A Penchant for… the Undesirable

Hello blog world. I don't talk to people about God in real life because my typical response is that no one either wants to talk about it to me or cares about it in the first place. I talk about God in my blog because I know that people don't have to listen if they don't want to, and it is those who are really interested who actually will go through these weird words of mine. So note, if you ever want to talk about God stuff with me in real life, I'm always in the mood. That being said, I have a question for you, my dedicated (and visiting) readers:

What does God mean to you?


I'd appreciate any sort of response—anonymous or no, I don't care as long as it's a response.

Peace.

μικρόs θαύμα—or, "A Little Miracle"

Okay, so I had to pay rent today. Most people do, what with it being the beginning of the month and all, but here's the story. So, I have two accounts—one being an interest-bearing account, and the other being a run-of-the-mill "savings" acocunt. Being the prudent individual that I am, I created a post-dated money transfer from the interest-bearing account to my savings so that I could pay rent (it takes 5 days for a transaction to be completed from my account). All that being assumedly peachy, I cut a rent cheque & then proceed to check the balance of my savings account—just in case... Excrement! There's no money in my savings account! Quickly, I goand check my account transaction history. For some reason, my post-dated transfer got lost and never went through. I said to myself, "Lucid Elusion, you're boned. What are you going to do now?! Not like you can just whip out that kinda cash from the change in your couch... I don't think..." Only finding 38 cents in my couch meant that I had to resort to another option. But there were no other options!! My roommate, wonderful person that they are, is purportedly poorer than I am, and wasn't home. Rent cheque due in 20 minutes, no other source of cash available, and me sweating like a turkey in mom's roasting pan on Thanksgiving, I was pretty much.... well, cooked (pardon the poultry pun). it's a $50 NSF fee from wonderful Royal Bank & it's $10/day fine for late rent, so I'm out a red bill either way. What do I end up doing when I find myself in any type of casserole dish, roasting pan or pickle jar? I pray. I pray & let God handle that which I cannot control.
So, I go and hand in my rent cheque fully aware that it's going to bounce. What choice do I have? Maybe the transaction from my interest-bearing acocunt actually went through, and just wasn't showing up? I was willing to tango with that devil more than I was being late on rent: at least there was a slim chance that I'd have ca$h coming into my account...

Did I mention that I had checked the mail before cutting the cheque? No? Well, I did check the mail, and there was nothing there. The mailman was later than usual that day. So, after handing in "rent," I re-check my mailbox just in case something showed up. Lo & behold—in the words of AOL—I got Mail! One of those envelopes came from the government. Inside was this pleasant scholarship cheque that had enough money to cover rent! So pleasant. A wee little miracle, if I say so myself. I am quite glad that I do indeed have a God who cares about the little things. Aren't you?

Metamorphosis Incarnate

***Disclaimer: Very long post. Although it is meant to be read as an organic whole, there are section breaks indicating shifts in modular thought. Yes, these can be read as encapsulated wholes—able to stand on their own—but forget not to consider the forest among these trees.***

Come. Be. Rise up. Everything. Wait. Fall. Broken. Empty. Restore. Restore. Restore.

The world is a weird place. Or, maybe more appropriately put: life is... different than what we expect.

I had previously started this post when the computer I was working on up & decided to go AWOL on me—forcing a complete reformat of the beast. Fitting for what I want to discuss, actually. Providence, perhaps? Providence is what evidently prompted me to create a full backup of my system files last night, so perhaps...

Falling From the Tree

My spiritual journey has been interesting in the past month. It has been interesting in that I did my best to push God out of my life insofar as that I could get the stuff I was doing for him done in time for the deadlines that were set. I ceased reading my Bible; I was forced to abandon Christian community. Prayer seemed to be an alien construct. I was on a spiritual fast, though not the kind that is promoted by the faith that I profess; rather, the kind that elicits waning & wasting away.

When I did occasionally read my Bible—those odd occasions where I wasn't passed out on the bus—I didn't like what I was reading. At all.

...And here is my advice about what is best for you in this matter: Last year you were the first not only to give but also to have the desire to do so. Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it, according to your means. For if the willingness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. (2 Cor 8:10-14 NIV)

What in the world is with that?! I mean, really! That can't be Biblical—or can it?

My Baptist roots reared in an Alliance environment shine through, especially in the context of my familial upbringing. Christianity—and life, for that matter—is about doing things and accomplishing things for God. Faith is only evident in the works that outpour from it. So, it necessarily follows, then, that the more you do & the more you sacrifice & the more you surrender your body to the flames, the more successful a Christian you are. Mr. Holy Spirit, in this excerpt from Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, did a number on me. And at what perfect timing too. Here I am, busting my hump for the greater glory of the Kingdom, and here God speaks, saying that I'm sinning in doing so! "The gift is acceptable according to what one has, not according to what he does not have.

Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality." Was my "gift" of self-destruction not acceptable because I was not giving according to what I have, but instead giving more that I actually had to give? Is over-extension & workaholism a sin—even if it is for the Lord? Looks like it.

So there I was on the bus, sitting in conviction. I could hear the voice of the Lord ringing in my noggin', "What, Lucid Elusion? Do you think I actually need you to accomplish my will? Am I that small that what I have planned to be done can only be done with your help? Am I dependent on your efforts? Who do you think created the universe in its entirety? Yeah? And how long did it take? Were you there? How do you think I ever managed before I created you?" *smack* right in the face. But, He did say to me, "Now finish the work, so that your eager willingness to do it may be matched by your completion of it." So I did.

I have often stated that 90% of the work done in the church is accomplished by 10% of the people in the church. I think that this is true, but over the past week, I have increasingly questioned the validity of that statement—moreover, I have begun to rethink the cause of the said situation. Yes, 90% of the work is most likely done by 10%—but is it due to the laziness of the Church, or is it due to the overzealousness of the 10%?

It has occurred to me that the positions that I hold in the ministries I am involved with do not really have many (or any) alternative individuals who could fill those positions. This may sound like I am full of myself, which I may be to an extent, but I honestly am unaware of individuals in my sphere who have the combined set of skills that I have. Then I go & look back at where I developed these skills... Very few of them I actually possessed when I began in my working. Why is it, then, that I think that these jobs cannot be done by individuals without the skill set that I possess? I mean, I did them, and I didn't have the skills to do them when I started! Rather, I developed the skills needed through exposure to the need. Granted, I made many huge mistakes, and the quality of my work has improved by leaps and bounds since I was a greenie... But still!

The more I think about it, the more I become convinced that the onus on the bulk of the disparity of "work to workers" in the church directly falls upon those who are doing the work. It is a sin to over-extend one-self, even for the work of the Lord. Are burnout and stress direct, concrete punishments by God on the over-workers because of their sin? How much of the unwillingness of the congregation to get its hands dirty in the work of the kingdom is produced by this mentality that only the qualified individuals are capable to work for the Lord? How much of this 90/10 split is a direct result of us believing that God is dependent on our efforts—instead of us being dependent on his power? I don't know. I won't even pretend to know. It would be interesting to examine, however. Church, experiment! Create empirical data for us to analyse and see what the root of these phenomena is! Workers in the church: remember who gives you strength & remember your beginnings. Let go, and let God.

Rotting

I have just completed the bulk of my responsibilities for this term. "Bulk," however, is quite a relative term. Nonetheless, I now have a chance to breathe: something that, until recently, I was compelled to schedule into my day planner, so that I would be sure to have sufficient time to do so. 6 midterms, 2 papers, 4 scripts, 3 productions, a youth conference and 3 design projects later... I now feel like I have nothing to do. I mean, I only have 26 pages of lines to memorise, 3 more productions to do, another 4 papers and 2 cumulative finals—then the term will be done. (Yay 4 classes!). But honestly, it will be a breeze, these final bits. How can I tell? Well, to be honest, it would have to be by the contemplative depression that spiked last night at 7:00pm. In fitting with psychology's Modern Opponent Process Theory of Emotions, the more you get exposed to any situation that elicits an emotional response, the faster your brain reacts to try to minimise the effect(s) of the original emotional response—with the intent of keeping itself in a homeostatic state. So, if you're hit with highly exciting, fast-paced, intense situations, your brain will respond in such a manner to not make you feel the extremity of the situation(s). Why? It reduces anxiety and the crippling effects of stress, so that you can continue in the situation relatively unaffected. With repeated exposure to these stimuli, the brain is faster to kick in the opponent processes, and these processes get larger with exposure too. The only problem with this system is that the counter-balancing device that the brain seems to use is a very sluggish and slow-to-respond beast, so when the external stimuli that cause the huge shift away from homeostasis are gone, the opponent process that let you keep your head during it all is still quite active. Hence, why I feel depressed right now: Evidently, the stressors that required this depressive state to counter-balance them are gone. It all makes sense now, thanks to the wonders of modern psychology...

