“Love Wins”, featuring the book by Rob Bell and some of my own thoughts.

Many people that know me personally know that I am a person of faith, meaning that I simply look for a relationship with God, my creator.  Although raised in a somewhat conservative-Christian upbringing, I have been on a personal journey of learning for myself who God really is.

I just finished reading Rob Bell’s “Love Wins”, and I LOVED it.  It was a very easy read (4-5 hours).

Honestly, there was nothing in there that even remotely raised any red flags and his entire storyline revolved around God’s infinite and undying love for his own creation; how He will stop at nothing to redeem us from that which would hurt us.  Bell also focused heavily on what we are to do with the time that we have and the weight that our love to God and others will have.

The book really didn’t teach me anything new or reveal something I haven’t been discovering already over the past few years.  More than anything, it just confirmed what I have learned about my Father and it made me even more excited about Him.

Here are a couple things that I have learned/discovered about God in the past few years that are also addressed in this book.

Hell

In my opinion, this notion that there is an infinite place of horrific torment for those that may have committed a finite crime is really quite absurd.  The traditional view of Hell (as Christian’s know it) has never resonated with my soul.  There has always been something “off” with the idea.

Since we all base our facts about Hell from the Bible, I think it is quite wise to examine the facts that we have been taught to see how they match up (or do not match up).  The fact is, after much studious research of the original scripture text, taking into account WHO said it and WHEN it was said, there is not even a remote reference to this place of eternal torment in fire for those who do not believe in Jesus.  It simply IS NOT THERE.  I could go on pages on how this whole notion entered traditional Christian belief (see Constantine circa 300 AD), but that is for another time.

All of these mentions of the word “Hell” are simply consolidations / misinterpretations of other words that referred to the grave, death, Hades, Gehenna… none of which were eternal lakes of fire reserved for the unbelievers.  Again, it is simply NOT THERE.

So, if you are going to strictly hold to what scriptures say to confirm your beliefs on these facts, you may want to check again.

If you are going one step further to look at who God is, why we exist and why He sent Jesus, you would also see a different picture.  You would see that God did indeed save us from hell (to use a word we are now familiar with), however the hell he saved us from is the hell we create here on earth when we walk away and deny Him.  When we turn from what we know is right and choose willingly to immerse ourselves in selfish behavior, we are in hell (to say, we are existing in polar opposites to His desire for our life).  We are miserable and unsatisfied.  His salvation is that He provides a way out from this horrific existence.  His love and desire for a shame-free relationship is the salvation from our human tendencies to consider self above all.

So what is the point of everything without Hell?

Are you kidding me?  There is such a great purpose in this life without a Hell being held over one’s head.  Is the belief in a Hell (being a lake of fire, reserved for the unbelievers) really a good motivation to love God?  Do you stay  with your spouse because you are afraid of being single?  Is your motivation to do good in this life out of the fear of what will happen if you don’t?  Is that even love or just fear based obligation?  Or perhaps it is just superstition?

Remove Hell from the equation and remove the whole “us vs. them” mentality, and you will find that you will love your neighbors, regardless of what they believe in.  You won’t find yourself segmenting everyone into groups/labels and appointing your mental judgment upon their heads.  Since they are no longer condemned to a different future and reality than you are, you are able to see through the hurt, pain and sin to a real soul; a soul that God loves us as much as He does YOUR soul.

God saved you.  God saved me.  God saved everyone by offering His unconditional love for us.   Those that choose to partake in a destructive, self-serving existence are miserable and can have no true happiness.  It remains true that ultimate fulfillment and soul-satisfaction comes only from aligning yourself with your Creator and Father.  There is no substitute.

The picture of me being dangled over Hell doesn’t motivate me to love God.  God’s love for me motivates me to love Him.  His unconditional love for the deplorable people in this world also motivate me to love them.  He wants me to love Him and He wants me to love them; that much has been made quite clear.

Does Love Win?

In the end, does God get what God wants?  Or does God fervently chase after an unbelieving soul while the person is alive and well and the moment the person dies, He turns 180 degrees in the opposite direction? He has made it quite obvious that His desire is that all know him, have a relationship with Him and are ultimately reconciled to Him.  He thrives on reconciliation and many of his parables and stories reflect that quite strongly.  Since the beginning of time, he has fought for the human race and has poured wrath out on that which would serve to separate us from Him.

He desires relationship with us.

