While we were down in the commons we went to a place that Jen and her family love to go called the Matte Factor. It is this little restaurant with this tea called Matte and Jen loves the place because she loves tea and she loves that the place makes everything with natural ingredients including honey to sweeten their tea because she can have honey and not sugar.
We first went in their to get some tea then walked around the commons for a little bit. After walking around and seeing the other stores and such, it was about lunch time and we needed to get something to eat. Jen wanted a wrap from the Matte Factor and I wanted a waffle from this waffle place. Which, my waffle was amazing, it was a cornbread waffle with real maple syrup and chocolate chips on top!!! I got my food and headed over to the Matte place to sit with Jen where she was talking to the guy who works there.
Now, to add a little background, the people who own, run, and work the Matte place are people who are apart of this group called the Twelve Tribes, which we think are like this Jewish cult. They have a website that you can check out called www.twelvetribes.com .
This guy gave her this pamphlet and I walked in on them talking about it. Later after sitting down and eating the guy came back because he saw I was reading it trying to get an idea of what it was saying. They quoted the bible a lot in the pamphlet and asked him why that was. So, we had a nice discussion on what he believes. Basically the man is a Pelagian who thinks men are going to heaven based on their good works and that Christ only came to save those who are just too deep in the whole to get themselves out. I had gone through the Ten Commandments trick with him to show him he is a sinner in need of Christ and he stopped me and said, "have you ever nailed a piece of wood together to something? does that make you a Carpenter? so if no why is it that if I lied once or twice or a few times but not a lot or badly does that make me a lier?"
I must answer this because this was a new thing I had never heard but I think I responded nicely to it. The difference between these two things being a lier and being a Carpenter by profession is that the standard by which the action is measured by. Let me explain, the Law of God says that you break my law you deserve punishment. It does not say how many time you have to break the Law before you finally deserve the justice. Even so was it not by one action of one bite of the fruit of the forbidden tree that sent the whole world into a fallen nature? By one man sin entered the world, is it not right to say that by one sin, justice is to be accounted for? The Carpenter is merely a profession and simply doing things as a Carpenter does does not make you a Carpenter. It is like saying if you ever ran in your life it makes you a runner, or if you ever wrote a poem for class it now makes you a writer. No! I am a horrible writer and by no means it it something that I am. yes I can write, yes I have written but I am by no means A WRITER. The title is stating that it is who I am by what I either enjoy to do often or do professionally. To walk into a room full of writers and say I am one and tell them i wrote a short story for 11th grade English once, they would laugh. The standard is set by society as to what it means to be a writer or a Carpenter or a runner, but not so with being a lier, a murderer, or a thief. The standard is an objective one in which crossing the line now makes your deserving of the penalty. In a court of law it would not stand if you broke it once or a thousand time. Point being you broke the law. In human Law you can break it a bunch of times and not get caught, untrue for God's Law because God knows the hearts and minds of everyone, knowing exactly what Law you broke and how many times whether it be few or many. So, to use that analogy is to compare two different things that do not apply to each other.
Anyways, after talking for a long time with the man who continued to go in circles confusing Law and Gospel, We kindly left the man shaking his hand. I praise God for the opportunity to have spread His Gospel and that by that His purpose will be edified in that man's life. May God's calling be effective always to those whom He chooses to make known to.
Jen then took me to the music store there in Ithaca and that was fun. I got to play a twelve string acoustic guitar which sounded amazing! We then left and kind of got lost trying to find Taughannock Falls, which was a first time for me going there and had to be one of the most beautiful falls in Ithaca by far! It started to rain and so we headed home. What an amazing day with such an amazing girl!
