at the same time I am driving by the boy finishes his drink. What happens next is the most disturbing thing that I could have imagined happening. The boy takes his last sip of the drink and proceeds to drop it out of his hand and tries to punt it like a soccer ball. If you didn't catch the keyword in that last sentence I'll repeat it for you, “TRIES.” He missed the cup, not missed kicking it well so he didn't get good height or distance, but completely missed the cup altogether! This is wear I get angry, I couldn't believe what I was seeing. This kid tried to punt an empty drink cup, a piece of trash, on the sidewalk and he totally missed it. After he missed it he just kept walking, just leaving that piece of trash sitting there on the sidewalk! I was completely and totally appalled! I had half a mind to stop driving, turn around and grab that kid by the neck and show him how to kick properly! How could a teenage boy NOT be able to kick a cup?! At that moment I knew there was a bigger problem with youth than I had thought.


2. Youth should not give other youth advice.

I was standing in line at a grocery store (this time I am keeping it a secret, I don't want to discourage anyone from shopping at a particular location) and I heard this exact conversation between the workers.


Worker: Male, 18-21 years old

James: Male, 16-18 years old

Brian: Male, 24-26 years old


Worker: Hey James, you should close tonight.


James: Nah I can't, I have homework to finish so I don't fail.


Brian: It's scary that she knows my name (talking about a customer behind me that asked him question by name).


Note: Brian is wearing a name tag.


Worker: James you should close tonight and then come hang out at my place. Last night I bought this tiny BBQ grill and filled it with charcoal; we made s'mores and I cooked sausage (you have to imagine him saying this like it Benjamin Franklin explaining electricity for the first time, he was that excited about the s'mores and sausage).


James: That sounds like fun, but I need to do homework so I don't fail.


Brian: What?! It's Friday, you have all weekend to do homework. I didn't even do homework on the weekends, I just waited until it was due and did it in class... if I even did it.


Two thoughts shot through my mind almost simultaneously: First all I could think was, “So you're not surprised that you work at a grocery store then?” The second thought was, “RUN JAMES, PLUG YOU EARS AND RUN!!!” But then my conscience got the better of me, so I kept my mouth shut and just smirked as I walked out.


I know what you're thinking and you're right, two of those workers were not technically youth age, and I would have to agree. Physically they wouldn't be considered youth anymore, but if you read the conversation, and I didn't preface their ages, what age would you have guessed them to be. My guess would have been youth aged.


This is all I'll leave you with: The constant question in my head for youth isn't, “What are you thinking?!” Actually the #1 question in my head that I always want to ask you is, “Who is your role model? Who do you model your life around and why?” I never ask it and the reason is that I am terrified of the answers I would get.

AJ Teaters | No comment yet

The Answer to God's Entitlement

After much deliberation... well actually it had to do more with not being finished by my deadline and having more to write... so like I was saying, after much deliberation and a poke at my readers attention span, I give you the reasons why it's okay for God to have entitlement issues.

1. He's God and we're not:

Plan and simple, God created everything in the universe. He created the heavens, the earth, light, darkness, the air we breath, animals, water, steak, pizza, crab cakes, lucky charms, buffalo wings, ice cream, cheesecake (sorry, I was kinda hungry when I wrote this post) and us (humanity, mankind, people, etc.). He deserves everything that is coming to Him regardless if you think he has done anything for you or not (just an FYI, He has).


2. Just because entitlement looks bad on us doesn't mean it looks bad on Him:

Can anything look bad on God? God could be rockin' a mullet and it would still be Almightily Awesome. Wow, that sounds like good lyrics for a country song. Entitlement is the ugly step sister of gratuity, so what we see as God's entitlement is actually sinless entitlement, gratuity. He is thankful for us, regardless of our sin and shortcomings. He is thankful just like any parents are thankful of their children. That is what God bestowed upon mankind, He didn't impress us with entitlement but with gratuity.


3. Entitlement, just like Boy Bands, shouldn't exist:

The first being to show entitlement was cast down into the fire and pits of Hell. The moment that Satan felt that He deserved more than God had given him, he mounted a war against Him. Satan lost, sin lost but we still live and live with sin. Light and dark, entitlement and gratitude. Obviously entitlement is not of God, it was not created by God, so God could not bestow it upon us. Entitlement is an attitude of ungratefulness an attitude of sin and sin can not come from God. Thus, a lot like American Idol, entitlement should not be among us.


So in the end what I've learned about entitlement, God and mankind is that we can not confuse what we feel in our lives or how the world has molded us from what God is trying to do in our lives. As easy as it would be to say, “I'm entitled because God is entitled! You can't tell me not to be, because God made me this way!” We have to look at our lives and align them with the Truth.

AJ Teaters | No comment yet

God and His Issues

As my last post pointed out one of the biggest problems with youth today is entitlement. Even though this post's topic is also entitlement, I am posing a different question. Does God have entitlement issues, because if He does, doesn't that make us an entitled people?

Roll with me: If God is in His nature an entitled being and we bear His image, than aren't we made in an image of entitlement. So youth having an attitude of entitlement is completely within their (pun intended) God given right. Nothing else on Earth bears God's image and by bearing God's image we (humans) differ from all other creatures because of the self-reflective, rational nature of our thought processes - our capacity for abstract, symbolic, concrete thought processes and decision-making.

Roll a little further with me: Who has the worst entitlement issues? God does. He wants us to give Him our lives before He gives us His Kingdom. He created us, so He wants what he deserves before He gives anything to us. If I have my theology right, we are not truly His until we are baptized in His name, thus dying and being reborn (correct me if I'm wrong). If I have this right, God wants us to die before He gives us anything? Sounds entitled to me. Just because God gave me life, He gets to take it away?

So if I have this right: God has entitlement issues, we are made in His image (we bear His image), we have entitlement issues too. It's simple math really x+y=z, if x=God and y=Mankind then z=Godkind... wait no, if x=God and His entitlement issues and y=Mankind then z=... Wait how can x equal two different things. Maybe it should be ab+c=d, because then ab=God times his entitlement issues and c=Mankind then d= the angle contained between sides of lengths a and b and opposite the side of length c. Hold on that was the law of cosine... So maybe the math isn't so simple.

What I've learned through writing this post is that this is a very confusing topic to write about. Why? Because I do think that God is the number one person... being... entity... whatever you want to label Him, that deserves everything from us without having done anything for us, but if that's entitlement (which it is) and we are made in the image of God, then how is it not okay for us to have the same issue?

Sorry, but this is turning out to be a 3 part series... I'm trying to keep the posts more toward the shorter end, so as to keep my readers attention (yes, I do think you have the attention span of a goldfish). Come back next week when I list the reasons why it's okay for God to be entitled.
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