Greetings,
Respecting one of the customs of blogging, I’ve fashioned a rudimentary description of myself, and of the nature and purpose of this blog. Being a novice amongst bloggers, and a novice amongst users of advanced technologies such as the laptop computer, you’re likely to be struck by an immediate recognition of my shortcomings when viewing this blog. I do expect to gravitate toward efficiency as I expend more time in this thing, although I can’t expect to declare a prediction of when and how far toward efficiency I’ll progress. I can declare that I’ll do my best to keep the form of this blog unconvoluted and uncomplicated, despite how the form of my actual writing may be rendered. I hope it won’t prove too burdensome to your eyes.
So, who is Jerun E. Franklin? Well, I am myself, of course. That is, I have been myself for the entirety of my life until this present. Which doesn’t do anything to satisfy the question that began this particular paragraph. The title of this “about page” applies the adjective “verbose” to myself. I certainly wouldn’t argue against the application of that adjective, but I reckon you’ll have a better understanding of its suitability after reading a portion of my posts here. You may even come to the understanding that the author is not really so clever. Well, at the very least, this author does engage in a conscientious effort to be clever.
I would describe myself as having the following attributes.
I am an avid reader, ingesting the literary innards of books across a modestly proportioned spectrum, though my current tastes have deviated a bit from what I acquired initially. These days, I prefer to consume things with historical flavors and “religious” flavors, especially pertaining to apologetics and the exegesis of Holy Scriptures. I have an appetite for information of all kinds, though, and find it quite helpful to have a stock of such things available when creating fiction.
I am a proponent of my country’s constitution, the United States Constitution, and speak in favor of it because it is informed by principles derived directly from the Holy Bible. Whatever arguments one may have against the people that contrived it, the assertions in its language cannot be so readily impeached. They are true and desirable. Conversely, I am an opponent of whatever seeks to harm the United States Constitution.
Mainly, I’m a believer in Jesus the Christ, and a lover of the Holy Scriptures. I wasn’t always affined to this characteristic, however. Not for the majority of my life. Oh, I’d been raised by parents who taught me such things, and I may have even believed those things to a degree. But, it wasn’t until recent years, within the previous seven, that I began to seriously consider those things. I’ve progressed a significant distance along the narrow path since then. More accurately, I’ve been led along that path. Much of the structure I’d built during the first major segment of my life had to be deconstructed by the Creator, after I finally submitted my heart and life to him. He’s been building the house steadily, having moved me from the shifting plot I’d been buildering on before to set me on a firm foundation, knocking down the structures I continue to stubbornly erect and buildering his better designs instead. After all, unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain.
And so, welcome to this blog, which is one of many millions that you might have chosen to view. I appreciate your visit, and will be more appreciative if you find something helpful, or even useful, in here. There’s certainly no pleasing everyone, and I’ve no intention of making such an attempt, but I hope there’s to be some people pleased with what I’ve done. I’ve discovered much to avail my studies of the Holy Scriptures and my pursuit of discipleship to the Creator among the pages of many blogs, many of which function as a database of sorts in matters regarding the Christian life and continual growth of the individual into the innumerable family of God, and that’s the purpose of this blog.
Aligned with the primary goal is a correlative function involving facts, opinions, humor, and informative contents intended to further a person’s tuition. To utilize the word “political” when referencing the Constitution of the United States is to debase and denigrate it, but in promotion of simplicity here, I’ll use “political” as a general descriptor of some articles. Some blog items will be historical, some will be commentaries, and some will carry various information that could be useful. Or not useful, depending on the quantity and degree of interest available in the reader’s mind. Still and all, these other constituents are meant to assist the blog’s primary purpose.