He desires good for us.

He believes in us.

He pursues us.

His love is strong enough to melt even the hardest heart, and it will.

In the end, does He get what He wants?  Does he get true and unadulterated fellowship with His beloved creation?  I would offer a resounding YES!  Isn’t that what He has been after since the beginning of time?

True, it is only through the ONE WAY that this is relationship achieved…  the one way to God is through his son, the human representation of his awesomeness.  Although the pathway to peace and happiness truly is exclusive to Jesus, I feel it is inclusive to all humankind…  His love will seek us out and nobody can resist love like that forever.  Sure, some are more stubborn than others and some see His love sooner than others, but His love does not tire.  If there is one trait we see constantly with the Father, it is one of being long-suffering and unrelenting in His pursuit of us.  He will forgive unconditionally and wait as long as it takes.

To the Christian reader and unbeliever alike, He does not see you as a wicked, worthless, wretched worm.  That is perhaps the biggest lie we have been sold.  Are we perfect?  Nope.  However, you are a creation of the Father and He loves you fiercely.  He does not see you as a horrid being, so why should you?  Don’t sell yourself short and don’t sell His love short.

You might be amazed at what you are capable of seeing and doing in the world around you if you allow God to love in His perfect way.  If you allow Him to love all people, unconditionally.  If you allow Him to let His love conquer and change even the hardest of hearts and toughest of situations.

“Paul, have you lost your mind?”

No doubt, most who read this will be upset or even angered at what I have written here because it goes so far against what most of us have been taught.

Rest assured, that isn’t my intent.  I’m not writing this to create any sort of conflict.

However, I feel quite strongly that the masses of current-day Christianity really are presenting a distorted gospel (aka “Good News”).  The notion of Hell being the place of eternal punishment is simply not a good story.  If you adopt that belief,  for the majority of people in the world, there IS no good news.  There would only be “good news” for a very small portion of mankind, and horrible news for the rest of the world.

It makes me saddened that that many people are seeing a version of God that is not who even He portrayed Himself as.  It diminishes His love and plot for humankind.  Hopefully, you will at least research for yourself what the Bible actually says and what God has shown of Himself throughout all time.

So, have I fallen off the deep end?  I don’t think so.  :)  I am more in love with God and have more affection and respect towards his GOOD work with humanity than ever;  His grace, mercy and unending love, to all.  It makes me want to spread the good news of hope that literally exists and is given to all, without end.  I have already seen the affects of love without condition and it is beautiful.

His revelation of His perfected love has caused my entire viewpoint of humanity to change;  I cannot simply sit in a seat of self-appointed judgment and dole out eternal consequence to whom I see fit.  Instead, I am able to now see others as objects of love from the Father, whom he cherishes dearly, just as He cherishes me, regardless of our shortcomings.

It has motivated me to love God more.  It has motivated me to love my wife and children more and love others more.  With this mindset and heart-response, love truly does win.

My new son: Duncan Bo (born 12/18/09)

It was a crazy ride, but we made it and we now have another beautiful son.  That makes four sons and one daughter (my princess).  It wasn’t a typical birth/delivery, though…

Laura was nearly 42 weeks into the pregnancy, so she was getting quite uncomfortable and we knew the baby needed to come soon.  She had been having contractions for a couple of weeks, but nothing was strong enough to be considered labor.  After a visit to her midwife on 12/17, she noticed the contractions getting stronger.  We both went to bed that night and at 1:00 am on 12/18, she woke me up and said she was going to call her midwife as she thought her labor was starting.

I hopped out of bed, took a shower and woke all of our kids up.  We were going to drop the kids off at my parents and perhaps stay the night as it was 15 minutes closer to our hospital.  We left our home at around 1:15 am, and began the trek into town.

After 5 minutes Laura said she needed to go into the hospital as she said the contractions were getting very strong.  I called my dad and asked him to meet us at our workplace in Maple Grove, so we could go right to the hospital.  This would save us about 15-20 minutes of drive time.  We met in Maple Grove and got the kids into their car and continued southbound on 81 towards the hospital.

30 seconds after we got back on the road, Laura told me frantically to stop and call 911.  Her water broke!

