a hard thing.

a hard thing is when you can't remember why you believed some things. you wait and you try to sort it out but the answers you would've given someone else don't make sense any more. you thought they would, you didn't mean them to be silly and small answers, you expected they'd be real and comforting and true and wide enough. but things you thought impossible keep happening, and you wonder if grace is any more impossible or any bigger than everything hurtful in this impossible big world. sometimes the beauty is only barely staving off a lot of ugliness, like when your jacket's too thin for the cold and no one offers you theirs.

frustration: take it out on people you don't know

"Blessing never ceases to follow obedience". Actually, random high school facebook friend, it does. Unless you have some weird definition of "blessing" that i don't want to hear about. Sometimes, obedience leads to crappiness and not much else. Is it ok if we all agree on that? Can we stop with the platitudes?

Who decided "platitude" was a good word? It always distracts me from my self-righteous indignation when i think of this word because it sounds like "platypus" and "attitude" stuck together, but obviously it has nothing to do with those.

Someone should tell God that he is seriously messing with my theodicy right now, because he doesn't appear to be listening to me.

[ok, God, that was a potshot, and you're not even a person i don't know... but, well, i'm whining, and there's a long tradition of that in the Bible, so there. THERE.

maybe you should come in a thundercloud and yell at me like you did to Job. i would definitely deserve that.

one time my new testament teacher declared that Jesus should have just magically made the widow of Nain happier instead of actually raising her son from the dead. if you're not going to fix things, you could just make everyone magically happy.

oh, that's one of the stupidest things you've ever heard? i thought so too.]

unmoored

Honesty has something to do with faith. I don't know what.

I am tired of answers. Most of the answers I ever had have failed me, and I am young and lucky. These days I simply live between near-despair and wild-flying hope, holding both inside me as a prayer for the world and also for me. I think that hope wins out where there is laughter.

Faith is a thing you do one day at a time, I do know this, but when I say it to myself it is hollow and the child inside me cries and rails against the thought. It is especially when I find myself unexpectedly alone, and fear settles in the deep pit between my stomach and my spine. No one will love you, says fear, and grace seems a distant happening for other people.

Something like faith continues out of habit, and I hope it is something like good enough.

"It seemed like you sort of found your identity in him."

My friend's words nearly knocked the wind out of me. I had worked hard, for two and a half years, to keep my identity separate from his, to do what I wanted and not to get subsumed into the relationship bubble that has sucked friend after friend out of my life. I have always had my own identity, thank you.

And yet, now that I've left, where have I gone?

There's something about knowing someone else finds you beautiful to the core, something that makes it easy to believe. But then it's not your own faith.

It turns out there is surprisingly little I know about myself. I'm an idealist and a cynic; I have no patience for small talk; I take charge of things because I can't stand to see them done "wrong". I like gummy bears and chicken fingers of all kinds, but only the best chocolate and coffee will do. I want the best from myself, every day and at all times; I'm awfully self-conscious and I think that's silly. I depend on my friends more than most people do and I am terrified, absolutely terrified, to leave them and make new ones, then leave them and make new ones.

I want to take big risks and I'm passionate about too many things to "just do it". Just do what? Travel the whole entire world or stay in Cleveland, at Havenplace? Start teaching improv to inner city teenagers or open a vintage clothing store? Peace Corps? Or one of a thousand really neat nonprofits that will let me work for them if I'll just do them the favor of begging my own airfare and living costs off of my friends and family?

For right now, exams and papers and responsibilities galore, plenty to do while the back half of my brain fills itself with a million little fears and doubts, possibilities and impossible desires, always whispering six months to May...

Questions I Ask Myself when Considering the Future

A world much like Earth, from a cloistered monk's perspective: "The work that people did had been broken down into jobs that were the same every day, in organizations where people were interchangeable parts. All of the story had been bled out of their lives. That was how it had to be; it was how you got a productive economy. But it would be easy to see a will at work behind this: not exactly an evil will, but a selfish will. The people who'd made the system thus were jealous, not of money and not of power but of story. If their employees came home at day's end with interesting stories to tell, it meant that something had gone wrong: a blackout, a strike, a spree killing. The Powers That Be would not suffer others to be in stories of their own unless they were fake stories that had been made up to motivate them." - Neal Stephenson, Anathem

On Earth, the real Earth, might not there Be Powers that are jealous of story, but not for the sake of anyone's safety? Perhaps a selfish will is an evil will; perhaps an evil will is working every day to convince us to accept safety, productivity, prosperity as barely adequate substitutes for adventure, joy, and real contentment. Couldn't every act of submission to the status quo count for a small victory on the side of the hopeless, and shouldn't we who have hope be the most outrageously daring of any?

What have you done lately that would have been impossible, absent the power of Christ? How have you reimagined the "story" scripted for you by those who do not love you?

Does conviction require coercion?

The same conversation, three times in one day:

Religion and Culture - what makes religions come into such violent conflict?

Systematic Theology - how do you do apologetics in a postmodern world?

Stuff Christians Like - what does "redeeming culture" mean? how is that connected to evangelism?

Religions spawn violence because they are non-negotiable. The whole point of religion is to tell you what things are most important. The best way to avoid violence is to compromise, and a deeply-held religion brooks no compromise.

Apologetics in a postmodern world has to abandon the idea that truth is the best thing we have to offer the world. Postmoderns are not looking for truth; they are looking for individual freedom and fulfillment. The best thing we have to offer them is respect for their individuality, and the opportunity, when sought, to escape the tyranny of self.

Redeeming culture literally means to "buy it back." It doesn't mean replacing or ignoring or accepting culture. It means transforming culture. We all contribute to the world in different ways; our contributions must bear Christ's image.

The reason these questions seem so puzzling is because, as Christians, we have a terribly difficult time seeing anything from outside of our perspective, so that often we never even consider that someone else's priorities and assumptions may differ from ours. We like to talk about Christ "meeting us where we are." We don't like to talk about meeting others where they are. We talk about "culture wars" when really, the vast majority of non-Christians aren't trying to fight anyone; so we try to drag people over to our side when what they need is someone to tend their wounds. This is simply another manifestation of religious violence borne out of an inability to allow others their choices. Instead, we must prayerfully and patiently exhibit Christ's love to the world with such beauty and strength and calm conviction that our lives become the final, undeniable proof of His supernatural grace.

Changing the world and such

Me and my blog went through a bit of a crisis.

Yes, it is early in our relationship, but I have already been spending the last several weeks reevaluating. I started the blog because I was bored, and I like to write, but also I think somewhere deep in my mind there was a desire to be this famous blogger, shaping the thoughts and opinions of the world.

That's super ridiculous, right?

It can become a narcissistic thing so quickly. Assuming the world wants to read your thoughts, but especially expecting the world to respond. So I needed to give it a break. I needed to not really care about it, so that I could care about it in the right way.

All that to say, I still want to write and I still want to put it somewhere for people to see. But I'm not going to be that blog guy on facebook. I'm not going to watch my stats five or six times a day. I'm not a blogger. I'm a writer with an occasional need for an outlet. And you're welcome to participate.