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.

Internship Things Part 2: Great Expectations

It's really hard for people to not expect things as we go through life. Especially those of us in the West, who are raised in a scientific world where "cause and effect" are a way of life. We do X, we get Y. Do X again, get Y again. It's ever harder to not expect things if we're told to expect them.

I'm not sure it's humanly possible to go through life without expecting things. I go to work, I expect to get paid. If I didn't expect anything from my labors, why would I even work? Expectations are the way Humanity moves forward. Hell, some day I expect to retire and build a plane. I'm looking forward to it, and it's one of the reasons I'm expecting (there's that word again) to devote a good portion of 2015 and 2016 to studying aeronautical engineering.

During my internship with MAF this summer, and even before that, I was told to expect certain things. I'd applied for an internship in a certain country, and was approved. Due to that, I expected to work in that country. The operation in that country works on certain airframes, in a certain culture, and so I expected those things.

I didn't really have a reason not to. I had plane tickets, a visa, a packing list, even a pocket guide to the local culture and language.Hell, it wouldn't have made sense to expect otherwise. Only a crazy person would see a plane ticket to Asia and expect to spend two months in southern Africa.

So when I got to MAF this summer, I had some expectations. Nothing absurd, just a certain gig, in a certain country, on certain airframes.

I was looking forward to it as much as I'd ever looked forward to anything. I was stoked. I was excited. I'd get all bubbly talking about it, because it was something I was truly passionate about.

But I made a couple mistakes, and they cost me. I totally blew my first chance, but was told that I'd get a second chance, and if I panned out, if I earned it, I'd get to get back on track with the original internship. "Do this thing for us," they said, "and we'll put you on a plane."

Cause and effect. Do X, get Y.

I did X. I got back to the US, they said "You did X, Y is coming."

Why on God's Green Earth would I not expect Y? What possible reason would I have had to not hopefully expect Y, which I had applied for, been approved for, had tickets and a visa for, and had now been told by the vice-president of the organization was coming?

But Y did not come. I got a lovely, plausible excuse as to why Y did not come, but even a plausible excuse does not erase the optimisim, hope, and expectations that come with over a year of working towards a goal.

It was depressing. 18 months of work and every expectation I had, no matter how reasonable, came to nothing.

So with a fair amount of dejection, I took the next available assignment.

I ended up in Z. Lesotho. It was not what I had been told to expect, nor what I wanted, but by that point I simply wanted to do something useful.

When I got there, instead of being put to work doing useful things on an airplane, like I had expected, I was stuck in the back room, counting parts. I was told that despite my prior training, the organization hadn't certified me on anything more complicated than counting parts, so I would not be touching airplanes with a wrench.

I'll admit, I didn't take that very well. All the things I'd been working towards, all the things I'd hoped for and expected, and all of it had turned out to be bullshit.

Mighta had an argument with the boss after that.

Got told by a guy in Lesotho that expectations are a bad thing. Good servants hope for nothing, and expect nothing, he said. A good servant doesn't care where he serves, or who he serves.

Dude's full of shit. I bet that dude expects that when he goes home from work, his wife will still be there, taking care of the kids. I bet he expects his paycheck to come in, in the expected amount, on the expected day. I bet he expects that when his boss tells him to expect something, he expects it. I certainly expects that he treats his wife differently than other women.

But somehow, I became the bad guy when, after being told to expect Y, I didn't have the same feelings about Z. Z should be just as fulfilling, just as good.

Where the hell do people come up with this stuff?

I seem to remember a story about a guy named Jacob working for a girl named Rachel's father for 7 years so he could have her hand in marriage. He worked hard, and at the end of the 7 years, he was instead given a girl named Leah.

He didn't go "Well, good enough. A girl's a girl. Wasn't the girl I was working for, but whatever."

Quite the opposite, actually. Jacob went back to work another 7 years to get the girl he wanted, because he had a goal, and something else just wasn't going to do. I'm sure that the transition was a bit of a struggle for him. His expectations were reasonable, as he had been told to expect Rachel.

Nobody would have expected Jacob to say "Well, I spent seven years working for Rachel, not Leah, but Leah will do fine."

I, on the other hand, was expected to say "Well, I spent 18 months working towards one thing, but some other thing will do just as well. After all, a program in Africa is just like a program in Asia, and there's no reason to want one more than the other."

I wish that was sarcasm. Unfortunately, I was actually expected to say that. I was expected to view one as just as good as the other.

Wait a second, hang on. Why the hell, if I was to not have any expectations, if any thing is as good as any other thing, why did HQ have such a problem with me anyways?

I mean, they expected (for unknown reasons) a relaxed, low-key mechanic. Instead they got one of the most intense people to ever walk through their doors. They expected someone who won't speak up in class...they got me. They expected me to view any program they shuffled me off to as just as good as the one I worked for.

