I've spent the past year learning about how Jesus sought out and forgave so many people who were considered unforgivable by the religious of that day. He even supposedly forgave Saul, who became Paul, who killed Christians for their Christianity (Acts 8,9). He even goes so far as to forgive those who mocked him as he hung on the cross, saying in Luke 23:34, "Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do."
He preached that the lost sheep were most important (Matthew 18:12-14). He preached that the ones who needed forgiveness the most would be most grateful for it (Luke 7:41-50). And He preached that we should love one another.
John 13:34:
"A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
35 "By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."
And from what I know, He also preached that the church was the place to learn about His teachings and the love of God.
Right?
So why am I blogging about this?
Because I keep getting totally rejected by the church. And when it happens, I put my feelers out to all those who know me well, and I ask, "Is it me? Am I that offensive?" and my people, who I know with all my soul would rebuke me if they needed to, say no, it's not me.
I learn and I learn and when I feel slightly ready, I dip my toes into the churchy pool and every time, I'm told to get out because I have not been invited.
They'll preach the message of Jesus, they'll say they love everybody, and then they cast me out like I'm some kind of demon.
Recently, I got deleted from a church's online forum. Of course, the way I'll explain it in here is the way I perceive it which may or may not be the way they intended it at all. Anyway, they emailed me to say they were deleting all the posts I had made in response to a question about generosity, saying because I had responded a couple of times, the posts were too conversational and they felt they would deter other people from responding.... so they deleted them all.
I don't get it. Nobody was replying, and it was a good thinky question- How has Jesus been generous in your life?- so I figured I'd reply.
I have a lot to be thankful for. I really do. I have had some terrible things happen in my lifetime, and throughout them all, even when I didn't believe in anything at all, I made it through and became stronger in the process. Now that I look back, I see that my strength was a gift and some of the things that happened probably had been helped. So I posted some things that I was thankful for, one of which being that even if you don't believe your entire life and go so far as to hate Jesus, God and the church and spew blasphemy for years, you can still find the love, forgiveness and redemption Jesus brings. So maybe the first story I wrote was a bit intense, but I meant every word, and really, what's wrong with a little passion in gratitude? And then the thread died again, so I put in a more shallow one to offset the intensity of the first one and a couple of weeks later, he replied again, and I happened to have a similar story to his... And then they all got deleted.
As I said, they sent me an email to explain, but still, the rejection was harsh. It seems to happen every time I reach out to any sort of church community, and it kind of makes me resent the church. I guess any person's reaction to rejection is resentment and shutting down out of self-preservation.
[pause for a few days for reconsideration]
I wrote the above last week while at work, and I went home for lunch, still upset about being deleted. They were sincere, heartfelt stories from the core of my person and they were rejected by a Christian community. I was so ready to come back here and spew anger all over the Christians, but on my way home, I realized that it wasn't Christianity I was angry with. It was the people who sent me the email and deleted my posts- the people who lacked tact and an ability to interact properly via text on a page to a girl they only knew from stories and a few questions.
My stories were intense. I tend to be intense. And sometimes, when I tell my own stories, I myself wonder if they're true because of how many I have. To those who don't know me, I might not seem real, especially if their own stories are simple and their lives have been "privileged" compared to mine (which really, I count as privileged anyway). Some people have no stories. Some people are totally and utterly broken even though they really have no tangible reason to be. And those are the people who tend to be most threatened by my stories. In my experience, they're the first ones to disbelieve my stories. And the saddest part is that it comes from a place of jealousy. They don't realize it, but it really is a jealousy.
To have lived a life that leaves passionate, heartbreaking stories in its wake is to have suffered through it. The thought of somebody yearning for suffering is just absurd, but with suffering comes a spark that people who have no spark would do anything to get. With suffering comes experience and an appreciation for more. Without suffering, everything is taken for granted.
A lot of people do have stories. Great, terrible stories. But so many people keep them for themselves, either out of shyness or embarrassment. I, on the other hand, am an open book. If my story fits the context, I'll tell it, even if it has parts that make me vulnerable and should embarrass me. I don't embarrass easily, and I think vulnerability is a gift.
So, representatives of the church- a lot of churches, no matter how progressive they seem- might slap my feet out of the water, but they are not the church. Jesus is the church. And Jesus isn't a slapper. Jesus isn't about the cliques, the legalism and the exclusiveness. Jesus is about inclusiveness, and if a church rejects me, so be it, but I will not let that change my view of Jesus. I will not let that change my view of Christianity, which is following Christ.
I really could grab some sort of camera and make a low budget documentary about getting rejected by the church. My point of view, my intensity, my history, and my personality seem to clash with the church regardless of my relationship with God and Jesus. I wish the church would wise up and fix their priorities. I wish they'd realize that there is a very fine line between community and clique. There's nothing I clash with more than a clique. But at this point, as an in betweeny, I feel like talking about it in any way would just affirm the atheists', agnostics' and other non-believers' view of Christianity and I don't want to be responsible for any hateful, unjustified affirmations.
But being rejected really shakes a girl's faith to the core, I have to say. Rejection makes me want to reject in retaliation. But what if this is a test? Being rejected can either result in spiteful resentment, or forgiveness and compassion. There's usually a reason a person rejects another, beyond just surface annoyances. People get rejected because they shake things up. They make people insecure. They make people throw guards and barriers up. And that being the case, the rejector suddenly becomes the weaker of the two parties involved.
Therein lies the real test, I guess. In the midst of rejection, how do you acknowledge that you're on more solid footing than the person or people who wronged you?
It's very Jesusy if you think about it.
Anybody who rejects somebody to the point of being hurtful either must not realize what they're doing or lack empathy completely in that situation.
A Christian community that excludes a girl when she's still so stumbly about the relationship between God and the church has no idea how strong an action that is. They have no idea of the effect they have, the power they have over somebody's perception of the church.
But if they did?
I'd like to believe that they would be ashamed, repent and open their arms a little wider for the next person. I'd like to believe that they'd wish to become better Christians.
And so, in that spirit, I have to "forgive them for they know not what they do", but also give them the benefit of the doubt in their rejection as well... I have to assume they didn't intend to totally reject me...
Hence, I used the email address they posted where my posts used to be, and I emailed them one last story of generosity- the most intense one in my repertoire.
It felt kinda good- probably because it was totally selfish and rebellious, but hey, I'm not perfect either.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
'The Reason for God' and the compassion of the Christ...
I got into a mild debate (they're always mild these days... where's my passion?) with my stepmother about books. I decided to buy Timothy Keller's "The Reason for God", and I started reading it a couple days ago. I'm a slow reader (i.e. an ADD reader) so don't get your hopes up for a book report anytime soon... Anyway, she seemed to get stuck on the idea that people read "these" books to either affirm their beliefs or validate their point of view, but really, that's not why I picked up this book.
At this point, I have no beliefs to validate or confirm. I'm learning. In theory, the only belief that might be affirmed by a book like this is whether or not we can rationally believe there is a God, while the rationality might be objective, I really believe that the actual belief in God is a very personal decision that nobody can really influence. Reading a book about the existence or lack thereof of God shouldn't affect your core beliefs. If it does, your core beliefs are not very solid, and you really should spend more time trying to figure out what it is you believe and why.
But where my stepmom and I disagreed was at the idea that faith-centered books are self-help books. Books about faith aren't necessarily emotionally-based, even if faith can't be proven one way or the other. Eventually, proofs about faith become unprovable beliefs, which paradoxically is kind of what the book is about, in a way. From what I've gathered so far, part of the book is about showing how, no matter how seemingly factual an argument about God or religion is, it still is based in faith, even if said faith is a sort of counter-faith (like atheism).
I read a quote once, I can't remember where, that said, "Without God, there would be no atheism." And it's true. If there was no God, "God" being either the supreme being of the universe or the fictional character we've created to represent the supreme being of the universe, there would be no debate about His existence.
Theoretically, though, there should be no debate about His existence anyway, right? It's a purely personal decision...
I understand how Jesus, in Matthew chapter 28, verses 19 and 20, says:
"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you;[...]"
and as a consequence, Christians become missional, spreading the Gospel, trying to get people to see the love, forgiveness and redemption of Jesus Christ. And even though, in theory, that message is solely a message of love and good things (even if the underlying message is really hard and full of rebuke for the people it changes), it is often received with bitterness, resentment and prejudice.
On the other hand, I don't understand why atheists are missional. Of course, I'll end up making generalizations based on the atheists I know (and know of), so I'm sorry in advance. But.... :D Atheists seem to be missional because they feel enlightened. They feel that they've been awakened to some sort of rational truth that dissolves any possible truth with respect to religion. It is as though once they've discovered science, or an either convenient or satisfying reasoning against religion, this new set of beliefs becomes the ultimate truth. Suddenly, religious people are irrational for believing in "supernatural fairy tales", and these enlightened individuals are overwhelmed by their desire to "set them straight".
But why?
One of my co-workers used the Santa Claus analogy in relation to Jesus. "You grow out of believing in Santa, and eventually, that will happen with Jesus too. If you're rational, there's no way you can keep this imaginary friend around for long before you wake up." But my issue with that is what's wrong with believing in Santa? I mean, obviously, if you're forty years old and you sleep by the chimney hoping Santa will wake you up, you have issues. But what's the harm in believing in the spirit and goodness of Santa?
