Concert and Christianity

Alright, ha ha! Okay!
Mavs won the finals. Lebron melted down. Dirk was ridiculous. Jason Terry is one cocky guy for saying he gives God the glory. I am not sure how I feel about any of that.
Other than that, my days have been pretty cool. My last post was on Thursday so since then, hmmm, I watched X-Men 3 with Victor. He wanted to check some facts from First Class, and I need to go see First Class pretty soon. Hopefully this week, so you can tell me if you are going or something.
I went to Seattle yesterday and came back today. I went with everyone but Ben from my family, my sister's friend Kayla, and Christian. We went and saw Emery, Oh Sleeper, Hawkboy, Monsters Scare You, and A Hope Not Forgotten(or something like that). The bands, Monsters and Hope, were the classic scream for the verse and have a whiny singer for the chorus, which people who know me know that is probably my favorite style... Okay that style bugs me, and it didn't help that Hope had a singer that had to consistently try to hit notes a step or two out of his range. To be fair though, it was kind of fun to watch because at least the screamers were good and the crowd was super excited.
On the ride up I made some joke about not wanting to see Hawkboy(seriously who wants to see a band with a name like hawkboy), and then my sister told me she read they were former members of As Cities Burn(which was a tight band). I confirmed this, and got pretty excited to see them. Then they got on stage with just a vocalist/guitarist and a drummer. A line up after my own heart following top notch bands like the White Stripes and Black Keys. And yeah, Hawkboy was pretty sweet, obviously not as cool as the two bands last sentence, but still a nice experience.
I mentioned the crowd. The crowd went crazy for Oh Sleeper and Emery, but it started with Oh Sleeper. I'm sure it isnt uncommon, but it's the first time I've seen the lead screamer get crowd surfed while still screaming lyrics. It was intense, and that guy's screaming was impressive.
Emery, oh Emery. I do love watching them in concert, but they were not the same without Devin. Still very professional, and I liked the quick acoustic session, and the new guy Andy was good, but Devin may have been my favorite member in Emery. His vocals drove I'm Only a Man, which I have already stated my opinions on. Although their guitarist is pretty cool too, I mean, who can hate on a guy doing two string tapping in concert? All in all though, quite the intense show.
Then I had New Vintage today which was good, although I was pretty tired from the drive and lack of sleep last night. Oh well, Austin gave a good message, and even used my favorite verse, 1 Corinthians 12:9-10.
Now that summer is started, I'm finishing up Mere Christianity. I took a small break at the end of the year. I read the chapter today called "Is Christianity Hard or Easy?" Man, there are some great points in there. Really, you should probably just read it, that would be cooler than me just telling you about it, because I probably won't make any sense if you haven't read it. Anyway, I liked how C.S. Lewis separated simple morality and being a good person from what Christianity is about. When people try to be moral, or good, they simply try to add stuff to their natural self, hoping that in the end with all these morals the natural self will be able to do what it wants. It is still a self centered viewpoint, and with that viewpoint we will just end up exhausted. We either have to give up being good or just end up horribly discouraged and no fun. Whereas in Christianity, it is easier, and harder than that. Because Christianity just says hey let's kill the natural self, and replace it with Christ. Christ doesn't want your money, your success, He just wants You. All of it. So it is harder to give up all of yourself, but in the end, you will be fullfilled. And fullfilled is easier than failure. I don't know if that made any sense, just something to think about.
That's all for tonight.