So, I pulled off of the side of the road, called 911 and the operator started coaching me on how to use objects in the van to deliver the baby!  If I told you I was scared, that would be an understatement.  The operator had me check to see if the baby was crowning (which it wasn’t) and then he said an ambulance was on the way.  When I pulled the car over, it was next to a snow bank, so I was standing there, coaching Laura while standing in the snow with my Crocs on (let me tell you, Crocs are not good shoes for snow control).  The operator asked if I had any shoelaces to tie off the umbilical cord;  again, I was wearing my Crocs.  :O  I removed my winter jacket to keep Laura warm, as I had to keep her door open to coach her.

After what seemed like hours, the ambulance arrived and we got Laura loaded up onto the cart and started our trek again to the hospital.  Thankfully, the ambulance was able to clearly run every red light and we made it there in record time.

As soon as we entered the hospital, the baby started crowning…  we flew up the elevator and literally, one minute after we got in the room scheduled for the delivery, the midwife delivered our son.  This was at 2:05 am.

Only one hour after leaving our home, Duncan Bo was born.  He and mom are completely safe and healthy, so God definitely provided for us!

Some have asked about the name…  with all of our kids (Zachary, Bailey, Austin, Cameron) the names have some Scottish heritage (to keep true to the McLellan name).  Duncan was a Scottish name we had liked for some time.  Laura’s nickname as a kid was “Bo”, so it just seemed fitting.   Here are some photos of Duncan’s first day as well as his first ultrasound picture:

Here is our very first photo of Duncan, taken on 7/20/2009. Even here, he looks like a little cutie!

Here is our little buy, just seconds after he was born!

Some of life’s greatest moments are those spent loving another human being… this is one of them!

Duncan is alert and watching the world around him, minutes after being born!

He is so fun to snuggle with…. all warm and cozy in his blanket. :)

Although a bit worn out, Laura is feeling elated and so thankful for a healthy baby boy.

After all of that birthing, Duncan decided to take a little nap… he looks like a little angel!

Laura getting some precious mommy-time with her new boy.

Wonder what he is dreaming about… looks so serene and peaceful.

We had a precious quiet moment with all of the kids and Duncan. They were all so amazed and curious about this new addition to the family!

Here are Cameron, Bailey, Austin and Zachary holding their new baby brother

She was SO excited to have a new baby in the family — she was grinning from ear to ear!

Our new family! God is so good. He has given me this family to love and serve.

Duncan is getting ready for his first ride home!

Duncan is snug in bed, going to bed in his new room… Sleep well, little angel. It’s your first day on earth…

Some of my old Amiga Video Games

Although I am a full-time web developer now, I got my start with programming on the Commodore Amiga computer system.  What is the Amiga you may ask?  It was a stellar computer that had its day in the light in the 80′s and early-mid 90′s, quickly being usurped by the PC and Mac.  Remember years ago when the Mac was this fledgling computer that only a small portion of the populace owned?  The Amiga was even less than that!

However, it was an amazing gaming machine and was kicking out graphics and 3d techniques that were far superior (IMHO) to anything that the PC and Mac were releasing.  I grew up on this machine and used it primarily for playing games, making games and surfing Bulletin Board Systems (BBS).

While I will divulge more on the BBS portion on a future blog, this one is dedicated to games. 

Having owned hundreds of games myself, I always wanted to make on on my own, as I had some fun and original ideas that I wanted to see in production.  I bought a copy of AMOS Professional, a pretty powerful programming platform on the Amiga.  This was back in about 1993, so I was all of 14 years old.

Around that time, I started at a new high school and within the first couple days, met Ben Brosdahl and Mike Ness, two fellow Amiga fans like myself!  We all hit it off, especially since Mike was also an AMOS programmer and Ben was a phenomenal graphic artist.  Because Ben and I lived so close to each other, we started collaborating on some games together (me = programming, him = graphics).

I would like to highlight on two of them that I think COULD have been successful if we had ever released them.

BALL

We never named the first one; we just gave it a working title, “Ball”.  Creative, eh?  It was a Breakout/Arkanoid style brick braking game with a twist.  Similar to the popular Dr. Mario on the NES, this game was a simultaneous 2 player game, where each player could perform well enough to hinder the other player’s progress.

Although the game code is long lost, Ben recently sent me some graphics he managed to save from 16 years ago!

Here are some player background screens:

 

Note:  the graphics look pixelly because resolutions back then were roughly 320 x 200!  Much different than the 1280 x 1024 we have come to know and love today.  Also, the Amiga in the early 90′s could only support a limited number of colors per screen, so we did our best.

