groaning spirits

"In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words with out a heart." - John Bunyan

"The best prayers have often more groans than words." - John Bunyan

I think these two might be the same passage but translated from middle english differently.

"the moment we get tired in the waiting, God's Spirit is right alongside helping us along. If we don't know how or what to pray, it doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans. He knows us far better than we know ourselves, knows our pregnant condition, and keeps us present before God. That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good. " - Romans 8:26-28 The Message/Eugene Peterson

Two shocking things first, 1. Yes I actually did use the Message - my perenial enemy, but sometimes Peterson just does a better job. and 2. I'm actually updating this blog again, normally I only do it when I feel really depressed.

These 2 passages really hit me tonight. Bunyan's idea which I find a commentary on Romans, that sometimes the groaning of our hearts and spirit are prayers to God.

Tonight a friend called me who I love a great deal, like one of my top friends in the world who I would die for, and as I thought about how much I missed them my heart groaned in prayer. I feel like my spirit prayed to the Spirit of the Lord that I really want to see them again. It was a soul-longing (to use J.K. Rowling's phrase). And so tonight I'm reading and praying and just realizing how much God loves us and is intimately connected to us, that when our hearts groan, he's the first to hear it.

I love the Holy Spirit, he's cool.

Goodbye Nietzsche

The above pictured man is the kind hearted, G.K. Chesterton, Genius Extraordinaire, Defender of Christian Orthodoxy.

This is the super-fucked up Friedrich Nietzsche - The Hero of the Nazis, and all around Douchebag, scum of the earth.

I was reading "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton today and it is AMAZING. He completely refutes the ideas of Nietzsche. I only wish someone would've told me about him sooner. I've been trying to come up with these arguments myself because I didn't think anyone else out-thought him in print at least. Wow, good freakin job G.K.

"Nietzsche, whom some are representing as a bold and strong thinker. No one will deny that he was a poetical and suggestive thinker; but he was quite the reverse of strong. He was not at all bold. He never put his own meaning before himself in bald abstract words: as did Aristotle and Calvin, and even Karl Marx, the hard, fearless men of thought. Nietzsche always escaped a question by a physical metaphor, like a cheery minor poet. He said, “beyond good and evil,” because he had not the courage to say, “more good than good and evil,” or, “more evil than good and evil.” Had he faced his thought without metaphors, he would have seen that it was nonsense. So, when he describes his hero, he does not dare to say, “the purer man,” or “the happier man,” or “the sadder man,” for all these are ideas; and ideas are alarming. He says “the upper man,” or “over man,” a physical metaphor from acrobats or alpine climbers. Nietzsche is truly a very timid thinker. He does not really know in the least what sort of man he wants evolution to produce. And if he does not know, certainly the ordinary evolutionists, who talk about things being “higher,” do not know either." - Chesterton in Orthodoxy

He is destroying Nietzsche's claim that he is himself beyond this Christian view of good and evil, when Nietzche is really only establishing his own system of good and evil which he likes more. Every value he advances has no inherent value. Lust, violence, and the will to power are Nietzsche's ideal characteristics. But Why? Nietzsche isn't offering us anything new about humanity he's just trying to shock us. Amen Chesterton. Did I mention Chesterton was a Catholic? Booyah!

Enjoying the Day

I'm just sitting here enjoying the day and celebrating my liberty. I have another 10 hours or so in the day and I'm doing well. I'm reading all about Hitler and the Third Reich and the history of Germany etc because I've never read about it alot and never found it super interesting, but it really is. Then I think I'll put on some pajamas when everyone leaves and read some Roman History by Gibbon. I might watch the Empire Strikes Back or a Bond film, but I will enjoy my day and decide not to focus on anything negative. Praise the Lord.