Some Background About Me.

My name is Austin.
I'm a student at George Fox University, although I almost wasn't. I love it here, and I'm glad I went. I love the people, the academics, and I love seeing God's works in my life and those of others. I think it's such a blessing to be in a community where I can observe praise flowing back to God for those things he does.
I grew up a nonbeliever, surrounded mostly by nonbelievers. In fact, I was a self-proclaimed science-centered skeptic and stark atheist. Around the summer before my senior year of high school, nothing in particular convinced me that God must exist and that I ought to believe in him. However, I'm proud to say that since then I've been trying to faithfully live my life for him. I'm still clearing my way through the 16 years of misconceptions about Christianity and strong arguments against theology, but those concerns fade into the background in the face of my newly formed conceptions of grace, peace, mercy, faith, and love.
In fact, that draws me to a quick note about the name of this blog. I don't think it's more important to know how God made us, how long it took him, what he looked like, or any of the other things people concern themselves about. God’s love is what brings people to him, it’s what makes people seek him, and it’s what holds people to him.
I love to learn about Jesus because I consider myself a follower of his teachings far higher than I consider myself a "Pentecostal", a "Quaker", a "pacifist", a "liberal", or any other label that people seem to identify me with when I say I love Jesus. (In fact, I would be far quicker to label myself a Christ follower than a Christian, but perhaps I'll talk more about that in a later entry.) There’s no way you can honestly be doing what Jesus instructs us to do and be doing the wrong thing. Even if your friends or your society tell you so, the teachings of Jesus and the will of God break those boundaries and cross into perfection.
I have a few political ideals that I hold to. I don’t believe in the concept of a just war. I don’t think extreme poverty is an economic necessity, I think it’s a preventable tragedy. I think marriage was intended for man and woman, but I don’t think homosexuality is a “greater” sin than any of the bad things I do. Above all, I think that hate, opposition, conflict, corruption, and brokenness can all be overcome in surprising ways by the power of love. As such, I don’t think Christ calls us to flaunt our political ideals in the faces of those who challenge them. I don’t think we’re supposed to conform to an agenda and fight for our party whether we agree with it or not. I’m not an anarchist, but I believe that loving and accepting is the ultimate “greater good”. In the words of Greg Boyd, “Jesus is pro-everybody. He’s not pro-everything. But he never lets the things he’s against get in the way of the people that he loves.”

So if there’s one thing I know about Jesus, it’s that he loves above all. And if I had to pick a story from the gospels to demonstrate it, I would choose the story from Matthew 22:37-38: “Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.”
And so I feel challenged to go out and do the same, to try to love all others above all else. It can be difficult sometimes, especially coming from a nonbeliever family with a very different agenda than mine, to look past the politics and focus on the people. But it's what Jesus did when he walked on the earth, and it's what he continues to do. For this reason, I'm very excited to learn more about Jesus' ministry and how I can show people love in more of everything I do.