Hubris: Anime and Reality

Back in highschool I remember one time I was doing an audition for a One Act play festival. The audition was a short scene, but also had a form to complete. On it the last question was something along the lines of "If you could be one of the Seven Deadly Sins, which would you be?"

First, the 'Seven Deadly Sins'. What are they? Well, I always think of an anime I watched named 'Full Metal Alchemist'. In it there were a couple brothers who had gone against the rules of alchemy and tried to bring their mom back to life. They created a monster writhing on the ground while also losing a couple limbs, and the other brother their entire body. They were on a quest to get back what was lost. But the 'bad guys' were these guys with crazy powers. Each had been made from a situation like the two brothers had done and they were named after the seven deadly sins. So that's how I always remember them.

Gluttony. Greed. Sloth. Lust. Pride. Wrath. Envy.

Now the anime ended up changing the ending as it caught up to the manga, so there's also a second series that followed the manga to the end 'FMA - Brotherhood', but I'm not talking about anime now. lol

So, point: What was my answer?

I wrote something like 'I would want to be pride because it would be the easiest to hide.'

Little did I realize how prideful that answer was. I don't want others to see me as sinful. I want to be regarded of as positively as possible. To be respected. To be better than others. The actions of lust, gluttony, and wrath are obvious. The lack of action of sloth is also quite evident. The actions caused by greed and envy are a little less obvious, but still not hard to see. But pride. You can hide that. You can appear normal.

In the show (both series) the enemy known as Pride acts as if he was a normal person until the brothers learn too much and he needs to take the fight into his own hands.

But that hubris led to their demise and the brothers win.

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This is where I am now: when I am struggling with sin (whether lust, sloth, or anything) I take it into my own hands. I think "what can I do about it?" instead of just turning back to our Father in heaven and asking Him "how can I just stop and trust You more?"

I've been trying to serve more on worship team, spend more time with the guys I had been discipling, and just trying to make myself better.


I think largely this is pride.


I've heard multiple times that pride was the source of all sin [whoa now that I think of it, FMA-B storyline!!]. It started with Lucifer wanting to be God and so he rebelled. Next he tempted Adam and Eve saying "when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil". From that first rebellion against God's will and perfect plans the knowledge of evil and rebellion against God has been passed down through all generations and peoples.

But you know it was the fall, we had fallen from the position we held before perfectly made for a perfect place and in perfect relationship with God and now were left to crave and seek after more, seek what only God could provide.

Ultimately nothing of this world can fulfill that craving. He search for the things that feed it and seek more of it, but never are satisfied. In desperation, our last effort is to try to get back to God; religion. The things we can do to make ourselves better, to bridge that gap between us and Him. Maybe if I pray more? Maybe if I read His words more? Maybe if I give to the poor more, sing and play instruments for Him, teach and learn, got to church; do what a Christian does, that gap will narrow?
 But that's absolutely not how this works.

"We are all like one who is unclean, all our so-called righteous acts are like a menstrual rag in your sight. We all wither like a leaf; our sins carry us away like the wind." (NET)

Our works; the acts we do to make us feel better than others. Those works are no better than filth. And if we remain in our sin we shall be carried away like the wind to wither and die.

Only by the grace of God, the completely undeserved forgiveness offered by Jesus' death on the cross. God brought this to be, sent His Son to the cross for our sake; because that gap could never be overcome by our means. He overcame it for us and offers forgiveness. Offers life. Offers Himself.

Instead of doing more for the purpose of earning my salvation, I need to do less, trusting in what He has done and reciprocate His love to others; continuing to ask for Him to work in me eachday.

Just a thought.

Ttyl.

D.Fa

PS. This song kinda sums this all up.

Beg by Shane and Shane.
http://youtu.be/bxtHJ7nkF70

A Week of Trials

Hey guys!

Sorry about being gone so long. It's been a tough week.

Monday I packed and moved out of my house and back to my parents'. So I've been all over the place.