So...can someone explain why their expectations are reasonable, while mine were not? Why my depression when all my expectations fell apart was bad, and their reaction to the falling-apart of their expectations was perfectly justified? Hell, why'd they even have expectations if expectations are bad?

Honestly, I don't know. None of the answers I can think of make much sense.

But I do know that I will continue to expect things. "Do X, Get Y" is one of the basic principles of the world. It's the basis by which we humans interact with each other, and to throw that aside in the name of "meh, whatever" is madness.

"Do X, Get Y" is not an unreasonable expectation to have. It's the foundation for the modern world, and the basis of trust. The expectation of "Do X, Get Y" will work is the basis of every transaction two people can have. It's how economics works, it's how science works, it's how everything works.

But this summer, "Do X, Get Y" did not work, and I became the bad guy because that bothered me. I did X, I was told I was going to get Y, and I expected Y. Honestly, it's not that a security situation in a third-world shithole caused housing troubles that bothers me now. It was disappointing, of course, but I know that sort of thing happens.

What really bothers me, even months later, is that people became disappointed with me because I was expected to not be disappointed that my expectations came to nothing. But only my expectations were bad, and only my disappointment was unjustified. I don't know how I keep ending up the villain, but I'm do know this:

People who think expectations based on "Do X, Get Y" are unreasonable are probably not people I want to fix airplanes for.

Internship things

I haven't really sat down and sorted through (in writing) all of the things I learned while I was in Africa. Part of it's been a time consideration, part of it was that it's been an ongoing process, and part of it is simply laziness.

But I need to start, because for me, writing has become a large part of the way I sort through things. Writing, for me, forces me to articulate the vague and swirling abstract concepts that a lot of philosophical thinking is done in. "Freedom is good!" is that sort of abstract concept, but it's not the abstract concept that matters, but the articulated explanation of how it can be applied to life.

Until I really get down to the brass tacks of the explanation, most of the hard work of actually processing what I've learned hasn't been done. It's easy to pay lip service to a concept, but it's really the work of explaining things that reveals flaws in the argument, and so that's what I need to do.

I suppose the most logical place to start explaining what I learned in the four months I spent with MAF (and the two I spent in Africa) is...honestly, I don't know. It's frikkin complicated.

See, I could say something like "I'm done proving myself. I've proved everything I needed to prove while I was in Africa, and now I'm going to relax and just be me."

But explaining that is something else entirely, because the devil is in the details, and exactly what I proved, and to whom, depends on who one talks to. MAF wasn't very impressed by how things went, while I had a somewhat different impression.

I mean, I only got in like three arguments in Lesotho, maybe four if one counts the near-argument on the drive to the airport. I didn't get into any arguments in Haiti, and if I didn't do well in Nampa, well, I blame the other guy, because starting a conversation with "what meds do you take?" and "How did your father die?" is fuckin' rude. I showed up for work every day (except when I was sick, of course), and obeyed to the best of my ability the directives of the program managers I had to work for.

I worked as hard as I could, every day, to get as much done as I possibly could. I didn't slow down for depression, and I didn't quit when things went several kinds of sideways. Even when MAF said I wouldn't be going to the country they had given their word I'd be going to, my first question was "OK, where else can I go?"

But when it comes to proving things to people, it's the standards people are looking for.

MAF, to be quite honest, doesn't seem to give a shit if people work hard. They want nice people, and that's all they seem to care about. They won't care if you're depressed because they canceled your internship after promising that they'd come through, the only thing they're looking for is a positive attitude. It doesn't matter if you resolve arguments and move on, they're looking for people who don't get in arguments.

To them, I proved that I was trouble.

I see it a little differently.

I see a person who's dealt with depression his entire adult life. I see a guy who spent three and a half years trying to join MAF, no matter what or who tried to discourage him, even when it was MAF itself. I see a guy who gave his second chance every microjoule of effort he could. I see a guy who only asked where else he could go when the promised result of the second chance wasn't delivered. I see a guy who was assigned to a program that was pressured to take him, a program that did not want an intern, and made the best of it.

When I look at my internship, I'm quite happy with how things went.

See, I'm not a man who values "nice" people over people who will show up for work every day, no matter what life throws at them, and do their best. Even if they're in a country they never wanted to be in, working for people who didn't want them there, on airframes they don't care to work on.

I value people who will resolve their arguments over diplomats who never get into arguments. No matter how petty the argument is, or how quickly one side gets logically ripped apart. 

I value people who will pick themselves up after getting their asses kicked and go straight back to what they believe they should be doing over people who allow a bad day, or a bad week, or a bad month to change their goals.

