Stages of Faith

    I think some people think that to be religious at all is to automatically be a hypocrit, and there is just no such thing as true Christianity and a good person who has faith.  But a lot of the people who promote those accusations are often the people who have created a culture so vile that basic human decency and honesty might really become impossible standards, and where the people who have Christian morals aren't allowed to follow through on their beliefs and therefore are constantly tempted to pretend to achieve Christian ideals anyway. A lot of people who call us hypocrits have truly made it impossible for us to succeed at our faith by deliberately corrupting every system that we have to be a part of to stay alive. So we are stuck with a choice to either be honest animals or fake saints, where we at least give some kind of shout out to what we were striving for by doing some pretending here and there.

    I also think in times that Christians fall short and truly do show some hypocritical tendencies, like when we choose to use people and "turn in" unbelievers to churches by showing everyone how we are reaching out to people, that this kind of unacceptable behavior is often just a phase or stage of growth on a path that in the big picture is actually very glorious and the victims of our two-faced double-dealing are actually still indebted to have any inkling at all of the mere existence of church and Christian truth.  I mean I say that knowing full well that stench is stench and people are right to be disgusted by fake friendship and condescension, but we should protect ourselves and everyone around us from the lies of the media, or literature, and of academic people who invest so much effort in trying to convince people that Christians are the ones who are perpetually dishonest.  I hope that maybe somewhere quiet in people's minds, they have the strength to do the math, and to think to themselves, "okay, what is really suspicious here? Is it the people who praised sobriety but couldn't help but party a little too hard with people they love? Or is it the people who brag about reading Lolita and mock autistic homeschool children because they said they are thankful to be forgiven for their sins? I think in the end, it is most questionable to try to block a door to heaven, and quite hypocritical, too, since it is impossible to close a door held open by two hands that have nails through them.

Christian Agnosticism

   I have been thinking about converting to Catholicism lately, but can never quite let go of being an Evangelical, and then other feelings of confusion kick in and I am left with the same exasperation where I feel responsible for sharing all my faith but don't know what that is. I mean the gospel as I know it is now a fifty volume mess of thoughts from reading a thousand books and learning from hundreds of friends who believe different things. And the gospel as I don't know it is a million books plus the religion I was taught by people who turned out to be chronically wrong about many important things that it is really not okay to still be wrong about.

   So I am wondering if I should just continue my constant obsessive code cracking and say whatever happens to be my belief at whatever time, or if maybe I should simplify things and give myself a little label like Christian Agnostic. I probably shouldn't, since people might think I do not believe in God and Jesus, when really, I feel very thankful to not just believe in God but to know him personally and be one of his friends.  And I know all along the way that God has wanted me to do things the way He would do it, and one of those things is being friends with agnostics.  So maybe that means God might want a little friend who doesn't know everything, and maybe that person is me.

Ironically

Well everyone, in this blog I have repeated some of my ideas that I have used before in poems and sayings, but I think it could be good that I keep coming back to some recurring themes.  That could be how I know that I am onto something important. This particular thing that I want to mention has to do with some of my thoughts about staying alive, and what to think when life becomes a lot about endurance instead of blessings or even service and productivity. I have been truly miserable sometimes with no end in sight, and it made me wonder what the purpose of living is.  I mean why should people be able to take away my Christian martyrdom AND get away with torturing me.  It seems like it should be one or the other.  Like you can't make my life meaningless and purposeless and be allowed to hurt me on purpose.  And yet I have found myself in situations that seem like that.  I have tried to handle those situations by praying more, thinking that maybe my prayers would count for more since I did not feel good, but it is hard to believe that kind of thing when you feel like your life is being wasted.  However, after years of doing what therapists call "Opposite action," where you just keep building a life when you don't feel like it, I have concluded that the very times that most seem like lose-lose situations are actually part of a life that has a bright side on every side.  I have concluded that if I am expected to keep living with unbearable suffering, then my existence must be very important and every second that I spend on earth is crucial. And then the other bright side is that if people, including me, really are allowed to ruin my life, then that must mean that the most important stuff is in heaven, and I can accept extreme losses here with infinite hope. It is kind of a luxury to write about this stuff now that some of my suffering has eased up and I don't have to be using all my might to get through each day, but I think there is a reverse alternative to thinking okay, people are allowed to take away both my temporal happiness and my eternal reward. It's more like all the swindling and adversity can both confirm the once-in-eternity nature of this opportunity to live, and still suggest that there must be some kind of consolation so great that people can take it all and they have taken nothing.

