A Nuclear Middle Finger

I currently have a Primary Objective in life: Get a job as an aircraft mechanic in Cascadia. Followed shortly by a house. My stated backup plan for the last four years has been, if missions didn't work out, to get a house and a dog and spend my weekends in the hills.

There are two Secondary Objectives, either of which may work out (but not both together). 1. Attempt to work with MAF again, because certain MAF staffers occasionally tell me to keep trying, as they want me working with them, regardless of HQ. 2, attempt to work with OCMC, although I wouldn't be fixing airplanes with them, as they don't have any. Both of those groups will want to see that I'm settled somewhere, regularly attending church, and have managed to be healthy. So both secondary objectives mesh well with the primary objective.

Another Primary Objective is to find a wife. Because I have no memory of a time where I haven't wanted to find a nice girl and start a family. I wanted that when I was 5, and I want that now that I'm 30. Of course, one does not simply walk into Mordor and pick up a girl to match that ring, so I've taken to slowly and carefully deliberating over each and every Christian girl I meet that I'm even remotely interested in. I won't even ask a girl out for coffee if I'm not 100% sure of what I'm doing, and more importantly, WHY. The most manipulate, petty, and critical women I've ever met have been Christians, so I'm very, very careful with who I get involved with.

Getting married might delay my 18-30 month timeframe for going back into missions work, and that's fine, but I will absolutely not put that goal in jeopardy for a woman. I know this because I can point to specific women that I haven't tried to get to know simply because they weren't interested in missions. I've had four girlfriends in 17 years, I'm not a man who takes the search for a wife to mean "I'll try any girl on for size, and whoever fits, fits." No, I'm looking for something fairly specific, and it has nothing to do with body type, hair color, or how pretty she is when she smiles.

ANYONE who's known me for a few years can tell you that no matter how depressed I got, I kept slogging towards my internship. While I was at MAF, I didn't take a single day off, no matter how depressed I was, during that entire debacle. And no matter how bad my day gets, and every day starts by waking up feeling lonely and wishing I had a family, I have NEVER gone out and tried to pick up a girl to drown my sorrows in. Nor have I ever had a single drop of alcohol, a single joint, or a single cigarette.

I have yet to back down from the challenges I've faced in my adult life. I've been unemployed for long periods of time. I've gotten sick multiple times and been unable to function. I've been homeless. I haven't won all of them, far from it, but every time I get knocked down, I get right back up. And I do it without drinking myself stupid, without the comfort of a wife or girlfriend, without being surrounded people who share my objectives, and without compromising those objectives.

This post is for all the people who tell someone how they should live before they ask how they're doing.

This is for the people who got married right out of college and had several kids, but are experts on being single, celibate, and 30.

This is for the people who drink, smoke, and fuck their pain away, but are experts on being a bipolar man living a Straight Edge lifestyle.

This is for the people who gave up on their dreams, but are experts on being absolutely uncompromising.

This is for the people who have never lived alone, but are experts on being a nomad who's lived in seven cities in four years.

This is for the people who have never spent three years training for something only to have it end in disaster, and then asked for another chance to do it again.

This is for the people who've never stared down the barrel of a gun and called the person holding it "Sir", but are experts on how to be polite in a tense situation.

This is for the people who've never sold their personal possessions to pay the bills while they're overseas doing missions work, but are experts on who and isn't qualified to serve at all.

This is for people who've never dropped everything and taken multiple days off work to help a friend out, but are experts on who is and isn't loving.

This is for people who've never sacrificed their entire way of life on the altar of Faith, and yet are experts on what Faith is.

This is for all the people who know us better than we know ourselves. The armchair generals of life, the people who are better than the rest of us, and are always willing to vomit out their opinion on us whenever we make the mistake of asking them for advice. 

Enjoy.

Only God Knows

"I'm depressed, man. Girl isn't even the slightest bit interested."

"That sucks, who's next?"
"I don't know, this girl seemed perfect."
"Or she could spend fifteen years sleeping around until one day she comes home drunk and stabs you to death. You have no way of knowing who she'd have turned out to be."
"God only knows, I guess."

"Is that really a guess?"
"No, I guess not."

The great arrogance of Humanity is that we think we have enough control over our lives that our plans should work. Life doesn't care about our plans, though, and so we get angry and depressed when life goes the way it will and pricks that arrogance. We apply for jobs we don't get, we ask women out on dates that don't care, we do thousands and thousands of things, all of which we expect to work, and few of which actually do. All our arrogance is revealed, daily, to be nothing more than just arrogance.

Most of us don't take that very well. Which, don't get me wrong, is a totally natural thing. 

It's not exactly unexpected for people to react negatively when things go sideways, and I wouldn't call it a problem if some guy cusses when he smashes his thumb with a hammer, or for some girl to shed a few tears if her boyfriend dumps her harshly. Humans are great at building up expectations, and frankly terrible at handling the inevitable letdowns.

For me, the problems don't arise when we get depressed or angry, because those are natural reactions. No, the actual problems show up when we let our anger or depression make the next decision for us, and we do stupid things as a result. Letting out a few choice profanities in our anger is one thing, and happens before we can think, but throwing the hammer across the shop and damaging other things in a tantrum is a problem.

It's not the natural reactions, but our refusal to get back on with life after our letdowns that drags us down.

Tantrums always seem to come down to one thing: We refuse to accept that we have a place in life that is somewhere other than at the top of the pyramid. Instead of realizing that we are not in control, we scream, cry, kick our heels, and break stuff because our arrogant pride has been wounded.

If, perhaps, we don't make quite the show of it we did when we were toddlers, it certainly still happens.

The reality is that we are simply not in control of our lives. Even if we were all intelligent, rational, and pure-hearted people, and we aren't, the world is simply too big and too complicated for it to submit to our wills. It's not going to happen, ever.

The reality is that God is in control of this world. So while it's perfectly normal to be disappointed, depressed, or angry that things don't go our way, we need to realize that everything that happens has been allowed to happen. While our natural reactions to things may not be explicitly sinful, rebellious tantrums is. So is dwelling and brooding on the past, believing that we didn't deserve this or that.

"Deserve" doesn't really have anything to do with it, when you think about it. The point is that our Father knows what's best for us, and when we arrogantly dwell on what we think should or should not have happened, what we're really saying is that we know better than God. If God had listened to us, He'd have gotten that job for you, and that girl would have liked me back, and that other driver wouldn't have smashed your car, etc, etc, etc.

But what we need to accept is that we don't know what would have happened if we'd gotten our way. That "dream" girl or guy could be the next Casey Anthony or Scott Peterson, that job we prayed and prayed and prayed for could have ended in disaster when the company goes under, or relocates. If I'm really honest about myself, maybe I'd have been a terrible boyfriend to that girl, or would have been bad for that company.

God only knows, and what we need to keep in mind is that He *does* know. Not only what's best for us, but what's best for the people around us, and people we'll never meet.

It's also worth pointing out that there's absolutely nothing wrong with going straight to God in our distress and saying "I don't know what's going on, but this sucks. I know you're in control, but I'm freaking out down here." If you don't believe me, read through the Book of Psalms. David spends most of the book crying out to God in his distress, but he always circles back to being humble before God.

