The Lighter Dark Side of Reconciliation

So this weekend, I spent all of my time exhausting myself, and most of that time was spent working at Univ-Con, the USA's largest paranormal conference. It was ridiculously fun, but ridiculously tiring, considering pretty much all of my free time from last Wednesday to Friday night was spent helping get this conference working, and I still haven't fully rested back up from how fatigued it made me.

Excluding all of that, we had an interesting pair of keynote speakers Friday night at Univ-Con, Lorraine Warren, wife and partner to the only Vatican-recognized lay demonologist (the late Ed Warren), and Father James LeBar, a former exorcist. I had heard Lorraine Warren speak at Univ-Con last year, and had read a few books about some of her and her husbands more publicized cases, and I was not disappointed in any of it. There is a real existence of demons in this world, and anyone who doubts should talk to one of these people.

That being said, demons are smart, and they know things they shouldn't be able to know (preternatural knowledge, as they call it, I believe). These spirits know the dark things you have done in your life, and may mock, ridicule, and harass you with their knowledge of your sins and the times you have failed God. However, as an interesting note, they don't seem to have any knowledge of sins that have been confessed.

I guess when you go to reconciliation, that old Bible verse really is true.

As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed his transgressions from us. (Psalm 103:12)

It's kind of nice to know that when we say "forgive and forget," that God takes it kind of literally, at least in terms of applying it to his angels (both fallen and otherwise).

I'm a hypocrite.

I realized I was a hypocrite just moments ago. Now, most people are hypocrites in one way or another, but sometimes we don't realize what it is that we do that is hypocritical. Through a wide range of "coincidences," I came to realize that the last post I made is hypocritical.

I was pissed off at my friend Alex. I had to drag him back to safety for an hour and a half. It left me feeling tired and weary, to say the least. I felt like he didn't respect me in my relationship, that if he really was my friend, that he wouldn't do stuff like this to me. We were together a lot today working at a concession stand at Beaver Stadium (Go Penn State!), and we managed to make things all right. I sort of implied that I felt hurt by all that I had to do, and I didn't want to do it again, and Alex implied that he wouldn't drink so much that I would have to do that.

There is someone I treat in the very same way as Alex treated me last night. That person is Jesus.

I went to a religious group meeting, and the leader talked about how we need to develop a relationship with Jesus, that a relationship with Him, God, and the Holy Spirit is really the core of our religion. Getting towards the end of finishing Donald Miller's "Searching For God Knows What" has also reinforced this idea in my head of a relationship with Jesus.

I realized that most of the time, I am being a total jerk to Jesus. I am drunk and angry and heading towards trouble in His eyes, but I still want Him to let me go. Jesus, however, just keeps on pulling me back. He's been dragging me back to safety and away from a much more serious punishment than a fine for probably a good 10-15 years. Yet He still keeps on pulling me along. Some of my other friends might say about me "Let's just leave him here, he might be okay." Jesus tells them no. He wants to bring me home. A lot of the time I fight Him, I pull up my legs so He's forced to carry me, I try to run out of His supporting arms and into a frat house so I can just party some more. Each time, He comes running to help me. Many times I feel angry about His help. I'll yell at God and Jesus because I don't understand why they won't let me go do the things that I want.

But in the end, God knows what is best for me. I just have to learn how to accept that.

College classes, day one

I finally started classes today. My roommate and I have been getting along more, as we slowly get used to each other. What can I say, we're guys, we don't just go hug and start talking about everything we can think of right off the bat. It'll come in time though.

Today I had to set up a stand for a pro-life group that I am the webmaster of at a student involvement fair. I was the only board member of the club that could make it there during the setup time, so I got drafted/I volunteered. However, what I failed to remember was how soon my first class, elementary French, started after the involvement fair began. My replacement came, and after getting him some much needed info from our website, I checked my schedule and realized I was already about 15 minutes late for my French class. Oops.

Luckily, I apologized to the teacher after class, and she was okay with that lateness because I had a good excuse. However, I am more afraid of taking French now. The teacher plans on speaking in French for most of the class. I have ZERO French experience. She seems very nice though, so I'm still hoping for the best.

Second class, mythology, was good. It's non-Western (i.e. no Greek or Roman) and it's a large lecture class, with 100+ people. However, I managed to participate a fair amount because really, everyone has thoughts, they're just too afraid to say them. Heck, we got asked what we thought someone who had seen God would say what He looked like, and someone suggested "Like Willie Nelson." You know that kid will get a good participation grade.

That's all the classes I had so far, but tomorrow will be much bigger. I have intermediate programming, French again, Social Psychology, and Creative Writing. The programming language is C++, which I never was too good with, so it kind of looks like I'm learning two languages this semester, haha. I'm worried about creative writing though. The syllabus says we'll probably have to write about what scares us, and, well, I'm scared to do that.