Bring Me to [Spiritual] Life

I just read the account of Lazarus in the New Testament today. On this reading I made an important spiritual application. We all know that Christ is our savior, that he saves us from sin, but how often to we feel crushed by our sins? Overcome by the difficulties of life? Killed, spiritually, because of the wrongs we've done? That is when we need the Messiah the most, yet perhaps ironically it's when we give up the easiest. We tend to be very good at convincing ourselves that we're to far gone, that our ship has sailed, that we're already spiritually dead.
Martha and Mary both said to Jesus, "If You had been here, my brother would not have died." Today, I realized this is a backward looking attitude which plagues many of us. After the fact we lament our wrong actions (which we should to some degree, after all we're not repentant if we're thinking "Man, I'm so glad I shot that hooker"-that's right I'm talking to you GTA fans) and we think, "If only I had kept the Spirit with me, if only I had been Christlike then, I would not have sinned." While we need to take every effort to avoid sin, when we fall we need to remember that Christ can bring us out of our spiritual death, just as He brought Lazarus out of physical death.

The Truth Hurts, Bring on the Pain!

Thinking a little just now I had the thought, the truth really does hurt. Why? There's more than one reason, I'm sure, but probably more than anything because it forces us to see our preconceptions, our beliefs, our actions in a different light. Sometimes it's with generalizations, a researcher who studies mercury and really thinks of it as his (or her since I live in the blasted p.c. society that won't allow the continuation of linguistic conventions such as using male pronouns as representing a generic male/female person) life's work may be frustrated by people saying most metals are solid at room temperature. He may react thusly, "But what about mercury? Possibly the most useful and important metal because of <> is a liquid, so how can you say that." It might just be denial too. Someone who has strong opinions about or an emotional investment in something requires a good deal of humility, courage, and honesty to admit that something is true when it doesn't match what their ideals or preconceptions are. It could be simple linguistic totalitarianism. Someone who loves jazz may take offense to the comment, "They just played twelve different songs at the same time," though really this comment may have some accuracy if all the players were improvising together. The same thing could be said in a slightly different way that would be fine, "That was amazing, it was like they all played a different song at the same time." This probably comes up a lot in the current political correctness atmosphere.
What I really want to say is that the sting of the truth can be good. We generally mentally flee from ideas that are difficult to sync with our current ones, but we should accept new ideas and consistently revise our current ones. Hearing things which cut us to the quick tempts us to marginalize the speaker, idea, or background from which it comes. The human species must fight this temptation and learn flexibility in our mentalities, conceptions, beliefs, and attitudes. Unlike on our human bodies which is scarred from a cut, a piercing comment to our souls can cause us to improve ourselves. One who is promiscuous will naturally react with offense when he/she is said to be sexually indiscriminate. The best reaction for them is unnatural, to take the comment as a possible truth, analyze their actions and outlooks, and amend them according to how they wish to live their lives in light of this new insight.
"He who takes offense when no offense was intended is a fool, and he who takes offense when offense was intended is usually a fool." -Brigham Young. The offense reaction is an unfortunate one in human nature. It is generally the opposite of constructive and at best leads to festering anger, a grudge against some group or person. Perhaps we as human beings should learn to take the comment, "That offends me," as a comment more about the speaker than the subject. Let he who says it be commenting on his own lack of self-control and hot-headed reaction rather on the heinous nature of whatever the that referred to is. People are wrong sometimes, even then we should seek to understand their thinking, and perhaps change their mind through reason and debate. What we must realize, however, is that change is always hard, especially when dealing with personalities, mentalities, ideas, etcetera. If we are to expect others to do this difficult task with theirs we must be willing to do the same with ours.

Physical Attraction-not the kind between an electron and a proton if ya know what I mean

When I was younger, probably entering puberty, I came to believe that physical beauty, by which I suppose I mean sexual attraction-just to be perfectly clear, was largely a societal construct. Think about it, the Venus de Milo would be "plus size" and even Marilyn Monroe would be a size 12-16, a far cry from today's "supermodels" whose dress size approaches or is the additive and multiplicative identities of the integers/real numbers. I think it's probable that today's nice skinny figures would be considered emaciated skeletons by earlier standards, especially in those societies that valued the ability to reproduce, looking for "hearty women with child bearing hips."
My point here is to ask how much physical attraction is societal, though. Obviously sexual attraction to women, in male's case and vice-a-versa, is natural inborn desire used to perpetuate the race, but I wonder if the specifics are essentially manufactured. If you like women with big breasts, is there anything to that other than a sort of societal brainwashing? To be truly free of being a mindless follower of the crowd, must we throw off the chains of what physical characteristics are sexually attractive and look deeper into people's souls to find our attraction?
People often speak against this idea when I present it, usually with the line, "There has to be some physical attraction in a romantic relationship." Well, I agree (duh) if you find your partner a repulsive specimen of the human form that things are gonna be rough. However, physical attraction is mental, and often changes according to our opinion of someone. One may have heard that confidence is important to looking good, and it's true. Many people have probably experienced a growing attraction to someone as they got to know them better. One slowly overlooks flaws and focuses more on attractive aspects, or vice-a-versa according to one's opinion of another.
I'm sure folk have opinions on this, and I'll be interested to see the discussion that ensues.

I think blog is a very ugly word

Well, I guess I have a blog now. Just fooling around helping some people I know create one I kinda fell into the whole blog thing, which is weird cause I used to hate blogs. Mostly because of the name. I mean, isn't the word blog just like...well it's like the sound you make when you're puking. "oh I shouldn't of had all that teriyaki chicken....ugh blog!"
A little more seriously though, I wonder about why all these blogs exist. The professional ones make sense, but the personal ones are somewhat curious. I wonder if I'm really so taken with myself that I feel the need to make sure that everyone knows about insignificant minutia of my life. Hmm, now I'm going to feel uncomfortable about the rest of this post, like every word is telling me, "what's the matter with you, you self-absorbed narcissist?" But I've got the account so I might as well use it is the thing, and maybe my thoughts are interesting enough that they're worth throwing out on the world wide web. I do think I have some interesting ideas, in a very humble way though, cause I'm not a self-absorbed narcissist.