I had an exam Thursday morning that I had not really been in the class for and had literally a thousand lecture slides to review... So, ya... I crammed all day Wednesday at school and crashed in my house (now without blankets) and went straight to school after waking up. I decided to read the Bible in the Architecture building instead of really cramming anymore in. Wait, this story is from the Saturday morning before. lol. Ahh.... it's been a hard week. I had really been struggling and that day I went there and started to reflect on the Spirit-filled life and really surrendering to God's will and trusting in Him. A friend of a friend walked in after apparently watching Pride and Prejudice all night. >.> Found out she is Christian. lol. Oddly encouraging conversation where she was just like "that's awesome!" lol...

Anyways, Thursday I went straight to school at like 6:30 and met up with my friend I had been studying with all night before. He had not slept... >.> So I finished cramming while he attempted to take naps. We went to the exam and it wasn't that bad. Like our prof makes review questions for each chapter and basically copy and pastes the exact same questions to the exams, so I am very very very grateful for that.

Me and my buddy ended an hour early. We had a lab report due the next day at noon... He had forgotten something at his house and I had a car that day so we drove over to his house and ended up eating ramen for lunch. xP. His house is really cool. lol. He slept on the way and on the way back. The whole time I had been counting down how long we had until our report was due, cause we kinda only had 24 hours from when our exam was supposed to end and the report was likely going to be about 20 pages and we had really not started... >.<

So we got to work. Divided tasks. Found a room to crash for the next 20 hours. Got out the laptops and got to it.

Excruciatingly long day.

Energy drink.

I think it was my first official 'all-nighter' without any sleep working the whole time. My buddy took 'naps' like every hour or so. He was just dead from a week f cramming and not sleeping.

40 pages. Seriously. And what's annoying is that our assumptions were likely not valid... lol. So the majority of the was us explaining why our results are reasonable, but not accurate. lol...

We got it in just in time and I had to do my next thing.

I had been put in charge of leading worship for a YA event for Sunday and needed to select songs to sing billingually with EC. We were going to have a practice at 7pm, so I needed to choose and practice asap. Borrowed my brother's guitar and got it done. EC suggested doing different songs. So I switched it up and needed more practice, but it was good.

Since we had practiced at church I stayed for YF. Pretty cool. lol. I miss YF. lol. So few kids, but they are all legit.

I'll tell you more later.

D.Fa

(slept only like 7 hours Friday night... lol)

Suits and Masks

Yo, sorry if this turns into a bit of a rant. haha. You've been warned.

So, I've been wearing dress shirts a lot lately. I don't especially have a problem with this if it's just an untucked dress shirt and jeans. I actually really like the semi-casual look with like a nice dress shirt not tucked in, nice pants and converse sneakers. But what I do have a problem with is like the whole suit and dress, semi-formal idea.The whole thing to me is just so fake.

One of my friends was joking that every time our other friend is wearing a suit he is looking for a woman.

Big problem: when people are wearing a dress and makeup or a suit they are putting on a show, sowing off the best side of themselves. If you get to know only the best of someone and never see the other parts you are going to be so far off when you actually get to a relationship.

You need to get to know the person for who they are, all their strengths and flaws. Not so you can accept all the flaws the way they are forever, but more like have an understanding of where they are weak so you can help each other grow.

But when people put on the suits, when people put on the makeup, when people put up this image of who they are pretending to be, I just can't stand it.

And the whole making connections for the sake of using people...

How in politics when something slips through the cracks of your perfect suit and mask and people hold it against your image for the next few months or years...

Grace.

We aren't perfect. We have problems. We have issues.

Covering them up doesn't help a thing. It's like you killed someone and you bury them. They are still going to be there, but now they are rotting. You can bury it really deep, but it's still there. Justice will come to pass.

Gotta be upfront and just confess and ask for forgiveness and help to change.

*sigh*

Being real is really hard though.

D.Fa

Can We Escape?

Ok. So it's been a long time since I blogged last, like over a week.


Kinda the same reasons as always.

Anyways, good times and bad, but ya.



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Here's a game: http://www.mofunzone.com/online_games/and_everything_started_to_fall.shtml

It's called "And Everything Started to Fall".