To make things all the more interesting, it just occurred to me this past weekend that I am a master at self-sabotage. The one thing that I desire most from people is this relatively natural phenomenon / attribute common to all healthy relationships: intimacy. This past weekend alone, I experienced two rather blatant—yet non-verbal—desires for intimacy presented to me from two separate individuals. Now, the natural response for an individual desiring such interaction would be to respond positively towards such offers. Me? Yup. Clammed up in terror. Turns out—on closer self-examination—that I keep pretty much everyone I know at arms' length so as to remain positively protected & non-vulnerable. Yet, in return, I demand from them a level of intimacy that I myself am reluctant—no, "unable"—to reciprocate.

All of my relationships with other seem to be able to fall into two categories. There are—for labelling's sake—the "waders" & the "plungers". My wader relationships are characteristically very surface, pleasant & uneventful associations. I know very little about how these people work & much less about what matters to them. Typically, I see them erratically and never know what goes on in their lives. Plungers, on the other hand, are the exact opposite. With these individuals, I typically know them very well—their struggles, their dreams, their desires, their beings. I typically know where they are and what they are most likely doing. Within my plunger relationships, discussion is rarely—if ever—centred around the run-of-the-mill. I do not have any relationships that exist in between these two extremes. For every 20 waders I know, there may be as many as 1 plunger in my life. None of my wader relationships has ever developed into plunger relationships. I can't seem to do it. To be honest, I don't think that I even know how to cultivate a relationship to the "plunger" stage at all: it's either there at get-go or not.

I do not think I was ever modelled the appropriate interactive pattern to develop healthy relationships—only extremes. You need only to examine my family to see how blatantly obvious this is. None of us talks to each other. Ever. At all. Well, that's not totally true, but the content of my family's discourse is not that which I would like to publish at this point in time.

So what do I do? Honestly, what do I do? Practice community in this fractured, highly disparate form? Pick up this developmental process from others? Ha! I push them away before they even get the chance! That, and I have only seen a discussion occur that progressed past the surface but not so much into the realm of unabashed intimacy. The content, however, was mostly gossip. If the only way to develop a relationship with someone is to talk about others behind their backs, then I don't really think I would want to bother. No. There has to be some other, more wholesome & less sinful method of doing this. Any suggestions?

So, back to the core of this central rot. What am I doing? Where am I going in life? My spiritual self is starving and is unhealthy. I have noticed my decreased inhibition in sinning—in every aspect of my life. It sucks. Hardcore, it sucks. But, what do I do?

Earlier on today, I received an e-mail from a colleague of mine who expressed joy and wonder at the faithfulness of God. I reacted with cynicism, and grating deprecation. "Oh look, someone's acting all spiritual & holy. Makes me sick!"

This reminds me of an event earlier on in the month where another of my colleagues was discussing his spiritual life and how wonderful it was at the time. Myself and another colleague, both of us being extremely busy, expressed woe at not being able to have a spiritual life as empowered as that due to our busy schedules. The guy responded, "You don't have to stay where you are. There's always time to pray and read your Bible. God will help you through your work and studies if you place Him first!" My busy colleague and I both reacted with a "Whatever. You don't understand our situations at all. There isn't time!" Later that evening, when several of us were praying, the Holy Spirit convicted me and made it very apparent that spiritual colleague was in fact correct—which caused me to confess my sin, with every intention to "repent" and change my pattern of living so as to reflect this shift. Unfortunately, my repentance never materialised into actual action.

Two Sundays ago, I was visiting a church, whose speaker had his sermon on Matthew 6:24-ff. "But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well." This, I believe. He finished off his sermon, concluding that Christians should get their priorities straight by offering themselves first to the Lord and to his work, which God would honour. In response to this, he ended up praying for a group of people who had invested a large amount of time on several projects that were being executed that very weekend, asking God to bless those individuals for their sacrifices. I was one of those people, though I do not believe that the speaker knew that I was sitting in the congregated mass that morning.

The following week, I had a midterm and a 30-page paper—both due on the same day, and both which I had previously not even begun preparing for, due to these "spiritual" projects that I was involved in. There was no way that I was going to be able to complete both the paper and the midterm in time, so I asked my paper prof. for an extension. She hummed and hawed, finally deciding that, in order to be fair to the class, I would be able to hand in the paper late but lose 10% off the final grade I would receive for it. Okay, granted, it was better than the "letter mark per day late" stipulation outlined in my syllabus, but it still wasn't the "all these things shall be added unto you" that I was looking for. I got a little cheesed at my God for that when I was offered that solution, to be honest. I mean, some God this is—you slay yourself academically so that his kingdom can be somehow advanced, and all he does in return is decrease your punishment a tiny little fraction?! Where's the amazing, show-stopping "I own the world" power that he has, huh? Some "all mighty" God...

Germination

After a day or so, however, I resigned my sarcastic, "Thanks for your provision, oh Mighty One!" to a more appropriate, "Though you slay me, yet will I trust you," attitude—remembering my place before the creator of the universe & all other things as well. I mean, He ultimately knows what he's going, right? Maybe there was a larger movement at play in the symphony that is my life—or should I say fugue that is my life? God doesn't need to fit my box: He has his reasons for doing what he does, even if I don't understand them at the time. Looking back on some really painful and confusing moments of my experience in this world, there definitely are moments where, at the time, nothing made sense at all, but now things seem to actually have happened for a purpose—not to mean that I can actually fathom the complete, unadulterated plan that God has for my life in any sense. Anyways...

Yesterday, the second day of writing this long entry, I got my midterm results back after Tuesday, the first day of writing this entry, my professor stated that the class average for the exam was a surprising 43/50 with a mode of 37. There were four 50/50s in the class—something that has never happened in his 10 years teaching before. I checked my mark yesterday and although I didn't get a 50, it did bump my average up in the class—a mere 0.5% away from my target mark of A+ for that course.

The paper I got an "extension" on had a momentous paradigm shift on the Thursday that it was due to be originally handed in. The paper, being a play script, was due for a second drafting. My class that day was marked by a guest lecturer, Sharon Pollock, who is a twice-awarded Governor General Medalist for playwrighting—meaning that she's one of the absolute best playwrights alive in Canada today. Something from her lecture made the ideas in my brain just gel, or crystallise or both and an amazing revision was produced—one that I was quite thrilled with. Today, it was time for my script to be workshopped and the surge of adrenaline running through my veins as my words were read by others—something I don't believe has ever happened before, at least not something "substantial" in length—was overpowering. I even laughed at bits in my own script! I was as giddy as a schoolgirl, and the comments that I received from my classmates after the read was finished couldn't have been more precise in what I was looking for. The script, by nature, is an engaging thriller. I won't spoil it for any of you, just in case you read or see it sometime in the future, but there was a perfectly even distribution of responses from those who didn't get it at all to those who totally got it and were blown away. Wonderful. Simply wonderful. The Lord moves in mysterious ways, no? I still don't know my grade on the submission, but something tells me that what I handed in—were I not in need of the "extension"—would have been nowhere near what was actually produced. Hand of God? "And all these things shall be added unto you?" My faith says yes.

Before all of this fallout actually came to pass, I was sitting on the bus reading my Bible on Monday as I was riding to school, reading the first two chapters of Revelation. Again, the Holy Spirit kicked me in the pants, as I read Rev. 2's letter to the assembly in Ephesus.

