CHRISDOGG14 said:
on the other thread askin what would i do if someone wanted me to burn my rag........i think the only thing worth really dying for nowadays to me is my religion, family, or in a brawl to save a homeboy when the funk is on. i wonder how God would feel about choosing to die over a rag instead of cherishing the gift of life that he has given us?
I can't speak for God or Jesus, but I don't think they would want someone to risk dying to fight soley for an inanimate object rather than for the people those objects stand for, even a cross, a Bible, or a church. They don't worry about your rag burning or whether you'd fight for it, they worry about your soul and the reasons you have about things, not the things themselves, I believe with all my heart.
There's nothing wrong with fighting for what you believe in, but if fighting puts the thing you believe in at greater real risk overall, there's just no point and no honor in it. There's no way you can take care of yourself or your family, let alone anything else you don't want to lose, if you get locked up over nothing, so be sure it's really worth fighting over or don't fight at all. Pick your battles wisely, and know that there's times and places for fighting if not fighting will make things worse.
I feel like the words in the Bible show pretty damn well how not to let others get power over you and yours, and how to get up and out if you are already under. There's no reason not one of us can't follow in Jesus' footsteps to some degree, but not everyone understands His words in the same way. I don't think He'd have much of a problem with people doing what they got to do when they don't have choices. I wish I could have done what He did, but I don't know if I could have handled it as well.
I just can't not have faith after all the things I have seen with my own eyes and felt with my own soul from the inside out, feeling an undeniable unnamable presence connected from the outside in, in unexplainable indescribable ways.
Just don't confuse reasons with excuses, cuz even if you don't know the difference, Jesus and God don't make excuses for not having reasons. There is a difference, and it's real. A reason could be even just that gut feeling that you can't really explain thouroughly in words, like simple faith, or deepest intuition, that thing you feel lost without so you follow it to find your way forward, regardless of all the wrong-way signs you can't help knowing don't speak the truth for you. Feel me?
Some people only claim to have faith when they don't cuz they are running game, and churches worldwide are infested with hypocrisy. Don't worry about confusing some so-called church folx with Christians who actually have faith, with or without a church. Can't nobody force you to believe something you really don't, and can't nobody touch what you truly don't doubt.
OGs worldwide won't clown you for sharing in the same power that kept them going, even through tough times. Norte tats of crosses, Christ, and Mary ain't inked for no reason. There's no better family to think of when you're alone, which is a whole lot over a lifetime. You are always part of that never-ending family.
Jesus in the Bible straight lays it down that you don't need a church to be doin the right thang or to use the power of the word, tho it can be useful socially and politically to organize with others of like mind if leaders can ever be trusted (which seems to be almost never.) You don't have to be good, or right, or rich, or free to align your mind with the mind of God. Once you lose your perceptions of those individual things as having anything real to do with your true self, God will become clear. In that moment, those previous personal descriptions don't apply at all to the realest of you that is always connected with and made of God, and nothing else matters. That's when you are a real made man, when you don't have the desire to be anything else.
The way is real, and it don't show itself unless you lose yourself first.