Employment Equity

I just received my first Employment Equity Program questionnaire at work.  Apparently since we are doing work for the Federal Government we MAY be subject to the requirements set out under the Federal Contractors Program.  I can hardly explain how furious this makes me.  It is discrimination!

Am I a woman – Nope

Am I an Aboriginal person – Nope

Do I have a disability – Nope

Am I a visible minority – Nope

So, what this means is that if a decision ever has to be made between me and one of the people who can answer Yes to one of the four questions above (all other things being equal) I don’t get the job/promotion/raise/etc.  And, heaven forbid we are far behind our quota in any of the four categories, because then even if all other things are not equal I still won’t get the job.

Do we want to do work for the Federal Government?  Then we’ve got a quota to fill.

…I am just shaking at work right now this makes me so mad.

Choosing Christ

I sometimes have trouble coming to terms with the fact that I have to choose to follow Christ every day.  Over and over, every day.  Why can’t I just choose once and then it is decided?

Let’s say I go to get a coffee at a restaurant somewhere and the waiter asks me if I want sugar in it.  I answer yes.  30 seconds later he asks me if I want sugar in it….um, yes please.  25 seconds later he asks me again, do you want sugar in it?  Is this a trick question?  I said yes already.  10 seconds later…do you want sugar in your coffee?  Listen dude, do you have a hearing problem?  How many times do I have to say yes before you get the picture?!?

So why do I have to choose Christ over and over, day after day?  I get that we’re beings with free will.  And I get why that is important, I would have chosen to go that route as well if I were God.  (Haha, I’m sure God just breathed a sigh of relief – oh thank goodness, Jon agrees with what I have done, I guess I must be doing things right then….LOL)  But if I choose God today, why do I have to go through the sometimes agonizing decision again tomorrow, and then again the next day?  It is not always easy to make that choice – temptations come in so many different forms that the choice doesn’t even look the same from one time to the next.  In fact, often I don’t even recognize that is the choice I am making.

Some of you will say, you really only have to choose to follow Christ one time and then after that your name is written in the Book of Life and you’re good to go.  Ok, I am not going to go into the eternal security vs. conditional security debate here (but I will mention that if you ever have that debate with me I lean on the conditional security side of that fence).  Maybe I should say I have to choose to live for Christ daily.  Actually multiple times per day would be more accurate.

I get tired of failing.  I get tired of being tempted – often with the same things over and over.  I just want to choose once and be done with it.

I suppose the answer lies somewhere with the fact that time is linear and choices we make do not rule out the possibility that we will encounter similar branches in the path ahead of us…  Whatever.  That is not a very satisfying answer when I am frustrated about this.

On a good note, I was reading the other day and something clicked for me.  We will not be presented with these decisions in heaven.  The temptation to do wrong will be eliminated therefore the choice to follow Christ won’t need to be made.  It will already have been made.  So, in the face of eternity, choosing to follow Christ daily for 70 years isn’t all that long really.  After 50 bazillion years in heaven I will probably look back at those first 70 years and say it was really only one choice after all…

Religion is like a what?!?!

I found this picture on my Facebook news feed the other day and at first I was offended, but after I thought about it for a while I felt really sad.

This is the sort of thing we are dealing with in today’s culture.  It used to be that people were fighting against Christianity and persecuting Christians.  Now they just don’t care.  In the spiritual war we are fighting for every soul around us, how do you fight against this?

People think they are doing fine on their own.  Even though they worship all manner of different things, they believe they have no god, and they are managing just fine.  Why would they need to obey some mythical figure and follow a bunch of rules?

The world around us screams about a Creator.  And it demands an answer.  Yes or no.  Unfortunately, pretending you don’t have to make the choice is actually choosing no.

Hose Clamp Skull Cap

I want to try to paint a picture of what it is like inside my head.  I find it a circle of struggles that I deal with on a regular basis.  I would assume that a lot of guys have these same struggles and I bet many use the same techniques I do to cope.  Anyway, here is the picture…

When my mind goes idle I often cast about trying to find things to think about.  This happens to me when I am driving, falling asleep, mowing the lawn, stuff like that.  I often think of this as the times I am hanging out with myself.  My internal monologue kicks in.  I am daydreaming about stuff.  I come up with arguments about things I am passionate about.  And my mind falls prey to all sorts of selfishness, greed, hurtfulness…..sin.