"To the angel of the assembly in Ephesus write:

"He who holds the seven stars in his right hand, he who walks among the seven golden lampstands says these things:

"I know your works, and your toil and perseverance, and that you can't tolerate evil men, and have tested those who call themselves apostles, and they are not, and found them false. You have perseverance and have endured for my name's sake, and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I am coming to you swiftly, and will move your lampstand out of its place, unless you repent.... He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the assemblies. To him who overcomes I will give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of my God." (Rev 2:1-5,7 World English Version)

"I know your works, and your toil... You have perseverance and have endured for my name's sake, and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you left your first love. Remember therefore from where you have fallen, and repent and do the first works; or else I am coming to you swiftly, and will move your lampstand out of its place, unless you repent." Hit me like a runaway train loaded to the nines with bricks. Bam! Again, the Lord tells me that my busyness is sinful. Again, he says that I have strayed and that I should smarten up. And this, mere days after I read 2 Cor 8:10-14!! So, what should I do? Listening would probably be a good start, I think.

Tuesday night, I resigned from a committee that usually eats up 4-5 hours per week of my time throughout the months from March to November. A first step. Also in line with my previous desire to become un-busy and to focus myself back on Christ and my relationship with him. Nothing has been made so clear. Nothing is more needed in me than to lay down my self—my self importance, my desire to be busy, my desire to do good over and above my desire to be with my Lord. I need to lay myself down again. I need to die to self, to let go of my agenda and my narrow perspective. I need to re-straighten my priorities and my image of God. I need to submit to his will and his omnipotence.

The Conclusion of the Matter...?

Jesus was brilliant. He must have been showing off his omniscience when he likened the Christian’s life to seed in John 12:24. Although he describes the nature of his mission on earth in the verse, he also states that the one seed produces many. The only way for new growth and life to exist is for the first kernel to fall from its original stalk of grain and die, as it lies covered by soil. So is it with me: I must separate myself from my selfish desires and "fleshly" roots. I must die to the desires and understanding of who I am apart from Christ. Only in doing so can my new self—the new creation within me—grow, flourish and produce offspring of its own, for the greater glory of Him who harvests.

Come. Be. Rise up. Everything. Wait. Fall. Broken. Empty. Restore. Restore. Restore.
Drink deep from the waters of the Lord, and in so doing, you will find abundant life in him.

"...but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

BlogPsalms

BlogPsalm 1 can be found here.

BlogPsalm 2

I worship you, Almighty God; there is none like you.

I will sing you praises with my lips;

I will glorify the Lord with exuberant joy and with endless thanksgiving.

As day turns to night, and night back to day,

so will I ever shout the glory of my God.

He leads me along paths of righteousness,

And does not rage when I stumble.

He gently walks beside me, clearing a way for my timid feet.

The Lord is good: his mercies extend for generations.

For generations, his love bursts forth bringining joy and peace and gladness

to those who call upon His name.

For this, your love, your love to me, I can not but sing.

I can not but shout the glories of my God.

BlogPsalm 3

Hallelujah!

Let the children of the King of Kings rise up in celebration.

Let them sing the praises of their Lord with endlessjubilee.

Rejoice! Be glad! The Almighty is He who saves.

The Almighty One is the lifer of heads,

The healer of hearts,

The mender of brokenness.

He will come and He has come;

His hand is open to all who come.

Let the Glory of the Most High reign!

A Holy Resonance

I just got back from attending a worship service. It was the first worship service I have been to in three years that was sensitive to the leading & the prompting of the Holy Spirit. I was overwhelmed. To even try to describe the feeling of refreshment, encouragement & love I felt from the Holy Spirit as I was led into the very presence of God would be useless—words can do no justice. I stood there at the back of the sanctuary weeping, overwhelmed with joy as a child who has been reunited with a beloved parent from whom he'd been separated for years.

A couple things struck me, and I am always forced to stand back in awe when the Holy Spirit moves in my life, confirming to me things that I previously have either though or spoken. During the service, the worship leader stopped and said that, "Birds never learn to fly unless they are forced out of the nest. Look at your own life and see what the nests are; what is holding you back from entering into a deeper relationship with Christ? You need to let go..." and fly. The other thing that impacted me was a song which we sung later on in the service: "All Who Are Thirsty"

All Who Are Thirsty

Words and Music by Brenton Brown, Glenn Robertson


All who are thirsty
All who are weak
Come to the fountain
Dip your heart in the stream of life
Let the pain and the sorrow
Be wash'd away
In the waves of His mercy
As deep cries out to deep

Come, Lord Jesus, come
Come, Lord Jesus, come
Come, Lord Jesus, come
Come, Lord Jesus, come

As deep cries out to deep
As deep cries out to deep

Chew on this, if you will, and consider it alongside Today's post #1...

Unchaining the Phoenix

I skipped church today. I skipped church because I had a rehearsal for my midterm group project scheduled at the same time as church was in session. I was actually secretly glad that I had such a water-tight excuse. I skipped church not just because I had school obligations, but also because part of me eagerly desired to be away from church—and not just the "Sunday let's get together and sing happily" church either—total Christian interaction.

Lately, within the past month at least, I have found Christian interaction very draining. I go to church & feel like it's worse than going to a low-paying job that provides no satisfaction. I hang out with Christian individuals and—not only do I leave feeling very alienated, but I also feel discouraged and burdened, as if several sacks of flour were heaped on my shoulders.

For some reason, this makes me think of my Christian-related experiences in Grade 9. The most beautiful girl in the whole school—so she was called—was in both my Grade 9 French class and my Grade 9 Drama class. She decided to become a Christian somewhere in the middle of the first half of the school-year—kind of around this time, but many many years past. My previous human experience had taught me up to that point that making any definite response to any person, regardless of who they were, would only result in personal agony and strife. If you had asked me a "Yes" or "No" question, the only answers I'd ever be willing to give you would be "Maybe," or "I don't know" accordingly.

After she became a Christian, she continually sought me out for friendship, companionship, advice & the like—I think because I was the most obvious Christian in the school, what with me wearing this semi-large nail cross around my neck while always carrying my Bible around & reading it when not doing schoolwork. Throughout the year, our friendship grew and so did her faith. It was exciting to see new growth in a place that you never expected. By the end of the year, our friendship & her spiritual growth started to become a thing to discuss throughout the school, and it started to get others interested in Christianity as well—not only new interest, but renewed interest too.

One of our final projects for Grade 9 Drama was to create a short movie for class. She & I and two other of our classmates worked together on a Christian-themed "what would it be like at the end of the world" video, which we were hoping would increase interest in the whole Jesus get-up.

Working on the project was quite interesting. She, I, a pastor's daughter and a guy who occasionally came to my youth group were all working together in & out of class on the project. Good Christian community was built. It's odd, because there was one day that I remember clearly when we were working on the filming that ended up with us shooting throughout the lunch hour. I hadn't expected this, so I came along without a lunch. We stopped for a break to stuff our faces and new Christian girl turned to me with a sandwich in her hand saying, "Lucid Elusion," (well, she actually used my real name, but...),"As I was praying last night, I got the idea to make you a lunch so I asked God about it & prayed if I remembered about making you a lunch in the morning before going to school, that it would be a confirmation that He wanted me to make one for you. So when I got up this morning, I remembered about making you a lunch & here you are without one!"

That was cool: Christian community and Faith in action—not to mention a tasty meal to boot. After the following summer, we didn't really hang out much anymore: she was going to a different church and we didn't have any of the same classes in Grade 10, not to mention very different peer groups to begin with... But anyway, that memory speaks to me of Christian community, because she demonstrated to me Christ's love: not only in bringing me food, but also in being open, in being willing to learn & listen, in demonstrating to me that one can be accepted for who they are without having to worry about being attacked by everyone around them. After that year, I began to answer questions more directly & clearly: there was no longer such a need for as powerful a self-defensive stance towards the world. People could indeed like having me around.