Whether people are Christian or non-believers, Christmas tends to be a special time of year. There's a Christmas spirit that fills the air and makes us all nostalgic (or bitter, as the case may be), and as Elvis asked, "Why can't every day be like Christmas? Why can't that feeling go on endlessly?"
If Jesus fills a Christian's heart with love, hope and generosity every day, why would you want to end that?
Of course, I understand why you would want to end the hate that is associated with fundamentalist Christians. I agree. The hate is terrible and it's very unChristian. But instead of "enlightening" these people by imposing atheist doctrine onto them, why not learn the real Christian doctrine and kindly and with humility enlighten the Christians as to how they are not reflecting the Jesus they claim to follow?
And the same goes for the reverse. Instead of Christians thumping the Bible on atheists and causing animosity in the name of Jesus and the Bible, why not just love them? Show them Jesus through love. Show them Jesus through generosity, support and forgiveness.
Like it or not, every word out of a Christian's mouth in a public forum or in the company of non-believers is a mission statement. It becomes a reflection of Christianity even if in truth, it's merely a reflection of one particular individual's brokenness and ignorance.
A friend of mine forwarded a comment made by an atheist on a forum earlier today in which he spewed all sorts of ignorance about the Bible. He said people eat the unleavened bread as the body of Christ to "telepathically claim him as their master". And then he went on to say how Christians believe in God so God can come in and wipe all of the evil out of their lives. It just went on and on, all misconceptions and ignorance about both Christianity and the Bible. On the flipside, I stumbled upon a video on youtube that makes fun of things fundamentalist Christians have said on internet forums. Things like that scientists want us to believe DNA is the core of our body, but DNA is an acid and everybody knows acid burns stuff so there's no way it could be in our bodies, so obviously evolution is a sham.
It's clear to most people that either side has its ignorant morons and being a moron has nothing to do with religion. But the issue arises when people who claim to be non-morons (:D) base their own core beliefs on the actions and words of the ignorant.
To dismiss Christianity without research solely because of what you've heard some terrible accidental representatives of the faith say or what they've done is doing yourself a grave disservice. Similarly, if all the preaching of damnation and hellfire turns you off God completely, sadly, you're missing the message of what Christianity is really about.
I heard a sermon [from my favorite church in North Carolina] in which the pastor talked about how absurd hell is as a means of getting people to understand Christianity. He explained how ridiculous it would be for a person to be deciding where to go on vacation and say, "Siberia is cold, fairly poverty-stricken, and instead of toilets, they have 'squatty potties', so... let's go to Italy," and equally ridiculous, upon their return from Italy, start talking about how bad Siberia would have been. That's what talking to non-believers about hell is like. Hell is not what Christianity is about. It's not a reason for believing. It's not a reason for not believing. It's entirely missing the point of Jesus.
If rational believers and non-believers alike should be able to agree on one thing, it would be that Jesus was a good guy. He healed the sick. He forgave the worst sins. He redeemed the broken. He lived in poverty and gave more than he had. He simply loved in a way we are just too broken to love and even to fully grasp. And if believers and non-believers don't agree that Jesus was a good guy, whether He is real or just an idea, then they just don't know Jesus.
Why bother knowing Jesus?
Why not?
He's a very influential person in history, right? I mean, we learn about so many historical figures in great detail, why not Jesus?
And frankly, to learn about Jesus is to change your life, whether you believe in Him as the Messiah or not. His example for love and forgiveness is incredible and even if it's all fiction to some people, that shouldn't prevent us from learning from it. We all love so selfishly. We seem to truly believe that giving our love is being generous. We love people because they deserve our love either through relation, acts or experiences. But in the sermon on the mount in Luke chapter 6, Jesus tells of a different kind of love.
Luke Ch 6:27-38 (NIV), in red because it's Jesus' words:
27 "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
37 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you.[...]"
If we did that, the world would be a completely different place. If we loved one another without expecting love in return, if we loved those who are hardest to love, if we forgave those who have wronged us the most, if we give to those who we know will not reward us for giving, what kind of people would we be?
The cynics in the room are probably mumbling, "Suckers. That's the kind of people you'd be." But why not be a sucker instead of an... um.. well, I can't say the word on this blog, and I have yet to figure out an equally powerful synonym that is not a swear word. :D Really, though, why be the one who takes advantage rather than the one who gives? Why be the one who hurts rather than the one who loves? Why be the one who holds a grudge rather than the one who forgives too easily?
We're so busy protecting ourselves, our families, our possessions, along with anything else remotely close to our person that might affect us, that we neglect our affect on those around us. We've become so incredibly selfish.
Yesterday, here in Montreal, a middle-aged woman was beaten in the metro (subway) and there are no witnesses that have come forward. Not only did nobody help her during the attack, nobody called the police, and nobody called in as a witness. All of us would hear about it and think, "How is that possible? I could never be so uncaring," but you know, the witnesses themselves probably thought that too, before they became involved and somehow felt put out by it to the point of just walking by and completely ignoring the situation. Or maybe, worse still, they didn't even notice.
What are we doing? What are our priorities? Where will they lead us?
And in the world we live in today, why would anybody want to dissuade somebody from trying to live the example set by Jesus?
If you're a hateful Christian, stop and reread the Gospels in their entirety. Read it all. Change your heart. You can't spread the love of Jesus through hate. Hate begets more hate.
If you're an anti-Christian atheist or agnostic, encourage the Christians you judge to be better Christians. You can't reach people through hate either.
Neither side will ever reach the other side without empathy, and really, without education. For example, you can't argue Creation vs evolution without knowing both stories. And chances are, if you knew both stories, you'd find a way to make them correlate.
When it comes down to it, it's all a matter of faith. Whether your faith is based in scientific findings you had no part of, or your faith is based on a historical text you also had no part of, it's all just faith. It's all a set of beliefs you've adopted for one reason or another. And, as I'm hoping Timothy Keller's book shows, every side of faith has reasonable arguments, even if the loudest members tend not to be aware of any of them.
But whatever it is, whatever your faith, grow in your faith. Learn in your faith. Flourish in your faith. Love in your faith.
At this point, I have no beliefs to validate or confirm. I'm learning. In theory, the only belief that might be affirmed by a book like this is whether or not we can rationally believe there is a God, while the rationality might be objective, I really believe that the actual belief in God is a very personal decision that nobody can really influence. Reading a book about the existence or lack thereof of God shouldn't affect your core beliefs. If it does, your core beliefs are not very solid, and you really should spend more time trying to figure out what it is you believe and why.
But where my stepmom and I disagreed was at the idea that faith-centered books are self-help books. Books about faith aren't necessarily emotionally-based, even if faith can't be proven one way or the other. Eventually, proofs about faith become unprovable beliefs, which paradoxically is kind of what the book is about, in a way. From what I've gathered so far, part of the book is about showing how, no matter how seemingly factual an argument about God or religion is, it still is based in faith, even if said faith is a sort of counter-faith (like atheism).
I read a quote once, I can't remember where, that said, "Without God, there would be no atheism." And it's true. If there was no God, "God" being either the supreme being of the universe or the fictional character we've created to represent the supreme being of the universe, there would be no debate about His existence.
Theoretically, though, there should be no debate about His existence anyway, right? It's a purely personal decision...
I understand how Jesus, in Matthew chapter 28, verses 19 and 20, says:
"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, "teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you;[...]"
and as a consequence, Christians become missional, spreading the Gospel, trying to get people to see the love, forgiveness and redemption of Jesus Christ. And even though, in theory, that message is solely a message of love and good things (even if the underlying message is really hard and full of rebuke for the people it changes), it is often received with bitterness, resentment and prejudice.
On the other hand, I don't understand why atheists are missional. Of course, I'll end up making generalizations based on the atheists I know (and know of), so I'm sorry in advance. But.... :D Atheists seem to be missional because they feel enlightened. They feel that they've been awakened to some sort of rational truth that dissolves any possible truth with respect to religion. It is as though once they've discovered science, or an either convenient or satisfying reasoning against religion, this new set of beliefs becomes the ultimate truth. Suddenly, religious people are irrational for believing in "supernatural fairy tales", and these enlightened individuals are overwhelmed by their desire to "set them straight".
But why?
One of my co-workers used the Santa Claus analogy in relation to Jesus. "You grow out of believing in Santa, and eventually, that will happen with Jesus too. If you're rational, there's no way you can keep this imaginary friend around for long before you wake up." But my issue with that is what's wrong with believing in Santa? I mean, obviously, if you're forty years old and you sleep by the chimney hoping Santa will wake you up, you have issues. But what's the harm in believing in the spirit and goodness of Santa?
Whether people are Christian or non-believers, Christmas tends to be a special time of year. There's a Christmas spirit that fills the air and makes us all nostalgic (or bitter, as the case may be), and as Elvis asked, "Why can't every day be like Christmas? Why can't that feeling go on endlessly?"
If Jesus fills a Christian's heart with love, hope and generosity every day, why would you want to end that?
Of course, I understand why you would want to end the hate that is associated with fundamentalist Christians. I agree. The hate is terrible and it's very unChristian. But instead of "enlightening" these people by imposing atheist doctrine onto them, why not learn the real Christian doctrine and kindly and with humility enlighten the Christians as to how they are not reflecting the Jesus they claim to follow?
And the same goes for the reverse. Instead of Christians thumping the Bible on atheists and causing animosity in the name of Jesus and the Bible, why not just love them? Show them Jesus through love. Show them Jesus through generosity, support and forgiveness.