My life as a Christian began with sincerity when I was about thirty five years of age, although I was raised in a Christian home, infused with the importance of church attendance, Bible studies, and all that goes with them. I was a rebellious young man, engaging in activities that tended to give the lie to what I knew in my heart was true, and there is much that I am remorseful for after so many years. My sharpest remorse is for the way I treated my mother during the year and a half that she lay dying of cancer. It is also one of the situations which is such a goad to my Christian life today. She wrote me a letter prior to her death, which my father handed to me after her death, and she expressed nothing but love and forgiveness for her son. For me. No matter what I did, or said, my mother loved me. That thought drives me on.
I’ve dabbled in illicit substances as a teenager, as well as illicit sexual material, developed a long time tobacco addiction when I was a teenager, and was entrapped in a pit of despair, depression, and fear for the major portion of my life. And still I’m here, a product of the love that is the nature of God. The love of the Creator for the produce of his invention. Human beings. The images of God. I contend against lifelong habits, sinful activities that have become inveterate, sometimes every week, but the war is won already. Christ said so. The former man has been killed, and it remains only for me to slough the dead skin away so I can feel as clean as the Creator has made me in reality. But why wait to share my testimony so others who have, or who are, suffering in the same pit I’ve been stuck in can at least know that they’re not alone? They’re not hopeless, or helpless. They’re not unloved, or unimportant. They are human beings. They are the image of the living God!
So I grappled my fear, stifled it, and stood on top of it so it couldn’t reach up and pull on my arms. Then I sat down and started this blog. I have received so much encouragement from the testimony of others, from songs, from books, from radio programs, and from blogs I’ve found while doing research and just looking for some bracing words, that I can’t keep my own testimony private. I can’t keep my knowledge and experience to myself.
Sometimes I think about the Apostle Paul’s assertion of his status as the worst of sinners. At those times I mentally debate with the man about his claim, presenting the loads of evidence to contradict his claim and prove that I am actually the worst of sinners. I’ve sustained damage to my emotions and to my body, and it’s still difficult for me to interact with people sometimes. I feel inferior. I feel that I could never be acceptable to anyone once they know who I really am, and are smacked in the face with a hint of things I’ve done in the past. Or things I’m doing in the present. Yet, I feel important and valuable because the Creator has valued me enough to lower himself to the condition of humanity, to suffer extensive and severe physical and emotional torment, to suffer spiritual torment, and then of his own volition to perish, paying the penalty that we could never satisfy.
The deeply set depression has passed. I’m no longer immersed in that caustic gunk every day. I’m sad now and then, usually at least once a week, but it’s exceedingly temporal compared to the darkness of before. The bulk of my sad hours are a consequence of my own excoriation of myself, whenever I allow the habitude of the former darkness to prompt an act of sin. I feel guilty. I feel filthy. I feel that I will never see an end to these insidious habits. I feel these things despite the reality of the Creator’s word, his guarantee that the penalty is served, that the guilt has been resolved, that he and I are no less than what we were since before time began. He is my Father in heaven, and I am his son. Because of his only born son, who is, in fact, the same person as he is. Amazing.
All of this is temporal. It lasts a day or two at most, and then I’m off again on the course my Captain has set for me. There is hope. Not wishful thinking. Not positive thought. There is hope. The LORD is good and his love endures forever. The same today, yesterday, and forever. And a major reason for my confidence in this is the knowledge and understanding I’ve gained through the years. Years of studying Scripture. Years of contemplating myself, my decisions, and applying knowledge and understanding to the run of my life.
In whatever I write, I pray the words to be infused with supernatural power, sourced from the Holy Spirit, who is God. I cannot consider the person who might read these things, since I don’t know that person, so I can’t perfect what I write, or customize it to that particular person. So I pray those things I write will be vested with Godly power to address the need of whomever the Creator has guided to this blog. I write from my heart. I write for those who are suffering as I have. I write to commiserate with you. Our Father will heal you. I do not know whether he will rectify your physical ailments, but he will heal every spiritual ailment. Everything will be okay. Just persevere. Persevere.
