Author: Higher Up IDEALS

  • PTSS (Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome)

    Recently, I heard that another childhood acquaintance, who we called “Professor”, died from a gunshot wound.  When my mom told me, I felt this wave of feelings pass through me and for a brief moment I felt like I might be next.  It was a familiar feeling that I had grown up with—the persistent consciousness…

  • When Your Strength Becomes Your Weakness

    One of the hardest things I have ever had to deal with was coming to terms with the fact that sometimes the things that are our greatest strengths can lead to our greatest weaknesses.  In other words, there is such a thing as being so strong that you don’t even sense your own weaknesses.  There…

  • A View From the Mountain

    I can honestly say that I don’t know if I would even be a Christian if it were not for Martin Luther King Jr.  Even though I was raised with the Bible and church, MLK Jr. was the greatest example of Christianity that I have known in modern times.  He lived out his calling and…

  • Sometimes Enough Is Tooooooo Much

    Sometimes Enough Is Tooooooo Much

    Do you ever  just feel like you can’t take it any more?  You feel like you have taken all that you can take but yet it seems like things keep piling up?  What do you do? Well for a long time I lived by the maxim that says, “what doesn’t kill you only makes you…

  • And Then Comes Spring

    In the winter season, it is easy to forget that in spite of gray skies and lifeless looking trees, there is something wonderful happening.  Life is begetting life even when we cannot see it.  The same is true for the winters of our souls.  In each of our lives we experience seasons.  Things grow, blossom,…

  • Emerge and See (Emergency)

    In his book, Unhypnosis, my new friend, Dr. Steve Taubman explains how most of us walk around hypnotized without even knowing it.  His theory is that in our early stages of life, when we had very little defense, we were basically programmed by those around us to see the world and ourselves in a certain…

  • Taking No For An Answer

    Sometimes I really get tired of trying to communicate to people because many of us only hear what we want to hear.  Especially these days when most people get so easily offended and feel like having everything go our way is a right.  If I could say it out of kindness, I’d say to them…

  • We Are Worthy! A Theology of Liberation

    This post is a little more personal than my other posts, but I thought it was worth sharing because for the past several weeks I have been having a difficult time reconciling my past with my present.  It started when my Systematic Theology professor gave us an assignment to name our biggest influence on our…

  • You Can Only Go One Way At A Time

    I would have to say that in my experience, the hardest vocation one can take upon himself or herself in this world is that of loving God completely.  Of course, I tell myself that I love God and God’s ways.  Daily, I crucify (figuratively) myself in my mind in an effort to see just where…

  • How Certain Material “Miracles” Become Distractions

    Nothing used to annoy me more than the preachers of the Prosperity Gospel.  I felt like they were turning Christ’s message of faith into something you could find on an infomercial.  It seemed like money and “blessings” were the only things on their minds and like any other pyramid system it was the people on…