Just Like in the Cartoons

   One of the most interesting and important ideas of Christianity and really a moral law of the universe, is that "He who loses his life for Christ will save it, and he who tries to save his life will lose it."  It is something that happens in big and small ways and could be part of scenarios like letting someone have the last piece of dessert and then that is right when someone brings out a better dessert that you get to have.  That is kind of a stupid example but there really are ways that unselfishness pays off in little moments and in great spans of history or just across a lifetime.  It has kind of driven me crazy to try not to be on the losing side of that principle, but I think letting my OCD kick in to obsessively try not to lose anything actually would be one of the instances where I end up losing instead of gaining.

   But anyway the thing I want to mention about it is something that I had to learn pretty early on in my life, which is that things can be confusing when there are situations where you really do need to save your life or someone else's.  That is what happened to me when depression threatened to win out and made me suicidal.  I abruptly had to stop looking for opportunities to suffer on purpose and started having to do everything to hoard as much happiness as I could find.  It changed the way I interacted with people and looked at friendship, and ironically, I think that it helped me be a truer friend instead of looking at people as potential good deeds.  Probably that whole idea of going ahead and losing some Christianity points and choosing some kind of authentic life actually is just another basic example of saving your life by losing it, but it is disguised, because didn't I save my life by saving it?
  God is very clever and He is the one who saves with all of his laws of nature and with all of his intervention beyond those laws. Everyone who trusts in him is guaranteed to be in what basically amounts to a Scooby Doo episode where at the end the villains will say, "Curses, foiled again."  Even those of us who start paying attention to all the patterns around us and trying to deliberately beat the system are like simple Looney Tunes road runners who just go where we are going while all the evil coyote plans backfire all around us.  And in the end, we will be winners, diving into piles of gold like Scrooge McDuck and his nephews in the Ducktales cartoon.

Because or Despite?

This is a post that could go on my mental health blog and I might do another one like it for that list of posts. I am just thinking about friends from a long time ago who were there for me, and I have to say that church people have really not let me down, even after sometimes being taught that people like me are bad people. It is common for people with mental illness and problems like that to be misunderstood and rejected for bad reasons, which has happened to me and a lot of other people, and has happened in church settings.  But literally hundreds of church people have come through for me and included me in their dearest groups of friends.  There have been times where I could barely have a conversation with people and could barely even sit up or hear what other people were saying.  But some of the greatest people in the world became my sincere friends.  I have tried to do that for others, and I would say that friendship with me is not usually complete charity.  But when it has been kind of like that, people did come through.  There is still no excuse for pastors to teach that mental illness is sin, or that people who take medicine for depression might not be real Christians, but the consistent help and "inclusion anyway" from their congregations is not something to be overlooked when looking at how the church treats suffering people.

What if I did say this?

Something I have been saying lately is "I did not do or say that but what if I did."  It is a little something that I thought up because people try to get on everyone's case about every little mistake, and I am saying what if I do say the wrong thing and even what if I do have some character problems?  You know, what if I do?  Everyone has to get out and live their lives without being perfect and it is a brave thing to do.  And as the flaws increase, the courage to face the world anyway increases, which is not something to feel bad about.

The miracle of suffering

   I have realized sometimes that my survival in life has been somewhat miraculous, and have even had to think about whether there can be such things as twenty year miracles.  I mean in the Bible some of the miracles just took a few minutes and then people enjoyed their health.  But when you have a chronic condition and survival really isn't a given, finding yourself to be alive after twenty years of daily suicidal ideation or some other dangerous symptom is really cause for thankfulness and reason to be certain that God has helped you.

  But that is not what this post is about.  This post is about something else that I don't always think about and will probably immediately retract next time I feel awful.  This post is a reflection about what might also be a great miracle, which is the suffering itself.

   I am only speaking for myself, though other people might have similar stories.  There are mysterious reasons for suffering, and there are benefits that affect other people and can do things like help people know God better or have more compassion.  For me personally, I think that some of my suffering has helped me with some of my hypocritical tendencies, and I think that some of the extreme humiliation I have experienced has some kind of value as a Christian witness.  Most importantly, I feel securely able to pray to God as much as I want and have gotten to know him better.  There are probably other benefits, too. But even that is still not exactly what I am saying is a miracle.

