[This introduction was originally written in June 2004. While somewhat dated, it still captures my overall philosophy. If you want to learn more about me, there’s a brief biography available on my other blog, and a more recent “about the author” blurb as part of my new book.]
1. Know your Objective
- What you Want
- What you Fear
- What Price you are willing to pay
What do I want: To know God. To be happy. To love people. (not necessarily in that order)
What do I fear: Losing sight of one of these in pursuit of the others.
What price will I pay: Getting up early each morning to blog my experiences.
This blog is an outgrowth of about nine months of counseling I underwent with Pastor John Isaacs of Kingsway Community Church. During that time, I dealt with numerous issues from my past, and in particular was reconciled to myself, God, and my parents. On Friday, June 4th, we felt I had reached a certain amount of closure on those issues — I had ‘graduated’ if you will. However, even after working through all of that, I still realized I had a lot of problems, and many things to learn. The difference now is that I have a handle on what the problems are (vs. them merely lurking in my subconscious), as well as some mechanisms and relationships to help me deal with them in a constructive way.
My biggest concerns going forward are a) pursuing greater intimacy with God, and b) re-focusing outward without losing sight of my family and my own happiness and health. To that end, I will keep meeting with John, though now as a mentor rather than a counselor. Also, I believe I need to cultivate a transformational mindset in order to be able to holistically apply — and maintain — everything I’ve been learning. Transformationalism is a relatively new school of Christianity that seeks to integrate theological, psychological, and sociological insights and activity into a unified view of what it means to be a fulfilled human being. Since it is so new, this blog is as much about creating transformationalism as practicing it.
To that end, I have decided to blog my way through the entire Bible in chronological order, in an attempt to look at it from a transformational perspective. I realize that it is somewhat dangerous to approach the bible with a preconceived agenda. However, my hypothesis is that transformation is God’s agenda, and thus worth pursuing. I’ve read through the Bible several times before, and frankly there’s always some implicit mindset we use when reading scripture — it seems worthwhile to do it at least once with an explicit mindset. Of course it may not work — perhaps I’ll find that Scripture and the Holy Spirit want to teach me something else, thought its hard to imagine what. However, it things go well, hopefully 5 or 6 years from now I’ll have developed a comprehensive transformational theology — and a transformed life, family, and a community.
Radically Happy 