Here are some of our level layouts displayed on one screen.  Each one of these layouts could be grabbed and utilized in AMOS Professional, so it made it easy to add and update in one master file:

Here is an actual snapshot of game play.  As you can see, player one is on the left with player two on the right.  The player’s remaining lives are shown below the paddle. Each player can advance onto their own unique level series to move past the other player, resulting in penalties being placed on the losing player. 

We had the rough game play working, but got stuck on getting into the complex mathematics required for dynamic ball movement on varied angles.  So, we abandoned the game…

 MELTDOWN

This was by far the project we spent the most time on.  We all enjoy playing the classic Bomberman multi-player game, using a simple concept but providing a great deal of in-game upgrades and a focus on skill and gameplay.  We played varied versions of the game and were determined to make our own take on the game.  As Ben and myself were fans of Steve Taylor in the early 90′s, we took his song title “Meltdown” and used it for this title;  it seemed fitting as the whole premise of the game is to strategically place bombs that result in blowing up your opponent.

Here is our glorious title screen.  You were able to select the game settings here and within seconds, begin game play.  We had created an instrumental version of Steve Taylor’s Meltdown to be playing during this screen:

 Ben and Mike had been working on some games before using the moniker Apocalypse Productions, so we used that for this game too (even though it was not released):

Meltdown worked heavily on items and bonuses that could be either purchased at the store or picked up during game play.  Here is the help sceen detailing them:

Here was the simple instructions screen.  Before the days of 10 different button combinations, we relied on “old faithful” and did our singular button mashing:

All objects in the game were created as unique blocks on a file and then referenced based on their x,y coordinates.  These were called BOBs, or Sprites.  Here are all of our wall/obstacle/bomb/icon/fire/money sprites:

Ben worked very hard on the player animations so it wouldn’t appear to be waddling little cartoons.  In fact, we modeled the four player options after myself, Ben, my sister and my uncle, so we had a lifelike object to fashion them after.  Here they are, listed in that order.  Also, notice the funny death animation at the top: 

Although I do not have any gameplay screens to show you, here is a level template, indicating the four player’s respective scores/money and life allocations.  All game play exists in the inner frame, with randomly generated walls/bricks/bonuses to give each player a strategic point of shelter at the beginning. Each player then slowly blows their way out and tries to kill the other players.

After every round, all players enter into the store where they can use the money they picked up in the previous round to stock up on upgrades for the next round.  Notice the lovely b&w digitized faces of myself and Ben representing players 1 and 2.

Finally, here is our credit screen upon exiting the game… To this day, I am not sure why we didn’t release this game and the core function of the game worked quite well.  It was a fun learning experience and I am just happy to have acquired some of these old screenshots.

What tickles my fancy?

Ok, so that is a dumb saying, but you get the point…  since this is my first blog post, I thought I would mention a few things that excite me in life.  While I enjoy some run-of-the-mill activities, I also seem to find great value in some of life’s simpler offerings.

So, here you go:

• More than anything, spending my free time with my wife and kids…  Nothing beats being with your family.
• I am, and have always been, a techie nerd to the core.  I still love computers, video games, electronics, etc…  I really enjoy the interwebs and all of the lucious web enterprises that now exist.  I find it quite fascinating to follow search engine battles (ala Google vs. Bing vs. Yahoo).  I also enjoy keeping up on the latest in social networking websites.
• I love music.  I have nearly around 600 CDs, ranging from 4-part a cappella to 80′s rock to UK techno/rave.  Electic?  I think so.
• I used to make fun of my dad for always spending so much time putzing around the house, working on DIY projects or keeping up the lawn/gardens.  I must admit that I now too enjoy these things.  It is great fun to invest yourself into your home and land and to see the rewards…  of course, it is rewarding in itself to have my kids and wife enjoy it too.
• I love working with my company, eLightBulbs.  I am currently the VP of the company and spend most of my time working on the website (development via CFMX), and work with marketing channels to get the word out there.  I am very passionate about it and find much fulfillment in it.
• I love watching movies with my wife.  We do lots of fun things together, but after the kiddies are in bed late at night, we enjoy watching movies together.  I enjoy darker, more intense movies and she love chick flicks…  I guess we have both learned to meet in the middle.

Well, I guess that is good for now…  hopefully, this will not be my only post on this thing and you will see more ramblings.  See ya.