In my senior high years, things changed & grew. I was the leader for my church's youth group in Grade 10—leading Friday night events and Wednesday afternoon Bible studies. I started attending a second church in the evenings on Sunday in Grade 11, when pretty much all youth from my church besides my family moved away. I was one of the directors of a youth drop-in centre that the local youth pastors & I spearheaded in Grade 12. I was giving words of prophecy to the leaders of my Sunday evening church after I graduated. Christian community was—on the whole, I think—good. Mind you, I never felt totally accepted by my Christian peers at school, but people older & younger than me loved me tonnes. I never really ever felt "at home" at my Sunday morning church—the one I went to with my parents. I felt alienated by the "cool" Christians & I felt condemned as well for being too hard-core Christian. But on the whole, in the grand picture of things, I still had a small support group of Christians who supported me & believed alongside me for greater & grander things from God. There was a group of us who were never satisfied with run-of-the-mill, status-quo Christianity—we were always begging for more: to go deeper, further & longer into Christ & our relationships with Him.

The other night—I think it was Wednesday, or early Thursday morning—I happened to see an old friend on MSN whom I haven't actually laid eyes on in over 11 years. We talk occasionally on MSN & stuff, but not too often, since he's gallivanting in FlatLand doing what he's doing (this past summer, he was doing an archaeological dig in Jordan) and I'm here over being disgustingly busy with everything that I am doing. I started talking to him that night, but it turned out that he was at work & that his girlfriend was actually online. That was the first time I had ever met her and by the end of the conversation, she had told me pretty much the bulk of her life story, the dirty laundry and everything. It was wonderfully refreshing to have someone open up & dump on me. I miss it a lot. That's not to say that it doesn't happen often; it just doesn't seem to happen as often as I would like. In the past year, I think two other people—just strangers off the street—approach me and tell me the sorrows of their life stories. The year before, I think 5 or 6 did. Besides those 3 strangers, one Christian opened up to me in the past year. Last year, none. The year before, one. This one was the first since Grade 11 who opened up to me (the time between the beginning of Grade 9 & the end of Grade 11 were what I refer to as the "Golden Age" of Christian community in my life). I go to church seeing people around me who are obviously carrying baggage but the largest response I get from them is "I don't feel like talking to you"—whether it's about personal stuff, or even if it's a light, airy-fairy "how's the weather" conversation.

I dislike going to church because it depresses me. I feel shoved away from true community in the church, whereas if I go into the world and surround myself with non-Christians, they line up in droves to sit and have a meaningful conversation with me. I don't know why this is.

I find hanging out with Christians draining & "Like tedious work" because I get the feeling as though I have absolutely nothing in common with any of them. I struggle. I hurt. I screw up. I screw up lots. I eagerly desire a meaningful relationship with Christ—one with power and purpose. I strive to encourage my fellow Christians in their walks.

When I hang out with Christians—typically my age peers, and not so much with my "historically superior" peers—I feel patronised, judged and shunned.

It is like talking about how one's walk with Christ truly is is comparable to openly fornicating in the middle of the service with multiple partners.

Contemporary Christianity—in my current sphere—seems to mandate that a Christian "has arrived" spiritually to be considered Christian.

The suits & ties and frilly summer dresses of our parents' generation have been replaced with a God-forsaken veneer of holiness, a film of pleasant deception, a coating of whitewash on mouldy tombs. To scrape away that outer layer is sacrilege, tantamount to heresy & punishable by excommunication.

I like non-Christians: they don't pretend that they have it all together. They are willing to be vulnerable, open and honest about how crappy their lives are. Truth is refreshing to be surrounded by.

I want to soar. I want to fly with eagles' wings. I want to run and not grow weary. I want to walk and not be faint. I desire to see others do so as well, but how can I? How can we, as Christians, if we forbid the discussion of locomotion, aerodynamics and flight? How can we loose these chains of self-defeat if we're not allowed to talk to each other about cutting torches or lock-smithing?

Going to church—for me—is like joining an aviation club filled with pilots, wearing their aviators & bomber jackets, who have never placed a foot in a airplane in their lives, yet they all tell these wonderful stories about flying. And as soon as you ask any one of them how to fly, or what the inside of a cockpit looks like, you are met with ardent resistance: "That's not something I want to talk about."

Christian community, in order to be effective in producing strong Christians and a powerful church, needs to let go of these powerful, self-defensive stances. We need to become vulnerable and open to one another. We need to trust that the community will support us in spite of our shortcomings. We need to be honest. Why else would we be admonished in the Pauline epistles to treat each other as though we were brothers & sisters, fathers & mothers? If we do not let go of our fear of rejection, our Christian experience will be limited to "Maybe"s & "I don't know"s.

So? What's your answer?

Why I Hate Christianity

So, I'm supposed to be reading my textbook right now, or working on either of my major projects that are due within the next ten days, but I feel like writing instead. I think it may have something to do with the visual / literary nature of my character. Perhaps. I also rationalise this diversion from "homework" because I would have been using it in rehearsal time, but since my scene partner pulled a no-show on me, I will write instead.

It has been a while, I think—or at least it feels like a while—since I have written an entry into this online log of activity in the realm & existence of one Lucid Elusion. Much has transpired; and much of it dissatisfying. I am becoming increasingly disillusioned with the constructs of contemporary Christianity: I look around & see that the church not only fails to meet its mandate, but it instead works to undo the progress it has made in the past. I watch myself surrounded by people who claim to be loving, pro-social, pro-community proselytes while in action, they bicker, squabble & steadfastly grip to the notion of "Me first; you, if I feel like I'm in the mood."

For the past 10 or 11 years, since I began to really take my faith seriously & since I began chasing after God with everything I am and have (though I do not claim I have done so consistently, contiguously, nor unwaveringly), I have often struggled with the Church—so much so that I have seriously considered renouncing my affiliation with the greater "Body of Christ" under the reason that that which claims to truly be the Body of Christ in contemporary society in fact does not act accordingly. Instead of promoting love, selflessness, community, peace & accord, fidelity & solidarity, etc. this institution seems to champion judgmentalism, ostracisation, pride, strife, discord and destruction.


I hate it.


Christians have transformed Christ into a self-promoting status symbol. Church today is a fraternity or a country club, where people of the same narrow-mindedness congregate in order to delude themselves into thinking that their actions & their perspectives on everything contain more authority than that old leather-bound book in the corner which no one believes is really true any more because it speaks nonsense, because what it says doesn't jive with their understanding of Jesus, because what it says is contrary to what they want to believe.

I look around myself, and I see my world. I am steeped in two very disparate "communities." At school, I am surrounded by what I would go so far as to say are the most hurting, the most beaten-up, the most outcast people on campus. These are my associates in the creative arts—both faculty and students. Conversely, in my non-school world, I am surrounded by the most pretentious, most plastic, most self-righteous people I know. These are the Christians. They don't see themselves in this such light because they stick to themselves—like turtles with their heads in their shells.

Colin Blakemore & Grahame Cooper, in 1970, undertook an experiment to study the effect that environment has upon the development of visual perception. They took newborn kittens & placed them in an absolutely dark environment, removing them only once a day for 5 hours, where they placed the kittens in a large tube which had either horizontal or vertical lines running across the walls. They even went so far as to place a Plexiglas platform in the middle of the tube, where the kitten would be placed so that it wouldn't be exposed to any edges or corners in its environment. After doing this for five months, they tested each of the kittens for perceptual acuity—showing the animals images of bars in varying orientations. Blakemore & Cooper discovered that if the animal was reared in an environment that only contained vertical lines, it would only respond to vertical bars—any other image would be ignored by the kitten, as if it did not see it. These results were the same for those kittens reared in a horizontal-bar environment (ie, they would only pay attention to horizontal lines). Any stimulus that was presented to the kittens which was opposite to that which it had been previously exposed caused absolutely no neural activity at all.

