Adolescence

I was a punk rock kid for many years. In many ways, I think a little bit of that element still resides in me. I was different, (just like all of the other kids). I was politically informed and believed in social reform but spray painted anarchy symbols all around town, believed in education as a means to a brighter day and ditched school frequently to meditate on it. Believed in peace while hating and hunting skinheads and metal heads because they didn't. Why is it that we whooped the hippies then? Oh yeah, just for fun. We listened to Adolescents and glorified slogans like "Brats in battalions". There was this deep, innate desire to be a man but there was no knowledge of Christ to become one. We were adolescents though, and that bought us at least 7 years. From 12 to 19 we have the right to be as stupid as we can, to do all kinds of contradictory things, engage in irresponsible, inconsequential behavior because our hormones are out of control. "That's what teenagers do", people say.
This notion of adolescence has become wildly accepted even in Christian circles lately.
I understand the whole hormone thing being a big hurdle to jump over, but according to the Bible, sin is sin whether you're fourteen or forty four. Scripture does not have such low expectations from teens. Paul even left Mark behind because he "broke". David, the red headed, short shepherd kid whacked Goliath defending the Name of God very early on in his life. God spoke with Samuel at a very early age, Mary, Jesus' mom, was very young and God placed on her an incredible responsibility. I guess one of my favorites is the story about those fools that mocked Elisha about his bald head and next thing you know, mother bear is out of the woods and they're dinner.
It seems to me that the biblical pattern for young men and women is one of expectation of godliness, entrustment of responsibilities and accountability. In other words, sin is not brushed over but young men are expected to be godly and when they aren't, they either repent or suffer the consequences of their sin. That is the expectation of godliness.
Also neither the family, nor the covenant community will shy away from delegating certain responsibilities to our young men because they are young. That may happen for different reasons (i.e gifting, amount of responsibilities already on them etc...) but never because they are "adolescents". The family and the church place certain responsibilities on the young men and women and expect godliness from them in fulfilling those responsibilities. Finally, young men are to be held accountable for their behavior just as much as everybody else. Being young is never to be an excuse for lack of spiritual growth, negligence of duties, reckless behavior or any sinful practice or belief.
God uses these (and other) means to produce in young men the characteristics that will define them as men, which has much less to do with biology or time walking on earth than it does with a reality of being, a stage of maturity that one reaches and should always look to keep growing in them by means of looking to Christ as Author and Perfecter of our faith.
I'll be talking about those characteristics very soon in future posts.
Peace to you all.

The Emperor

Andrei "The Pitbull" Arlovski had, in my opinion, a good chance of beating The Emperor. He's tall, explosive, has really fast hands and knockout power on both of them. He was even doing good in that first exchange but... flying knee? Really? Against The Emperor? That wasn't a brilliant idea. I was surprised to see someone of that caliber being sooo naive. My guess is that he "smelled the blood" after coming out on top from that first exchange and got carried away. It actually made me wonder about what happens when we get carried away in our spiritual lives and go against the instructions, against what we have been taught by our Trainer. I saw a powerful illustration of how we end up hurt when we disregard the Spirit's instructions in our life by behaving in an unbiblical way. Disobedience causes pain.

Think about it,

See you soon.

He fought "The Law" and he won.

Vítor Belfort put a stamp on Matt "The Law" Lindland. It was very impressive to see something that had never happened before. Lindland is the definition of a tough guy. The man is an accomplished Olympic wrestler and a top notch MMA fighter. He has fought the likes of "Rampage" Jackson and Fedor and neither of them could put him to sleep. Vitor did. I am not sure "The phenom" is back yet because, although impressive, it was a very short fight and I wonder how he would deal with Matt's smell, toughness and meanness after the 10th minute. Anyway, congratulations to brother Belfort and the best of luck to brother Lindland as heals up from the fight.
Sokoudju is going to have to figure something out because he doesn't look very dangerous right now. Babalu slowly applied the choke and the "African assassin" did nothing. Inexperience on the ground? Poor conditioning? Can't really tell but he's gotta do something. He has the stars of no less than Team Quest behind him so it shouldn't be hard to figure it out. Barnett is mean! What he did with Gilbert should be against the law. I really liked Minotoro's showing. Hopefully he'll be on the main card next time.
The WEC event was very, very good in my opinion. Little Evil has nothing to be ashamed of. Urijah is a beast and it could have happened to either of them. Now, to me, the star of the night was Jose Aldo. I was impressed. Killer leg kicks reminded me of he "Pitbull".
Anyway, this was a weekend packed with good MMA and the coming one is no different. I'm looking forward to it. In the meantime we'll keep talking about biblical manhood as I have a couple of interesting things coming up.
Until next time.

