Kryptonite

I've been feeling quite disillusioned over the last week or so. Maybe its the change in the weather (though San Antonio simply goes from Hot to Less Hot) or maybe its the crippling reality of finals but I feel myself waking up to the realization that I don't know myself at all. The last semester has changed a lot. The year before even more. My life keeps changing and I keep adapting but all the sudden I look at myself in the mirror and think, "Who are you?". 

I definitely feel older. Not just in the physical sense (yesterday I went running and the pain in my knees was horrible) but also mentally. The things that used to interest me don't. The food that I used to like, now inspires not even a second look. Someone asked me the other day what my hobbies are and I couldn't think of any. Yeah, I get it. I am in law school. My life consists of studying, sleeping, studying, eating, studying, listening, and studying. I have no hobbies except those which keep me sane (working out about 4 days a week and watching my weekly sitcoms spread out one night each).

I used to write (this doesn't really count because i have the distinct feeling my style is lacking).

I used to draw and paint (my painting was never that great but my pen and ink work was making strides)

I used to read the newspaper every morning over breakfast (now I don't read anything that doesn't come in textbook form)

Growing up it always seemed that we could retain those things that made us different if we simply tried enough but now I am starting to wonder. It's more than law school, this has been a shift that began slowly, imperceptibly, and now has made my life something I don't recognize. 

You think I'm so relaxed, nothing ever bothers me. Now, I realize it may just be apathy. I've been through some shit; some unexpected and a lot of my own making but I still lived it and all this....this is boring. This is simple. All of the possibilities laid before me make me feel

indestructible

Whatever happens, it is all livable. They're all swimming against the current as I sit on the shore. 

Invincible

Like Superman right before the kryptonite. 

Changing Facebook

Q: And What are your religious views?

A: Religious views? Ha, do you have enough time? I suppose my answer is…that…I don’t have answer. 

Q: you think you’re smart don’t you?

A: Generally speaking, yes. Maybe you’re just mad that I didn’t give you a canned answer- a quick response. Shouting from the rooftops with all assuredness that I have the answer the world is looking for…. I can tell you’re not amused. Well, I’m not a Christian. I know that.

Q: Well then what are you?

A: What am I? A Human? A person without a clue? Why do I have to prescribe to some set of beliefs? Sure, I know people who claim to not be Christian anymore. They feel like they don’t deserve the title. Like they aren’t good enough because they don’t actively participate. See, I’m not a Christian because, well, I’m not. It’s about identity [coughs]. Let me tell you something. I was a vegetarian for three years. One day I just decided that meat might not be that bad and I started eating chicken, then pork, and lastly beef. Now, that was two years ago and for a while I still called myself a vegetarian but I wasn’t. That’s the key [pause]. It was one of the identities I gave myself. It was one of the boxes I felt I fit into. Religion is just another box.

Q: Religion is a box?

 A: YES! It’s all a box. Democrat, Republican, Christian, Atheist, Aggie, Longhorn, Right, Wrong. What does it matter? I write; does that make me a writer? It’s all a box. Life is a box! Life is the ultimate box because it confines our every action. People see the face of God when they look at people; I just see dignity. The atheists I know are the most moral people you’ll ever meet. You wanna know why? Because they don’t live for anything other than what each person knows is right or wrong. When you are looking to yourself to see the answer, then the answer is much more beautiful than anything I could read out of some book…I mean…

 Q: Excuse me. I would actually just like to go ahead and get your answer so we can move on.

 A: oh…right, of course.

 Q: What are your religious views?

A: Can I check “other”?

KILL ALL OPTIMISTS

Every short intake surely precedes while in turn succeeding its equal return. The air flows in and out again...Again; I am found breathing without even realizing. It’s been four years of continuous continuing, a fact that is nothing close to living. My best friend is an objectivist and he explains that objectivists believe that there is no perception: there is an ultimate answer to every question. I want to understand his simplistic stylings but I am left looking at life like a modern art painting- always seeing something different with each glance. My own personal mosaic of moments has added up to twenty-two years of life and still has yet to make a rhyming sequence of scheme. Like the bride on her wedding day, I am struck by the realization that I never planned for the after- the aftermath of growing up. Graduate. Get a job. Get Married. Have Kids. I am twenty-two and have nothing to look forward to but a fifty year march to the grave; the day when the breathing stops and my body finally catches up to my brain.