   What I am really saying is that it is a miracle that someone like me could suffer at all. I just grew up in a great environment with awesome friends and cash for great grocery stores, and parents who cared and provided for me, but who weren't necessarily eager to support me as some kind of life-risking Christian missionary.  When you have blessings and resources like I had, which included getting to go to college and having a lot of opportunities and good health, then it really usually is morally questionable to just waste that stuff for suffering's sake. I wouldn't be allowed to go to some dangerous place to live for a worthy cause, and it would be an intolerable offense to try to replicate those conditions in my own life, so what are my options? Well good service and giving for other people are great options.  They really are and I will always tell people who feel happy and well to make the most of their blessings and don't underestimate what people can accomplish by helping others and being honest and good.  
   But for me, I was interested in some of the more extreme messages about the cross of Christ, and it seemed like that kind of adventure might have been intended for other people. However, I think that is not what happened. I have had a great opportunity to feel worn out, to forgive, to show up and be a part of other people's lives despite pain, and, well, to wish I was dead for years at a time. And how stupid to call that a miracle, but how stupid not to, because God has been good to me, and though I deserved to be treated better in life, I got better than what I deserved.

Good grief

I feel like more and more with media and other things, people have a choice between religion or pornography, when there have been other times when there was more of a variety of things that were just plain good, and when most things in life were more integrated. Some people try to correct the nasty atmosphere with more religious pressure, and then people fight that with more indecency. I think if people would try to grow the amount of goodness and good things and good life then it might also get rid of a lot of the polarization and poverty in our culture.

Purgatorio

I think it is time on this blog now to tell everyone that Dorothy Sayers is my patron saint.  I made that request a long time ago when I was depressed and working at Barnes and Noble, and continuing to go through a very long Orthodox Christianity phase.  The Eastern Orthodox Church is kind of like the Catholic Church where people choose saints to be their patron saints.  I knew that I would never be a communing member of the Orthodox Church, so for my patron saint I chose a Christian author that I liked, and who had similar interests as me.  Dorothy Sayers was an advertiser before she started writing mysteries, and she was friends with Tolkien and C.S. Lewis.  I majored in advertising in college, and I am friends with Jesus Christ.  I do not think of those Inklings as often as I used to when working in the bookstore, but I am very blessed in my life and think that Dorothy Sayers was probably not mad about how presumptuous it might have been for me to make a request like that, and to me it seems very likely that she did whatever patron saints do for their assigned people. And she wrote a novel about advertising, and I wrote a novel about advertising, but I did not translate Dante's Inferno like she did.  When she translated it, she preserved an alternating rhyme scheme in another language.  So that is amazing, and I will probably think of her when I am a camp counselor in Purgatory, which I do think will happen, and I will also say in this post that I expect that Mitch McConnell and some other people like that may eventually be some of my campers.

Bulletin

I think as people read my writing, some of them might find themselves uttering words like "kook."  Well I do not mind, but people need to know that kooks might end up being a whole Christian denomination, and I think once mental illness is accounted for, our denomination might really beat all the other denominations at life and Christianity.  You know some of the best people from our line of believers actually walk down the street telling people that they are Jesus Christ, and one of the real Jesus Christ's most important messages was that what people do for the least of these, they have done for him.  So it would be a little bit crazy to look down on us too much, and it might not be the kind of crazy that counts as membership in our church.

Cracked Reflection

I was thinking just now about how I brag sometimes even though I figured out early in my life that it is basic Christianity not to brag.  Well there is a lot I do like that and it is because when I was 19 I found myself looking at a life of severe depression and I decided that I had to just live my life and try for happiness and eat and make friends and do a lot of stuff that is normal human behavior instead of sacrificial Christian living.  And yet behind my gregarious selfish extravagance is a very pure Christian motivation to stay alive, not even to have some glorious offering for God, but simply because I am supposed to.  And even with my hedonism, which isn't the "Christian hedonism" that some Christians talk about, but just plain hedonism to stay alive, there is an ongoing sacrifice of my reputation among other Christians, who actually don't brag, who don't seek out wordly fame and temporary happiness, who don't depend on accomplishment for self worth, and who serve a lot more people with a lot more purity and holiness.  I know how they see me and my moral inferiority, which is real considering my knowledge and training. And yet my participation in the church just can't be the same as theirs.  Some people seem to get it even without any explanation from me, and because of them, my little reputation sacrifice and chronic status as an inconsistent and questionable parishoner is, thankfully, limited and minimized so that there are some flashes of service and participation that remind me of life before mental illness. I think all of this must be some kind of help from God that keeps me from becoming a hypocritical monster, and it is something that could provide a great surprise when all the people who did not know to take the glorious Christian path cash in on my prayers that might not have existed if I had been able to truly and successfully walk that path myself.