Some topics of study and discussion are controversial, someone might say, but I feel they’re important. I feel they’re not beyond the scope of Christian propriety, either. These are things that need to be discussed, to confront each other with in order to refine our discipleship. As iron sharpens iron. Sexual immorality isn’t often brought into the light these days. Not like it was in the early church. It’s a reprehensible thing to whatever conscience hasn’t been seared, as the Bible puts it. I think that’s why it’s not properly addressed sometimes. We’d rather it didn’t happen, didn’t exist amongst the members of the church body, so we think if we dismiss it as an oblique occurrence it can’t drive its root into the Christian person. Ignore it, and it’ll go away. The thing is despicable, dishonorable. It affects men more than it does women, and men are put upon to behave more honorably as the one tasked with the responsibility of leadership, so it becomes simultaneously unspeakable and prevalent among men. We need to talk about these things, in order to bring them into the light and introduce the monstrosities to their destruction.
Another controversial topic, especially within the modern church, is that of violence, of weapons, and of ending a human life. Church doctrine has, to my knowledge, established a ubiquitous condemnation of all violence, and most especially the taking of human life. When the exemplar Scriptures are considered and reasoned with, such doctrine appears to be valid. But there are other Scriptures which have been ignored, and which argue an opposing case. We ought to not flee the broaching of this and other topics as if a ghoulish apparition were upon us, earnest to masticate on our appendages, but we ought to face it with a knowledge of the Creator’s holy word. All of it, and not selected passages of it which are employed to bolster a particular opinion or philosophy. The word of God is quick and active, sharper than any double edged sword, and it even sunders soul and spirit. (Hebrews 4:12) Shouldn’t we study it as such, respecting the fact that it defines itself? I think we ought to. I think we ought to wield it as a complete implement, and stop trying to separate its aspects from the entirety of what it is in order to use them singly. I consider them less effective that way.
I’m sure many will accuse me of being overly verbose, as many who’ve read my literature have already alleged. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. Maybe the Creator has issued a unique writer to the world whose purpose is to dribble a unique style into the penetralia of a unique type of reader. Perhaps a reader who is like minded and can appreciate my brandishing of unusual words and sentence construction. We’re all created a bit differently, which is one of the reasons we have differing tastes in just about everything. We have different skills, different levels of understanding, different levels of social and emotional intelligence, so what appeals to one may not appeal to another. Where one may understand an argument or description, another may not. As long as I’m doing what God intended me to do, I’ll remain acquainted with satiety.
These blog entries may seem more like small essays, and maybe they are, but my goal is to have them curtly comprehensive, if that makes any sense. In other words, I want to be as thorough as I can without making a short book of each one. All of them are intended to advise the Christian, or at least to incite a grade of cogitation in the Christian’s mind. Each one will be designed to stand alone, for the most part, but should also supplement any or all of the others in some way. Anyhow, I’ll always do my best to write coherently and relevantly, and personally.
I offer welcome to your comments, discussions, debates, arguments, suggestions, agreements, disagreements, encouragements, and other manner of responses to these blog entries. Please be mindful that we can all be firm in our respective convictions without slinging putrid execration at each other. We can all behave like intelligent adult human beings, even mentally stable human beings, and disagree with each other at the same time. Even if we’re neither intelligent nor mentally stable, which is what I’ve been accused of from time to time.
Please pray for me, if you feel it appropriate, that I’ll be of one mind and one spirit with the word of God, faithful, pure, holy and sanctified, and that many people will be helped in some measure by this blog. Pray that I will be effective in all that I do, especially in my behavior toward outsiders, that my physical person will be attuned to the person in my writing so that what I have to say will not be negated or invalidated by my action and speech in life. Pray that our Father will heal my physical ills, damages, wounds, as well as all the injuries I’ve sustained emotionally and psychologically. Pray for all those who ask for prayer on this site, that we may fulfill the word of our Father to pray for one another. Let’s be a strong family, and see many of our brothers and sisters healed and prospered because of our selfless prayers.
And in all things, let’s give glory and credit to the meritorious Creator, not only in words, but in being the person he created each of us to be, in exercising and using our talents, our skills, our abilities, for this will bring honor to him. Amen.