{"id":58,"date":"2005-05-25T08:25:21","date_gmt":"2005-05-25T14:25:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/journal.ragedied.com\/?p=58"},"modified":"2005-05-25T08:25:21","modified_gmt":"2005-05-25T14:25:21","slug":"parallels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/revivalprojects.com\/journal\/2005\/05\/25\/parallels\/","title":{"rendered":"Parallels"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dude at Paradoxology<\/a> is offering up some images of Protestant Evangelical worship and asking for reactions. The interesting thing about the picture in part 3<\/a> is that it looks a lot like a friend of mine, Rusty. Rusty is a surfer and a rebel from way back, sure he has found success in business but, man, I have never thought of him as a suit or a traditional evangelical conservative.<\/p>\n

It just seems like we are so ready to categorize and criticize, and I would be right there judging if dude did not look so much like my friend and mentor. See I know my friend’s story, we have a relationship, we know each other’s deep stuff and that knowledge does not give me the freedom to judge him.<\/p>\n

So what about the guy in the picture? My guess is that he is just someone who resembles my friend. Even so, it makes me think that this guy has a history that I have no idea about and this is just a snapshot of one moment in his life. I do not know his struggles or his joys. I have no idea what goes through his mind at night when he is staring at the ceiling before falling asleep. I do not know the situations that have drove him to his knees and has made him cry. I have no idea, if he is just a guy that resembles my friend Rusty. But if that is Rusty, I do know some of what he has been though and some of what makes him the man he is today.<\/p>\n

Either way, I cannot bring myself to judge him or even quantify my opinion of what he is doing\/experiencing in that picture simply because when I look at him I see my friend and I just cannot bring myself to presume his intentions or the veracity of his experience, much less ridicule or poke fun him.<\/p>\n

That reminds me of another friend, one that promised us that He would stick closer to us then a brother. If I believe what I read in the bible is true then we are all bearers of His image. Do you see the parallel?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dude at Paradoxology is offering up some images of Protestant Evangelical worship and asking for reactions. The interesting thing about the picture in part 3 is that it looks a lot like a friend of mine, Rusty. Rusty is a surfer and a rebel from way back, sure he has found success in business but, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4pNDf-W","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/revivalprojects.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/revivalprojects.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/revivalprojects.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/revivalprojects.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/revivalprojects.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/revivalprojects.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/revivalprojects.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/revivalprojects.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/revivalprojects.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}