On behavior modification, seeking guidance and finding love...

I never understood the purpose of altering swear words to make them more "G-rated". What is the bad part of the bad word? Is it the combination of letters itself or is it the sentiment behind it? Or both?

I think it's the sentiment. A combination of letters is hardly a threat to anybody's social well-being. The intention behind them though, behind any words for that matter, can be extremely violating.

Saying things like "fudge" or whatever else people say (I'm a swearer, not a fudger), to me is the equivalent of changing your behavior to avoid sin without actually making it an endeavor to become closer to God.

Anybody can modify their behavior. Sure, some behaviors are harder to correct, but that's why we side-step those conveniently and focus on the easier stuff we can change moderately successfully.

When I dated the Christian guy who raped my soul (these days, that's what we're calling what he did), his focus was on my swearing. Admittedly, I swear like a sailor. No, no, not like a sailor. More like a sailor who has stubbed his toe, hopped around for a while and knocked over the 7,000 piece 3-D boat puzzle he had been working on for the past two years. I swear like that guy. And I don't see a problem with it. Obviously, I tone it down when I'm around kids and whatnot, even though I don't see the point in doing that either since they'll grow up to swear like me eventually anyway. I also avoid swearing in this blog because I think it might detract from the message I'm trying to convey.

There is a time and a place for everything.

But when I refrain from swearing, I do it out of courtesy, not because I think it's a sin and God frowns upon four letter words.

God sees my heart. And that's what I want to change. I want my heart to be good. And the only way that can happen is if I lean into God, if I ask God to make my heart good.

The stereotypical behavior modification-oriented Christians do have one thing right: we're all sinners. We're broken sinners who idolize things, have sex with people we aren't married to, and reject God every chance we get. Great. But where they lose me is when they decide we can fix all this on our own. If that's not pride, I don't know what pride is.

What is Christian about swear jars and self-deprivation? I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think Jesus deprived himself of anything just to be good with God. Somehow, I think He was good with God and everything else just sort of fell into place.

But hey, I wasn't there. Maybe after Jesus turned the water to wine, he went home and dropped a few silver coins into his wine jar.

Right?

It could happen?

Or, since He used His God powers to turn the water to wine, God was in on it all along.

See, if God is in every action, every reaction, everything, then you're not living alone anymore. You're not deciding alone anymore. You have a guide, which I guess they call the Holy Spirit, but I still call Him God because I don't know enough about the Holy Spirit. Whichever of the Trinity He is (or it is?), if He's there and you don't reject Him, then you'll know which choice is the more godly of the ones you face.

This week, I faced a lot of ungodly options. A lot. More than usual. And being that I'm still broken, and I think I'm on the fence, teetering toward the side where I just give up, where I let myself be broken and decide there is nobody in the world for me because I have been through too much, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Basically, I told God, "I need to heal, and doing this will heal me." I convinced myself that the ungodly behaviors would somehow repair the damage created by other ungodly behaviors.

And they would. They would really repair that particular damage. I am absolutely certain. The behaviors would allow me to overcome certain fears and trust issues and open a door to hope for the future. But, in their wake, the behaviors would leave other damage. And then what? What would repair the new damage?

I decided I was a better healer than God. I decided I knew what was best for me more than God. I decided. I decided alone, without God.

But the funny thing I've learned over this past while since starting to figure out my relationship with God is that when you decide things alone, without God, He's actually still there. And then when you fall, He's actually more there than He was before because you're far more open to listening.

"God, I'm going this way. Bye," and you start walking a path on your own and when you get to a dark dead end and you have nowhere else to go, there He is, with some sort of flashlight.

But sometimes, we have to learn the hard way. Well, often. Sometimes, we can be gently guided and other times, we have to be smacked down so we finally ask for help. And when you factor behavior modification into the equation, most of the time, it'll lead to the latter- the smack down. Because we can't do it on our own. We can't overcome our worst sins on our own merit. If we could, we'd have done it a long time ago.

And wouldn't we be perfect by now?

So yeah, we shouldn't deliberately sin or anything. It's not a free pass. But our focus shouldn't be on the behaviors themselves but on why we do them. Trying to eliminate the behaviors without assessing our need for them and reasons for continuing in them just creates a smoke screen blocking the real issues.

And on the other side of the issue, while talking about the things that are hard to overcome with others who have faced them may help us to sort them out, I've found that when you get into really hard issues, Christians tend to shut down. Maybe that's a generalization. Maybe the limited number of Christians I've been exposed to lack the compassion and courage to be true friends. After all, would you risk your salvation to talk somebody off a ledge they walked onto on their own?

I think that might be what Tim Keller means when he says the opposite of love isn't hate but fear.

How defective is a person who can't even listen without being afraid of taking it badly and instead of providing guidance, fears falling off the tracks themselves, just through inadvertent suggestion?

You don't get that up here. It's funny how in the land of atheism and supposed Godlessness, the support systems are far more boundary-less. If I was really in trouble, I could easily ask anybody I've ever met for help and right now, as I write this, I honestly think any one of them would help, even if I haven't talked to them in years (as was the case this week). I think none of the people in my past about whom I could say that are Christian. And sure, that's a judgment, but it's also a major part of why Christianity is so dead here. It's why people say, "I'd rather be a good person just because I want to do right by people and not because some god created rules to make me nice."

The difference is tangible and heartbreaking.

Over the past year or so, as I've been trying to follow advice of the few Christians I know, I have been trying to talk to Christians about my faith more, and really, Christian love is much different than atheist love. Christian love is hesitant, temporary and temporal. Christian love is "serving". It's almost as if you can feel that they're using you and your afflictions to serve. It's among the most uncaring gestures I think I've ever faced, simply because of its manipulative and indifferent nature. False caring. It's as though my needs become a casualty in their quest for God, as backward as that sounds.

