Ever thought how nice it would be to have a one line question to ask a close friend on a calm rainy day?  Not like we have any calm rainy days around here in saint louis -  Maybe for the fact to stimulate your mind or sounds smart or the big one – to grow in your relationship with that other person by discussing deeper topics other than how’s work?  I long for this every day and wanted to share something with you.

In the last month I’ve had numerous conversations with good friends, this time instigated by yours truly, about something that has been on my mind, a lot lately.  Let’s say it simply intrigues me to the ultimate and back.  Like a package of oreos, i can’t let a package of oreos just sit there and go untouched, and most the time, I have to eat the entire package!  So this intrigues me like a new package of oreos…

Notable: This would be most effective if you only read and processed one section at a time (they’re short and few).  I know it would be very tempting and easy to read the entire post or none of it but I challenge you to take a moment or a few moments throughout the next week and read bits of this post.  See what may happens.

I hope this post will be as intriguing to you as 20 hopeful oreos!  I would even go as far as recommend you to read the first section and walk away from this post so you can think about it and come back for the next section.

Let Us Begin! – I would really appreciate an email or text or comment if you wish about this cause I’m crazy curious about it.

Section 1

do not read section 2 until you’ve fully thought about this.  It may come as a shock to you for how short and initially comical it may seem to you:

If you were present and some random guy / girl walked up to your mother and punched her out, what would you do?

[ truly think about what you would do]

Section 2

Now that you’ve thought about it a bit and hopefully have an answer, do you think that’s right?  Meaning do you think it’s humane or based upon social standard or is it the culturally common thing to do?

Section 3

What do you think Jesus would do?  Was your answer anywhere close to what Jesus would do?  If not then why, if so then why did you not answer with a more cultural answer and why do you think the cultural answer, or in other words, the immediate instinctive answer is so barbaric?

There are SO many things and ideas that can spawn off of where we are now, when do you think anger is an OK emotion, do you think it’s right to allow someone else to control your emotions, if God created anger for a purpose what is that purpose and how do we control ourselves to using anger for only what it is designed for?  I could write pages of things we could talk spawning from where we are on a conversation topic level!

I encourage you to bring this up to a close friend.  When discussing this, it IS very important to pause and talk about each section naturally like it’s not a process.  Reason I say close friend is because I think this is something that could open up a very deep conversation to allow quite a bit of growth between two people.  It allows a lot of inward thinking and reflection which I think is a great way to grow.  One of my deep desires is to grow in my relationships with other people through Christ and his word.  Need I say more?  I love how simple this is too!

There are aspects of our lives of which we constantly hide from others.  Hide because we are afraid, ashamed, embarrassed or something else.

I realized that with a lot of people I only express my surface self.  With other people, closer friends, I let go of a few vulnerabilities by showing a deeper side of this matt simpson.  But how deep do I show?  It amazes me that when it comes down to it, God is the only one who truly knows who I am, knows every detail of my very being!

Why do we hide these vulnerabilities?  What do we cling on to and lock up deep inside and never share?  Are we even aware of some of the things we hide of our true selves because we’ve kept them locked up for so long?  Having realized this I pray and I hope that I can say goodbye to fear and embarrassment and be my true self with EVERYONE I meet.  This world I live in, the culture, media, people, skews my mind into thinking I should only express certain things, I should only wear certain clothes, I should only speak a certain way about certain things.  Who AM I?  I know who I think I am but is there more to me?  Have I lost touch and forgotten something I’ve not expressed in so long?

I’m curious if anyone else has thought about this or what you think of this now that you’ve read it.  I’m not concerned, simply intrigued.  I’m also not disapointed in who I am, far from it, God has given me courage and guidance to live free of a lot of cages.

side note / fyi: saw the new transformers movie tonight and forget whatever reviews you read, it is a 5 star guarentee! awesome movie, much better than the first and I recommend it for all.  It does have more language in it and a little bit of sexual connotations but they are not untasteful or the like.  I thoroughly enjoyed it   Best movie I’ve seen this year for sure.