Like it or not, every word out of a Christian's mouth in a public forum or in the company of non-believers is a mission statement. It becomes a reflection of Christianity even if in truth, it's merely a reflection of one particular individual's brokenness and ignorance.
A friend of mine forwarded a comment made by an atheist on a forum earlier today in which he spewed all sorts of ignorance about the Bible. He said people eat the unleavened bread as the body of Christ to "telepathically claim him as their master". And then he went on to say how Christians believe in God so God can come in and wipe all of the evil out of their lives. It just went on and on, all misconceptions and ignorance about both Christianity and the Bible. On the flipside, I stumbled upon a video on youtube that makes fun of things fundamentalist Christians have said on internet forums. Things like that scientists want us to believe DNA is the core of our body, but DNA is an acid and everybody knows acid burns stuff so there's no way it could be in our bodies, so obviously evolution is a sham.
It's clear to most people that either side has its ignorant morons and being a moron has nothing to do with religion. But the issue arises when people who claim to be non-morons (:D) base their own core beliefs on the actions and words of the ignorant.
To dismiss Christianity without research solely because of what you've heard some terrible accidental representatives of the faith say or what they've done is doing yourself a grave disservice. Similarly, if all the preaching of damnation and hellfire turns you off God completely, sadly, you're missing the message of what Christianity is really about.
I heard a sermon [from my favorite church in North Carolina] in which the pastor talked about how absurd hell is as a means of getting people to understand Christianity. He explained how ridiculous it would be for a person to be deciding where to go on vacation and say, "Siberia is cold, fairly poverty-stricken, and instead of toilets, they have 'squatty potties', so... let's go to Italy," and equally ridiculous, upon their return from Italy, start talking about how bad Siberia would have been. That's what talking to non-believers about hell is like. Hell is not what Christianity is about. It's not a reason for believing. It's not a reason for not believing. It's entirely missing the point of Jesus.
If rational believers and non-believers alike should be able to agree on one thing, it would be that Jesus was a good guy. He healed the sick. He forgave the worst sins. He redeemed the broken. He lived in poverty and gave more than he had. He simply loved in a way we are just too broken to love and even to fully grasp. And if believers and non-believers don't agree that Jesus was a good guy, whether He is real or just an idea, then they just don't know Jesus.
Why bother knowing Jesus?
Why not?
He's a very influential person in history, right? I mean, we learn about so many historical figures in great detail, why not Jesus?
And frankly, to learn about Jesus is to change your life, whether you believe in Him as the Messiah or not. His example for love and forgiveness is incredible and even if it's all fiction to some people, that shouldn't prevent us from learning from it. We all love so selfishly. We seem to truly believe that giving our love is being generous. We love people because they deserve our love either through relation, acts or experiences. But in the sermon on the mount in Luke chapter 6, Jesus tells of a different kind of love.
Luke Ch 6:27-38 (NIV), in red because it's Jesus' words:
27 "But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32 "If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. 33 And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. 34 And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full. 35 But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
37 "Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38 Give, and it will be given to you.[...]"
If we did that, the world would be a completely different place. If we loved one another without expecting love in return, if we loved those who are hardest to love, if we forgave those who have wronged us the most, if we give to those who we know will not reward us for giving, what kind of people would we be?
The cynics in the room are probably mumbling, "Suckers. That's the kind of people you'd be." But why not be a sucker instead of an... um.. well, I can't say the word on this blog, and I have yet to figure out an equally powerful synonym that is not a swear word. :D Really, though, why be the one who takes advantage rather than the one who gives? Why be the one who hurts rather than the one who loves? Why be the one who holds a grudge rather than the one who forgives too easily?
We're so busy protecting ourselves, our families, our possessions, along with anything else remotely close to our person that might affect us, that we neglect our affect on those around us. We've become so incredibly selfish.
Yesterday, here in Montreal, a middle-aged woman was beaten in the metro (subway) and there are no witnesses that have come forward. Not only did nobody help her during the attack, nobody called the police, and nobody called in as a witness. All of us would hear about it and think, "How is that possible? I could never be so uncaring," but you know, the witnesses themselves probably thought that too, before they became involved and somehow felt put out by it to the point of just walking by and completely ignoring the situation. Or maybe, worse still, they didn't even notice.
What are we doing? What are our priorities? Where will they lead us?
And in the world we live in today, why would anybody want to dissuade somebody from trying to live the example set by Jesus?
If you're a hateful Christian, stop and reread the Gospels in their entirety. Read it all. Change your heart. You can't spread the love of Jesus through hate. Hate begets more hate.
If you're an anti-Christian atheist or agnostic, encourage the Christians you judge to be better Christians. You can't reach people through hate either.
Neither side will ever reach the other side without empathy, and really, without education. For example, you can't argue Creation vs evolution without knowing both stories. And chances are, if you knew both stories, you'd find a way to make them correlate.
When it comes down to it, it's all a matter of faith. Whether your faith is based in scientific findings you had no part of, or your faith is based on a historical text you also had no part of, it's all just faith. It's all a set of beliefs you've adopted for one reason or another. And, as I'm hoping Timothy Keller's book shows, every side of faith has reasonable arguments, even if the loudest members tend not to be aware of any of them.
But whatever it is, whatever your faith, grow in your faith. Learn in your faith. Flourish in your faith. Love in your faith.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
On Bone Marrow...
I started to read the book of Job, and I came across this verse, Job 21:24 (NKJV):
His pails are full of milk,
And the marrow of his bones is moist.
And the marrow caught my [biologist] eye. I read another version, NIV, to get a different perspective (still Job 21:24):
his body well nourished,
his bones rich with marrow.
My study Bible says the date Job was written is unknown and the author is unknown, but it is believed to be possibly Moses or Solomon. The books Moses wrote were written from, according to my study Bible, 1445 to 1405 BC, and Solomon wrote from ~971 to 931 BC.
What bothers me about the verse in Job is that whoever wrote it had not only the knowledge of bone marrow, but also knowledge that somehow, bone marrow correlated with health. When did we discover bone marrow?
I googled and so far have come up with next to nothing on the history and discovery of bone marrow. Instead, I googled the history of anatomy and judging my wikipedia's entry on the topic, it appears as though the Greeks around 4th century BC would have been most likely to discover it, as it says Hippocrates study "demonstrates a basic understanding of musculoskeletal structure, and the beginnings of understanding of the function of certain organs, such as the kidneys." Before that, it doesn't seem as though anybody had come up with realistic models of human anatomy that were complex enough to have touched on the idea of bone marrow.
So what does this mean?
I have no idea. I'm going to have to do more research and ask some people to figure it out.
Maybe they knew of marrow, that it was sort of blood-like in color, and therefore related to health somehow? Or maybe Job was written later on after marrow and its purpose were really discovered? Or maybe these versions say "marrow" when an original version said something like "body core"?
We'll see.
ETA (April 21, 2009):
YEY! I asked on a forum and an awesome Christian guy, well-versed in literal Bible things, explained the meaning of marrow. It's Hebrew root refers to fat, and back then fat was associated with health. And he said they likely ate marrow from animal bones, and in that sense, would have some idea as to what the marrow of a sickly animal versus healthy animal would look like. So there you go. Life is simpler than it seems.
His pails are full of milk,
And the marrow of his bones is moist.
And the marrow caught my [biologist] eye. I read another version, NIV, to get a different perspective (still Job 21:24):
his body well nourished,
his bones rich with marrow.
My study Bible says the date Job was written is unknown and the author is unknown, but it is believed to be possibly Moses or Solomon. The books Moses wrote were written from, according to my study Bible, 1445 to 1405 BC, and Solomon wrote from ~971 to 931 BC.
What bothers me about the verse in Job is that whoever wrote it had not only the knowledge of bone marrow, but also knowledge that somehow, bone marrow correlated with health. When did we discover bone marrow?
I googled and so far have come up with next to nothing on the history and discovery of bone marrow. Instead, I googled the history of anatomy and judging my wikipedia's entry on the topic, it appears as though the Greeks around 4th century BC would have been most likely to discover it, as it says Hippocrates study "demonstrates a basic understanding of musculoskeletal structure, and the beginnings of understanding of the function of certain organs, such as the kidneys." Before that, it doesn't seem as though anybody had come up with realistic models of human anatomy that were complex enough to have touched on the idea of bone marrow.
So what does this mean?
I have no idea. I'm going to have to do more research and ask some people to figure it out.
Maybe they knew of marrow, that it was sort of blood-like in color, and therefore related to health somehow? Or maybe Job was written later on after marrow and its purpose were really discovered? Or maybe these versions say "marrow" when an original version said something like "body core"?
We'll see.
ETA (April 21, 2009):
YEY! I asked on a forum and an awesome Christian guy, well-versed in literal Bible things, explained the meaning of marrow. It's Hebrew root refers to fat, and back then fat was associated with health. And he said they likely ate marrow from animal bones, and in that sense, would have some idea as to what the marrow of a sickly animal versus healthy animal would look like. So there you go. Life is simpler than it seems.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
"What if Satan has tricked you into thinking you've been saved?"
(A pastor said that in a sermon I heard once.)
I've been thinking about this hell thing some more. Back in the day when I believed the God I didn't believe in wouldn't send me to hell, one of my justifications for it was that if God really loved me, He'd want me in heaven with Him. But if God is all powerful and reigns over everything, including Satan, then He must rule over hell too. What that means then is while a person is in hell, they are separated from God, but God isn't losing anything. It's just a one-sided transaction. God gets whatever mediocre benefit from knowing your soul, while you get no benefit of God's unfathomable infinite love whatsoever.