Christians have spent too much time looking at Christians. They have spent so much time in their own little circles that their perceptions have become horribly skewed and markedly distorted. The "Church" has lost its capacity to help the poor, to act in faith, to effectively preach the saving power of Christ, to wield the power given it because it does not recognise anything outside of itself. A hurting individual walks into a church, looking for acceptance & love because that is what they were told would be offered by a body of believers. He gets, instead, pushed to the side of several small crowds—ignored at best, but more often,asked to move out of the way because another group of Christians wants to use the space he occupies. He tries the proactive approaches: he goes up to several groups & tries to make small talk, but he is either given the "cold shoulder" and is ignored or he is met by active resistance by those in the group because their circle is already filled to capacity. Trying another angle, he seeks to get actively involved in the ministry activities of that church, which is easy for him to do because it requires that one give up some of his or her free time to be involved in this fashion. Some of these ministry activities are monopolised by certain circles, which proves—again—to hinder his integration. Others are considerably less desirable to be a part of, which allows the outsider to enter into a professional relationship with a few individuals in the church. But the hurting outsider, whether he be male or female, Christian or non, is not looking to engage in a semi-professional group. He could easily do that at work, or in the community or in a sports' team. The reason he has come to the church is to look for acceptance, healing & love. He remains unfulfilled & his needs remain unmet.

What happens to Joe Newcomer when he encounters contemporary Christianity? One of several outcomes: 1.) He becomes so disgusted by the self-centered nature of "Christians" that he leaves the church with a bitter taste in his mouth, refusing to ever associate with the representatives of Christ & his love ever again. 2.) The poor fool, not knowing any better, becomes a Christian and over a longtime—due to his sheer persistence in the community—becomes absorbed as one of them, which culminates in his distorted perception of the world, forgetting where he has come from. 3.) The poor fool becomes a Christian, starts reading his Bible & retains his real perception of the world & the wonderful love that has been bestowed upon him, which causes a great amount of upset in the "Church"because he is doing things differently & because his thoughts are alien to the group, further enhancing the stone-wall of rejection that he was greeted with upon his arrival.

Look around you: are you—if you are a Christian—living a happy, content life? Yes? Does most of your activity revolve around a group of individuals who you go to church with? Does that group stay relatively static—only changing when someone moves away, or when an associate of one of the group members moves to that area? Then be ashamed.

The contemporary Church has the world's fastest revolving door, but no one inside notices this because they have erected a concrete wall in front of it that has been painted with a fancy mural quoting Acts 1:8 saying, "You will be my witnesses to the very ends of the Earth."

Whether the contemporary Christian Church wants to believe it or not, that statement holds true regardless of how active it is in interacting with the world. All of creation knows that the Church is the manifest exhibition of Christ's love. How do you think Jesus is perceived by the world when His Bride, His Love, His very Body would rather organise events & activities for its own than to smile on the Other, throw its arms around the destitute with a loving hug & with true caring compassion ask how the Other is doing? Christianity today—both as a whole Church and manifest in individual Christians—has decided that Philippians 2:3-4 no longer holds any relevance. It must be one of those many verses, says the Church, that was culturally-bound and which has no bearing on present living. The Church has adopted the exact opposite approach to life instead. You, Christian and you, Church are living a lifestyle where you do everything out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, and you consider yourselves better than others. Each of you look only to your own interests, and also not to the interests of others. If there is one of you who follows the letter of Phil. 2:3-4, you exploit him to your own advantage & to your own gain, making him bend over backwards so that your life can believed with more ease. AND YOU DO THIS TO YOUR VERY OWN!!! Guess what, non-Christians see this too. Not only do they see this, but they experience your navel-gazing & self-absorption first-hand: many have tried the door to the church, but few are interested in breaking down a wall just to enter into a group that exploits its own.

I say this to your shame. I feel justified in saying it, because Christ himself alluded to it when he asked, "When the Son of Man comes,, will he find faith on the earth?" (Lk 18:8)


The disgusting part is that I am part of the Church, and ergo, I am also part of the problem.


Yesterday, I was running late in getting to a practise for a certain activity that was created to entertain Christians. I was stopped by a homeless man, who asked if I had any spare change because he was hungry. I reflexively responded, "Sorry, I don't have any!" because I usually do not have any change on me. My mind was in a whir, because I was running late & because I felt that getting to this practise as quickly as possible was my priority. Moments later, I realised that I did have change in my pocket—$1.34 to be exact—but I also realised that if he had asked the same thing from me when I wasn't busy with this "Christian entertainment for Christians" practise, I may very well have bought him a meal & spent time with him, something that I often did the previous year, regardless of my schedule. Not 10 minutes later, a girl approached me at the bus stop asking if I had $1.50 that she could borrow. Again, I reflexively said,"No I don't; sorry." At least this was true, but I found myself, as I sat on the bus,wondering why I hadn't offered the very little change that I did have on my person to help her out. I mean, the money I had was entrusted to me—it is not my own; it is Christ's. She did eventually get on the bus, due to the driver's graciousness, but that still had me thinking about the two things that I did.

Christ calls us to be light in the darkness of this world, but yesterday it seemed more important that I shine my light on to light bulbs instead of into the shadows. I pulled a Pharisee or a Levite as I walked past the bloody victim of robbers lying on the roadway. I did not do what Christ has called me to do, and I was left feeling condemned—but rightly so.

Such an attitude is due to Church Poisoning, I propose. Spending so much time trying to be around Christians & in the Church makes you forget what Christianity is all about. And I don't know why I try to do this anyways, because I myself, like Joe Newcomer, feel quite shunned by the Christian community that I find myself surrounded by. Not only so, but I also feel taken advantage of by this very same community. This leaves me with the question as to why I even bother trying to show Christ's love to those the Holy Spirit, through Paul, defines as my brothers & sisters. Why do I even bother? I do not enjoy exploitation. I do not enjoy the corruption of my faith by Comfort Christianity. I seek to depose Self from the throne of my life, but I am surrounded by others who clutch to that chair in their own lives—and who have neither the urgency nor the desire to do anything to let go of that very chair besides wistfully wishing that their life could be more Christ-like. How come I remain in the company of these individuals, when I know that "bad company corrupts good character"? Because of hope. I like to cling to the hope that there indeed are others who seek to live a selfless life & who eagerly desire to exude Christ's love. I live in the deluded hope that there exist other Christians who have the will & the fortitude to be uncomfortable enough to actually life for Christ instead of living for the Christian social club.

My Conclusion

So here it is. You have my word on it: I am resigning from every time-consuming activity that I currently find myself involved with whose activity is oriented towards ecclesiocentrism. I will finish my terms in my capacity within those activities, but after that,I am washing my hands. Instead, I will be devoting every iota of my spare time to the pursuit of advancing the Gospel of Christ & the love of Him who owns me. If there are any who want to join me on this new pursuit, which will begin in January, 2005, then neither post a comment to this blog or e-mail me. I would very much like to spearhead a group of individuals who want to live a power-filled, effective life for the King. This will involve much communal prayer and Bible reading. It will involve discipling,sacrificial giving and faith-in-action. It will demand a good portion of your free time—in fact, it may result in you not having spare time to do anything else. If you're willing to give up everything & follow Him, then let me know & we'll start running to catch up to Him we claim to worship.

I'm done my rant. It's now up to you.

No More Apologies!

Okay, so I hit a breaking point today.

I'm not all too sure what the straw was, or why the camel was even in the picture in the first place—much less why the poor dromidary hadn't been drinking enough milk or other calcium-rich foods (mmmm.... Spinach! Spinach, eh? That could totally start me going down a tangent about photosynthesis-powered solar cells created at MIT this week.... but I'll save that for later, maybe?). All I know is that after I had finished my stint at the gym & was walking over to one of the many bus terminals that I loiter around, I had an epiphany and it went something like this:

Y'know what? I'm sick and tired of apologising for my Christianity! I mean, people around me talk about how their minds are constantly filled with poetry or music or visual images, and all my mind is filled with is thoughts of Christ. I know that I've been beaten up, spat upon & even socially ostracized by other Christians because of the fervor within me to live & breathe & even ultimately die for Christ. And you know what, Mr. Lucid Elusion? Eff it all!

