Video Testimony

These are two videos I made to express how I feel about the Savior and His life:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N80_9Aw0wuc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYfNVO8lgyg&feature=plcp
Thanks for watching, please feel free to share and post, they are meant to uplift those who need it!

Evil Queen Vs. Wicked Witch

My new obsession, for anyone who cares, is called Once Upon a Time. It's a TV show that takes all the fairy tales and turns them on their heads, albeit a little unDisneylike. One of the things it endeavors to answer is why does the evil queen hate Snow White so much? The play Wicked attempts to answer the same question about the Wicked Witch. Dumbledore in Harry Potter makes a point to educate Harry about his enemy, what made him the way that he was. On my mission I had an interesting conversation with an elder, during which we disagreed on whether it matters how someone like the Wicked Witch got to be so wicked. For him, the bottom line was that she is, in fact, wicked, and it does not matter how she got that way. For me, it goes beyond that. Understanding why someone is evil doesn't make them any less evil, it simply makes them, well, more understandable. It means that they are not simply evil for the sake of being evil. There is more to them than meets the eye. It changes me, not them.

We all have bits of evil in us. The natural man, sinful self, enemy to God. Whatever you call it, all it means is that we are all, more or less, just like the villains we love to hate. The difference between us and them is that they have embraced their sins, and let them define them. The more we let jealousy, fear and pessimism rule our lives, the more like them we become. So, does it really matter why? Yes, and I'll tell you why. Because we learn to be that way. We learn how to sin. Early in life, our imperfect minds and bodies give our spirits a run for their money and we learn how to sin. It's just that simple. The ever-present good news is that if we can learn how to be a certain way, we can certainly unlearn the same thing. It takes time, but we can go from being the Evil Queen to Snow White, lovely and loving and pure. Because if the Evil Queen has a back story, so does Snow White, which means Snow learned how to be good, just as the Queen learned how to be evil. We get to choose. So, who will you choose to be?

Knowing

Pornography is not intimacy. Pornography is a distortion of reality. Intimacy between a man and a woman celebrates their love for one another and brings them closer together. It is mind, body and spirit melding together. The scriptures refer to intimacy using the word "know". To know something is to be familiar with, perceive, understand. It requires experience. Which is exactly the way the Lord intended intimacy to be in the first place. If you do not know someone in a personal sense, you cannot know them in the Lord's sense. Which is how pornography distorts the true meaning of what it means to love someone. To love someone for the physical pleasure they give you is to view them as an object, something to be discarded when it no longer suits you. The truth is, you can always be pleased physically, but emotionally, spiritually, those take someone special. Someone willing to know you as you would know them. Someone to hold you when the tears come unbidden, someone to serve and protect you. Someone to love you. That is why we guard intimacy like a precious jewel, because it is the only jewel worth giving to someone else.