Dearest America;

(It's near the end of the movie, and the hero,having retaken the city from the enemy and beating the traitor villain in a brutal fight points gun at him. The traitor offers a defense of his actions, but the hero simply shoots him in the head.)

America, it's time we had a talk. I know, I should have done this years ago, but I'm worried about you. It seems you've forgotten who you are, and you're starting to come apart at the seams in your self denial. I'm here to help, because I love you with all of my heart, but this may still sting a bit:

(The heroes, having beaten the bad guy in a car chase, wax poetic about shooting criminals instead of searching and arresting him. They then allow him a chance to pull a weapon, and when he does this, the criminal is shot multiple times at point-blank range.)

America, you are a country full of lethal, death-loving, war-starting bastards.

(the good guys, having killed an enemy patrol, calmly state their intent to kill every enemy solder in it, then tear one of the enemy soldiers limb from limb.)

I know you talk about loving peace, but America, I'm not so sure you do. Oh, I know you talk about it, and I know your leaders will talk endlessly about diplomacy, but let's just be honest: At the most basic level, you don't settle for anything less than total victory and the complete destruction of the enemy.

(The hero, bound by rules to take prisoners if possible, asks the villain to do him a favor and attempt an escape, thus justifying the hero shooting the villain.)

While other countries love and celebrate their histories and cultures, you celebrate death and violence at every level. You're a country that hates the idea of taking prisoners, that thinks "overwhelming force" is a good place to start, and is never at peace with yourself unless you're kicking the shit out of someone else.

(The hero, unwilling to kill an unarmed man, screams at the villain to fill his hand, thus allowing him to kill the villain without remorse.)

You're a country that describes everything in terms of warfare: Football games are described as "gridiron battles", where men line up to "fight for yardage". Government programs to alleviate the burdens of low-income life are described as "Wars on Poverty". Hell, you've even declared war on a verb, and even though it's kinda complicated, you've managed to prevent that foreign users of that word from showing up on your soil.

I suppose it's a small wonder: From birth, you raise your children in a society where violence is a familiar and natural thing. Even your Saturday morning cartoons are brutally violent, featuring barnyard animals shooting and blowing each other up on a regular basis, ironically labelled "Looney Tunes", as if the comic nature of the violence will deny the inhere brutality. Once children are old enough that their parents allow them to watch movies, the body counts skyrocket.

It should come as no surprise, then, that by the time your children are grown up, they're inured to violence in a way that makes the rest of the world piss themselves in fear. Your children regard the idea that two knights would duel, and the loser would leave the field of battle, never to return, as an absurdity. Your children do not allow the possibility of their enemies ever coming back. Your children utterly destroy their enemies.

And if you want my opinion...it's fan-fucking-tastic. America, you're a country that is never comfortable with yourselves unless you are winning, and someone else is losing. You're a country full of people that are driven to succeed at damn near any cost, and it has made you a blood-soaked nightmare to people who end up on your bad side. In your entire history, nobody, not a single country, company, group, or person has been able to stand toe-to-toe with you and survive.

America, while other countries are concerned with their cultures, foods, and histories, you've always been concerned solely with survival, dominance, and success.

But sadly, it seems you're increasingly unable to accept this basic fact. Instead of accepting that you're a nation of killers, you're trying to change who you are, and as a result, you're going insane. America, this existential crisis of yours is killing you. You've lost the drive to succeed that made you a top military and economic power, largely because part of you is sorry for what you've done.

America, that's absurd. You are what you are, and there's no real point to changing. See, while the rest of the world is looking backwards and considering past glories, you've always looked forwards to the future. That's been your greatest strength, and while it has at times caused problems, everybody makes mistakes, and yours are no worse than anyone elses.

Even the fact that you feel bad about some of the things you've done is a good thing, it means you haven't lost your soul, but having some regrets about how something got done isn't necessarily a valid reason to change everything about yourself. You've been the driving force of progress in this world for a very long time because you understood that when things move forward, some other things may get left behind, and that's not a reason to stop moving forward.

The future is not an all-or-nothing event, and not everyone will get there. America, you have to stop this navel-gazing hippy bullshit, and admit that only the strong, self-reliant countries will make it to the future. I know, I know, we all feel bad that not everyone in America has a house, and not everyone lives a life devoid of fear. It's a scary world, and nobody's perfect.

Just stop for a second, though, and look around. There are really only two or three countries that are capable of stopping wars in other parts of the world, of making peace by making warlords back down. You're the only one that's ever done it for the cause of peace alone.

