Pondering a perspective by author and lecturer Nir Eyal. He is called a foremost authority on habit formation and focus.

“We are sold this unrealistic and unhealthy fixation and obsession with happiness. And most people don’t understand that we are evolved to be constantly happy. You want a species to be perpetually perturbed. You want us to always strive to always want more, to always be discontent so that we fix things.” (Nir Eyal)

“Feelings of discomfort are important. They push us to find and fix what is broken.” (Lewis Howes.)

In his book The Greatest Mindset, Lewis Howes comments:

“…reimagining the purpose of discomfort. When we feel bored, lonesome, uncertain, anxious, fatigued, fearful, we have to start by understanding that these uncomfortable sensations are a gift. A gift to help us use that as rocket fuel toward traction, rather than trying to escape it with distraction.” (page 187)

“Our emotions are data, not directives” (Psychologist Dr. Susan David).

I’ve been looking for a word or two to say when someone in the news clearly speaks an untrue opinion. I want something as effective as “damn!” Or a more graphic word. I want to set into motion activity that is not verbalizing witchcraft. I don’t want something horrible to happen to the liar or propogandist, like a severe rash in an inaccessible spot. I sure don’t want the wrong to go unchallenged. There is “Let your yes be yes and your no be no,” (Matthew 5:37). That has always meant to me: let responses not get mucked up with profane statements. However, I don’t think Jesus said “Behold, behold!”

After several days of thinking about, and trying words and phrases, a potent phrase jumped into my mind. “Jesus’ Kingdom Come”! That is what Jesus taught us to pray—“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven.”

An educator described what is happening to some students—hundreds of thousands to 6.5 million—who went missing after the pandemic or are truant on any given school day. Without supervision or education they are in peril of becoming a feral kid. I want to ask for judgement on those events and people who facilitate(d) that. I avoid cursing them, but I want them to be accountable. I want the students restored—“Jesus Kingdom Come!” in that youngster or young person’s life immediately. Right now!

Guys playing golf. One swore when he hit a bad shot. The other hocked up a goober and spit. “Does spitting make you feel better?”   The spitter answered, “I know that where I spit the grass will never grow again.”

To say/pray “Jesus’ Kingdom Come,” sets Resurrection power into motion. If it aligns with God’s will!

Jesus’ Kingdom Come!

©2023 D. Dean Benton, Ponderer, Wonderer, Meanderer.

Jus’ Pondering

Christian Drag Queens?

I’ve been reading Water From A Deep Well, by Gerald L. Sittser. Foreword by Eugene Peterson. Sittser tells the stories of the Christian movement from the first to fourth Century. For a decade plus, I’ve been asking how does the Christian movement of the 21^st Century impact our population, institutions and culture? There are indicators!

“The fledging Christian movement thrived in such an unstable environment. The church became like family to aliens and outsiders who flocked to the cities. The church welcomed people from a wide cross-section of society and taught a message that was easily understood. ‘The appeal of Christianity’ Peter Brown states, ‘still lay in its radical sense of community: it absorbed people because the individual could drop from a wide impersonal world into a miniature community, whose demands and relations were explicit.” (page 62)

“…‘look,’ they say ‘how they love each other.’” “See how ready they are to die for one another.”

During the first couple of centuries, historians say Jesus Followers would worship next to former prostitutes and every form of outcasts, outsiders and rejected. A radical community. A place to belong.

With these words, I pondered: Is the local church called to welcome drag queens? I know! My mind may have slipped a cog. Or two.

A former member of a major Contemporary Christian band is now appearing and recording as a drag queen and his/her latest song is #1 on the itunes Christian Music chart. So, I listened. I liked the track. It has a good sound. I can’t understand all the words, but some were about belonging. Is it prophetic or seductive to corrupt living?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiXscOjacIM

From the comments about the song:

“You sing for all of us who have felt abandoned and outside the ‘”circle’”

The loneliness and angst are vivid. When I ponder, I can’t discount the role of the Holy Spirit. I pondered if I would be more comfortable if the singer didn’t show up on Sunday morning in his stage costume. Maybe, not teaching Sunday School?

The story is now in Newsweek. Another performer states she is committed to bypassing or setting aside “Church Gatekeepers.”

The church historian Sittser makes it very clear that the early preachers/teachers declared boundaries and the expected behavior for members of the ekklesia. Paul’s letters to the Corinthians indicate that. God has intentionally set gatekeepers and declarations of how one becomes a member of the universal Body of Christ and expected behavior specs. Culture or society or social media have no legitimate voice. If grace is the provision and our only means of salvation being God’s grace and our trust in Jesus’ provision, can a person be a Christian Drag Queen?

Pondering. Is that singer my brother or sister in Christ? Will Jesus settle for the deconstructed faith drag queen as my crazy cousin?

Jus’ Pondering

© 2023 D. Dean Benton—Wonderer, Meanderer, Ponderer