October 29, 2008
I Sense a Rising Melody
My top four thoughts on life right now:
1. Since this past spring, I've completely transformed into this new person. I am a new me. It's kind of been scary and nerve-racking at points, because I genuinely realize that I'm changing. Now, some would say the changes I have made are for the worse. I say, screw them. No change of mine has been for the worse. I'm growing, and people grow through change. You can analyze the details of good or bad, but the stark reality is that I'm on my journey, and I'm okay with who I am along the way. This leads me to my next point:
2. I used to think that "me" was a point of arrival. Like, we have our childhood which is fun and dandy, but at some point, maybe towards the end of high school or during college, you "find" yourself. You discover who you really are. My eyes are finally open to that deception. Finding yourself is not a point in time. It's a life-long process, and instead of constantly stressing and feeling guilty about what I should/shouldn't, ought/oughtn't, and need/don't need to be, I'm content with the day-to-day process of discovering me.
3. In regards to spiritual matters, the truth is that I'm kind of dry right now. I guess overall I am just kind of disappointed with Christianity today. I'm not saying that's grounds for my personal beliefs, because it's not. My journey's my own journey, but with Christians, it's just annoying. They tell the world to convert to Christianity because it's so great and awesome, and once someone DOES, all they're told is how much our world sucks, how much our nations sucks, how much the present-day church sucks, and how much they suck!
The other day in one of my classes, one of the Evangelism professors was guest speaking. He had one hour of our time. The first 45 minutes, no exaggeration, he spent spitting out facts and statistics, one after another, completely bashing our nation and the Christian church. We were all wondering when he was going to get to what we thought was the whole POINT of his message which was how to FIX the problem. He looked at the clock, and realizing he only had 15 minutes left, he said, "Okay, now the question is, where are we [as Christians] missing it?" He had five important points to make and delve into. He got through the first point, and it was very detailed, explained well, and overall decent. He started his second point, went about half as deep then finished it up. Then... time was up, so he spout out the words that filled in the blanks for those next three points. Boom, class over. That's it. I wanted to punch something. 45 MINUTES on the problem that we all already knew existed. He was pretty much preaching to the choir about that, but then when it actually came to instructing us on methods of resolution, he just kind of brushed through his points. That's just one example of my view of Christianity today. It irks me to the bone.
Anyway, as far as my personal walk, like I said, I'm dry, but overall, I'm kind of okay with that. I feel like I kind of need the time off, 'cause before now, I've been at the point where I wasn't cultivating my walk really. The difference between then and now is that then I would get so down on myself, telling myself I was a failure and sucked. I would set goals for myself to "get better," but I fell short. Mad at myself, I would reset my goals again, even higher, and lo-and-behold, I fell short yet again. The cycle would continue, and instead of getting closer to God which is all I wanted, I was just pushing myself further and further away. I started dabbling with doubts towards the foundational aspects of my beliefs. WHY DO I BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE? I kind of realized that it was simply because that had been my whole life. I literally did not know any different. At this point, like everything else in my life, I just wanted to press the reset button and restart myself at 0, which is what I did. I said to myself, "If you really want to be close to God, let it happen how it's supposed to happen... in it's own timing. I'm SICK of trying to force it."
4. I'm a control freak (not in a psycho sense). I like to have everything figured out, so as you can tell from my first three points, control of life has NOT been the case these last number of months, which leads me to my final concept: It's okay to NOT have it all figured out, to not have all the answers. Whether it's with my personal identity, my spiritual walk, my financial matters, my physical fitness, my friendships, my relationships, my morals/ethics/values, my political opinions, my time management, my academics, my long-term future plans, etc... IT IS OKAY TO NOT HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS!
And I'm so sick of others that try to shove the "right way" down my throat. The reality is that we are all on our own journey, and when we start stepping out front saying our way is better, all that does is push others away. We're all at different points in our journey. We're supposed to help each other along, regardless of our circumstances, no matter how different. That's the measure of friendship in my opinion, not how similar you are, but how different you are and that you're strong regardless. I've heard it said before that "Love is not how much you care about a person, but about how much you're willing to go through for that person."
SOOOO, there it is, folks. This is who I am right now. It seems kind of radical, even to me, but I'm so content with this mindset. The truth is, however, that I still have a lot of new thoughts about things. My present condition is not set in stone. It's just where I am right now. It's a completely fresh, relaxing, therapeutic outlook in an exhausting, stressful, rule-driven, revolutionary, messed up, horrifying world.
And you know what's crazy? I used to be one of those revolutionaries. That passionate side of me is just as equally present in my life, only now I feel like I could be on the verge of a breakthrough. People that want to change the world often feel like they have to do it through being radically different than the world. However, if you think about it Biblically, Jesus met with prostitutes by wells and ate meals with his followers. Perhaps the most effective way of presenting a revolutionary idea to the world is not by building a stand high enough for everybody to see you. See, the higher the stand (the larger the audience), the harder it is for them to hear you. What if we were to just simply BE and bring our message to individuals on their level? Just a thought.