Atheist love, on the other hand, as I've experienced it, stems from a place of empathy. It's a place where the atheist has realized we're in this together and crushing each other only makes it worse. It's where their own sorrows and uncertainties and traumas turn to positives in the absence of a redemptive God. It's where the idea of the crutch comes in. Without the God crutch, you have to pick yourself up, learn to forgive and forget, learn to build your support system, learn to love and learn to cope on your own. And in doing so, you quickly become aware of how difficult it is, and how those around you who have lived through far worse traumas than you have are real survivors. And you admire them for it. And you love them through it.

That's the love I'm used to. It's not perfect. No. It's riddled with defense mechanisms and brokenness too, but it tries so hard to be genuine and enduring. All these years in my not fitting in with anybody, I've taken for granted how much support I've had. And I think it's one of the reasons that church is so hard for me. The Christians are all, "You're meant to be in community," but I am in community. I have the most authentic community of anybody I know. It's part of the reason I have a hard time sometimes- my community always tells it like it is. They always rebuke me when I need rebuke but back off when they see I've stopped listening until I fall down again and then they're right there beside me again, walking with me in my mistakes. As nice as that sounds, it's actually really difficult. It's difficult to be called out all the time and to face reality constantly also. It's most difficult when you need rebuking of so many different things all at the same time. It's difficult because of the detrimental pull pride has on our malleability.

I'm not used to the kind of love that is selective depending on the fragility of the other party. Like, if my problem is with sex and I take men's advice far more readily than women's (I'm wired that way on account of growing up with a single dad), I should be able to talk about it with a guy. There should be at least one guy in the world who is strong enough to talk about sex with a woman without being tempted or end up freaking out at the risk of temptation. I mean, really, grow up. But I do have that here. I have that in the atheist guys I know. I really can talk to them about anything and it doesn't turn into a scandal or taboo breach. It's just helpful conversation. Inspiring conversation. And I get the rebuke and guidance I need, and it's not from the Christian community.

That's the thing- you can actually get Christian guidance from non-Christians. You know why? Because Christianity isn't a secret. It's not some exclusive club that you only know the details of once you're inside. Non-Christians can actually come up with some very, very insightful questions because for them, the Jesus thing is black and white, which is part of the reason they haven't grasped it yet. And when you're faced with temptation, Christianity can become grey. But it's not grey. It really is black and white.

Do you believe in Jesus? Do you believe the words in the Bible are true? Do you believe that Jesus is God? Do you believe that the reason God asks certain things of you is because they are for your benefit? What do you stand to gain through all this deprivation? Do you trust God?

What, as a Christian, is your stance on this particular topic? How do you feel your actions reflect that? If they don't reflect that, why are you pursuing them anyway? Which is more important to you: what God wants for you or what you want for you?

And when an atheist/agnostic asks you tough questions about your faith, sometimes (not all the time) the reason isn't altruism or an act of guidance pointing you towards God, but an effort to show you that by being a Christian, you bring unnecessary suffering into your life. You deprive yourself of things for a God they don't understand. And a lot of the time, all they know of Christianity is hypocrisy. And here they are, asking you the hard questions, getting you to think about where you stand with the Almighty God.

Where do you stand?

Because if you don't ask yourself that, and you start giving answers to an atheist that reflect your pride, you just turned that atheist off God even more. It's as if you're in a boat with the atheist and you just shot the bottom out because you don't have the courage to face your shortcomings.

And when you're humble, and you answer each of those questions with humility while falling to your proverbial knees pleading for God's mercy which has been gifted to you beyond your comprehension, that's where the community finds you.

I know I'm overwhelming sometimes. I'm a passionate person and I'll dive head first into trouble out of nowhere. And I'll get advice to get me out of it and within hours, find myself in an even worse situation. I know. I know I walk out onto a lot of ledges. I fall off a lot of wagons. I do. But so do you. And it's ok. It's ok but at the same time, don't watch me do it and avoid the conversation because it's tedious. And don't hear my words and hide your own in pride. Don't pretend to love me. Don't pretend that God doesn't see this "serving" business is a load of shit.

Don't use me to serve God. Love me. Loving me serves God. But really love me. Or at least spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what that means.

I don't expect people to stop me from my own stupidity. I really don't. If I choose to deviate into terrible territory, that's my problem. But the past little while, I had been so clear with so many people, Christians, agnostics and atheists, and the ones who tried to set me straight are the ones who are either the least certain of their faith or the most certain they have none at all. And really, when you teach me about what it means to be Christian and paint yourself as an elder to me in the absence of Christian structure in my life, you paint yourself as an example, and this week, that example was not caring, loving or walking with me at all.

Do you really think God sees serving as saving yourself?

This week, I got the best compliment a girl can ever get from my friend Erin (I hope she doesn't mind that I kept it :D) after a discussion about God things:
"I don't know why you think you aren't a good Christian. You are the most helpful person I know when it comes to this sort of thing."

It made my day. Or week really. And I would give anything to be able to help her when she needs help and to somehow know when to be around, you know? She lives far away and to just accidentally be online when she's online the minute she needs help... Well, that's something I wish for. I wish that if she needs somebody and reaches out, somebody would be there to reach back. I wish that for everybody around me, really, and I've wished that since long before I was Christian. That's the love I'm used to. It's not serving. I'm not giving something anybody is lacking. I'm giving what I'm lacking. I'm giving what I need because we all need it. And I don't think that's the kind of community I've found in church. It's the kind of community that turns people away from church.

And honestly, from my perspective, it's a more Christian kind of love. It's the way Christian love should be.

No strings attached.

No fear.

Just love.

Just Jesus.