Screw the lame-ohs who can't handle my obsession with Christ. People talk about intolerance, how it's evil and how everybody should accept everyone else for who they are & what they believe. Well I'll give that postulate a run for its money again. I'm tired of hiding who I am & what drives me because it "offends" some people out there. Tough. I have become worn out in being a closet Christian. Jesus has freaking battered so many holes in that closet door that it was really only a matter of time before he busted loose. If people are going to condemn me for Christianity, then it makes me glad that they are condemning me for that & not something else.

I'm a Christian. I love Jesus, the Father & the Holy Spirit with all of my being. You can't stop me. You won't be able to shut me up about it either. It is fundamentally me. It is my very essence. You'd have to remove every fluid from my body to stop me from proclaiming the Lordship of Christ! Does that mean that I'm going to ram Christ down your throat? Not a chance. In loving Christ, I am compelled to love you as well. I am compelled, furthermore, to love you with the love Christ has given me. Will I be intolerant? Not a chance: my place is not to judge or condemn; that is Christ's job. On the contrary, I will love you to the point of death & then some because I love Christ. That is my aim. That is my goal. That is the reason why I live: to glorify the Father in both word & deed. But to do so in broad daylight. I am a Christian & ain't nobody goin' to shut me up about it either. You don't like it? You don't like the fact that every hour of every day I have worship songs running through my head? You don't like knowing that the most important things to me are my Bible & my prayer time? You don't like the fact that I would give up my personal well-being & personal gain to help the hurting person on the side of the road out of joy because Christ dwells withing me & I can't help but do it? You don't like the fact that I will always love Jesus more than any person on this planet, whether they be my parents, my siblings, my children or my spouse? Well, t.s.!

I am Christ's & no one else's. Not even my own. If that offends you, suck it up, for I won't back down. I'm tired of apologising & cringing and lowering my head in "shame" because I belong to a dood who rose from the dead almost 2000 years ago. So what if it is socially unacceptable to belong to this guy? I am his & will always be. Live with it. Better yet—join me: such a life leads to insurmountable adventure!

Another Prayer Nugget

Being busy, God is getting all of my free time. I leave you the scraps :). A real blog entry will come soon, and I promise it will not disappoint. I hope that this nugget is beneficial for at least one person out there.....

Oh Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder consider all the works thy hands have made. Then yearns my soul, my Saviour God, for thee. How great thou art, how great thou truly art.

Lord, I don't know. I'm having a super huge problem with being able to concentrate & read at this moment in time. I almost am wondering if has something to do with a.) my sickness, b.) my lack of sleep, c.) my current lowish blood sugar or d.) all of the above. Perhaps it also has to do with my lack of exercise lately. I hate not being able to work out. I am finding that this whole school thing is really, really bogging me down.

I cry out to you, my Lord. I need you. I need your help with every single aspect & facet of my existence. I love you dearly, yet I do not feel as though I am living a lifestyle that matches the desire of my heart. Why is it, God that I always seem to stray from you, my only love? How come I get wrapped up in so much other stuff & how come I forget what is essential & important so easily? Why am I so quickly fooled & blindsided? Is it the curse of a passionate heart? The result of wanting to go & be fervently effective in my life for you that I get caught up in the doing instead of being caught up in just you? I hate how it always seems to happen, God. I love you dearly. A super huge lot. Words cannot really express the extent of my love for you, and I know you know that but it feels good for me to say it myself. Oh lord,, help. I am so lost without you. I don’t really even know what I am doing right now..... Bring me back to you.

"My strength is made perfect in weakness"

Very true, Lord. Very true. All the more, I begin to see the reality & the truth of that very statement. It is in our states of weakness that we need to become wholly reliant on You. It is in these times where we realise our own insufficiency, where we accept that we aren't all that we are cracked up to be, where we see what we truly are. It is in brokenness & submission to You that your will can be most easily accomplished. In these states of humility, I follow instead of lead. Help me to follow, my God. Help me to live in this state of humility & "waiting on" perpetually. It is in these states that I feel most "in tune," so to speak, with you--where I feel like I am actually following your lead & listening to and for your voice & call.

It is a revelatory thing, weakness, brokenness. To recognise that you are not capable of running your own life, yet to also know that there is one who would gladly take that yoke upon his shoulders... Being in this state makes me appreciate the power & the truth in the "leading servant" paradigm all the more.

I love you, Father. Lead & guide my life in every direction at every moment for your purposes & for your purposes alone. Be glorified.

An Open Prayer

I quite often end up writing many of my prayers down, as the written media holds a certain dearness in my heart. This prayer I wrote today in between classes & it contains some interesting thoughts that I thought may be worth sharing to others. Enter into the realm of my prayer life with God—a little snippet & by no means difinitive nor paradigmatic.

Enjoy.....

Lord God, I do not really know what to write about at this point in time, but—that being said—I still feel like writing for some reason. It is 12:09 in the afternoon of September 14, 2004 and I am contemplating life, I guess. Today's class was pretty good so far. Thanks that you’ve given me the opportunity to attend a good educational institution, Lord. I actually am very grateful for that.

Okay, since you're God, I know that I don't really have to "work into" the deeper topics & that I can pretty much just jump in & go wild, as it were. So, I will.

Relationships are a funny thing God. They are really quite unfathomable. If you were to ask me even as little as 6 weeks ago if I would ever have held the perspective about my current relationships with people that I do right now, I probably would have laughed at you. All these relationships are turning out to be quite weird. I wonder if it's just a girl thing, God... My male friends seem to act the way I would expect friendships to progress. My female ones always seem to throw me a curve ball—consistently at that!

It is interesting to think about, relationships. They are the key to community & society, yet it seems like I have very little control over how they progress. Something about the dynamism of interacting with another sentient & conscious, "free-willed" being must contribute, I would imagine. It seems that I typically talk to you about relationships & how they are progressing in my life, even about my relationship with you . Makes me wonder why this is so? How come I don't talk to you about science or art or literature? Why do I not talk to you about politics or the weather? I guess it just goes to show what I find important in my life, eh? Does anyone talk to you about the weather, or about the workings of our physical environment? Do you ever reveal the secrets of the rules that underlie creation? Did Newton discover gravity after asking you how (why) things fall to the ground? Did Einstein pray to you & consult the Lord of Creation about the mysteries of space/time? It makes me really wonder.... Perhaps I should start talking to you about these other things as well.... Maybe it will result in a scientific or technological breakthrough, contributed to the knowledge of the human race by the Author himself. Interesting concept. I wonder if anyone would buy it...

So, how are you doing my God? I don't think I've heard from you in a while. Maybe that's because I don't listen to you as much as I would like (or even should). But I really do have an interest in your self. Do you ever have really shitty days, God? I've always wondered that: can the King of Love ever just have a rough, dismal day? I am torn in my desire for an answer. On one hand, I would like to think that you indeed to have crappy days & depressing states, but on the other hand if you did, I know that it would really wrench my heart—even the mere thought of you suffering emotional distress of that kind makes me want to give you a super huge hug. You probably did experience such things while in your incarnated state, and you probably still experience duress & distress at our inability to follow after you in a true and fervent manner, but just a "bad day"? I dunno... I would hope not. I would hope that the progression of the events throughout time would cause celebration in your heart & in your presence to the extent that it would outweigh the harrowing events of our sinfulness. Or is that why you chose to redeem us? Because the mere thought of the quantity of our sins before you was too depressing to bear that you were compelled to do something about it in order to feel happy/better? This is something I have never thought about before, but it seems to make some type of sense... Though the contradiction of this thought becomes a bit apparent after some time: If your selflessness was motivated by your selfishness, then why would selfishness be considered a sin? Then again, you also are the only one who can be righteously jealous. I guess you could be righteously selfish, seeing as when we are selfish, that puts our focus on ourselves & removes the focus from you. When you are selfish, the focus does not change, and because you are the lord or all creation, king & creator of everything, everything is subordinate to you & therefore everything was made for your purposes. It would only naturally follow that your selfishness would not be considered a sin, since it aligns itself with the purpose of creation: to be aligned to your will. Yes, this makes sense. It also causes a bit of a new perspective within me about sin & its nature. The Greek word is "mistake"—hamartano. Since you are god & since everything that is done has been done to serve your purposes, it follows that you cannot sin & therefore you cannot make a mistake & therefore you are perfect. :) perfection is easy if you are the one making the rules, isn't it? You decide what's right & what isn't; you decide what is correct & what is a mistake, and since you have the capacity to define this—being the absolute authority & all—you are fundamentally, by your very nature, perfect. The only only way that you could ever be considered not perfect would require something—anything, maybe—that was not created by you—except for yourself, of course. This alternate creation could possibly have a structure in such a manner that would require something that is contrary to your character. This can be evidenced in human philosophical constructs, whose realms were not created by you & whose fundamental laws you neither completely conform to nor abide by. But since they exist purely within the context of your creation, you still remain perfect. Even if there were other things that were not created by you, you would remain perfect within the context of your creation, which we as humans will forever be, seeing that you are the one who created us. Therefore, anything outside of creation besides you is irrelevant to anything in your creation.