Life is hard, I would never state otherwise, and it will, more often than not, take us off our feet. Things simply do not go our way most of the time. There's nothing we can do to stop that, but there are things we can do to deal with it. We can remember that the world doesn't circle around us, we can remember that God is in control, and we can remember that we can take our troubles to God before we allow ourselves to do something stupid.

Faith, Existentialism, and That One School.

As an existentialist, I have spent a lot of time trying to find something to give my life meaning. A search not just for Truth, but for Truth that would actually give Purpose to my life. 2+2=4 isn't a good reason to wake up in the morning, and won't make life worth living. No, to stave off nihilism, one has to really have a purpose in life.

Part of being a Protestant, as I was, was something that can best be described as a quest for perfect doctrine. Endless Bible studies, devotionals, and classes, all with the intent of unlocking one more nugget of truth, one more bit of wisdom, until, theoretically, we'd reach a point where we had perfect doctrine.

Neverminding that bit in the Bible about the faith "delivered once and for all to the saints", there was always one more book about systematic theology to read, because the last one wasn't quite perfect. Of course, it wasn't enough to just agree with the last guy's book, because the new guy's book disagreed. I had to be my own expert in all things doctrinal, just in case whatever theologian I was reading wasn't perfect himself.

Of course, all of this only worked to a point. As one of my professors at That One School stated "Never let your doctrine get in the way of your witness." Now, to clarify, he stated this while relating a story about how despite being a staunch 5-point Calvinist (of which he boasted often), he told a women whose child had died that it was assuredly in Heaven. He went on to say that although he *actually* believed God occasionally damns newborns to hell for their sins (or maybe Adam's sin, I get confused), he didn't want to scare this woman off, so he basically lied about what he believed.

Now, this has always been interesting to me. First, it assumes that what this man believes God is really like is so heinous that to accurately represent Him would drive off unbelievers. Second, it presupposes that one's doctrine is something that can be set aside.

How much meaning can doctrine really give a man if it can simply be cast aside when it becomes awkward or inconvenient? Nihilism is a mean sonofabitch, it takes something very real to fight it off. The self-created doctrines of Man, nevermind if they're disguised as theology or simply hedonistic, are simply not enough.

There's another question, too, that I have about that: What is faith if all that you believe about God can be cast aside for convenience?

While I was Protestant, a great deal was made about how "works" were not required in any way, shape, or form in order to be saved. "Simply have faith", I was told. "Faith" was never really defined, but since it didn't require works, it basically came down to "agree with this list of things." In essence, assent to a certain doctrine and it's defined as having faith.

Doctrine, according to my professor at That One School, can simply be cast aside when it's inconvenient. I don't really know how he knows he has faith in anything if he can lie about what he believes. He's a Calvinist unless he's talking to grieving mothers, at which point he's....something else. I don't know what, actually, but if he's not willing to stand up for what he believes in front of one woman, is he willing to stand up for it in front of a firing squad?

Here's what I know: True Faith, of the kind that can truly give meaning to life, is something people hold on to even when it means being fed to lions. The Bible professor? He recanted his doctrine because he was afraid of what some woman might think. That's how much he was willing to risk, and it doesn't say much about much meaning his doctrine gave his life. If he wasn't willing to risk it, why should I?

I want the True Faith that people stared down execution squads for two millenia because of.

An Apology For Video Games

I'm not near the internet right now, so I can't use the google to look it up, but I've heard that the word "Apology" comes from Greek, and means "to make a defense" or something similar. There's an entire field of Christianity dedicated to defending the faith, it's called Apologetics. Frankly, more Christians ought to be skilled apologetics, we tend to get trounced in debates, or we just avoid them entirely.

But one can make a defense of a lot of things, and the skill of logically and rationally defending one's activities should be exercised. So, purely as an exercise, I'm going to make a defense for my primary means of relaxing, that is to say sitting on my couch next to my dog and playing video games. Here goes:

In the world of things one can do to relax, it seems to me that they fall into two general, if broad, categories: Passive and Active. One can sit (passively) by a stream and listen (passively) to the water, or one can fish (active) for whatever kind of fish are in it. One can sit (passively) on a couch, watching (passively) television, or one can play (actively) a video game of some sort.

This is not to say that video games are "active" in the sense that going running is "active", one could hardly say that video games lead to good heart health and low cholesterol, but they do require active thought and input from a person. This is in contrast to simply watching television, which does not require thought or input. True, one can watch television shows that provoke thought, but that is not a requirement of television.

Inside the realm of video games, there are of course many genres of video games. Some are devoted to guiding the player through a story, some center around puzzles, others center around gunfights, wars, car races, etc, etc, etc. It's a multi-billion dollar industry, so if you've ever done something, there's probably a video game that centers around it. Farmville is testament to the fact that even hard and boring work can be jazzed up enough to be a popular game.

However, video games can be grouped into two main categories, although I admit these are somewhat arbitrary: Games that primarily require fast reflexes, such as racing or shooting games, and games that primarily require problem-solving and strategic skills, such as strategy and puzzle games. That's not to say that the two cannot overlap, but that the mechanics of the games favor one skill over the other.

Now, any repetitive activity that requires a skill will train that skill, that's basic neurology. If you play poker regularly, you'll get better at it. Same with fishing, throwing a ball, or anything else. If you spend hours every day solving a Rubik's Cube, you'll develop strategies to do so faster, with more efficiency and fewer mistakes. If you spend hours every day shooting endless waves of digital zombies with digital machine guns, you will develop a much better 

Take a game like Total Annihilation. A player needs to manage his resources to build up both an army and an economy to fund the construction of that army. He also needs to evaluate his enemy or enemies, then build specific units to counter his enemy's units to prevent his own destruction. He then needs to develop a strategy for defeating his enemy, and manage the several hundred units that will be involved in the various skirmishes. All in real-time, while the enemy is constantly doing the same thing.

The OODA loop, a basic part of modern strategic thought, works like this: A person Observes a situation, Orients himself to that situation, Decides on a response to that situation, then Acts to implement his response. At that point the person Observes how the situation has changed, and the loop repeats itself.

That thought process, and the ability to run through it quickly, is a key skill to a modern gamer. Even if gaming doesn't do anything at all for a gamer's body, a gamer's mind has been trained to work quickly and accurately. Contrast that to the mind of someone who watches television instead, someone who does nothing more than passively sit there while the box does all the work, and one can quickly see why gaming is in fact a positive alternative to watching television.

And people wonder why I dislike television.

Lust and Soullessness.

I had an epiphany earlier today, and I realized exactly what lust is. For a very long time, I thought "lust" was just a healthy sexual appetite that was being handled inappropriately. I mean, I knew that lusting after women was sinful, and I didn't disagree with that, but I didn't realize the true nature of lust. I thought it was simply "adultery in the mind", as Jesus phrased it. It's not just infidelity, it's more vile than that.

People have souls. Minds. Lives. Despite what Darwin's disciples tell us, people are not just walking meatbags. There is more to a person than simply cells of various kinds. Theologically speaking, every person has a soul, a mind, and a body. Not just a body and a mind, as the atheists say, nor just a soul as the fans of Plato say, but all three, existing at the same time.