I’ll stop before you begin to think this will end in suicide. It won’t. I can say no to life but I can’t say yes to that…that dirty word that creeps up behind us until we are so disgusted with the everyday that we turn and find it staring us straight in the face. Shocking us with its unearthly grin, we forget the careful tedium of balancing the positives and negatives of one more day of living. I am the heart patient on table feeling the shocks of electricity race through me once again. Yes!! Today I will love living!! Yet the heart knows its own security and falls back into the slow pattern I have crafted these past years.

I’ll do you one better, you believe I need the Lord. Glory Hallelujah, May Christ be praised!!! The religious always believe that their faith will save you from despair, make you believe in living again yet they fail to see the great irony. Christianity is a religion obsessed with death. You talk of our Heavenly Reward and the Judgment of the Wicked. When will these things occur? Today? On this earth? No. They are tasks assigned solely to the creator who we might get the chance to meet after we are dead (if we do everything right first). Have you ever played a game with all rules and no result? If I were a Christian, I would want to die everyday just so I could see if I guessed it right. In this light, martyrdom is not such a sacrifice after all. Surely this is a waste, just as my friend fails to understand. We are standing in front of that great painting and the religious man is shouting that the painting is so obviously a dog…. Really? Cause I just saw life pissing on a fire hydrant.

I am breathing again but this time there is something I must explain. It’s called perception. Every hurt, each affliction, is filtered through it and it is that which measures our level of tolerance and pain. You call me a pessimist. I call myself a realist. Either way, I say we kill all the optimists. Ah, finally a smile from your lips and I know my rant as found its mark. Tonight I will wrap my arms around this grown up life and remember what it felt like to have that swift bolt of electricity race through me once more. Today I say Yes.

Look Mommy, It's an Evangelical!!!


I read this recently and found it to be quite an accurate description of the evangelical faith these days. For those who know me well, you know that my unfavorable opinion of the church is not a new insight. Over the past few years, I have come to question the glamorization of the christian faith. The large projection screens, small orchestras, and stadium seating begins to feel like a show that all have gathered to watch each sunday. We are fed our daily bread, repackaged in a more appealing way because the plain stuff just doesn't cut it anymore, and then we go out into the week filled with the good feelings that boosted our soul as the singers and orchestra reached their crescendo. As lost souls come forward to recommit week after week, I begin to wonder how genuine all this pomp and pageantry truly is. Even in my holiest FCA Presidential days, I would get the feeling there was something missing in the equation. We were livin' for the lord and saving souls for the cross...yet... the words, the actions, and the endless tracks being passed out on city streets never seemed to change a thing. We were filling an empty world with bright caricatures of Jesus and three step guides to salvation.

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"We are distinctively unspiritual people, by and large. Individualistic to a fault in many ways, yet looking for our churches and pastors to provide spiritual experience as a commodity. We criticize Catholic rosaries and visual spiritual aids, yet have a multi-million dollar chain store stuffed with Christian trinkets and merchandise in every mall. We buy and sell spiritual experience shamelessly.

If our Catholic friends were charging $50 to come to a mass at the local stadium, we’d all be shocked, but the major CCM groups make millions from tours and record sales. Even Osteen sells seats to hear his vapid talks. Tetzel was the bad guy in the reformation, but it’s among evangelicals that Paula White, Joel Osteen, Creflo Dollar and Joyce Meyer proliferate and profit from the devotion of the Christian public; all because they promise genuine spiritual experience. I haven’t seen any Catholic teachers openly promising a dollar return on your financial giving lately. Evangelicals have enough such con-artists posing as ministries to fill several television channels. I loathe indulgences, but I’ll take them over the promise to get rich by way of Jesus.

It is among evangelicals that one can write literally endless books promising more, more, more and more spiritual experience. We are Experiencing God, but we still want Our Best Life Now and our Purpose Driven Life courtesy of the Prayer of Jabez. We all know the next 7 easy steps to Being a Better You is in the mail. Christian consumerism is just one witness to the state of our spirituality. There are many others. Ministerial burnout. Pornography addiction. Divorce. Prayerlessness. Church hopping. Sexual promiscuity. Rampant materialism. Pastoral turnover. Addiction to fashion, sports, pets, opinions. Hours spent in front of video game screens, staring at web sites, reading MySpace, talking to our friends on the cell, saying nothing.

And then we’ll go to church on Sunday and hear the minister say the LOST are living empty lives and don’t have the joy of the Lord. It’s a good thing the few lost folks in our churches are too polite not to laugh out loud.

"http://www.internetmonk.com/archive/post-evangelicals-and-the-path-of-catholic-spirituality