I value people who keep their word, never promise more than they can deliver, and don't expect any more than that from anyone over people who demand perfection and can't keep their own word.

When I judge my performance in Haiti, HQ, and Lesotho based on the values I espouse... I could have done better. I won't even start to say that everything went well, or that I did an especially good job at being a missionary. Frankly, by the end of my time in Lesotho, I knew that I had a list of things to improve before I'd be "ready" for overseas missions.

BUT!

By those same values, I didn't do a terrible job of living out the values I, umm, value. That's not particularly eloquent, but even if it's clumsily said, I proved to myself what and who I am while I was there.

I'm not perfect. Some days I'm a pretty solid bastard, actually. But at the same time, I'm proud of how far I've come from the total shitbag I was in 2003. I'm like a totally different person, and I'm proud of the change. There's a lot of things I could have become after being that guy, 

Some of those once-possible futures are probably better than this one. Not everything has gone well.

But it could have gone a hell of a lot worse, and having seen who I am when life goes south, I am well-satisfied with being this guy.

Because I know who I was, who I might have been, and who I am.

I didn't learn who I was by smoking pot and playing video games, I learned who I was in the fires of suck. I've learned who I am when everything falls apart, and I'm not ashamed to be that guy.

And honestly? If you're OK with who you are when your world goes to shit, even if you're not handling it well?

You have nothing left to prove to anyone.

I am *done* with proving myself.

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.

A dramatization in the style of Lovecraft (hopefully)

I saw the "No Guns Allowed" sign, but didn't care. I had a license to carry, and no pot-smoking hippy was going to put up a sign and keep me out. I opened the door, and walked inside. Enemy territory. Would they know? What would happen if they saw that most hated of tools, the bringer of death to this world, The Gun?

"Hello!" One of the hippies said cheerfully, unaware of the horror that had just walked into their presence.

"Good morning" I replied, knowing that this was anything but. This was a morning that would cause screams that would echo through time, screams normally reserved for Elder Things.

I walked over to the wall of DVDs. They were alphabetical, and not sub-divided by type or genre. Typical of hippies to know only one way of organizing things. I'd stopped by the shop to find a rock documentary, but it wasn't there. Probably too loud and angry for the store owners to handle.

A dilemma presented itself. I could stop by the music selection, I'd been looking for a certain Collective Soul album, but one of Them was there, and they might not have it, either. I could destroy this man's sanity by my very presence, and yet it might be a waste of my time. Perhaps I should leave immediately?

I decided to risk it. This lesser creature was not worth worrying about, and could easily be replaced.

I sauntered over to the bins and found that these, too, were only sorted alphabetically. The store's selection was actually decent, and I grabbed several other albums that I had been looking for.

"Have you found what you're looking for?"

I glanced over at the hippy that had spoken to me, and he suddenly appeared to be sweating slightly. He tugged at the already-loose collar of his polo as I politely responded "Yes, thank you."

Realizing I had a limited budget, I walked past the man towards the front of the store. I heard him collapse behind me, giggled gibberish pouring from his mouth. The overwhelming horror of The Gun had taken his sanity by sheer proximity, even without him being directly aware of its presence.

I made eye contact with the hippie that appeared to be the manager, and indicated with a nod that I needed to pay for my goods. He directed his remaining subordinate to the till, then began clawing his eyes out, whispering formless words of horror at what he had just seen.

I glanced down, but my heavy jacket was still concealing The Gun. I wondered what he had seen, clearly simply being a Bearded Man could not cause that kind of reaction, but shook off such idle thoughts as I approached the register. I had more important things to do than ponder the inner workings of the hippie mind.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" the cashier shrieked as he began biting his own lip off.

"Yes, thank you."

"Would you like a bag for this?" He shrieked again, I barely avoided the spatter of blood that came with this question, his lips were tattered, and he now appeared to be chewing on his tongue.

He held out the receipt to me, but I declined, not wanting to risk contaminated hippie blood in my car. Suppressing a smile, I walked to the front door and paused to put my sunglasses on, which gave the now-eyeless manager time to cheerfully giggled out the words "Have a nice day!"

"You too, sir" I replied, knowing that the rest of his life would be marked by nightmares of this day. I pushed the door open, smiled at the sunlight that streamed in, and left the store.

******

Author's note: This was written entirely as a writing exercise (because H. P. Lovecraft is the man), dramatizing a completely normal trip to a record store. No hippies were hurt in the making of this story, nor during the actual events that took place.

The moral of the story is that those signs are pointless, and stop absolutely nothing from happening. I'm a nice guy, and that sign might as well have said "no germs allowed" for all the actual effect it had on me. Guns go wherever the people who carry them want to take them, and as long as people are willing to walk past the signs, the signs don't matter.

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.