When one lusts after a person, one is desiring to possess that other person's body. But that possession requires the destruction of that person's soul, and the replacement of that soul with one that is amenable to fornication. It's not just "Man, I really want to get that girl in bed," it's actually "I want to alter who that person is, to erase that which makes them unique, and change it so that that girl ends up in my bed."

It's not a desire for a healthy sexual relationship with a person, it's a desire for the destruction of that other person's self. When a person lusts after another person, one is desiring their body, stripped of the soul. Stripped of their personhood, so that what's left is a willing body.

That's not just being unfaithful to God's commandments, and/or to our spouses (if we're married), it's being hateful towards all that makes that other person an actual person. It's not just indulging in the physical pleasures of sex, it's dehumanizing the other person. 

Which explains why porn is so vile and corruptive, really. Porn exists in antithesis to celebrating people as people, instead it's committed to reducing people to merely bodies with sexual instincts, devoid of both personhood and mind. Far from rationality, porn promotes the idea that other people should be treated as merely bodies to be used for pleasure, and unrealistic pleasure at that.

If people really have souls and minds, and minds, then sex isn't just two bodies bumping together, it's two minds and two souls coming together. It's not merely physical and sensational, it's mental and spiritual as well. Which isn't an idea that one will see being promoted by the world, of course. Society seems fairly committed to convincing people to disregard their souls, and to discard rationality as well, in an endless pursuit of the pleasures of the here and now.

But people do have souls, they do have minds, and thus should be treated as such. Far from being just a biological bedwarmer, that girl or that guy has a mind that is rational, and a soul that is dearly loved by God.

I Was Wrong

Social Distortion, a band I'm a big fan of, has a song titled "I Was Wrong." It's written from the perspective of a man who's made some mistakes. People tried to warn him that he was wrong, but he didn't listen, and later in life, he's admitting his mistakes. Put another way, it's a song about repentance.

I'm a big fan of repentance, and being wrong. The way I see it, if I can't admit that I'm wrong, then I'll never make improvements to my life. It's a fundamental part of learning that as we learn, we discard things that don't work and flawed ideas, continually improving our methods as we learn more. Sometimes the old way is valid, there's just a better way, and sometimes the old way is ineffective or dangerous.

Since I'm an aviation mechanic, the obvious analogy is that while aviation started with the Wright Flyer, now we have airplanes that are faster, safer, bigger, and more reliable. Did you know that the reason airplane windows are round at the corners instead of square is that square corners builds up stress, and that leads to catastrophic structural failures during flight?

We learned that after a couple planes crashed, and people got killed. Instead of trying it again, the entire aviation world said "Well, we're not going to do that again, we were wrong, and so now we're going to do it better."

It's a basic part of science, too. Theories are posited, experiments are run, and experiments that fail are taken as proof that the theories behind them were wrong. Experiments that work prove that the theories behind them are sound, and that's part of learning, too. That's how we were able to build the SR-71, coolest airplane ever.

The concept is universal, although one cannot always say it's always applied. Most fields of study are always evolving, and the experts in them are (or should be) always refining their knowledge so that they can do a better job. God only knows what's up with politicians, I guess they focus on improving their chances of getting elected instead of leading countries. 

It's a simple thing to look at the results one is getting and make some basic observations about the theories that were being tried.

I'm not a big fan of communism, because the results seem to be economic stagnation (USSR, DPRK, Cuba) along with an unimaginable body count (USSR, PRC). That experiment has been tried several times, it never really pans out.

I'm not a big fan of methamphetamine for the same reason. I've seen enough of the results of the use of that drug that I'm not only not going to try it, I'll try to keep others from trying it.

The same thing goes for thousands of other things. Running on hot pavement barefoot, driving drunk, trying to pick up chicks while covered in vomit, etc, etc, etc. Any thinking person in this world is constantly seeing what works, and what doesn't work, and changing how they act in response to this process. It's called improving.

And it requires us to be wrong. Not only that, it requires us to exist in a state where we realize that we're only acting based on our best knowledge and reason of how to do things, and that we may currently be wrong. To know, right now, that everything we base our lives on may be false, and that we might learn of that tomorrow.

It requires humility, and repentance.

Small wonder, then, that this concept shows up in Christianity from time to time. Not only repentance, which is absolutely central to Christianity, but judging things based on the results (Matthew 7:15-23), instead of the marketing.

As I study the Bible, and as I attempt to apply all of its teachings to all of my life, I should be constantly refining not only my knowledge of Christianity, but how I practice it. Some things work, some things don't. Some things sound good and don't work, some things sound absurd, yet work quite well.

Once upon a time, I thought being polite was a waste of time. I was wrong.

I used to use porn, and didn't see anything wrong with it. I was wrong.

I used to be angry all the time, and blamed the world for everything. I was wrong.

I used to ignore what Christ had to say. I was wrong.

I used to never listen to Christian music, I didn't see a point. I was wrong.

I used to lie, manipulate, cheat, and steal. I was wrong.

I used to argue with teachers. I was wrong.

I used to shoot pistols using a teacup grip. I was wrong.

I used to refuse to take medication to treat my bipolar diagnosis. I was wrong.

The list goes on, and will keep growing as I mature, as I learn more, as I refine how I do things based on what bears good fruit, and what doesn't.

Seven months ago, I realized that I was wrong about being a Protestant. I admitted that I was wrong, and started the process of being an Orthodox Christian.

"I was wrong" is not an arrogant statement. I'm not arrogant because I believe the Protestant Reformation was a mistake, anymore than I'm arrogant for believing that square windows in airliners are a mistake, or that porn or drug usage is a mistake. Mistakes are made all the time, admitting them is an act of humility.

I was wrong.

So if you're holding an opinion I used to hold, but now believe to be wrong, then logically, I'm going to think you're wrong. That doesn't make me arrogant either, I used to hold the same opinion, and was making the same mistake. I'm not looking down on you for being wrong, I'm trying to correct the same mistake I used to make. I may be five yards ahead of you on life's trail *for that particular lesson*, but I'm not better than you.

I was doing the same damn thing, and I was wrong.

Being "better" than you would mean that I was never wrong.

And I'm not Jesus Christ. I was wrong, He was not.

Leaving Protestantism Part 1:

I was sitting in a basement-turned-coffee shop, where a Sunday evening church service was being held. I was there that Sunday because a friend of mine invited me to attend, saying (quite correctly, I might add) that there were several very beautiful women there who were solidly of the Christian persuasion. I'm not exactly a complicated guy. Christian women aren't generally found in bars on Friday night, so if I'm going to find a lady to marry, I should probably look for her in a church.

The pastor was the epitome of the "relevant, seeker-sensitive" type. Denim shirt, one too many buttons unbuttoned to be business casual, stating that he's not a traditional pastor, so he can be approached. Same with the week's growth of beard. The carefully unkempt hair. That affably friendly demeanor, the affinity for Apple products, the discerning taste in coffee. The tattoos that speak of slight edginess, just enough to say "I know what you've been through".

I looked around, and I saw people I'd known at other churches, some of them 15 years earlier. I'd gotten to know some of the church members, they were mostly transplants from one church or another. There were a few converts, but the vast majority that I talked with were folks who'd "stopped being fed" by their old churches, and left them for greener pastures.