Ok, so the scene is set.  I just started mowing the lawn 3 minutes ago and I have about an hour and a half of mowing ahead of me.  My mind has shifted into neutral….

I start thinking about cars.  I love automobiles in general but I really love my car.  I have big plans for it like a supercharger at some point in the future (this won’t actually ever happen…), but in the interim, I would like to get a header-back exhaust on it.  That would be sweet and it is sort of inside the realm of possibility even though it would still cost quite a bit.  My thoughts never seem to just be content with the pure love of automobiles.  It always leads to me wishing I could get this for my car or do that to it.  I've got plans.  Always wanting something else.  Never content.  It is frustrating and I don’t think the discontent is biblical.  I think it is sin to always be wanting something more – never to be satisfied with what you have.  Alright fine!  I take a firm grip of my car thoughts and mentally push them over there and I hold them away from me with one of my mental arms.

Next…..

Sex.  That is something that’s pretty interesting to think about.  Problem is, it is such a slippery slope to keep sex thoughts pure and clean.  So that lasts for a lot less time than the car thoughts and I throw a super vice-grip onto those thoughts and mentally push them away.

Alright, now I’m holding those away.  I can do this.  Next…..

I love video games.  I wish I could somehow be a professional video game player (that or a race car driver of some sort).  I would love to make my living that way.  Yeah right…  So I start analyzing my latest session playing Destiny.  “Last time I went into the big room I headed left and tried sniping the guy from there but I wonder if it would work better to head to the right and climb up to the balcony.  There is better cover there and I could duck and hide if need be……”  How much of my life gets poured into video games?  How much of my time and mental energy is spent on this COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS PURSUIT?  You know what, video games in and of themselves are not the problem.  Sure they don’t promote anything good and usually they do promote stuff that is unhealthy, but I see the problem as the time they take from my life.  I think the enemy is very supportive of the video game industry as it pulls me out of basically everything.  Volunteer activities, building meaningful relationships, studying God’s Word, building into my relationship with my wife, praying, and on and on…  Ok, grab that with a firm grip and push it away and hold it there.  (Something you may not know about me is that I have quite a few mental arms – not just two.  I kind of need that many because my mental landscape all slopes toward me.  I can’t just push thoughts away and leave them there because they all roll back to me as soon as I let go of them.  Mental arms people – you can never have enough of them).

You know what it feels like to have all those mental arms holding stuff away? Imagine a hose clamp that fits onto your skull. 

Now tighten it down REALLY tight!  There, that should do it.  Ok (through gritted teeth) the breach is contained; I’m good to go now.  And so I move forward one painful step after another on the path of life.  Guess what happens to me every now and then (in fact quite often) – the hose clamp bursts open.  Everything comes apart and I fail.

Over and over and over and over and over and over………

Every time I fail I beat the stuffing out of myself.  I cry out, “God!  Why is this so hard all the time?!”  I can’t do it on my own.  I already know that – which makes it really hard to even motivate myself to grip those thoughts and push them away in the first place.  What is the point?  I have never succeeded at this in the past.  What makes me think I can do it now?

God stands at the door and knocks.  Give it to me my boy, that is the only way you can make this work.  Crazy thing is I don’t even own these struggles any more.  A story Boyd Hopkins used to explain it to me once goes like this:  Boyd bought a property once in BC.  It was a nice large property with foliage all around.  He went and checked the place out, he liked it, he bought it.  It wasn’t until the next year when he was standing on his back deck and he notices something out back in the bushes that he hadn’t ever seen before.  Sort of looks like a chimney or something out back there.  Turns out there was an old structure back there that was full of the previous owners old junk!  Old bicycles, lawn mowers, rusted patio furniture, broken windows, probably an old clothes dryer – you know the sort of stuff I’m talking about.  So, now what?  Call up the previous owner and get him to come clean this trash up?  Nope, Boyd had purchased it with the property.  Well God purchased our property on the cross.  He owns it!  All of it.  It is His because he bought it.  Haha, what a sucker God is right?!  Nope.  Difference is He knew it was there when he bought the property but He knew we would never be able to clean all that up.

So here’s the key: I have to stop fighting and say, “God, I’m gonna need you to come clean this up because you bought it on the cross and I actually can’t even lift it.”  I need to surrender it to God, not keep fighting.  I need to walk away from the fight.

How hard is that to do?  I haven’t managed to successfully do it yet.  I’m pretty sure it is harder than doing the Crota’s End raid on Hard in Destiny.