The purpose of creation was to suit your will. Therefore, by its very design, all of creation is intended to have its focus on you & to resonate with your will. If, by some chance, there were other constructs outside of creation that were parallel or even super-ordinate to this creation or even to you, their mandates would be irrelevant. Even if there was a god over you, who demanded that there should be no worship of anything besides itself, or even if you had contemporary, fellow gods how deserved just as much—if not more—veneration & devotion as you deserve, the act of worshiping these others would remain sinful within the context of creation even though they may be the requirements outside of your creation. Technically, our solitary worship of you could really be a huge, grave sin, but since we were created by you, for you, to resonate with your will & your will alone; since you created "this" all around us, you have made the rules & therefore to worship any other god or to adhere to a set of principles for perfection other than the one you created would necessitate a "mistake" on our part, and we would not be following the correct outline mandated within creation: we would be sinning. It is weird to think about these things, God, but it also refreshes my perspective—looking at the big picture & understanding everything by that. Therefore, a foundational & crucial assumption in my faith & in Christianity is that you indeed are the sole creator of my self & of these things around me. This does not, however, necessitate that everything in the world around me has been/was created by you, just that you created the architecture, the framework & the guidelines by which everything that resides in this creation must adhere to. Perhaps there are other gods that were not created by you. Perhaps there are other non-gods in this creation that are/were not created by you. Maybe their assertions to be worshipped above & beyond you are valid. They just cannot be so within this context of creation, especially if I myself am specifically created by you. The assertions made in John chapter one seem to imply that there is nothing outside of creation, but maybe all it is saying is that nothing outside of creation is relevant. It certainly does state that everything within creation must adhere to the foundational premises of this your construct—even those things that we ourselves create, whether their foundational premises align themselves to your will or not. This is why sin is sin & why the same Greek word is used for both "sin" and "mistake." This is also why you alone are the judge of human kind & of our deeds here on earth. This is why you can be both jealous & selfish without sinning. This is why you can be grieved with your creation, yet be faultless—as you were before you sent the Flood. This is why you are inherently perfect, because the very nature of your creation leaves no room for you to be otherwise. It is impossible for you to do anything wrong.

This is also why it was so very important for you to become fully man when you appeared as Christ on earth, isn't it? In order to redeem us, you had to become fully one of us. It is this apparent freedom of the human will in our limited, linear appreciation of time that needed to proceed in such a fashion as to never make a single mistake in order for you to be considered a blameless, spotless sacrifice, suitable for atonement. This, in combination with your fully-god nature, is exactly how you atoned & redeemed mankind, isn't it? You had to be both fully man & fully God in order to accomplish this: You had to be fully man to have the capacity to sin—to make a mistake & to deviate from resonating with your own will—in order to be able to take all of humankind's sins upon yourself. You had to be fully god simultaneously in order to completely eradicate those sins, for by the very foundational tenets of this creation, it is impossible for you to sin. By having the capacity to sin yet being in your very nature incapable of sinning, all sin was atoned for and negated on the cross. Phenomenal! Brilliant! Only you could have come up with something so elegant: redemption through destruction. You chose to destroy a part of yourself in order to realign creation to your will, yet since you were not created, you needed to "create" yourself in order to achieve this purpose. Furthermore, since the created part of yourself is still fundamentally you, it is also—paradoxically—a non-created artefact within creation, and therefore—since you were not created—you were not destroyed either, just the sin that was attached to you.

Saran Wrap and Waterfalls

Warning: Slippery When Wet.
Imagine with me, if you will. I'd also ask you to close your eyes, but that wouldn't work so well, since I am approaching you through the written, visual media. Therefore, imagine. Imagine that you are somewhere in the Rocky Mountains and that you've found this wonderful little swimming hole in a deep, deep gorge on the side of a mountain. The path to the picturesque little piece of heaven is steep and very narrow, but it's worth the trip: the water in the pool is fed by a beautiful cascading glacier waterfall that spills over the ridge above into this tiny basin. Just behind the gently pouring water, however, is a gurgling & gushing hot spring, whose steaming waters mix perfectly with the glacial waterfall for a beautiful temperature.

So, having found this amazing wonder, you decide to spend the afternoon there frolicking in bliss. As the hours pass, you begin to notice the formation of some pretty ugly clouds overhead, and as the sun begins to be veiled by the black, ominous masses, you decide that it would probably be a prudent decision to head back down the mountain before all of your clothes on the beach get soaked.

The sky cracks and growls with the impending downpour as you finish drying your hair & quickly tie that last shoelace. You take one last photo of the spot so that you can show your friends this amazing little getaway for a future visit, and as you just get your camera safely packed away, it begins.

At first, it starts out as a few drops, and then it progresses to a light drizzle, but by the looks of those clouds, you know that this is by far the nicest part of the oncoming storm. You look up the long, steep & narrow pathway to the top of the ravine & decide that you had better get a move on before your only way up turns into a tiny rivulet. So, up you go. The pine needles under foot are still dry, and the roots from the surrounding trees provide a good natural staircase, but as you survey the ground before you, you notice that those little patters from the raindrops are becoming more frequent—and larger. One last look back at the pool makes you cringe: The surface of the water on the other side of the pool looks as if it was boiling, and the white sheet of rain causing it was ripping across the surface towards you. Desperately scrambling up the tiny path, you try your best to make as much of a headway as you can before the fury of the thunderstorm hits, but you only manage to make a few hurried steps until you could swear that there was less water falling on your head under that waterfall than there was right now.

You were smart enough to put on your hiking poncho, so your pack and your body remains dry, but everything that was not directly under your rain gear is now thoroughly drenched. Those nice, crunchy pine needles & sturdy roots have disappeared. They have been replaced by a greasy mash of needle-filled mud, which proves to be Teflon's biggest competitor—or so it feels. The roots, which used to be a sought-after bastion of safety, are now avoided like the plague, in fear that a poorly placed step could cause you to slide 20 or 30 feet back down the steep trail. Your ascent has now become the dreaded "one step forward, two steps back" routine as—without fail—every time you shift your weight to that newly placed foot, the mud underneath, now quite like black margarine, smears beautifully until enough of the goo accumulates behind your foot to provide sufficient mass & friction in order to bear your weight. The higher you go, the trees become increasingly sparse, preventing you from using their trunks as footholds & handholds. After what seems like an eternity, you finally reach a narrow crevice, up which is the only way out. The walls, being sheer and smooth, are just far enough apart that you cannot use them as braces in your ascent. The mud here is relatively shallow, and you can see the smooth, slick shale in patches where the rushing water has washed away what used to be a fine layer of silt. You attack the smooth rock with your muddy boots, but to no avail: each step you take only lets the slippery surface taunt you more as it revels in its mastery. Whether it's one step up the slab or three, the result is always the same. Without fail, either by a loose patch of gravel, or a fresh gush of mud from the pouring water above, you manage to lose your footing and slide ever so "gracefully" down to the base of the now quite clean shale face. What makes the experience all the more rewarding is that every time you make it up a little farther, you have come to realise that the inevitable loss of footing sends you sliding down the steep valley even further.