I felt kinda sick when I realized that this is Protestantism everywhere I go. I was a member of a United Methodist Church when I was in Tulsa, but then I moved to Idaho, and I went back to the church I attended while there. That church was almost all transplants, too. So was the proto-megachurch I attended for a few months before I went to college.

I was living in a world of church hopping transplants. That's what Protestants did, I realized. We attended a church because the pastor was cool, or because the music was good, but sooner or later the love affair cooled off, and we moved on. We had better excuses than that, of course, but that's what it was.

It was all about us. That's not how I saw it at the time, of course, all the years I was a part of it. No way, man, I was trying to find the pure church, the one where the pastor was doctrinally sound, the music was good, and the people were friendly. I attended four churches in 17 years in Idaho.

I left one because it started to preach Prosperity Gospel heresy, and I got so sick of the ensuing bullshit that I walked away from the faith for a few years.

I left the second because there was a persistent rumor that the third had a nice collection of singles. Like I said, I'm not exactly complicated.

The third was a good church. I left it, though, because after a while I wanted something new. Got tired of the old, didn't feel like I was getting much out of it.

The fourth I left when I left town to go to college. I guess that's actually a good reason.

But still, I church-hopped. Worse, I made a sport of church criticism. Because in the end, it was about me, and what I wanted. What I wanted out of a church was the main thing. What I thought correct doctrine was. What I thought were good songs. What I thought church folk should act like. And whether or not other people measured up to my standards.

Me, me, me. I, I, I.

Because that, ultimately, is what Protestantism is. It's foundational, really. We're taught early on that the Bible is the supreme authority on every matter of Doctrine. Sola Scriptura, and because Scripture alone is the final authority, it's up to each of us to make sure that our interpretation of it is perfect. Whenever one of us has a disagreement, we turn to Scripture to solve it, and it should be the end of the matter.

What really happens, though, is that my interpretation is more accurate, more Spirit-guided, more Bible-based than yours. So I'm going my way, and you can go yours. We have a schism, and we go our separate ways. Then another few years down the road, I get into another doctrinal debate, there's another question that we go to the Bible to answer, and if and when we don't agree with each other, we have another schism.

It's been estimated that there are around 33,000 denominations of Protestantism. Think about that for a second. That means that 33,000 times the Bible was raised up as the ultimate authority in our lives, and the end result was a fracturing of the family, not reconciliation and peace. Just schisms, sunderings, and rebellions. Protests. Something like 1.7 times per week since Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of a Catholic Church.

It's all we do. We get along for a while, then we leave. We Protest. We decide that *we* are the authority. *I* decide that *I* am the authority, really. "We" only comes into the picture as long as you and I agree, otherwise I go where I believe I should go, and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.

Sola Scriptura becomes Solo Scriptura. Me Scriptura.

Look where this brought us, what the Fruits of the Tree of Sola Scriptura have brought us: Rates of divorce that are utterly indistinguishable from the secular world. Heresy abounds. Doctrine is downplayed or simply not taught (which is "rebranded" these days as "Focusing on Christ and Him crucified) so that we don't offend anyone or make them feel excluded. Lines in the sand are wiped away, because it's politically incorrect to stand opposed to things based on religious principles these days. Alcoholism is far too common. Drug abuse isn't unheard of, and I don't mean the newcomer that stands in the back, but in pastors and regular attenders. Pornography use is so common that it's rare to hear a man say that they've never used it.

And in every church, people hide their sins behind masks of perfection, of godliness, too afraid of the criticism of their fellow man to actually come before God in humility and deal with the very problems that destroy their lives.

It was actually a question if one of the churches I used to attend, denomination-wide (which means millions of people), would officially change their stance on homosexuality. And I mean it was serious enough that the pastor made a semi-official statement that if the bishops changed the official stance of the denomination, he'd leave. 

Why was it even brought up? Was it because the Bible we unanimously declare to be the final authority changed, because the words moved around on the page on every Bible ever written? No, because the politics don't favor it anymore. Far from standing on Scripture Alone, these days we don't stand on, for, or against anything.

Roughly a year ago, I ran across a question that I couldn't answer at the time: "If the road you followed brought you here, was it the right road?"

The more I look at not only my life, which is alternately a mild success and a flaming train wreck, but at the state of the Protestant Church as a whole, the more I realize that no, we're not on the right road. The last 460 years have been a disaster, and the Reformation, while it sounds like a good idea, isn't working out.

For all the newness, for all the "innovation" we crammed into our services, for all the projectors we displayed sermon notes on, for all the low-cost warehouses we converted into megachurches, for all the debates we've had over doctrine, for all the colleges we've built to teach theology, for all the tactics we've tried to reach the unreached, for all the changes we've made, for all the problematic things we've reformed, the wheel that the Protestants keep trying to reinvent is nowhere near as structurally sound as the original.

I guess it looks cool, though. It's hip, we use Apple products and digital projectors. Out pastors have tattoos. I suppose that counts for something to someone. Not to me, I couldn't give a shit. I don't go to a church because it's cool, it has to have sound teaching (and hopefully single ladies.)

So, about three months ago, I decided to join the Orthodox Church. Because while the Protestant church has become an ever-changing and spineless wreck, the Orthodox Church doesn't change.

Worship styles at my last church changed every three to five years. The Divine Liturgy, which is celebrated (if that's the word) every Sunday morning at every Orthodox Church in the entire world, hasn't changed in roughly 1700 years, and St. John Chrysostum, who wrote the Divine Liturgy, based it largely on the Liturgy of St. James, who was the brother of Christ. It's as original, as pure, as any church service could ever be.

The doctrine at the Methodist church I used to attend was roughly 250 years old, and was an offshoot from the Arminian movement (early 1600s), which was a reaction to the Reformation, which happened in 1547, which was a reaction to the excesses and corruption in the Roman Catholic Church, which broke off from the Orthodox Church in 1054. The Orthodox Church, in contrast, has never changed.

If the Protestant Reformation has taught me anything, it's that what works should be kept, and what doesn't work should be discarded. Chew the meat, spit out the bones. Well, I'm spitting out Sola Scriptura, and I'm keeping the Bible. I'm spitting out fads, and I'm keeping Tradition. I'm spitting out the Me-centered church service with flashy lights, rock guitars, and stylish young worship leaders, and I'm keeping the Divine Liturgy.

Because it's all about me, and I've been on the wrong road for thirty years.

**********

I feel like noting that the above is a lot of "Why?" with very little "How?". The how is actually fairly simple: I have a friend that's Greek Orthodox, and we've gotten into multiple debates over the past three or so years about Orthodoxy and Protestantism. I'm a pretty solid debater, or so I like to think, and while I can score points on the guy on other subjects, when it came to Orthodoxy he never lost a point, ever. After a while, it came down to making excuses for why I wasn't joining the Orthodox Church. While I didn't understand the "Why?" of a great number of things the Orthodox Church does, it was clear that his kung fu was stronger than mine.