Paper, Rock, Scissors

My reference to there being such thing as a greater life in that other post reminds me of something I was recently thinking about how God uses different kinds of honor to bless people.  God tells people more than once in the Bible that people should associate with people of low position, and his disciples have several conversations about who is the greatest.  Jesus flips it around sometimes and says that the first shall be last, and he says some hopeful stuff about people being the least. I have found that in life, the best way to treat people is usually to ignore status and to help everyone be loving in a way that rejects meaningless and superficial rankings.  And yet there are rankings, and it seems that not all ranking is evil, and there are hierarchies in heaven.  I do not know what it all means, except that God flips it around a lot and seems to use a lot of it as a tool to bless people.  I also have a current understanding that some of the rankings that are from God and not from the cruel world often have a paper rock scissors relationship, where people might beat someone at something, but that person will beat someone who beats them, and everyone can truly live with the understanding that they can "consider others better than themselves" with relative ease because of people's infinite, immeasurable worth that cannot be confined to lists and position and rankings.

Do you see what I see

             Here is a blog post that I have been meaning to write for a while.  It is about something I recently realized.  For years, I have faithfully avoided reading horoscopes or even talking or listening to people who are talking about astrology, because it is not my religion.  I am always polite and tell people when I was born and even what my astrological sign is, but I always skip over the horoscope when reading the comics, and was even faithful about this during my most extreme times of doubt and alienation.  When all my other Christian habits failed, I just for some reason would not dabble in astrology.  And I have really wanted to, and wanted so much to read the horoscope, but I think I caved in only once in about twenty years.  

            I always did so out of sheer obedience and without much concept of any kind of real consequences or purpose.  But in recent years, for some reason, as I have been making choices about what to do next, including big choices like moving to New York City, I have been remembering times even from when I was in college and envisioned the future in certain ways and planned out what would seem right for me to do.  And I am really shocked at how vivid my recollections are, and how much I can see the path that was before me and see how much it turned out to be my actual path. I am talking about specific things like working in a bookstore, being a poet, having various levels of leadership and nonleadership, foreseeing suffering and persecution, and all kinds of stuff.  I mean it is so clear, and I have ideas about what to do next in my life now, too.  And I think that some of what I can see in my mind is probably possible because of a lack of interference from things like astrology.  And I can see how if I tried to find out stuff from horoscopes, it really could have confused me.

            I have often wondered if maybe people who do psychic readings are often people who just weren't blessed with the same church experiences that I have been, and may even be rewarded by God for using their gifts instead of wasting them, even when their service is technically out of bounds for Christians.  And I am also in the camp of people who think that the star the wise men followed in the Bible was something they discovered through astrology.

            And yet I am almost shocked and certain to find that my faithfulness that I thought was just for its own sake might be paying off in ways that impact my whole life, and that I have a clear vision of what is expected of me and what has been expected of me in a way that is miraculously not muddied by a half hearted effort that included consulting with the occult or near occult.
            It is weird, and if people think that it is just the typical thing that happens to people who were born in the same month as me, please don't tell me, because I don't want to know.

Something Scary to Tell People on Halloween or Easter

Most of what is on this blog is more like thoughts about Christian living instead of theology but this post really is more theological.  It is something I have been wondering about the situation when Jesus washed his disciples' feet right before going to die on the cross.  He was with them and washed their feet and used it as a lesson to them and explained that people who want to be great should become like a servant or slave.  And he put on a servant outfit and washed their feet and talked about having washed them more completely. It is an important lesson that gets taught a lot but I have been wondering if he did that in order to literally put some kind of holy water or cleaning that actually did protect them from something like demon snakes or something.  Because later he mentions that it is a very evil hour and the Bible says soon after that is when Satan "entered" Judas.  So I was just wondering, and then later, Pontius Pilate washes his hands after handing Jesus over to be crucified, and I was thinking what if Jesus mercifically told him to do that for some kind of cleansing and protection purpose.  That is crazy and scary, isn't it.  Well it is an idea I had.  