When you consider how selfish humans are, it would kind of seem backwards that any human would accept a relationship so one-sided from which they would receive no benefit, but that along with the selfishness comes a strong drive towards instant gratification, which often outweighs the desire to make provisions, even if for eternity.
I've been listening to sermons and lectures for a while now, and sometimes, I'll come across a really awesome one and I'll feel a need to share it with my atheist friends because I feel the logic and reasoning spoken by whichever minister or authority would either clear up some cloudy areas (about religion or life in general) or allow them to relate to Christians in a more respectful way... Generally, they'll react one of three ways- either they'll tell me to stop pushing religion on them, or they'll feel the need to appease me, take the link and never listen to it, or they'll just ignore it (and me) completely. So far, not once have any of my atheist friends actually listened to or watched anything I've sent, as far as I know. Maybe they're too shy to tell me. *shrug* But what bothers me about their reaction is that this is a life decision they've made, and they won't even give it a few minutes of thought outside themselves to either confirm their decision or perhaps challenge it.
And I know I was there once too. I know I was closed to the idea of learning about religion or even learning anything at all from religious sources, all while thinking I was open-minded, self-aware and forward-thinking.
After finally opening my mind a little and learning a ton, I finally realized that being a liberal thinker doesn't necessarily mean you're an open-minded person, nor does it mean you're either progressive or self-aware. Being liberal in this day and age basically means accepting that with which societies of the past tend to disagree. But the limitations are in the word "past". Religion was the norm in the past. Now, it isn't. Now religion has become something that our liberal society as a whole seems to disagree with, and it also seems to have become the scapegoat for all that is wrong in the world today.
I used to think liberalism was synonymous with tolerance, but it really isn't. Liberalism has become more of a lack of boundaries concept than anything of actual tolerance. In a liberal society, a woman can be promiscuous without judgment, but a woman who saves herself for marriage is judged as oppressed, uninformed, and old fashioned. Everything is a choice until the person chooses the path that is most conservative at which point they are seen as not having made a choice, rather as on a path based on their environment. However, choosing to be promiscuous in this current environment is by far more of a conformity to societal pressures than is choosing to stay a virgin until marriage.
The media seems to paint North America as overwhelmed and increasingly threatened by religion and the religious, even though churches are dying as Christians in particular leave the church in droves. The media constantly glorifies the worst, most bigoted, closed-minded and intolerant religious people and occurrences and project them to the continent as the "norm" of religious circles, and atheists, agnostics, believers of other faiths and even some believers of the Christian faith adopt this horrible perspective as a general view both of Christianity and often of religion in general.
Maybe they are the norm. Maybe the majority of Christians are hateful, bigoted, intolerant misusers and misquoters of the Bible. But even if that is the case, that's not what Christianity is about. That's not what Jesus' goal was. Jesus' goal was not religion. Jesus pissed off the religious and hung out with those the religious would have considered the bottom-feeders of society.
Humans get a lot wrong. We try to help the environment and sometimes end up damaging it even more. We protect ourselves by judging and generalizing to the point where it hurts those around us. We believe we're conscious, thinking individuals, but often discover what we've been led to believe about one thing or another with total confidence is so false that we end up terribly embarrassed. We screw up. It's what we do. Our grandparents messed up the world for our parents and our parents messed up the world for us and we'll do it to our own children, too. In our daily lives and on a global, historical scale, we get everything wrong.
So why then do people base so much of such a personal decision on the actions of so many broken people? Why would you let a bunch of potentially ungodly, broken people decide what your own personal relationship with God should be?
There is no doubt that people have done horrible things both in the name of religion and by taking advantage of the trust within the religious platform. No doubt. But that's not God. And that's not Jesus either.
People go to church to find God. I don't have any stats, but I'm guessing that a lot of people who get the urge to seek God start with the local church. And it makes me wonder how many of these seekers actually find God through people in church versus how many find God through other less interactive means, such as studying the Bible independently, reading criticisms, and listening to sermons on the web.
I wonder because I started independently. I started by reading the Bible, and eventually got a study Bible with notes in it to help me understand passages, and from there, I moved onto reading multiple versions of the texts to get a clearer understanding of it, and gradually, I moved to listening to sermons online. I did talk to people when I had questions, but my discussions were very limited. And in the process, I thought my faith was very shaky and fragile, but when push came to shove, and everybody around me thought I had fallen hard enough to give up my new passion, it only grew. I believe it grew stronger because of its foundation being independent of the broken people who were around me (i.e. the Christians who had introduced me to the Bible to begin with), and therefore, I could dissociate the pain they were causing me from the personal relationship I had built with God. Without having stepped foot inside a church over the past year, I avoided the politics and the brokenness that turn off so many seekers.
But now, I am finding it so hard to integrate into any sort of religious community because I get rejected from both sides. On the one hand, I get rejected because I don't know the rituals, the songs and the procedures that seem innate to those who've grown up in the church. And on the other hand, I get rejected because I see the exclusiveness of the church community and from everything I've learned so far, Jesus is not about exclusiveness.
Last week, I got into a mild debate about exclusiveness within a Good Friday sermon with one of the few religious friends I have. I've been listening to sermons from my now favorite church in North Carolina for some time now, and leading up to Easter, the pastors would explain to the regular church goers that with Easter comes crowds. People attend church that one time of year (maybe Christmas too) and the fact that they enter the church at all provides the church an opportunity to reach them. And so they planned for weeks, from what I heard in the sermons, to make Easter so passionately inclusive in hopes that they'd touch as many hearts as God would allow.
While they were doing that down there in NC, I went to a choir performance of Saint-John's Passion the evening of Good Friday here in Montréal, and in the middle of the performance, the pastor gave a sermon. As he walked up to the microphone before the packed church (probably between one and two thousand people attended, which is an insanely abnormally high number for a Quebec church, as far as I've been exposed to it anyway), I got my hopes up to be moved and touched by the words he had so diligently prepared for this giant audience. Instead, he gave a sermon that Quebecers have come to expect at any church devoid of humanity. It was full of Bibley references, old religious words and references that nobody understood, and was entirely lacking in passion. He did mention love a couple of times, but considering this was the day Jesus suffered terribly and ultimately died on the cross, the day this entire church was being birthed, I would have thought that the power of the significance would have moved him to express the meaning of Good Friday in such a way that everybody listening would feel the intensity and importance of Jesus' death on the cross.
So my friend, who was in the choir, asked me what I thought of the evening, and I was honest. His reaction to my perspective of the sermon was (paraphrased), "The sermon was for the congregation. Does it really matter if the 'holiday Christians' aren't touched? It's not like they're coming back anyway."
Can you see it? That's not Jesus. That's not the Jesus I've come to know. That's not the message that I've learned and cherished. If one sheep strays from the flock, that sheep is most important. But that's not the message I've been getting from the churches I've attempted to reach out to and frankly, it's made me terrified to commit to any church. What if the strings attached to membership overwhelm me? What if I clash too much with the church community simply because I feel Jesus is loving, forgiving and inclusive? What if those fundamental things that have kept my faith strong- Jesus' love, forgiveness, inclusiveness- aren't in the church at all and my exposure to a Christianity that is so impure takes it all away from me? What if the broken people of the church are so broken they replace my idealistic faith with a bitter cynicism?
I am new to faith, and as such, my perspective on it is naive and childlike. But from what I've read, that's a good kind of faith. It's not tainted by legalism, pride and certainty. I pray from my heart because I haven't been taught the rituals of prayer yet. I worship with my soul because I haven't learned to mumble hymns incoherently. I feel broken and completely imperfect because I haven't yet begun to take God's grace, mercy and forgiveness for granted. I feel I am the worst possible Christian there is because I hide my faith, I don't go to church, I don't partake in the Christian community, and I know God loves me anyway, even if fellow Christians judge me and look down on me for my seeming lack of devotion and commitment. I am also humbled by my own arrogance in judging the church, the Christian community and lifelong Christians so harshly.
I'm an in-betweeny. I know there's more to life than atheism, but at this point, I feel I'll never get to a place where my salvation is secure. I think it's very possible (more than likely) that there is a God, but if the way to heaven is through church and the rituals that follow, I'll end up down in hell wishing I could feel the God I loved while I was alive.
So then tell me again, after all this work over the past year, all the effort, the passion and the devotion towards learning about God, along with becoming a social outcast in this respect, why an atheist who rejects a relationship with God would be so confident that if there's a God, they are going to heaven, while my eternity is suddenly so uncertain?
I believe if you know God at all, you know you can't ever grasp even a tiny fraction of God's greatness. God is everything. In the Bible, God says, "I am." He just is. While I'm this tiny person who, from even a kilometer away, is already nearly insignificant, He is all things and everything. How can I be so sure of Him? How can I know Him? I can't. None of us can, whether we believe or not.
All I can do is live, learn and love in His name with all my heart and soul. I believe that's the extent to which I may know God in my tiny human capacity.
I've been thinking about this hell thing some more. Back in the day when I believed the God I didn't believe in wouldn't send me to hell, one of my justifications for it was that if God really loved me, He'd want me in heaven with Him. But if God is all powerful and reigns over everything, including Satan, then He must rule over hell too. What that means then is while a person is in hell, they are separated from God, but God isn't losing anything. It's just a one-sided transaction. God gets whatever mediocre benefit from knowing your soul, while you get no benefit of God's unfathomable infinite love whatsoever.