Then a blogger (Arctic Pilgrim, if you ever read this, email me!) whose blog I regularly read (It has since been taken down. Tragic.) started a series on questions he had about Protestantism, and his posts greatly, greatly clarified the issues and questions I had with Protestantism. Most of what I wrote above his blog helped clarify for me, since before he started talking about the "fruits of Protestantism" my thoughts on the matter came down to a much less structured "The other guy wins debates, and has done it enough times that I know he's right, although I don't understand why".

Then, like I related above, I ended up in a coffee shop, and had a moment of clarity. One of the few things I'll brag about is that I don't shy away from owning up to the reality of a situation, and the reality was that I just couldn't do Protestantism any longer. I knew it was bullshit, and even if I didn't then (and indeed, don't currently) understand all of Orthodoxy, what I do know is that the Orthodox Church has a much more legitimate claim to authority than any Protestant could hope to have.

Once I realized that, it was just a matter of manning up and making the change, which I am in the process of. I started with doing daily liturgical prayers while I was in Lesotho, and started attending an Orthodox church as soon as I returned to the US, as to my knowledge there is not an Orthodox church in Lesotho.

Thoughts on Love (And Tacos)

It seems to me that "Love" has been thoroughly muddled as a concept in modern society. These days, "love" is now a half-physical, half-emotional sensation that one seeks to satiate the way a pile of tacos would satiate hunger pains. Now, granted, I do love me some good tacos, but the way I just used the word "love" hasn't a thing to do with what the word really means.

If we take the physicality (sex) out of what love has come to mean, and then take the often-deceptive emotional aspect (romance) out as well, we're left with "unselfish actions done for other people." By that definition, giving a homeless guy tacos (a recurring theme in this post is how much I love tacos) is an act of love. It's not a thing of sex, nor is it a thing of romance, but it is undeniably an act of love. And tacos.

I wonder what would happen in modern society if we stopped using the emotional/physical concept of modern "love" when it came to starting a relationship, and started basing our relationships of the concept of "acts of love"? What would that look like? What would it mean in practice?

This is just my opinion, but I believe that the most basic act of love, the act that all other acts of love should build upon, is prayer. If one can't be bothered to go before God on behalf of another person, does it really matter if one buys them tacos? Prayer should be the very foundation of every other thing we do for another person, and if there's an easier or more basic loving action that one person can do for another, I've not heard of it. It's easy to focus on big things, but it's really the smallest acts that matter the most.

There's a girl out there, and I don't even know where she is these days, who stole a small piece of my heart a few years ago. She didn't ask if she could take it, and to be honest, I don't know if I want her to give it back or if I want to give her the rest of it. She stole it by being gracious and forgiving and kind when she didn't really have any reason to be and when few other people were. By her loving acts, she stole a small piece of my heart, and that small piece of my heart loves her to this day.

I've never even given her a hug, so I know my love for her isn't a thing of physicality. Nor do I spend much time daydreaming about her, I long ago realized that daydreaming about girls is a dangerous thing, and even more dangerous when they're attractive. Pretty girls are a lethal danger in this world. So whenever this girl pops into my mind to remind me she's got a piece of my heart, I take the time to pray for her.

It's all I can do. I can't go on a walk with her and buy her tacos (I don't know what town she's in), and I'm not sure that I should pursue her as a future wife anyways. I try to avoid building up a huge amount of emotion for her, I know that in all likelihood, I won't even see her again. I do know, however, that the stupid little piece of my heart that she took loves her, and the only way I can express that is to pray for her whenever I think about her.

So she's one of the line items in my list of people to pray for when I pray in the morning, not that I'll say that I actually go through that list daily. I don't know that I'll ever ask her out, I don't know if I even should, but I do know that if she ever asks how I feel about her, if God ever sends her my way, I can honestly say that I have regularly prayed for her for years. 

I love her, and it's expressed as an action, not as emotion or as physicality. I think it's better this way. It's not about what I get out of it, it's about going before God and saying "I don't know why I care for her, but I do, so please take care of her. Help her through life, keep her safe, and give her a hug." Because that, not tacos, not a wedding ring, not sex and not romance, is the most loving thing I know of.

Maybe someday God will bring her back to my life and I can buy her tacos. Maybe I'll wake up next week and not even remember her name. I suppose it doesn't matter, really. 

Love isn't about me, it's about other people and doing things for them. There are people in my prayer list that are there simply because they treated me like shit and if I can't forget them, I would rather pray for them than hate them. God has called us to love our enemies, and if prayer is the most basic act of love when it comes to pretty girls, it's probably the most basic act of love when it comes to my enemies as well.

Although granted, I'm a lot more eager to buy her tacos than I am to buy them tacos.

Tacos rule.

Undo.

"Let me ask you a question: Before you left, several people told you that you weren't going to make it at That School. Do you think they were right?"

It's not a simple answer.

Those "several people" included members of my blood family, and my pastor. You know, the sort of people anyone would want to be supportive when making a major life change. Instead, I was told that I wouldn't be able to hack it academically, and/or would get thrown out of the school.

I don't think I can properly describe the impact that had on me. Instead of going off to college feeling like my family was behind me, like they believed in me, like they wanted me to succeed, I left for college a seething ball of rage. All the people that should have standing behind me had apparently abandoned me.

So when I got to that school, I got there with a massive chip on my shoulder. I was there because I believed God was leading me into mission aviation, and I still do, but I was full of rage, hurt, mistrust and insecurity, and everything and everyone that threatened that goal got hammered. Hard. I'm not known for subtlety or pulling punches, and I was at my worst there.

So back to that question, were they right?

Well, the term "Self-fulfilling prophecy" comes to mind. While I do believe that the people who said those things meant well, the effect was that their words caused so much damage in my life that there was no way I would have finished a degree there. I had reacted to the statements the only way I knew how, and being angrier and working harder only has two possible outcomes if things get pushed far enough.

And they got pushed far enough, believe me.

"I'm sorry" the person said. The person hadn't meant to cause harm, but had. Grievous. Worse than the person could have imagined. Trust was lost, friendship had been replaced by bitterness, family had disappeared under cynicism, and over three years later, some of the wounds are still raw.

"I'm sorry" does nothing. Their sorrow fixes nothing. There is no possible way for anyone to apologize for their comments enough to make up for what I went through, because the universe simply doesn't have an "undo" button. It doesn't matter how many times they apologize, there is no way that anyone can go back in time to unfuck things up.

They can't rewind the night I had to spend in a homeless shelter because I had no where to stay. They can't unspend the money I had to spend just to make sure I didn't leave the town with a legal record. They can't erase the time I spent in a psychiatric ward, or repair the destruction of multiple friendships. They can't undo the anger, they can't make me unfeel the pain.

"I'm sorry" is a worthless statement. It's pathetic. Someone's sorrow does absolutely nothing to fix the damage they've done. Time flows in ONE direction, and it doesn't change just because some pathetic human feels bad about something they did, even if they didn't mean to. It won't even change just because someone tries to "make it up" to the person they hurt.

I suppose I could end this post here. A cohesive point has been made, "I'm sorry fixes nothing, and nothing can undo the past."

But that's not where this post ends. That's just a cynical tumblr-tier rant about pain, frustration, and loss, it barely qualifies as philosophical. It certainly doesn't answer any questions, which to me defies the very purpose of writing.

The real answer to pain, the only way to actually fix anything is to forgive people. That's actually worth writing about.