Signing off,
Jeff ¶ 3:31:00 PM
1. Since this past spring, I've completely transformed into this new person. I am a new me. It's kind of been scary and nerve-racking at points, because I genuinely realize that I'm changing. Now, some would say the changes I have made are for the worse. I say, screw them. No change of mine has been for the worse. I'm growing, and people grow through change. You can analyze the details of good or bad, but the stark reality is that I'm on my journey, and I'm okay with who I am along the way. This leads me to my next point:
2. I used to think that "me" was a point of arrival. Like, we have our childhood which is fun and dandy, but at some point, maybe towards the end of high school or during college, you "find" yourself. You discover who you really are. My eyes are finally open to that deception. Finding yourself is not a point in time. It's a life-long process, and instead of constantly stressing and feeling guilty about what I should/shouldn't, ought/oughtn't, and need/don't need to be, I'm content with the day-to-day process of discovering me.
3. In regards to spiritual matters, the truth is that I'm kind of dry right now. I guess overall I am just kind of disappointed with Christianity today. I'm not saying that's grounds for my personal beliefs, because it's not. My journey's my own journey, but with Christians, it's just annoying. They tell the world to convert to Christianity because it's so great and awesome, and once someone DOES, all they're told is how much our world sucks, how much our nations sucks, how much the present-day church sucks, and how much they suck!
The other day in one of my classes, one of the Evangelism professors was guest speaking. He had one hour of our time. The first 45 minutes, no exaggeration, he spent spitting out facts and statistics, one after another, completely bashing our nation and the Christian church. We were all wondering when he was going to get to what we thought was the whole POINT of his message which was how to FIX the problem. He looked at the clock, and realizing he only had 15 minutes left, he said, "Okay, now the question is, where are we [as Christians] missing it?" He had five important points to make and delve into. He got through the first point, and it was very detailed, explained well, and overall decent. He started his second point, went about half as deep then finished it up. Then... time was up, so he spout out the words that filled in the blanks for those next three points. Boom, class over. That's it. I wanted to punch something. 45 MINUTES on the problem that we all already knew existed. He was pretty much preaching to the choir about that, but then when it actually came to instructing us on methods of resolution, he just kind of brushed through his points. That's just one example of my view of Christianity today. It irks me to the bone.
Anyway, as far as my personal walk, like I said, I'm dry, but overall, I'm kind of okay with that. I feel like I kind of need the time off, 'cause before now, I've been at the point where I wasn't cultivating my walk really. The difference between then and now is that then I would get so down on myself, telling myself I was a failure and sucked. I would set goals for myself to "get better," but I fell short. Mad at myself, I would reset my goals again, even higher, and lo-and-behold, I fell short yet again. The cycle would continue, and instead of getting closer to God which is all I wanted, I was just pushing myself further and further away. I started dabbling with doubts towards the foundational aspects of my beliefs. WHY DO I BELIEVE WHAT I BELIEVE? I kind of realized that it was simply because that had been my whole life. I literally did not know any different. At this point, like everything else in my life, I just wanted to press the reset button and restart myself at 0, which is what I did. I said to myself, "If you really want to be close to God, let it happen how it's supposed to happen... in it's own timing. I'm SICK of trying to force it."
4. I'm a control freak (not in a psycho sense). I like to have everything figured out, so as you can tell from my first three points, control of life has NOT been the case these last number of months, which leads me to my final concept: It's okay to NOT have it all figured out, to not have all the answers. Whether it's with my personal identity, my spiritual walk, my financial matters, my physical fitness, my friendships, my relationships, my morals/ethics/values, my political opinions, my time management, my academics, my long-term future plans, etc... IT IS OKAY TO NOT HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS!
And I'm so sick of others that try to shove the "right way" down my throat. The reality is that we are all on our own journey, and when we start stepping out front saying our way is better, all that does is push others away. We're all at different points in our journey. We're supposed to help each other along, regardless of our circumstances, no matter how different. That's the measure of friendship in my opinion, not how similar you are, but how different you are and that you're strong regardless. I've heard it said before that "Love is not how much you care about a person, but about how much you're willing to go through for that person."
SOOOO, there it is, folks. This is who I am right now. It seems kind of radical, even to me, but I'm so content with this mindset. The truth is, however, that I still have a lot of new thoughts about things. My present condition is not set in stone. It's just where I am right now. It's a completely fresh, relaxing, therapeutic outlook in an exhausting, stressful, rule-driven, revolutionary, messed up, horrifying world.
And you know what's crazy? I used to be one of those revolutionaries. That passionate side of me is just as equally present in my life, only now I feel like I could be on the verge of a breakthrough. People that want to change the world often feel like they have to do it through being radically different than the world. However, if you think about it Biblically, Jesus met with prostitutes by wells and ate meals with his followers. Perhaps the most effective way of presenting a revolutionary idea to the world is not by building a stand high enough for everybody to see you. See, the higher the stand (the larger the audience), the harder it is for them to hear you. What if we were to just simply BE and bring our message to individuals on their level? Just a thought.
Signing off,
Jeff ¶ 3:31:00 PM