When you consider how selfish humans are, it would kind of seem backwards that any human would accept a relationship so one-sided from which they would receive no benefit, but that along with the selfishness comes a strong drive towards instant gratification, which often outweighs the desire to make provisions, even if for eternity.
I've been listening to sermons and lectures for a while now, and sometimes, I'll come across a really awesome one and I'll feel a need to share it with my atheist friends because I feel the logic and reasoning spoken by whichever minister or authority would either clear up some cloudy areas (about religion or life in general) or allow them to relate to Christians in a more respectful way... Generally, they'll react one of three ways- either they'll tell me to stop pushing religion on them, or they'll feel the need to appease me, take the link and never listen to it, or they'll just ignore it (and me) completely. So far, not once have any of my atheist friends actually listened to or watched anything I've sent, as far as I know. Maybe they're too shy to tell me. *shrug* But what bothers me about their reaction is that this is a life decision they've made, and they won't even give it a few minutes of thought outside themselves to either confirm their decision or perhaps challenge it.
And I know I was there once too. I know I was closed to the idea of learning about religion or even learning anything at all from religious sources, all while thinking I was open-minded, self-aware and forward-thinking.
After finally opening my mind a little and learning a ton, I finally realized that being a liberal thinker doesn't necessarily mean you're an open-minded person, nor does it mean you're either progressive or self-aware. Being liberal in this day and age basically means accepting that with which societies of the past tend to disagree. But the limitations are in the word "past". Religion was the norm in the past. Now, it isn't. Now religion has become something that our liberal society as a whole seems to disagree with, and it also seems to have become the scapegoat for all that is wrong in the world today.
I used to think liberalism was synonymous with tolerance, but it really isn't. Liberalism has become more of a lack of boundaries concept than anything of actual tolerance. In a liberal society, a woman can be promiscuous without judgment, but a woman who saves herself for marriage is judged as oppressed, uninformed, and old fashioned. Everything is a choice until the person chooses the path that is most conservative at which point they are seen as not having made a choice, rather as on a path based on their environment. However, choosing to be promiscuous in this current environment is by far more of a conformity to societal pressures than is choosing to stay a virgin until marriage.
The media seems to paint North America as overwhelmed and increasingly threatened by religion and the religious, even though churches are dying as Christians in particular leave the church in droves. The media constantly glorifies the worst, most bigoted, closed-minded and intolerant religious people and occurrences and project them to the continent as the "norm" of religious circles, and atheists, agnostics, believers of other faiths and even some believers of the Christian faith adopt this horrible perspective as a general view both of Christianity and often of religion in general.
Maybe they are the norm. Maybe the majority of Christians are hateful, bigoted, intolerant misusers and misquoters of the Bible. But even if that is the case, that's not what Christianity is about. That's not what Jesus' goal was. Jesus' goal was not religion. Jesus pissed off the religious and hung out with those the religious would have considered the bottom-feeders of society.
Humans get a lot wrong. We try to help the environment and sometimes end up damaging it even more. We protect ourselves by judging and generalizing to the point where it hurts those around us. We believe we're conscious, thinking individuals, but often discover what we've been led to believe about one thing or another with total confidence is so false that we end up terribly embarrassed. We screw up. It's what we do. Our grandparents messed up the world for our parents and our parents messed up the world for us and we'll do it to our own children, too. In our daily lives and on a global, historical scale, we get everything wrong.
So why then do people base so much of such a personal decision on the actions of so many broken people? Why would you let a bunch of potentially ungodly, broken people decide what your own personal relationship with God should be?
There is no doubt that people have done horrible things both in the name of religion and by taking advantage of the trust within the religious platform. No doubt. But that's not God. And that's not Jesus either.
People go to church to find God. I don't have any stats, but I'm guessing that a lot of people who get the urge to seek God start with the local church. And it makes me wonder how many of these seekers actually find God through people in church versus how many find God through other less interactive means, such as studying the Bible independently, reading criticisms, and listening to sermons on the web.
I wonder because I started independently. I started by reading the Bible, and eventually got a study Bible with notes in it to help me understand passages, and from there, I moved onto reading multiple versions of the texts to get a clearer understanding of it, and gradually, I moved to listening to sermons online. I did talk to people when I had questions, but my discussions were very limited. And in the process, I thought my faith was very shaky and fragile, but when push came to shove, and everybody around me thought I had fallen hard enough to give up my new passion, it only grew. I believe it grew stronger because of its foundation being independent of the broken people who were around me (i.e. the Christians who had introduced me to the Bible to begin with), and therefore, I could dissociate the pain they were causing me from the personal relationship I had built with God. Without having stepped foot inside a church over the past year, I avoided the politics and the brokenness that turn off so many seekers.
But now, I am finding it so hard to integrate into any sort of religious community because I get rejected from both sides. On the one hand, I get rejected because I don't know the rituals, the songs and the procedures that seem innate to those who've grown up in the church. And on the other hand, I get rejected because I see the exclusiveness of the church community and from everything I've learned so far, Jesus is not about exclusiveness.
Last week, I got into a mild debate about exclusiveness within a Good Friday sermon with one of the few religious friends I have. I've been listening to sermons from my now favorite church in North Carolina for some time now, and leading up to Easter, the pastors would explain to the regular church goers that with Easter comes crowds. People attend church that one time of year (maybe Christmas too) and the fact that they enter the church at all provides the church an opportunity to reach them. And so they planned for weeks, from what I heard in the sermons, to make Easter so passionately inclusive in hopes that they'd touch as many hearts as God would allow.
While they were doing that down there in NC, I went to a choir performance of Saint-John's Passion the evening of Good Friday here in Montréal, and in the middle of the performance, the pastor gave a sermon. As he walked up to the microphone before the packed church (probably between one and two thousand people attended, which is an insanely abnormally high number for a Quebec church, as far as I've been exposed to it anyway), I got my hopes up to be moved and touched by the words he had so diligently prepared for this giant audience. Instead, he gave a sermon that Quebecers have come to expect at any church devoid of humanity. It was full of Bibley references, old religious words and references that nobody understood, and was entirely lacking in passion. He did mention love a couple of times, but considering this was the day Jesus suffered terribly and ultimately died on the cross, the day this entire church was being birthed, I would have thought that the power of the significance would have moved him to express the meaning of Good Friday in such a way that everybody listening would feel the intensity and importance of Jesus' death on the cross.
So my friend, who was in the choir, asked me what I thought of the evening, and I was honest. His reaction to my perspective of the sermon was (paraphrased), "The sermon was for the congregation. Does it really matter if the 'holiday Christians' aren't touched? It's not like they're coming back anyway."
Can you see it? That's not Jesus. That's not the Jesus I've come to know. That's not the message that I've learned and cherished. If one sheep strays from the flock, that sheep is most important. But that's not the message I've been getting from the churches I've attempted to reach out to and frankly, it's made me terrified to commit to any church. What if the strings attached to membership overwhelm me? What if I clash too much with the church community simply because I feel Jesus is loving, forgiving and inclusive? What if those fundamental things that have kept my faith strong- Jesus' love, forgiveness, inclusiveness- aren't in the church at all and my exposure to a Christianity that is so impure takes it all away from me? What if the broken people of the church are so broken they replace my idealistic faith with a bitter cynicism?
I am new to faith, and as such, my perspective on it is naive and childlike. But from what I've read, that's a good kind of faith. It's not tainted by legalism, pride and certainty. I pray from my heart because I haven't been taught the rituals of prayer yet. I worship with my soul because I haven't learned to mumble hymns incoherently. I feel broken and completely imperfect because I haven't yet begun to take God's grace, mercy and forgiveness for granted. I feel I am the worst possible Christian there is because I hide my faith, I don't go to church, I don't partake in the Christian community, and I know God loves me anyway, even if fellow Christians judge me and look down on me for my seeming lack of devotion and commitment. I am also humbled by my own arrogance in judging the church, the Christian community and lifelong Christians so harshly.
I'm an in-betweeny. I know there's more to life than atheism, but at this point, I feel I'll never get to a place where my salvation is secure. I think it's very possible (more than likely) that there is a God, but if the way to heaven is through church and the rituals that follow, I'll end up down in hell wishing I could feel the God I loved while I was alive.
So then tell me again, after all this work over the past year, all the effort, the passion and the devotion towards learning about God, along with becoming a social outcast in this respect, why an atheist who rejects a relationship with God would be so confident that if there's a God, they are going to heaven, while my eternity is suddenly so uncertain?
I believe if you know God at all, you know you can't ever grasp even a tiny fraction of God's greatness. God is everything. In the Bible, God says, "I am." He just is. While I'm this tiny person who, from even a kilometer away, is already nearly insignificant, He is all things and everything. How can I be so sure of Him? How can I know Him? I can't. None of us can, whether we believe or not.
All I can do is live, learn and love in His name with all my heart and soul. I believe that's the extent to which I may know God in my tiny human capacity.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
The God who may or may not be there... Maybe.
Yesterday evening, I somehow stumbled upon the website for the "documentary" called The God Who Wasn't There and it made me wonder things.
First, if it's about how there is no God and Jesus never existed, then why'd they choose the url to be "the God movie". Isn't that like having a movie about white things and then choosing the url for the website to be, "TheBlackThingsMovie.com"?