Please, we beg of you, accept who and what you are, and stop trying to apologize for the things you've done. Accept that you don't really want to see the bad guy survive to the end of the movie. Accept that you're the good guy, not the nice guy, and keep that saber sharp and polished so that when you rattle it, the other guy backs down. Accept that you'll make mistakes, but have always made things better on the whole.

America, you're not a country of weaklings who just want to be loved. Stop acting like it, stop trying to be everyone's best friend, and go ahead and kick the shit out of the next guys who mess with you. Don't worry about taking them alive, we all know what justice really looks like, and it's not a man sitting before a judge. Justice comes when the judge passes down the sentence, and the murderer is hung for his crimes.So the next time you get sucker punched, the next time someone attacks one of your friends, the next time you have a great idea that not everyone agrees with, give the critics the finger, and go balls out. WIN, as you have always won when you allowed yourself to. We'll be right behind you, we support you, and we'll have some burgers ready for you when you get back.

(All parenthesized bits are from actual movies and television shows.)

Let there be no mistake:

During my journeys around the internet, I occasionally run across an atheist who says "You'd have to be insane to be a Christian." I got called a "Christophrenic" once, which made me chuckle a bit. Being the philosopher I am, I figured I'd overthink and codify a point I've been trying to make for a couple years now that the posters I've talked would probably hate hearing. Here it is:

Let there be no mistake: I am saying, with full knowledge of the options, that either God exists, OR I am a madman of the highest order.

I do not live a life that allows for me to be "mistaken" about my faith in Christ. If Jesus is not God, and God does not exist, then I am a man with a severe mental illness who talks to the voice in his head, and dangerous to the extreme because of the utter disregard he has for the consequences of obeying the voice.

It bothers me intensely when I hear "Christians" say things like "Science doesn't support Creationism, so I'm an evolutionist, but I'm a Christian too" then go on to explain that only a madman disregards scientific evidence. I hear folks say that they can't have faith because it doesn't make sense. I see all these people who stand there and say "Fundamentalist Christians are lunatics because they believe the Bible!" (Thrown in exclamation points and profanity where necessary.)

Well, yeah, it would take someone absolutely insane to do that. Someone like...me. I'll be that guy.

I'm done dancing around the honesty of what having faith in Christ really means. Faith is not science. Faith is not weighed and measured, and decided based upon the evidence. Faith is an suspension of disbelief. It believing in things we cannot see, and trusting that things will happen.

I'm sick and tired of people trying to make "faith" and "reason" coexist inside Christianity. To be fair, Christianity makes sense, but not because the evidence supports it, or because Jesus is performing miracles in Central Park every Sunday morning before His sermon. It certainly doesn't make sense because Jesus was a "moral teacher with a good message" as I heard one man say.

No, Christianity makes sense because every madman's leap of faith I've ever made has paid off. The voice in my head, the one I pray to and call God, is right every time. Every. Single. Time I have ever placed my trust in God, I've been rewarded. There have been things that I do not understand, of course, and not everything has worked out like I thought it should, but my life has gotten better, and more rewarding, every time.

It makes sense because of Faith, because of trust placed in the the barely-comprehensible God, through which things begin to make sense in the way that JFK assassination theories make sense once all the parts of the conspiracy are seen. Disregarding small pieces of Christianity because they don't make sense soon leads to larger and larger chunks not making sense, and it all falls apart. If Jonah never got swallowed by a fish, then what was Jesus talking about when He talked about the "sign of Jonah"?

Much like C. S. Lewis stated, Jesus is either exactly who He said He was, or He was a madman, or He was the Devil himself. His followers, the ones who actually place their faith in Him, are much the same: We are either right, or we are utterly insane. Jesus wasn't asking for people to believe small things that aren't very important, or to make only a few small changes to the way they lived, and anyone who is actually trying to follow Jesus' teaching isn't making minor changes to their lives.

Jesus asked people to leave their families, and their jobs, and everything they'd ever known to follow Him. He didn't offer it as a career improvement, with better benefits and vacation pay, or even dental benefits, He promised that His followers would be hated, and that it would suck intensely.

Christianity is not a religion that can be added to one's life, it replaces it. Choosing Christ is choosing to change everything. It's choosing to leave your old life, with your old ways of acting, your old ways of thinking, and the old places, behind. It's choosing to become an entirely new person.

It is choosing to adopt a way of life that, should you be wrong, means you have chosen insanity, but if you are correct, means that you've chosen an eternity with God. You can choose to try walking on water in Faith, or you can choose to stay in the boat because the idea of walking on water is crazy, but you cannot choose to both walk on water and say that it makes sense.