The people who I *could* blame for what they said three years ago, if I wanted to, need to be forgiven. Not because they deserve it, they don't. Not because forgiveness will magically rewind time and allow everything to be OK like it could have been, it won't. Not because they've made it up to me, they haven't and can't.

No, I need to forgive them because forgiveness is the only thing that allows raw wounds to heal up. It's the only way for the pain to stop and for healing to start. Nothing will ever heal perfectly, and even old scars can be gouged open again, but without forgiveness, all we have is a world full of people full of open wounds. No healing, no fading scars that don't hurt anymore, just pain.

I don't know about you, but that's not an appealing thought. I'd rather move on as best I can than to remain stuck in the past, thoughts stuck on the same old wounds, the same old pains, the same old people. No, things will never be perfect, and the damage we do to each other's lives can never actually be made right.

So my advice is to not worry about who's sorry and who isn't. Don't wait for the other person to repent, and don't demand they do the impossible and make it up to you. Just forgive them, which is a process, not an event. Make peace, if possible restore the relationship, but above all, forgive them and move on.

That Anarchy Post

When discussing a philosophical, political, or religious viewpoint, it helps to start with a precise definition of what certain terms mean. Especially, perhaps, when discussing Anarchism, because after 40 years of punk rock, angry kids, and tyrants misusing the term, "Anarchy" has been redefined as "burning cop cars, doing drugs, and wearing black clothing."

According to dictionary.com:

noun

1.

a doctrine urging the abolition of government or governmental restraint as the indispensable condition for full social and political liberty.

Etymologically, it comes from the Greek "anarchos", which is a combination of "an-" meaning "no", and "archos" meaning "ruler".

There is nothing in the basic definition of "anarchy" that promotes violence, chaos, or even being an asshole. So bear that in mind as I proceed from here. It's also worth pointing out that there are many, many, MANY different ways of having an anarchist society that have been promoted over the years, and I'm not even trying to encompass all of them, it is simply the only common term that comes close to encompassing my political views.

It should also be stated, at the beginning of this post, that anarchism as a political ideal is not the same thing as having anarchy as a daily lifestyle. This post is about the political ideal, and reality is just a bitch. America was founded as a Republic, that doesn't make it a Republic, nor does it make "A republic" a perfect system. Same with Democracy, and in this case anarchism. I'm an anarchist because that is the political ideal I believe in most (*right now, which is subject to change in the future), not because I think it's perfect.

At it's most basic, a society (be it a nation, a tribe, or whatever) is a group of people who come together for the common benefit. It makes a lot more sense to work together to raise crops and fight off wolves than it does for everyone to work on their own, because someone needs to be up at night to keep watch, and someone needs to work during the day. Cooperation is a good thing, obviously.

I'm also a Christian. This means that on a basic level, I don't believe in aggression (Romans 12:18, Matthew 5:39). I do believe that the Bible teaches that self-defense is a basic human right and that extends to defending others (Nehemiah 4:17-18) and even to capital punishment (Genesis 9:6), but aggression without just cause is a vile thing. Those who start wars without just cause (even if it's just "limited airstrikes with no boots on the ground") are guilty of murder.

In 1 Samuel 8, the Israelites ask God for a king so that they can be like other nations. They want a warrior, a man who will go out and fight their battles for them. God warns them that the reverse will happen, and that wanting a king is a rejection of God, and God's place as the sole ruler of the nation. They choose to disregard the warning, and Saul, the first Israelite king, is a disaster by any standard. David, who followed, was not exactly a good man, and had a loyal general murdered because he'd knocked up the general's wife.

Israel's government before Saul could be best described as a kritarchy with occasional incidents of theocracy. The Israelites were left to do as they saw fit, with disputes mediated by judges, as long as they generally followed God and weren't being invaded at the moment. It's the only part in the entire Bible where God weighs in on a specific form of gov't, and it's explicitly anti-State. It says "Follow God, and do not desire any other ruler."

Having no earthly ruler sounds like anarchism to me. Going through life with nobody telling me what to do, only God, and the only people I need to submit to are the judges, and that only comes up when there's a dispute with a neighbor? With the only law being God's law, not an endless-changing list of man-made rules and regulations?

An-archos. No rulers...sounds pretty similar.

Of course, Romans 13 tells me to obey the rulers that do exist. Which doesn't sound at all like an anarchist statement, so how do the two reconcile?

Basically, it's a question of realism versus idealism. 1 Samuel 8 is the ideal. Just follow God's Law, put God first in my life, and there won't be a need for a string of loser kings (and most of Israel's kings were bad). The reality is that kings do exist, though, so even though it's not the ideal that God had in mind, we should obey them out of respect for God. Notice that Romans 13 doesn't say "Obey the king because he's right." or "Obey him because his father was a good man.", it says "Obey the king because God put him there."

The reality is that because people screw up, leaders, rulers, and law-makers are something we're stuck with, but it's not the ideal that God had in mind for us.

"Really?" You ask.

Sure. Look at it this way:

In the Garden of Eden, what system of government did God institute? Kings? Presidents? Communism? How about none of the above, just a single commandment to not eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Adam and Eve had absolutely no other obligations, regulations, rules, laws, or even social customs to follow.

In fact, it was their adding to God's laws that messed them up. Notice how in Gen 3:3 Eve says "...and you must not touch it, or you will surely die" while in Genesis 2:17 God only said that they cannot eat the fruit. Had Adam and Eve not added to God's laws, the serpent would not have been able to cast doubt on what God said. In the additional laws there was room for doubt and confusion.

But Adam and Eve did eat, and were cast out. Skip forward a few chapters, The Flood happens, and God gives Noah ONE law. In Genesis 9:6, again there is no system of government established, no endless codex of prescriptive laws to follow, just a commandment that murderers are to be put to death.

Even after the Torah was given to Moses and a full system of laws was established, the only system of government was "Follow God and the Law", there wasn't a king who had absolute power. The judges had absolute power, but were only raised up in time of need, not during peacetime, as it were, and they did not add to the laws.

Had God actually wanted a certain system of government, it does not make sense that He would not have instituted that and made it clear, but at no point in the Bible is there any such thing.

Instead the repeated commandment is to love our neighbors, which is referred to by Jesus as the second-greatest commandment, the first being to love God. So let's examine what that would look like, if everyone was totally committed to keeping those two.

First off, if everyone loved their neighbors, poverty is gone. Period. Instead of some guy being homeless and starving, his neighbors would take care of him, help him find a job and a place to stay, and get him back on his feet. In a loving manner, not just flicking a nickel at him as they drive past.

Second, if everyone loved their neighbors, crime would largely be a thing of the past. Murder isn't love, neither is rape, theft, or any of a thousand other things that we have laws against. The need for cops would be over.

Third, it would be the END OF WAR. While there would always be a need for weapons in case a neighboring country got hostile, the days of punitive bombing of countries thousands of miles away would be gone.

Now, granted, this ideal system also has as a basic requirement that everyone loves God. That means it's predicated on everyone being a Christian, which sadly will never happen. Ultimately it is just an ideal system, and not a realistic system.