Obviously, I haven't seen it, but maybe it's so bad that it actually leads a person to lean towards God in a backlashy kind of way? lol
Second, the site says there are interviews with people on the dvd, two of whom are "Barbara & David P. Mikkelson, authors of the Urban Legends Reference Pages at snopes.com". So I went to snopes thinking maybe they can help me figure out if Jesus really was real, you know, since they're authorities on an anti-God documentary's dvd... So I meandered over to snopes.com, put "Jesus existed" in the search bar and the first result was whether or not Jesus was going to be portrayed as a gay man in a movie... Aside from that, the search yielded a bunch of modern hoaxes and chain email scare things, but nothing on the actual birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
I guess I have to see the interview to find out what their purpose is, what authority they have and which ideas they push, because to me, something is missing.
Now, I'm just inferring things here, obviously, because I haven't seen it yet. If the knowledge the writers from snopes share on the dvd is congruent with the message the director wanted to convey (which it should be if they are used in the advertising, listed among other "famous" authorities on godlessness that back up the film's claims), the interview would have a distinct anti-Jesus sentiment, right? And in theory, since they write a website debunking urban legends, they should have the back up to prove their point one way or the other.
But what I have an issue with is why would they be outspoken on an anti-Jesus documentary but not on their own site? Why would they lend their names to such a divisive, single-purpose movie without backing up their stance on their own platform? Unless they have, and I just can't find it, or unless they end up unexpectedly professing their love and dedication for Jesus on that dvd... *shrug*
Often, I've heard atheists, including myself at one point, say, "If there is a God, I highly doubt he'll send me to hell just because I didn't believe in him." I thought I was a relatively good person and in the grand scheme of things, not believing in God was not all that significant.
There are two things wrong with that idea.
First, without realizing it, my atheist belief that God would not punish me and send me to hell is actually a disguised belief in a loving, forgiving and just God. Think about it. For me to be certain that the God I don't believe in won't send me to hell, I have to believe he's a good God and not a God full of wrath. Part of me has to believe that, otherwise, I might become fearful that if I am wrong and IF there is a God, I probably will go to hell, if hell does exist.
Second, believing that God wouldn't send an atheist or even an agnostic to hell just because they hadn't believed absolves a person of any responsibility. If you believe in God and believe in heaven and hell, in theory, your life is changed by those beliefs. Your heart changes and you submit to God, not only because He is the Almighty, powerful Creator of everything and He breathed life into you, but also because you love Him with all your heart and your soul. We sacrifice for those we love and that which we love. We give the things and people we love our time, our money and our hearts. We work for them out of devotion and care.
But to be comforted by a God who is so loving and forgiving without making any sort of sacrifices in appreciation is purely selfish, arrogant and prideful. Instead of submitting to God, the person is taking advantage of the free gifts while knowingly and proudly turning their back to God. As in the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, they are choosing their independence rather than a relationship with God. And as Tim Keller said in the Q&A part of his lecture at Berkley (paraphrased, of course), if you reject a relationship with God, you have chosen to go to hell. You have made that choice. God doesn't have to decide for you.
Now, of course, atheists will say, "That's fine. I don't believe in hell anyway." But what if you're wrong? What if there is a hell? How can you be sure there isn't? And if you really think you know all of the answers of the universe, and you have life all figured out, how come you haven't been able to convince the masses? How come your message is not received? How come, in all your certainty, you're not convincing?
It always seems to come down to faith. I learned sometime last year that faith is a choice.
Jesus was the product of an immaculate conception, he performed miracles and healed so many people, he died on the cross, resurrected on the third day and then ascended into heaven.
If Jesus wasn't God, then none of it is true and it's all just a very famous fairy tale that a whole bunch of people were fooled into believing. And if Jesus was God, then anything is possible. If He created the universe, how is it not possible for Him to do things beyond our small world's capacity? And the difference between the former and the latter is faith. It's a choice. It's basically saying the supernatural is possible because I don't know everything about the universe and I am humble enough to say I'm not the be all and end all. I am not the ultimate. I was given life, this life, not because my soul is awesome, but because somehow somebody somewhere chose me to live this particular life. Somehow my soul not only exists, but it ended up in this body because somebody [greater] thought I might possibly do great things with it.
If none of that is true, then my life is meaningless except for the few instances of gratification I might find along the way. And sure, that's a possibility, but why take comfort in meaninglessness? Just as a believer takes comfort in the love of God, the non-believer takes comfort in the meaninglessness.
How can meaninglessness be comforting? It all lies in the self. I am me, I am all I have and I am all there is. I am in control of my life, my destiny, my actions and my thought. It's just me. If my life is wasted, it's on me. If my life is awesome, I earned it through hard work. I am responsible for me. I am responsible for protecting myself and my body. If hardship, illness and suffering come upon me, such is life, life is hard and life is about survival. The hardship of life is natural and non-discriminatory, and it is up to me to learn how to cope and overcome the hard parts such that they don't overcome me. It's all me. I am independent, self-reliant, self-sufficient and nobody will look out for me but me. I am in total control of me and the things I don't control, I control my reactions toward.
There is no long term possibility of disappointment when you're by yourself in the universe. Nobody can hurt you unless you let them. Nobody can abandon you. Nobody will fail to show up in those moments where you absolutely need somebody. There is no possibility that somebody knows all of you, knows the absolute core of your person, knows how hard you try and how much you suffer and add to it all while watching you struggle, saying nothing and seemingly not being helpful. There is also no possibility that all of this suffering was not accidental, rather calculated and planned. There is no possibility that you are not in control of yourself.
It's reassuring.
It's more reassuring than the thought of setting your life path toward a certain ambition, working harder than anybody has ever worked every day of your life, and never achieving it regardless for no tangible reason.
They say God answers your prayers, just not always in the way you'd like them to be answered. I think one thing most of us pray for, even as non-believers is purpose. We want to leave a mark in this universe before we leave. We want a legacy.
But that's not what a godly life is about. A godly life is about living a life that leaves a legacy in His name. He's about achievement that glorifies and honors Him, rather than ourselves. So what if when we pray for purpose, God answers by taking away that which we rely on for purpose, rendering our life as we know it completely and utterly meaningless? We get back up again, dust ourselves off and aim toward a new purpose. And some of us go through this again and again and again. We see every fall as a failure, as somehow being on the wrong path, and yet, our every attempt seems to end with us falling anyway. We either fall by truly failing somehow, or simply by losing our lust for whatever our goal was.
What if we relinquish control completely? What if we pray, "God, guide me to wherever it is you want me to be," and then just listen for a while with an open heart and see what happens. If there is no God, God won't move within your life. If there is a God, He might move and He might not. Either way, when you start to truly listen, when you start to open your heart and mind to the idea of being led to right path instead of feeling in total control of your own journey, you might see opportunities you would have missed otherwise.
When I go on road trips, I love getting lost. Sure, it's a waste of time and resources, but often, when I get completely lost, I see the most beautiful things that I would never have seen otherwise. When you're lost, you look around a lot more than when you're on the right path. You take in more, hoping to recognize something, anything, and in the process, you pay attention to all the tiny details and find the incredible beauty you ideally were never supposed to witness.
That's kind of how praying started for me. The Christians I knew said, "Just pray to God that he'd show himself to you." And so I did. But the thing with asking somebody to show you something is once you do, if you genuinely mean it, you have to look for it.
If you ask an unfaithful spouse or a friend who has betrayed you to give you reasons to trust again, you have to look for them. You have to try to feel them, otherwise no amount of effort on their part will ever sink in and redeem themselves in your eyes. Without your heart opening, all of their actions just fall to the ground, useless and insignificant.
Now hear me out for a minute: If you want to see God, you just have to look for Him. I'm not telling you whether or not He exists, just that He can be everything, and it's up to you to see Him or not. He might not exist and yet we still might see Him- kind of like how a person's horoscope seems accurate because it's so general, but that doesn't make it actual truth. And if you open your heart to the possibility of seeing Him, the rest will follow. You'll see the choice you have to make that I mentioned earlier: either it's all God, or it isn't.
At the end of it, maybe I'm too idealistic, but I really, really don't think anybody would say He's "the God who wasn't there", because even if you choose not to believe, suddenly, you'll respectfully see how others might veer in the toward the other option.
And if that happens, you just might end up an in-betweeny like me.
Sucka! Hehe. :D
Just kidding...
Maybe.
First, if it's about how there is no God and Jesus never existed, then why'd they choose the url to be "the God movie". Isn't that like having a movie about white things and then choosing the url for the website to be, "TheBlackThingsMovie.com"?
Obviously, I haven't seen it, but maybe it's so bad that it actually leads a person to lean towards God in a backlashy kind of way? lol
Second, the site says there are interviews with people on the dvd, two of whom are "Barbara & David P. Mikkelson, authors of the Urban Legends Reference Pages at snopes.com". So I went to snopes thinking maybe they can help me figure out if Jesus really was real, you know, since they're authorities on an anti-God documentary's dvd... So I meandered over to snopes.com, put "Jesus existed" in the search bar and the first result was whether or not Jesus was going to be portrayed as a gay man in a movie... Aside from that, the search yielded a bunch of modern hoaxes and chain email scare things, but nothing on the actual birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus.
I guess I have to see the interview to find out what their purpose is, what authority they have and which ideas they push, because to me, something is missing.
