I'm Cutting Up My Bible

 I'm cutting up my Bible.

Let me explain that.  I read about a university student and his friends who went through all the books of the Bible cutting out the verses dealing with poverty, wealth, justice and oppression.  When finished, they were left with a Bible that could barely be held together.

Why would they do this??

When standing in front of a group of people he replied while holding up the mangled Bible; “This is our Bible full of holes.  Each one of us might as well take our Bibles, a pair of scissors, and begin cutting out all the scriptures we pay no attention to and ignore”.

Wow.

That really impacted me.  I’ve decided to do this.  I want this visual constantly in front of my face to remind me what my faith is really about… what this life is really about…  what God Himself is concerned with.  I want my kids to know this and have it serve our family as a reminder that our neighbor IS our responsibility.  That we need to care.   We can’t save the world, but we can reach those who are within the reach of our arms.

So yes, I’m cutting these verses out of a Bible I bought online for $3.   I’m on Exodus (the 2nd book in the Bible) and am already amazed at how much is missing.  Some pages I’ve been tempted just to rip out altogether due to the page hanging by a thread of paper.

I don’t want to ignore this anymore.  I don’t want to live in my prosperous bubble, blind to the needs not just around the world, but around the corner from my house.  God is clearly concerned for the least of these, how can I not be?  I want to be a rebel to the culture that screams: ME FIRST.   A culture that says I need "more" when I have so much already

Whether you are a person of faith, or if you’re not sure what you believe in this life, I hope that you can go past all the images of “church” and the word “christian” to hear the heartbeat of God in this demonstration.

Maybe you wouldn’t "cut up a Bible" (I don't recommend we all do that), but maybe it’s time to get back to seeing how much God really talks about caring for others in need, what we are to do with our wealth, and how He longs for us to be the answer to those living in oppression.

You and I hold an answer in our hand.   That is a journey I’m on right now personally asking:  What does it look like to live this out?

- Connie Jakab

Check out Connie Jakab's blog at http://culturerebel.com where she blogs about her family's adventures in serving the less fortunate and her continued rebellion to what culture tells us.  Be sure to pick up her book, "Culture Rebel - because the world has enough desperate housewives" at http://culturerebel.com/books/.   You can find Connie on Twitter at @ConnieJakab

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Self-Made People

Yesterday morning on the way to work, I heard an interview on the Fan 960 with R.A. Dickey, the new starting pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays. He was telling the story of how he had gone from traditional pitcher to having to learn to throw a knuckle ball if he had any hope of becoming a big leaguer - a transition that he has certainly been successful in making, having won the National League Cy Young as the best pitcher in baseball in 2012. However, in telling his story he said something interesting: “I’m in no way a self-made man.” R.A. then spoke about all of the people who loved him and cared for him in his life and profession - people that made it possible for him to be the man he is today. And I thought, “That is so awesome”.

I know what people mean when they point to someone and describe him or her as a self-made man or woman. But, is it ever truly possible to be that person who is so stable on their own two feet that their family, education, faith and all the amazing people that they have in their lives has not shaped the person they have become? The greatest of people on this earth are in fact a combination of a whole series of influences both positive and negative that allow them to be the man or women that they are.

For example, I am excellent at doing dishes…but I didn’t start out that way. When the lovely Janice agreed to marry me 25 years ago, I was actually very poor at house cleaning. I often say I didn’t know what dirt was until I married Janice, as she just kept pointing it out to me all the time. Now 25 years later I have become quite accomplished at dishes, cleaning bathrooms, and the even the occasional vacuuming of the house. Janice has influenced the man I am today.

I work at The Mustard Seed, an amazing organization that is doing all it can each and every day to build community, grow hope and support change amongst Alberta’s homeless population. Amongst my friends on the street I have truly met some of the most amazing people that I have ever met in my life. Talented people and often terribly intelligent people who had dreams and visions of what their life was going to be. None of these dreams involved being homeless.

Unfortunately, the homeless are often stereotyped in very negative ways. They are described often by people who have never taken the time to hear a homeless person’s story as somehow they deserve what has happened to them, that they must have done something to deserve their situation. Failing to recognize that homelessness is something that happens to good people. That it is, in fact, but a symptom just as most addictions we see all around us are symptoms. The illness is a world that is increasingly so self-possessed that we miss the whole point of our existence on this earth. So how do we finally once and for all kill these misconceptions?

Well, if there is truly no such thing as a self-made man or women – at least in the truest sense, if they are in fact really nothing more than compilation of a series of influences of people and circumstances. We now have an ability to understand my friends on the street. They also are not self-made men and women. They also are more often than not a compilation of a series of influences of people and circumstances; however, in the case of the homeless these have seldom been positive.

We are surrounded by people to whom we could be that source of positive influence or experience, so they too could one day stand up as R.A Dickey did and say, “I’m not a self-made man.”  Then they too could talk about all the people who loved them and cared for them in their lives and professions that made it possible for them to be the man or women they are today. The formerly homeless.

- Bill Nixon,  Director of Public Education, The Mustard Seed
@billbytheminute 

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