On the other hand, a cursory glance through history has seen EVERY system of government yet devised fail as well. They are all idealistic, because the simple reality is that people are corrupt and selfish, and placing people in power only amplifies corruption and selfishness. Kings become tyrants, voters become leeches, and anarchist burn cop cars.

I'm not saying that anarchism is perfect, but I am saying that if we all really follow God's commandments, we'll remove any need that exists for rulers. The result of everyone following God's commandments would be a peaceful, lawful, healthy society that didn't need cops, courts, or rulers. Everyone would be left alone to do as they saw fit, with no one who would threaten to jail or kill them if they didn't play whatever games the government is playing that day.

If the two greatest commandments, according to Christ Himself, are followed, government becomes superfluous, and for that reason, I consider myself an anarchist.

Holy unBlack Metal

I'm sitting in the maintenance office of the MAF hangar in Maseru, Lesotho. There's no work for me to do, so I'm listening to Frost Like Ashes on YouTube. They're an unBlack metal outfit from St. Louis, if I remember correctly, and the current song "Adorers of Blood" is a wonderful praise song in the style of Black Metal. Before "Adorers of Blood", I listened to "Hardest Rocking God of All Time" by Grave Declaration, another unBlack metal outfit.

If anyone asks what I'm listening to, I'll downplay and dodge the question. I certainly won't try to explain unBlack Metal to a group of missionaries that thinks David Crowder is the hardest rock allowed at work. There's just no way to understand unBlack Metal without understanding Black Metal, and Black Metal is something I just don't talk about with strangers. Well, not unless I want to scare them off and make them think I'm Varg Vikernes' biggest fan, anyways.

There isn't a genre of music that's created more controversy than Black Metal. People think pop music sets the standard for shocking and bizarre behavior, but nothing ever done by a pop star has come close to the things done by black metal musicians. Lady Gaga and Madonna subverted Catholic imagery for their music, black metal musicians (and their fans) burnt churches down. Gangsta rappers boast about killing their rivals, black metal musicians have actually done it. There's no compromise in black metal, it's explicitly pagan. Explicity anti-Christian.

Black Metal isn't simply a genre that one listens to. Black Metal, in it's original form, is a lifestyle. The first wave of black metal didn't simply show up on the charts, it announced itself with a multi-year spate of murders, suicides, and church burnings. It's ideological music in the purest sense.

The fact that most people have never heard of Black Metal is simply due to the relative obscurity of the genre, as it's a tiny and extremist fringe inside the perpetually fringe world of heavy metal, but the fact remains that black metal is the razor's edge of music. It's way past "this album sounds too processed"  is a criticism and into a world where "(this album) is the aural equivalent of having your throat slit in one smooth motion" becomes normal. It's not "easy listening". It's not "soothing white noise".

When it comes to Christians listening to music, if there's any one genre of music that we were probably supposed to avoid, that we should have left alone, it would be black metal. It is hands-down the most vile, sick, and evil genre of music ever created. So, naturally, Christianity invaded it in the early 1990s, because we will allow no pit of darkness to remain unlit.

Black metal has always been about the message. And not in the cheeky way that Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin played around with dark imagery, but in an explicit way, where the message in the lyrics was played out onstage, and in the lives of the band members themselves. UnBlack Metal retains the look (minus the sacrificed animals and most of the blood), the sound, and the intense, message-first lyrics, but has swapped out the lyrics for Christian ones. 

Personally, that makes it just about perfect to me, because I'm sick and tired of ever-fancier versions of "Jesus Loves Me" that somehow still manage to be repetitive, technically simple, and theologically empty. Yes, Jesus loves us, but that's a small portion of what Christianity is about, and I want music that reminds me that to be a Christian is to be at war with Darkness.

There's a hell of a lot more to fighting that war than just remembering that Jesus loves us. Let's go kick some ass.

HAIL CHRIST!

When In Doubt, Attack!

I've heard the phrase "When in doubt, attack" attributed to the US Army Special Forces as one of their SOPs. Apparently, they train themselves to default to attacking the enemy when they're unsure of what do to, because that way, there's never a doubt about what the other guys in the team are going to do, nor will they ever accidentally break at the first sign of the enemy.

I could be wrong, of course, about whether or not the Special Forces actually operate this way as I know very little about how they do anything. I'm not sure that it's a particularly good idea for a 8-man team to always attack, but perhaps with their level of training, they're able to win firefights that most soldiers would lose, and their team leaders would know when to break contact.

SF: Supremely cool, but not the focus of this article.

What is the focus of this post is the concept of defaulting to attacking when confused. It's about moving forward when the path is uncertain, about not retreating just because you have no idea what is going on.

A couple months ago, I went on a field trip to a Muslim cultural center (AKA a mosque that wants to get around city zoning ordnances) and a Hare Krishna shrine. I went because it was part of orientation with a missions organization, and it was meant to get us some cross-cultural exposure.

As it happened I got the worst case of the heebie-jeebies I've ever gotten in my entire life. I've been less creeped out by haunted houses and scary movies. I literally felt unclean, like I'd been covered in motor oil and needed a shower, only worse and in a sinister manner (I'm a mechanic, motor oil doesn't bother me much). So in each case, as soon as I got the chance to do so without being socially offensive, I walked outside and sat down across the street.

If one thinks rationally about it, to a Christian, a shrine to a different religion is in effect a shrine to false gods, and at best can be considered blasphemous to God, and at worst (also in reality) is a shrine to evil. It's not simply false, it's actively anti-God, anti-Christian. So I don't mind that I felt unclean, that being inside those shrines to evil made me want to get out, immediately.

The organization I'm with didn't take that as a good sign. For reasons I don't actually understand, I was told that they thought it was a bad thing that I got creeped out. I was asked, several times, if perhaps I should forgo my internship and not go into missions after all.

I can't think of one bad experience as a particularly good reason to not move forward, so even though I was in doubt, I moved forward with the internship. After all, when in doubt, attack. And while very little of my internship has worked as it should, and in fact has gone mostly wrong, I'm still moving forward as long as I'm unsure of what to do. I'd rather wait for a clear sign to break contact than to wait for a clear sign to move forward.

See, combat's a simple thing, really: If the enemy retreats every time he's not sure what to do, then all I have to do to win is to keep him off his footing. Defense becomes a simple matter, because the enemy will break and run at the first opportunity. I won't need to actually defeat or destroy the enemy, I just need to keep his head down and wait for him to break.

If, however, every time he gets shot at he charges, if every time he's confused he moves forward, if every time he's scared he tries to kill me, if every time he's struggling he gets more pissed off at me, then I have a very serious problem. I can't rely on scaring him off, I need to kill him, immediately, otherwise he is going to waste me in short order.

Time and again, the Christian life is described as spiritual warfare. We're supposed to bring light to darkness, to cast out demons, to heal the sick, and to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is describe quite literally as a war against Satan, and small wonder that the Prince of Darkness would be fighting back.

So why on Earth would I run at the first sign of trouble? or the tenth sign of trouble, for that matter? Why on Earth would I say "Man, I don't know what to do and this is really hard, so I think I'll go home and sit on my couch"???

To Hell with that notion, I'm not going to do any such thing: When in doubt, I ATTACK!

The Mad Genius of Soren

A while back, I read an article that contained a brilliant explanation of the old phrase "There's a fine line between genius and insanity". 