Now, I'm just inferring things here, obviously, because I haven't seen it yet. If the knowledge the writers from snopes share on the dvd is congruent with the message the director wanted to convey (which it should be if they are used in the advertising, listed among other "famous" authorities on godlessness that back up the film's claims), the interview would have a distinct anti-Jesus sentiment, right? And in theory, since they write a website debunking urban legends, they should have the back up to prove their point one way or the other.
But what I have an issue with is why would they be outspoken on an anti-Jesus documentary but not on their own site? Why would they lend their names to such a divisive, single-purpose movie without backing up their stance on their own platform? Unless they have, and I just can't find it, or unless they end up unexpectedly professing their love and dedication for Jesus on that dvd... *shrug*
Often, I've heard atheists, including myself at one point, say, "If there is a God, I highly doubt he'll send me to hell just because I didn't believe in him." I thought I was a relatively good person and in the grand scheme of things, not believing in God was not all that significant.
There are two things wrong with that idea.
First, without realizing it, my atheist belief that God would not punish me and send me to hell is actually a disguised belief in a loving, forgiving and just God. Think about it. For me to be certain that the God I don't believe in won't send me to hell, I have to believe he's a good God and not a God full of wrath. Part of me has to believe that, otherwise, I might become fearful that if I am wrong and IF there is a God, I probably will go to hell, if hell does exist.
Second, believing that God wouldn't send an atheist or even an agnostic to hell just because they hadn't believed absolves a person of any responsibility. If you believe in God and believe in heaven and hell, in theory, your life is changed by those beliefs. Your heart changes and you submit to God, not only because He is the Almighty, powerful Creator of everything and He breathed life into you, but also because you love Him with all your heart and your soul. We sacrifice for those we love and that which we love. We give the things and people we love our time, our money and our hearts. We work for them out of devotion and care.
But to be comforted by a God who is so loving and forgiving without making any sort of sacrifices in appreciation is purely selfish, arrogant and prideful. Instead of submitting to God, the person is taking advantage of the free gifts while knowingly and proudly turning their back to God. As in the story of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, they are choosing their independence rather than a relationship with God. And as Tim Keller said in the Q&A part of his lecture at Berkley (paraphrased, of course), if you reject a relationship with God, you have chosen to go to hell. You have made that choice. God doesn't have to decide for you.
Now, of course, atheists will say, "That's fine. I don't believe in hell anyway." But what if you're wrong? What if there is a hell? How can you be sure there isn't? And if you really think you know all of the answers of the universe, and you have life all figured out, how come you haven't been able to convince the masses? How come your message is not received? How come, in all your certainty, you're not convincing?
It always seems to come down to faith. I learned sometime last year that faith is a choice.
Jesus was the product of an immaculate conception, he performed miracles and healed so many people, he died on the cross, resurrected on the third day and then ascended into heaven.
If Jesus wasn't God, then none of it is true and it's all just a very famous fairy tale that a whole bunch of people were fooled into believing. And if Jesus was God, then anything is possible. If He created the universe, how is it not possible for Him to do things beyond our small world's capacity? And the difference between the former and the latter is faith. It's a choice. It's basically saying the supernatural is possible because I don't know everything about the universe and I am humble enough to say I'm not the be all and end all. I am not the ultimate. I was given life, this life, not because my soul is awesome, but because somehow somebody somewhere chose me to live this particular life. Somehow my soul not only exists, but it ended up in this body because somebody [greater] thought I might possibly do great things with it.
If none of that is true, then my life is meaningless except for the few instances of gratification I might find along the way. And sure, that's a possibility, but why take comfort in meaninglessness? Just as a believer takes comfort in the love of God, the non-believer takes comfort in the meaninglessness.
How can meaninglessness be comforting? It all lies in the self. I am me, I am all I have and I am all there is. I am in control of my life, my destiny, my actions and my thought. It's just me. If my life is wasted, it's on me. If my life is awesome, I earned it through hard work. I am responsible for me. I am responsible for protecting myself and my body. If hardship, illness and suffering come upon me, such is life, life is hard and life is about survival. The hardship of life is natural and non-discriminatory, and it is up to me to learn how to cope and overcome the hard parts such that they don't overcome me. It's all me. I am independent, self-reliant, self-sufficient and nobody will look out for me but me. I am in total control of me and the things I don't control, I control my reactions toward.
There is no long term possibility of disappointment when you're by yourself in the universe. Nobody can hurt you unless you let them. Nobody can abandon you. Nobody will fail to show up in those moments where you absolutely need somebody. There is no possibility that somebody knows all of you, knows the absolute core of your person, knows how hard you try and how much you suffer and add to it all while watching you struggle, saying nothing and seemingly not being helpful. There is also no possibility that all of this suffering was not accidental, rather calculated and planned. There is no possibility that you are not in control of yourself.
It's reassuring.
It's more reassuring than the thought of setting your life path toward a certain ambition, working harder than anybody has ever worked every day of your life, and never achieving it regardless for no tangible reason.
They say God answers your prayers, just not always in the way you'd like them to be answered. I think one thing most of us pray for, even as non-believers is purpose. We want to leave a mark in this universe before we leave. We want a legacy.
But that's not what a godly life is about. A godly life is about living a life that leaves a legacy in His name. He's about achievement that glorifies and honors Him, rather than ourselves. So what if when we pray for purpose, God answers by taking away that which we rely on for purpose, rendering our life as we know it completely and utterly meaningless? We get back up again, dust ourselves off and aim toward a new purpose. And some of us go through this again and again and again. We see every fall as a failure, as somehow being on the wrong path, and yet, our every attempt seems to end with us falling anyway. We either fall by truly failing somehow, or simply by losing our lust for whatever our goal was.
What if we relinquish control completely? What if we pray, "God, guide me to wherever it is you want me to be," and then just listen for a while with an open heart and see what happens. If there is no God, God won't move within your life. If there is a God, He might move and He might not. Either way, when you start to truly listen, when you start to open your heart and mind to the idea of being led to right path instead of feeling in total control of your own journey, you might see opportunities you would have missed otherwise.
When I go on road trips, I love getting lost. Sure, it's a waste of time and resources, but often, when I get completely lost, I see the most beautiful things that I would never have seen otherwise. When you're lost, you look around a lot more than when you're on the right path. You take in more, hoping to recognize something, anything, and in the process, you pay attention to all the tiny details and find the incredible beauty you ideally were never supposed to witness.
That's kind of how praying started for me. The Christians I knew said, "Just pray to God that he'd show himself to you." And so I did. But the thing with asking somebody to show you something is once you do, if you genuinely mean it, you have to look for it.
If you ask an unfaithful spouse or a friend who has betrayed you to give you reasons to trust again, you have to look for them. You have to try to feel them, otherwise no amount of effort on their part will ever sink in and redeem themselves in your eyes. Without your heart opening, all of their actions just fall to the ground, useless and insignificant.
Now hear me out for a minute: If you want to see God, you just have to look for Him. I'm not telling you whether or not He exists, just that He can be everything, and it's up to you to see Him or not. He might not exist and yet we still might see Him- kind of like how a person's horoscope seems accurate because it's so general, but that doesn't make it actual truth. And if you open your heart to the possibility of seeing Him, the rest will follow. You'll see the choice you have to make that I mentioned earlier: either it's all God, or it isn't.
At the end of it, maybe I'm too idealistic, but I really, really don't think anybody would say He's "the God who wasn't there", because even if you choose not to believe, suddenly, you'll respectfully see how others might veer in the toward the other option.
And if that happens, you just might end up an in-betweeny like me.
Sucka! Hehe. :D
Just kidding...
Maybe.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
In the beginning...
Since most of the people who read my original blog (Living Life to the Furrest, which has gone underground) are atheist or agnostic and skip over most God-related discussion, I figured I may as well start a new blog where I can dive into it into detail without offending my loyal readers...
Of course, I'll still offend them, just with less Jesus. :D
Instead, I'll offend everybody, most likely, religious and a-religious alike. Yey!
Obviously, that's not my intention. My intention is to sift out my thoughts and experiences about religion and lack thereof from the perspective of an "in-betweener".
The first time I ever read any of the Bible outside of school and without being forced was around the second week of May 2008. So basically, for nearly a year, I've been exploring the Bible and other churchy things, and while I feel I've learned a ton, I am so aware that I have learned next to nothing.
In the beginning, the opposition to me reading the Bible was fierce. In spite of having a BSc in biology, people around me started to question my rationality and categorized me as a right wing, conservative Bible thumper- just because I was reading it. At that point, I didn't even believe in any of it yet. I was just learning for the sake of learning.
Suddenly, I was expected to throw my years of biology away and believe in the literal telling of Creation, hate the homosexual community and start bombing abortion clinics.
Well, no.
I love my gay peeps. And really, not to love them is unChristian in my opinion. But that's another issue for another day.
I won't say I'm well-versed in Bible things. Honestly, so far, I've read Matthew, John and Luke, James, Ecclesiastes, a few psalms, quite a bit of Genesis, bits of the Corinthians, Philippians, um... you know, bits of stuff all over. There are some books in the Bible that I still don't know exist. There are some books I've read twice already. Some parts I've read dozens of times. So obviously, I'm not a pro and I still have a lot to learn. A LOT.
I'll also be honest and say a boy gave me my first Bible. I really thought he was my person, and he was a Christian. No matter what, his kids would be Christian, and in order for me to see any possibility of a future with him, which would include Christian babies, I had to find out a way to come to terms with religion and a way to respect my own future babies' beliefs.
