Tuesday, June 10, 2008

1st Post: Peeling Skin

Summer has been peaceful. There is a consistent cycle of sleeping in late, reading books, and eating home cooked food. As I was reading the Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there is a conversion that Eustace experiences. C.S. Lewis describes it as peeling back layers of skin. It was a painful process but it was a necessary process. My layers of sin are being continually peeled back and as I fall into a state of perpetual sin, I have realized that I can no longer do the peeling, but I must rely on my Lord to peel back my skin.

One thing I have been thinking about a lot is prayer and how I don’t do it enough. It is cliché to say I don’t pray enough, but the quantity of prayer isn’t even what I am talking about. I speak about the quality of a prayer. More often than not, a prayer is something that I do subconsciously and it is not something I immerse myself in. I find that I can immerse myself into my friends, my reading, my daily activities, but I find it difficult to immerse myself into my communication with my Lord. Augustine’s Confessions was really an acknowledgement of praise and his book became an auto-biography of praise. How much of our daily time is spent confessing or praising or thanking God? When we do ask for supplementary needs, how much time are we praying for ourselves and how often are we praying for others? It seems that our lives should be a constant revelation of God’s grace in our lives. It is quite difficult for me to live in this manner. I fear that the more difficult this becomes, the closer I approach the danger of spiritual sloth.

After taking business classes at Biola, I have acknowledged that ethical dilemmas are a part of business. People say that business is a lucrative field. It is that, but it is also a very ethically challenging field. Yesterday as I was serving beer to clearly plastered customers, I was presented with an ethical dilemma that I hadn’t really thought about. It suddenly struck me that a beer I was serving could be the beer that kills an innocent driver on the road. A friend of mine said that they are responsible for their actions and it is their free will to choose. Yes, but at what point are we (who have a clear conscious) responsible for their actions and at what point should we have stopped selling beer to drunk customers even if it meant less business? I can’t say that it surprised me to see so many people throwing their lives away on $8.75 beer cups, but I would say that it surprised me to see me selling them something I only knew would hurt them.

I shall have to end my first post abruptly. But before I go I want to add that I wish you all would blog. I think it is absolutely amazing to be able to share in each other’s lives and to be able to delve into each other’s lives. I shall hope to update this somewhat frequently, although I cannot promise to update as frequently as you all shall like.

2 comments:

Pseudo-Anonymity said...

Great to see you on here...and great post.

By the way, your title made me think of a certain poignant Death Cab song...

Mr. Cleo strikes again!
;)

Chelsea White said...

Your writing is clear and engaging, it is a pleasure to read your thoughts. :) I look forward to more posts!

By the way, you mentioned that you had found my blog...I think the blog you found was the one I created for my Journalism class and has only been used for that purpose. I have a personal blog that stays slightly more updated. :-P The name of that ones is Cendrii, if you care to find it.