Play it. It takes like 5 minutes. Really. Play it.
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We had our P2C year end banquet last Friday which was a lot of fun, got to lead worship on Sunday, had sushi with the servant team on Monday, stayed up all night working on a paper, slept Tuesday, had classes and review tutorials, visited my mom in the hospital.

Stuff happens.

I've got an exam at 9 am on Saturday so I have to cram for that. After that a formal lab report, two exams, going to a conference and I'm off to Saskatoon for the summer to work in a lab, which should be awesome.

But ya, I've been wasting as lot of time lately on facebook, youtube, free apps on my phone...

You play that game yet? I hate spoilers, so you've been warned.

This game is like my life. In the pursuit of moving forward and doing stuff you forget to enjoy the times you have there. The first time I played the game I was just jumping and didn't even realize what was happening in my life until I started drowning in money. Like really. Time starts flying by and you don't realize what is happening until it is too late. God has blessed you with this time, so why are we wasting it?

*sigh*

I just want to escape. lol

Ttyl.

D.Fa

Loved

Yo, so, this week has been one of those weeks.

I don't really have that much to do, and so that means I am doing next to nothing and also falling to my struggles and just overall not doing too well, simply because I have free time, which means I waste time, stay up late, sleep in, get bored? There's gotta be a real way to deal with this. I mean, just having free time shouldn't lead to temptation and sin. I need to figure out how to live life when I have free time.

In my hours of wasted time I ended up going from email to youtube subscriptions to vsauce again and onto a DONG (Do Online Now Guys) video and my attention was caught by this game:


http://armorgames.com/play/6086/loved

It's really simple, but powerful. You play the game how you want to play. Multiple times there will be a prompt to do something and you can choose to do it, or not to, and that changes the course of the game and ultimately the ending, but one thing doesn't change. I don't want to spoil it, so go play it now before reading on. It will take probably 10 minutes max. It took me 30 to play twice including one really long part.

I'm really blessed though. Like today was a lab exam for my plant physiology and biochemistry class. I really didn't study much yesterday and I slept in and was going to school at 9 to cram until my lab. Got to school at 9:30, but then a friend attacked me and we talked until my class at 10. Instead of paying attention in class I flipped through the 700 pages of my textbook and found out that MT planned for us to go sharing during discing time, so I asked if he could keep me accountable to study for an hour after my class then we could go sharing for an hour.

So really I had scanned my textbook, but that was about all the review I had since the review session last week. My friend also needed to borrow my laptop for his lab exam at the same time as mine, so I had no laptop to study with. I ended up reading my lab manual for an hour, skipping the last part cause I was bored of it.

We talked for a bit and then went off. We ran into this guy NP. He was pretty cool. Wearing a St. Louis Gretzky jersey and a Blue Jays cap. We got into a good conversation about God's grace and the sinlessness of Christ. Got to walk through our need for a saviour and share a bit about how anger in itself isn't a sin. He was really interested in the conversation, like he had maybe 2 texts a minute for the 25 minutes we talked and he never answered one of them. xP

Then I had the lab exam. Was slightly late, but quite confident in my answers. Got to answer about photosynthesis, the topic of our microbio lab, so it was really easy. I ended up being nearly the first person done.

But ya, I really liked that game. Have you played it yet? No? Go play it. I hate spoilers.......

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Ok. Done now? Good. The ending is so good! Whether you followed His prompts or not, He still offers you a chance to come close to Him and experience His love. Even after walking away your entire life, He still gives you that chance. You can continue to walk away, but then you'll never experience Him. Taste and see that He is good, you won't want to walk away anymore. There may be difficult parts, like that part where He asked you to take the road through the spikes, but He is with you and will help you through it.

"I have loved you with an everlasting love"

That's what the Bible says about God's love for the world. So much that even though we went against Him, He was willing to forgive us justly by taking our punishment upon Himself, bearing it all on the cross.

So, ya. That game. So much a reflection of God's love.

Anyways, Ttyl.

D.Fa
 
PS. Austria! w00t!