As it turns out, my passion for learning made him feel like a bad Christian and I ended up keeping my searches and eventually my faith entirely from him. He'd ask me if I believed in Jesus and I'd always say either "no," or "I don't know," when really, I wasn't so doubtful one way or the other.
I continued my secret quest for learning by listening to sermons from a number of churches, along with lectures on youtube and subtle [and not-so-subtle] chats with both believers and non-believers. Sometimes, the discussions go well, and other times, I am shut down- by both sides- and being shut down so often leads me to categorize myself as an "in-betweeny" as I mentioned earlier. I'm too entrenched in the Bible to be non-threatening to the atheists and I'm too much of a religion-virgin to get along with the religious.
After twenty-eight years of swaying between atheism and agnosticism (but by far, leaning towards agnosticism), I have found a love and passion for learning about Christianity, learning about the teachings of Jesus and learning about the Almighty God, but somehow, I have yet to make the link between religious practice and faith in God.
In theory, it works. You sing hymns to worship God, to express your love and devotion. But when the multitude stands up and drones out barely audible mumblings with their noses pressed into old, musty hymnals, I lose the connection. Or, when I look back at the times I went to Catholic church with my grandparents as a child, as the Eucharist was served (passed out? Sorry, I don't know all the terminology yet), my grandfather made sure we didn't get any because we weren't raised "right" with the church. Why does a person have to know the rosary to know Jesus?
I'm a dog person, hence the "furry" and "dogma" play on words. And so, I'll use a dog analogy. My brother was short on cash and his dog needed a rabies vaccine by law. So he brought his dog to the vet down the street and asked for the rabies shot. The vet refused. He told my brother he had to buy the package with ALL the vaccines or the vet wouldn't vaccinate the dog at all. So, on my advice, my brother left. He'd listed the vaccines in the package to me and there were so many, including optional ones, like Bordetella and Lyme. We don't have Lyme disease here (yet). That many vaccines in one day would have done damage to that dog's immune system.
Based on my experience, I draw parallels between that vet and the church. Because of its own policy, the vet refused to give a single core vaccine and the dog walked away vulnerable and unprotected, just like the church (as in the group of Christians) refused to teach me Jesus simply because I wasn't ready to buy the whole package either.
Over the past year, the Christians I have learned from have put the Christ back in Christianity. Jesus is all that matters and the rest follows, they say. Jesus changes your heart and as a result of a changed heart, the rest follows. And I can buy that, because honestly, having Jesus love you no matter who you are does change your heart, similar to how a person who is newly in love has an altered perspective. But in this society where parents are abandoning their kids constantly- and I don't mean giving their kids up, I mean, walking out on them, and also just not being present in their daily lives- it is so easy to see how belief in an unconditional, undeserved love like that would become harder and harder.
I knew it in my own life. I've always felt a struggle with feeling loved. My own mother left when I was two. To learn abandonment at two years old is to learn that a person can just fail at being lovable. How can Jesus love me if my own mother didn't? How can Jesus, who knows everything I've done and thought of doing and everything I will do in the future stay with me always if my own mom gave me up when I wasn't a full person yet?
How can He not? If, as they say, I'm a child of God and God's love is unimaginable and completely outside the realm of any human capacity for love, then how can He not?
Anyway, all that to say, I've started a new blog where I can spew out my ideas on faith, religion, the religious, the non-religious, the church, the Bible and everything else that might cross my mind regarding any of it.
And I'm sorry in advance for offending through misnaming, accidental blasphemy, not capitalizing the right words, and frankly, just saying things I'm not supposed to. I'm sorry for offending- I'm not actually apologizing for what I'm saying or going to say, because not only am I still learning, but I'm just speaking my mind here. These are my thoughts and you're free to comment as you please (unless things get out of hand and I have to limit that, but we'll pretend to be optimistic for now :D).
So yeah. And so there was life typed onto this blank blog. Thank God. lol
Of course, I'll still offend them, just with less Jesus. :D
Instead, I'll offend everybody, most likely, religious and a-religious alike. Yey!
Obviously, that's not my intention. My intention is to sift out my thoughts and experiences about religion and lack thereof from the perspective of an "in-betweener".
The first time I ever read any of the Bible outside of school and without being forced was around the second week of May 2008. So basically, for nearly a year, I've been exploring the Bible and other churchy things, and while I feel I've learned a ton, I am so aware that I have learned next to nothing.
In the beginning, the opposition to me reading the Bible was fierce. In spite of having a BSc in biology, people around me started to question my rationality and categorized me as a right wing, conservative Bible thumper- just because I was reading it. At that point, I didn't even believe in any of it yet. I was just learning for the sake of learning.
Suddenly, I was expected to throw my years of biology away and believe in the literal telling of Creation, hate the homosexual community and start bombing abortion clinics.
Well, no.
I love my gay peeps. And really, not to love them is unChristian in my opinion. But that's another issue for another day.
I won't say I'm well-versed in Bible things. Honestly, so far, I've read Matthew, John and Luke, James, Ecclesiastes, a few psalms, quite a bit of Genesis, bits of the Corinthians, Philippians, um... you know, bits of stuff all over. There are some books in the Bible that I still don't know exist. There are some books I've read twice already. Some parts I've read dozens of times. So obviously, I'm not a pro and I still have a lot to learn. A LOT.
I'll also be honest and say a boy gave me my first Bible. I really thought he was my person, and he was a Christian. No matter what, his kids would be Christian, and in order for me to see any possibility of a future with him, which would include Christian babies, I had to find out a way to come to terms with religion and a way to respect my own future babies' beliefs.
As it turns out, my passion for learning made him feel like a bad Christian and I ended up keeping my searches and eventually my faith entirely from him. He'd ask me if I believed in Jesus and I'd always say either "no," or "I don't know," when really, I wasn't so doubtful one way or the other.
I continued my secret quest for learning by listening to sermons from a number of churches, along with lectures on youtube and subtle [and not-so-subtle] chats with both believers and non-believers. Sometimes, the discussions go well, and other times, I am shut down- by both sides- and being shut down so often leads me to categorize myself as an "in-betweeny" as I mentioned earlier. I'm too entrenched in the Bible to be non-threatening to the atheists and I'm too much of a religion-virgin to get along with the religious.
After twenty-eight years of swaying between atheism and agnosticism (but by far, leaning towards agnosticism), I have found a love and passion for learning about Christianity, learning about the teachings of Jesus and learning about the Almighty God, but somehow, I have yet to make the link between religious practice and faith in God.
In theory, it works. You sing hymns to worship God, to express your love and devotion. But when the multitude stands up and drones out barely audible mumblings with their noses pressed into old, musty hymnals, I lose the connection. Or, when I look back at the times I went to Catholic church with my grandparents as a child, as the Eucharist was served (passed out? Sorry, I don't know all the terminology yet), my grandfather made sure we didn't get any because we weren't raised "right" with the church. Why does a person have to know the rosary to know Jesus?
I'm a dog person, hence the "furry" and "dogma" play on words. And so, I'll use a dog analogy. My brother was short on cash and his dog needed a rabies vaccine by law. So he brought his dog to the vet down the street and asked for the rabies shot. The vet refused. He told my brother he had to buy the package with ALL the vaccines or the vet wouldn't vaccinate the dog at all. So, on my advice, my brother left. He'd listed the vaccines in the package to me and there were so many, including optional ones, like Bordetella and Lyme. We don't have Lyme disease here (yet). That many vaccines in one day would have done damage to that dog's immune system.
Based on my experience, I draw parallels between that vet and the church. Because of its own policy, the vet refused to give a single core vaccine and the dog walked away vulnerable and unprotected, just like the church (as in the group of Christians) refused to teach me Jesus simply because I wasn't ready to buy the whole package either.
Over the past year, the Christians I have learned from have put the Christ back in Christianity. Jesus is all that matters and the rest follows, they say. Jesus changes your heart and as a result of a changed heart, the rest follows. And I can buy that, because honestly, having Jesus love you no matter who you are does change your heart, similar to how a person who is newly in love has an altered perspective. But in this society where parents are abandoning their kids constantly- and I don't mean giving their kids up, I mean, walking out on them, and also just not being present in their daily lives- it is so easy to see how belief in an unconditional, undeserved love like that would become harder and harder.
I knew it in my own life. I've always felt a struggle with feeling loved. My own mother left when I was two. To learn abandonment at two years old is to learn that a person can just fail at being lovable. How can Jesus love me if my own mother didn't? How can Jesus, who knows everything I've done and thought of doing and everything I will do in the future stay with me always if my own mom gave me up when I wasn't a full person yet?
How can He not? If, as they say, I'm a child of God and God's love is unimaginable and completely outside the realm of any human capacity for love, then how can He not?
Anyway, all that to say, I've started a new blog where I can spew out my ideas on faith, religion, the religious, the non-religious, the church, the Bible and everything else that might cross my mind regarding any of it.
And I'm sorry in advance for offending through misnaming, accidental blasphemy, not capitalizing the right words, and frankly, just saying things I'm not supposed to. I'm sorry for offending- I'm not actually apologizing for what I'm saying or going to say, because not only am I still learning, but I'm just speaking my mind here. These are my thoughts and you're free to comment as you please (unless things get out of hand and I have to limit that, but we'll pretend to be optimistic for now :D).
So yeah. And so there was life typed onto this blank blog. Thank God. lol
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