It has been literally more than a dozen times since you have seen where the stone face once again meets muddy soil, and due to your frequent, quick returns to this location, the middle of the approach has now worn much of the mud away, revealing more bare, smooth rock in an ugly, mocking grin. Your knees have been bleeding for so long that whatever is left of your poncho is now beginning to stick to the swollen joints. Your hands have long been numb from the continual abuses of both the frigid rain and from the repetitive blunt traumas associated with your rock adventures. It has come to the point where you really don't think that the beast is scalable in these conditions, but looking up at the sky tells you that these clouds have no intention of letting the pathway dry out even for a moment. You are cold. You're tired. You're more wet than you have ever cared to be in your whole life. Every muscle in your body is aching either from exhaustion or from damage—or, as in most cases, both. You have no way of making a shelter, because you brought no rope & because the terrain is too steep to really make anything that will truly shelter you anyways. You are now kicking yourself for not bringing that book of matches, but the stupid weatherman told you that there was only a 30% chance of thunderstorms today—and we all know that 30% never means that it'll actually rain. You are very aware that if you don't get out of this weather soon then you will start getting severe hypothermia. The stupid, frustrating rock has made you so miserable that you almost want to cry when thinking of trying it again. You have to ask yourself, though: What do you want—and do you really want it? What will you do, what will you put yourself through to make sure that you actually get it?



This is how I currently feel in my Christian walk. I am frustrated by what little effort I am presently trying to make to overcome the little bumps & upsets that are quite inseparable from striving after a Christ-centred life. I originally started writing the above narrative illustration over a week ago, but many many things have crept into my daily drivellings that have distracted the discourse's development. However, in doing so, many many developments have occurred which will inevitably contribute to the content of this entry. I will start with my original thoughts & continue with the developments afterwards. Shall we? Let's.



It has been fifteen days since I have been tied to a relatively stable, obligatory duty. That being said, I really haven't had any drive to go around and do anything until school starts again on the 8th of September. Does that mean that I have been doing nothing with myself for the past 2 weeks? Quite the contrary. I have successfully filled my schedule to the same level of busy-ness that I previously experienced while in school. How come? Well, I have reached the conclusion that explains my tendency to fill my schedule to the brim, and it goes something like this: I do not allow myself to kick back & relax because of my old habit of using busy-ness to escape from the reality of my life. Being busy is easy. Everyone needs an extra hand once in a while, and when you're advertising that you want to get involved, they will call you on it. It's a lot easier—at least for me, because of how I grew up—to offer help & to become overly busy than it is for me to look inward & address those things in my life which need to be looked after.

Due to the lack of structure that comes with the ceasing of an obligatory duty, I no longer have an easy time getting around to spending any really time with the Lord. For me, this really, really sucks, especially since I just started back up in reading my Bible & praying. The amount of worship songs running through my head have now dwindled very much. I am also becoming more prone to the "darker thoughts" which further seems to disable me in my other thought processes, especially my thoughts on self-efficacy, on self-concept and on the nature of others' motivation(s).

So, how does this resemble the above story? Well, it seems that as much as I try to actually get back to a proper and disciplined communion with God, as much as I try to spend time with Him who I most desire to be with, I seem to just not be able to do it. Due to my free time, I end up doing other things & saying to myself, "I'll spend time with God later," which never seems to actually come to fruition. Rather, I just end up doing a whole whack of "good things," and although I do find these activities highly rewarding, I know that they are not the things that I should be letting trump my one-on-one time spent with the Lord. But they do, and it really, really sucks.



Interim of Progression


The past few days have been interesting to me. I have spent much time with some people that I really haven't seen for months—and in several cases, years. What surprised me the most about the whole time spent with my old friends was how very awkward I felt being around them. I felt as if I was an intruder—perhaps not unwelcome, but definitely not a true part of the group. It felt so weird being around these people with whom I used to interact very well, and with whom I used to have good conversations, and with whom I used to have quite fulfilling friendships. It all seemed to have changed within the past year or so, and this was most apparent with one of my more valued friends.

I won't get into the details of how or why I feel that this friend was a member of a few individuals who didn't totally shun me throughout the fallout of the "joys" of last year & before, but because they actually stood by me at the times of my life in that era where I felt the most alone, the most rejected & the most hated by Christians everywhere, they have earned a great deal of respect & honour in my sight. However, for some reason that I still have no understanding of, I have felt very alienated from this friend over the past 10 months. The other night, as I bade farewell to them, I had the feeling that that would probably be the last time that I would probably ever hang out with them ever again. That thought saddened me a great deal, and it actually ended up with me getting a little lump in my throat—something that has never happened to me before when thinking about losing the friendship of another person. What is all the more sad is that I feel paralysed about doing anything to prevent it: pretty much all of my attempts to get a hold of my friend to talk have ended up being futile, so I now have become so discouraged that I feel it is worthless to even try any more (note that this perception is probably very coloured by the resurgence of my "darker thoughts" as noted above, but still taking that in mind, I have a difficult time seeing any of my efforts actually paying off.).

Because of these recent experiences, I have half decided to give up trying to be people's friends. The amount of time I expend on trying to get involved in people’s lives, when considering the amount of how effective I feel I am at achieving that goal, makes me think that I am really, really wasting my time. It's like spending a full day to find that loonie you dropped on the ground in that huge field down the road: sure, you'll spend a bit of time looking for it, but you need to know when to cut your losses. People are gay, but Christians, I find, are worse. Why? Because they're plastic & insecure, which turns them into really huge assholes. Judgementalism & "holier than thou" attitudes disgust me. I have another friend who has been called a non-Christian because he is struggling with the whole concept of the Trinity, with faith and with the mind-bogglingness of Christ being both man & God. The truth of the matter is that his biggest hang-ups centre around Christianity & its pretentiousness than truly about the tenets of his faith.

I hate the presence of the church's need for people to feel that they must have it together & with the church's demand (however unwritten & contradictory to the fundamental foundations of our faith) that every Christian must be perfect in order to be considered a good Christian & how that you cannot be a servant of the Most Holy God if you mess up here & there. If that were true, I know that I most definitely would never be able to call myself a Christian, and I reckon that you wouldn't be able to do so yourself. Why is it that contemporary Christianity has turned its foundational beliefs on its head & why has it adopted the Pharisaical beliefs of "earning your way to heaven by doing all the right things" instead of submitting to the freeing power of the cross, and accepting the fact that we are all sinners yet under the freeing grace apportioned to us by Christ? Why is it that almost everywhere I go, with all the people who are dear to me & whom I care about deeply—why is it that they are all becoming disillusioned with Christianity? How come the church is failing its members? Why are we demanding things that are contrary to the Bible from ourselves? What is with all this Plastic Christianity?


Plastic Christianity


I am very tired of Plastic Christianity & I am no longer going to tolerate it. That being said, I do not think that many of you will hear from me directly for a good long while—unless you approach me. I care very much where my friends & where my colleagues are at in their lives—socially, spiritually & internally, yet my patience for enduring the shiny, crinkly coating that Christians put on top of their true selves has reached its limit. If you want to talk to me, talk to me. Those of you who really really know me will appreciate the fact that I will literally drop everything I am doing to go & have coffee etc. with you if you do actually want to talk.


Conclusion


I'm tired of sitting here at the base of this slippery stone. I have decided to beat it regardless of the cost. Christ is too valuable for me to sit here & rot in the rain. I don't personally like wearing plastic myself, but if I find any on my person, it's being left here at the base of this stone so that it will no longer hinder me in my progression towards my one true goal. I choose Christ; I choose to go for the goal & I choose to overcome. What will you do? The rock isn't going anywhere & the rain will never stop. If you want to come with me—as I would very much like youth do—then you're going to need to leave your plastic behind as well. Suffer the synthetics no more: Christ calls us to be genuine. Let us live that way as we eagerly search after him.




Oh, and call me sometime.