Supermarket Sweep

In recent years, I have found that I am kind of a hog, and I greedily collect things sometimes or order more food than I really need or keep looking for opportunities in a crazed way.  I think some of it could be just some autistic obsession that I should not feel too bad about and should just try to manage as best I can.  But I do think that some hoarding tendencies can be used to pray for people, and you can literally just let yourself mentally be as greedy as humanly possible on everyone else's behalf as you ask God for stuff like health and food and hope and all kinds of other blessings.  I think part of it is the idea behind fasting, where you let yourself be hungry and it fuels prayer.  Even though I don't think God likes greed, when there are 7 billion people to pray for, it might be good to go on an out of control mental shopping spree for everyone.

Curses and Blessings in Disguise

It is confusing to not find love at church but to find it at a school or a group of random work friends, but there is an enemy that God is continually outwitting to save us and some decoys and unexpected resources and even letdowns may be part of a grand plan to bless us under the evil people's noses and to set us a table in the midst of our enemies.

A thorn by any other name

  I read a book about Buddhism once, and it talked about certain strategies to remain detached from things in life as a way of being more immune to loss. It was interesting to find this idea in such a different context from where I had heard it before, which is from Christians who criticize grieving people because they supposedly loved something too much in this world. The Christian judgers suggest that sadness or depression must surely be a form of idolatry and that it exposes a preference of worthless things over God.  The idea is that if people trusted in God instead of things like friends or insurance, then they would barely bat an eyelash when their whole life is ruined or when they were smashed by a steam roller or all their loved ones died.

  But my opinion is that as surely as it is okay to sit on a bench and trust it to hold you up the whole time, then it is okay to depend on both tangible and intangible resources in this world, and especially to love people so much that you would feel devastated for those attachments to even be weakened by a wrong word or a missed appointment, much less a permanent address change, or something horrible like death or disease.
   In fact, I think it is exactly a lazy lack of intense caring that would cause people to do something as mindless and spiritually inferior as telling others that it is better not to love.

Random analogies about suffering

   I am gradually remembering all the surprising things I have learned over the years of trying to stay alive and salvage as much of life and goodness as possible while feeling like I lose stuff faster than I gain it, except weight.  But anyway, one of the things I remember is an analogy that often comes to mind when I think of a very important command to be thankful for what I have and try not to complain.  I have had depression that made it difficult not to complain, and that is one thing to understand, but there is something else that I think is more important to understand, and when I think of it, I think of a certain scenario.  I think of someone sitting on the floor after a magic show or something like that and someone is standing on their hand.  And over all maybe life seems good but they have to cry out and say "Someone is standing on my hand."  And they can't move and leave and live their nice life until the person stops standing on their hand.  It is a very random analogy and not that great and yet I really believe that a lot of people who are told not to complain are in that situation where not only do they have to describe and explain their situation but they are trapped by the problem too. And even though it is kind of simple thing, and maybe even a mistake from someone else, in a way it is truly incapacitating and almost an emergency as much as it is a simple inconvenience.  I do not have real life examples for it, and some abuse situations should not be minimized by a comparison like this.  But this image did not come from nowhere, and when people say something is bothering them, they should be believed.

   The other analogy I think of is how some people expect people to catch a falling piano. I think this is something I think of when people expect people not to be affected by certain things that actually are very difficult situations. Falling pianos are common in the cartoons, and yet many people did not learn.
 Some writers weave analogies into nice writing but I decided to just say this stuff.

This post might not please some people.

    One of the most common teachings from pretty good people is advice to not be a people pleaser.  It is especially frequent for people to remind everyone to only try to please God.  But God told us to serve people, and most of all to love people, and I think when both of these important commands really are priorities and really are being accomplished, then part of it often involves truly wanting to please people as much and as thoroughly as possible.  And usually, if you really love or even like people, you do care about what they think of you and want them to like you back.  If you don't, then you might just be using them to make yourself seem like a charitable person, which I think is close to the opposite of what God wants from us. People will be quick to say that reciprocal love is not the kind of love God was talking about, but some of those people are probably being defensive because the rejection they experience is from complete failure to be even a decent regular human being.