"When your brain works more efficiently than everyone else's, that means it performs most mental tasks more efficiently than other people, including go crazy. Worse, because a smart person's brain is so good at running through hypotheses and rejecting them, it tends to come up with insanity that's more resistant to basic therapy, because the rationalizations are built to withstand the assault of a genius level intellect. When people say genius and insanity are close cousins, this is what they're talking about."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/22/i-was-adam-lanza-part-2.html

And while I don't actually claim to be a genius, I am a highly intelligent person, or so I'm told by the people who tested me once. The problem with being smart, like the author of that article stated, is that when normal people rationalize something, it only takes someone equally smart to talk them back out of it. I'd add that things like tradition and social pressures also work more effectively to keep people of normal intelligence from going too crazy, because most folks don't really bother to question everything and aren't willing to buck society in order to go their own way.

I did, though. I've spent most of my life asking the "Why X?" question, and for all the good it has done me, it's done an equal amount of damage. See, the problem is that there are very few people who can rationally talk me out of anything, and even fewer who are willing to try. I win most of the debates I get into, regardless of whether or not they turn into arguments, simply because I can recall more facts, lay down a stronger philosophical foundation, and rip the other guy's argument apart faster.

The problem with methodically doing this for the last decade or so (I don't actually remember at what point in life philosophy became an obsession) is that there are very few areas of my life that haven't been examined rather ruthlessly to see if they're acceptable. Which in turn means that there are very few areas in my life that anyone can, no matter their motives, actually change my opinions in. Trust me, I generally know why I do what I do, and I've thought it through several times...

...But I need to make some changes in my life, because as it turns out, some of my opinions are wrong, and some of the ways I do things are causing more trouble than they prevent. Surprising, right?

See, the thing about having a strong intellect is that it's like an oak tree. It only gets stronger and stronger as time goes on, but if it doesn't grow up straight, like if someone ties ropes around it as a sapling so that it grows up bent, then that incredibly-strong tree can't easily be straightened out.

I'm bent. I understand how I got bent, of course, not that it particularly matters. I can point to incidents I've been through that have caused damage in my life. Not all of them are my fault, but some of them are, not that "fault" matters at this point, either.

I still need to get unbent. Which means that something stronger (or more accurately smarter) than me needs to make a point of unbending me. It's going to hurt, and all of my bent strength is going to resist. Which is actually as it should be, because it's important to resist forces that threaten to change me, at least until I'm convinced they're positive changes, and not negative ones.

But I still need to make some changes, and it's not going to be pleasant. Anyone familiar with the concept of blacksmithing and metallurgy can understand that the strongest steel is made in the hottest fires, and that an item smithed out of steel has been heated red-hot and hammered on many, many times.

To quote the late author Robert Jordan; "A sword may be grateful to the fires that forged it, but never fond of them."

I have spent a good portion of my life striving to be the strongest, toughest, smartest person I could be. I still think that's a good goal, but what I didn't do when I started was to ensure that the person I was making myself into was going to be made on a firm foundation, with straight lines and a level head. So I became very smart, very tough, and very strong, but I didn't make sure I wasn't bent.

Umm, whoops. My bad.

Now, I'm not writing this to say that I've suddenly figured out how to unbend myself, I haven't. The real problem with being bent is that no matter how strong, tough, and smart I am, I can't be stronger than myself. I will always equal I, so I will never be able to apply enough force to straighten myself back out.

No, unfortunately I need to fine something stronger than me to do the hard work. Looking to other people won't work, if they were smarter than me, I'd not have gotten bent in the first place.

Thankfully, God is most certainly stronger than me, and although He cannot be rushed to straighten me out on my schedule, He is definitely willing to do it.

My head hits the pillow, and I'm sobbing.

My head hits the pillow, and I'm sobbing.

I just want to go Home, Father. I just want to wake up and be Home. I don't even know where or what that is, but I want to be Home.

I'm 30 years old, and I'm crying myself to sleep in Maseru, Lesotho. (For the record, when I write, I write what I feel. What gets posted on this blog is a question of quality, not whether or not it makes me look any certain way.)

I don't have a friend on the entire fucking continent, Father. I haven't known anyone here for even two weeks, I have no one to talk to that has any background or context for anything I'd say, any reference I'd make, any idioms or mannerisms. There's no one here I can trust to see Me.

I'm a broken person. I don't really try to hide it, and I'm not good at acting anyways.

I want off this ride. I don't want to be a missionary, I want to be the guy with the wife, the kids, the dog, the warm bed in a cozy house, the front lawn I'll bitch about mowing. Send somebody else, I just don't want to do this anymore.

It wasn't my thought that came next, it was a line of Scripture. "Foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." I think it's from Matthew. One of the Gospels, memorization isn't my strong suit, never has been.

The book of Hebrews, says that Christ was tempted in every way that we are tempted. That was the next thing through my head.

Every. Way.

The Son of the Almighty God, tempted in Every. Way. I've ever been, and ever will be, tempted.

I can barely, barely comprehend it. The text is simple enough, of course, it's just that the reality...

Jesus Christ, the Son of God, The Word become Flesh...was at some point so down that he was tempted with suicide, like I was two years ago? (TWO YEARS AGO, NOT NOW, DO NOT CALL THE COPS ON ME (AGAIN))

Jesus at some point felt so alone, so broken, that He just wanted to set His cross down and be a normal person, forsaking whatever good He knew God would work out of His obedience?

Every way? Jesus was tempted to take over the family carpentry business, instead of being about His Father's work? He was tempted to settle down with a wife and kids, to live a calm, quiet life where He would be left alone, instead of preaching to thousands of people?

Every way? Does that really mean Jesus at times just wanted to sit down, get a loving hug from somebody that knew Him, and let the world handle its own problems? To quit and be a normal guy?

I mean yeah, there's that bit in the Garden, where He asked the Father to take the cup from him, but I mean that's always kinda brushed over. Jesus wasn't actually discouraged, He couldn't have been. He was perfect, we're broken, so He didn't get discouraged.

Because right now, I'm in Maseru. There are dried tears on my cheeks, and I just want to go home. I want to go home tomorrow, to find a nice girl, settle down and not leave town except for leisurely vacations. No more Calling into missions, no more food poisoning from third-world restaurants, no more being unable to sleep because hard beds aggravate my bad shoulder, no more being lonely and alone, no more looking ahead to being broke, homeless, and unemployed the day I get back.

It's tempting. The Bible says Christ was tempted in every way I am. So I'm not alone, and if I struggle with this, so did He.  Christ was where I am, calling out to the Father in tears, asking for another way. And when the Father said "No", Christ obeyed.

I'm not perfect, but I have been as obedient to the calling I've received as I could be. I'm in Maseru, where I was sent, I'm doing the job I was sent to do (well, the food poisoning bit notwithstanding), and I haven't let things like "I would rather not be doing this with my life" stop me.

Maybe I'm not as broken as I think I am. Maybe I'm just human, and struggling with temptation.

Maybe, just maybe, Christ struggled with the temptation to lose hope, to say "Even with God's help, I can't do this, I'm too pathetic, too weak, too alone, too broken."

It does say "every" in that verse.