Fighting principles in the Word

I remember one day long ago when we were doing some drills and at one point we did "roundhouse kick" against "spinning hook kick". It was very intense and we really did simulate a real fight , with a lot of footwork and faking until this one guy would not attack me but would only hypnotize me with his "killer" footwork. Eventually he got too close for (my) comfort and the tension had really built up over the last minute so, on pure instinct, I fired an attack even though I was supposed to counter only. "The prey became the predator!" our trainer exclaimed with a loud voice and a positive tone. "Patrick (Coté) when you're not doing anything, he (Anderson Silva) is thinking on how to hurt you, so stay busy OK. " said Coté's corner between rounds.

These are principles that are true, both in the physical and the spiritual worlds. How so? One might ask. You see, the Bible is replete with military terms, fight references, war language, war analogies that depict one very important truth: the Christian life is a battle. It is war. It is a fight. It is on. One of the few things I've learned in my life is that Truth is disgustingly indifferent to my likes and dislikes, opinions or even awareness. We are in a battle whether we realize it or not. Many men end up being casualties because they don't see this reality. Paul tells Timothy "fight the good fight of faith" and part of how we can fight that battle is to stay on the offense.

The fight is a fight of FAITH. It does take place in many battlegrounds but the bottom line is Faith. Saving faith is to be kept at all costs. If there is anything that is threatening to your faith, you should attack it before it attacks you. How does that apply to real life? Well, Rachel in human resources. You just don't ever go beyond good morning with her. She's got the power to destroy everything you truly value. The abusive boss will not get an argument from you because you have been reading ( for the 4th time), Mahaney's "Humility", praying that God crushes your pride therefore you will see the abuse from God's perspective, not as an enemy but as a tool of sanctification conforming you to the image of Christ, to which you have been predestined , brought about by your loving God. A good fighter will be alert to all possible threats and even the remotely possible threats (i.e Houston Alexander's ground game) in the same manner the Christian man will do himself a favor by asking God to reveal to him constantly anything that could harm his faith. This should be done as a perpetual, frequent spiritual discipline. As a result of identifying possible attacks, action is taken against the enemy, whatever it may be. It is crucial that spiritual disciplines are in place here, because it is easy to DO the "right things" out of formula or self reliance or many things other than FAITH. So, be always on the lookout and shoot on sight.
May God give you the strength to fight until you die.

Franklin won

Although I do have a couple of biblical manhood related posts brewing, we are in a month innundated with MMA events and eventhough my wife seems to love it even more than I do, I reckon that's kind of manly too, so here we go.

For once in my life I had been right in all my predictions: Toquinho overpowered Horn but couldn't GnP him much less sub him. Davis outboxes Lytle in an old fashioned slug fest. Shogun beat a very tired Hammer and although I was surprised about how poorly Rua performed, he came out with a "W" which is what I thought would happen. No surprises, everything is going as predicted. Coke and Cheetos in hand I fast forward to The main bout of the night. I really thought Rich won the first and the third and had secured a decision. I said to my brother in law: you know, 29 x 28 isn't that bad. After all this is Dan Henderson, one of the baddest dudes out there". The score cards were made public and there were flying Cheetos everywhere. Now, I already hate being wrong like i was on Chuck x Rashad or Werdum x Cigano or Griffin x Rampage or Chuck x Rashad and many others but this one reminded me once again that I should never bet on MMA because even when I'm right, I'm wrong.

See you again for the Affliction on the 24th.

God bless you all.

Skirt to church

Magenta buildings, men holding hands singing romantic love songs to a nice, wrathless life coach named Jesus. That, I think, describes a good percentage of American evangelicalism today. I mean, how many slow, "I just want to fall in love with you" type songs can a guy sing? And since when is "magenta" even on the radar of a guy's color knowledge? Hey, I'm all for slow songs too, but where are the "Onward Christian soldiers" and "A Mighty fortresses" in our day? More than that, where are the mighty men of David? Our churches are full of girls because we dropped the ball. Our fatherless generation produced a bunch of little boys who seek comfort and entertainment above everything, even God. I long to see a generation of John Bunyans choosing affliction over sin, Athanasiuses taking ostracism and opposition over false unity. We can moan and complain about how much wrong our daddies did us or we can go to our father in Heaven, The Lord of Hosts and petition Him for a generation of men who will, in fear and trembling, pursue Him and step up in faith and love our girls as Christ loved His, our neighbors as ourselves and our God with all our might. That is the only way we'll see true reformation in our day. We have to seek God desperately as He is the One who can birth the desire for true, biblical manhood in us. To the extent that that happens we'll be able to reform the church out of the "Skirt Christianity" and eventually even lead our culture once again for Christ's name sake and our eternal joy.