Reading a Book for Pleasure

I have to be careful about reading. During the quarter, especially this quarter, there's been so much to read literature-wise, and it tends to eat up whole days of time, daring you to get behind in the schedule so it can devour your weekend. Anytime I pick up a book that it not on my scholastic reading list I have to be careful not to get too into it or I'll take all my time reading that book and ignoring my scholarly duties.

I started reading Donald Miller's Blue Like Jazz maybe two weeks ago and it's taken over my life. Not because I'm reading it all the time, but because I'm thinking about it all the time. I've been thinking about the nature of belief...why I believe the things that I do. I'm not necessarily doubting what I do believe because it seems implausible, I hope I'm done with intellectual faith crises (hopefully...), I just keep wondering if I really do believe it. Because if I did believe it wholeheartedly I'd probably.....do better. I don' t know, I lost my train of thought.

Anyway, I've also been thinking about whether I care about people or if I'm just super duper selfish and don't consider anything other than myself. I'm self-absorbed. I realize it and it's beginning to cause me pain, little pinpricks of pain. The trouble is, whenever I try to do anything to not be self-absorbed, I end up being more self-absorbed than I was before. Or at least just tumbling back into that valley. I can't do it.

Obviously there's hope for me. And we all know the right answers.

Another thing: Miller was talking about grace and how a lot of the time he felt like he was above grace because he wasn't a "charity case." When he said this I balked, because that's how I feel 100% of the time. I'm okay, really, my problems aren't that deep. I haven't murdered anyone yet so I'm doing pretty good. My pride is eating me up. I don't need charity God, I'm doing okay. But I'm not doing okay. Because if God didn't give grace to me I'd be going to hell because I sin and do evil things. I can't accept grace because I don't want to go to hell and then refuse further grace because now I think I'm okay and "good enough."

The next step is weird. I don't know how these concepts can be real. God feels nebulous most of the time. There are moments that I know He's real because I can absolutely see His work and feel His love very clearly. But then there are other moments, moments that feel just as real, when my heart is hard and cold and question whether or not He's there at all. It's weird to me how I can go from absolutely knowing He's there to almost completely denying it. Am I that shifty on other things as well? Or is it only with God?

Just some things I've been thinking about.