Am I Selfish or Selfless?

The title is deceiving, because as far as humanity goes we are selfish in and of ourselves due to our sinful nature. However, the question I am trying to ask is whether or not I am thinking in the best interests of others or if I am simply being selfish right now. As you probably have read in the previous post, I am currently struggling with this pervasive need to be alone. I'm in a state of mind where I need time to myself to think things through without worrying about what those around me want to do. And it is difficult to draw the line between collecting myself so that I can better interact with those around me, and simply wanting to give in to the selfish desires of my heart. I know deep down that in order for me to deal with other people in a godly way I need time alone with God to reevaluate my life and priorities, and in that way I know that my desire to get "Me-time" is a godly desire. However, the other part of me wants to be able to get away from everyone else so that I can do my own thing. That's the selfish part, and I can clearly distinguish the two. The problem is not identifying the two sides, the problem is that while I really do need time to myself, I only really want to use it as an excuse to do whatever I want to do.

And maybe doing what I want to do isn't such a bad thing, but when it leads me away from my friends and distances me from God, then it is a problem. The interesting thing is, I hadn't even thought about this until I started writing this post. So perhaps the real dilemma was that I knew deep down what the real problem was, but didn't want to admit it. While I have been thinking deeply about God's Word and theodicy and all sorts of issues lately, I've been ignoring my relationship with my Creator. This doesn't mean that my breakdown the other day is irrelevant, on the contrary it means that I need to start setting apart time where I can talk with God and study His Word in a more relational way.

So to conclude this, I am selfish, very selfish, but I need to start working on being more selfless, as should we all.

Community

So today we had a field trip for our Christian Formation in a Cultural Context class. I don't really want to go into the details, but basically we talked with kids from Lynn who took part in a study on human formation 6 years ago, and are back to follow-up. The class talks a lot about how important it is to have a Tri-polar relationship with God, meaning that there should be a triangle between God(at the top corner), you(at the bottom left), and other people(at the bottom right). This triangle represents the role of community in a right relationship with God. You can see and understand yourself better through other people, thus allowing you to see and better understand God. We develop our relationship with God in the same way that we develop our relationship with others, and by developing healthy Christian relationships with others, we grow closer to God.

While this field trip got me out of a class, it also made me late for the Inaugural Ball. My friend group all went together, which is totes better than trying the "Bring a Date" thing. If it came down to dates, let's just say I wouldn't have gone. Not because I'm not interested, but because I'm a retarded baffoon with no self-confidence or ambition. Anyway, so I showed up late after changing into nicer clothes, said hi to people, felt awkward for a few minutes, then decided to leave. I didn't feel right. Something about the whole thing left a pit of ... something, I don't know what, in my stomach, so I had to leave. I had to get out of there.

And of course, it's raining outside. It's bad enough that rain depresses me, but with me already not feeling right, it just got bad. I am currently in no mood to deal with people. And perhaps this is a result of not getting alone time, like, ever. I never get to spend time by myself, unless I go seclude myself in some corner of Ferrin or walk somewhere in the woods, which I don't really want to do. For me I get alone time by playing videogames, or reading(which I haven't had a good book to read in ages), or writing a story. *On a side note I guess you could say writing this blog is like writing a story.* Anyway, I can't play videogames because that's in my room and that's where there is ALWAYS somebody who wants to DO something, and I can't be alone if I'm worrying about what other people want to do. I can't read a book for two reasons: I don't have anything worth reading(besides the Bible of course, but that's not the kind of reading I'm thinking of), and I've got almost nowhere to read that is both secluded and comfortable. Where I am now excluded, though it is cold. And for some reason that I cannot adequately explain, I can't write a story while at Gordon. Something about the atmosphere of college life hinders me from focusing on a story. Words won't come, ideas don't flow, it sucks... P.S. I've resorted to naps, people tend not to bother me when I'm taking a nap, though some get pretty pissed off.

So anyway, I don't want to deal with people right now. Someone asked where I was and I lied to them(sorry), because I can't talk about this with someone right now. Maybe later, but now is not the time.

All this to ask, how does community help develop Christian character and a right relationship with God if dealing with people ends up just pissing you off in the end? *On another side note, if any of you are reading this, it's not you that's pissing me off, it's dealing with people in general on a daily basis to the point where I don't get to deal with myself.*

Warning: profanity
I think I'm too nice, because some people just came in and asked if they could play something real quick, and I said sure, no problem. And maybe that's the other reason I can't talk to someone right now. I'd force myself to shrug it off for later, and then I'd be stuck with this shitty feeling again some other time. And once again I would seek solitude to the exclusion of my friends and those I care about. Just get the fuck out of me, and let me be in peace.
End profanity

On the bright side, I found out Chris is a really good guitar player. I'm impressed, even in this mood. And with that I think I will end this post.

The Beginnings of a New Year

No, its not New Year, but this is the start of my Junior year at Gordon College. I have a new job, I am now the Director of the student venues council, basically placing me over Chester's Place and giving me oversight of several other spaces on campus. It's been difficult adjusting to my new responsibilities, especially since coming in I had very little knowledge of what the previous directors had done. Basically, I didn't know anything. But I am getting the hang of it, it's all starting to make sense and fit into a pattern and rythm. Which is good. I make a bit more money than I used to (always a plus, I really suggest it), and I get to work with a lot of great people. Some aren't so great, but you can't win everything.

Classes are freaking sweet. I'm finally taking all Youth Ministry major-related classes, and it is fantastic. I get to discuss stuff basically everyday, which I LOVE to do. I've already thought at least a little bit about everything we are going through, and some of those thoughts have already been posted in here, so I can just go back and reread my own thoughts... It's pretty neat, once again I'd suggest it. Thankfully this will give me more to talk and think about for this blog, so all you non-followers will finally have some reading material again (exciting, I know).

I think friendships are getting a little strained this year. I'm in a triple now, and it's been difficult reconciling the differences me and my new roommates have. We aren't very good at expressing our feelings on things and dealing with each other, and the bigger problem is that we all have the same friends. I'm starting to second guess my decision to room with them, not because of who they are but because we can't seem to get away from each other enough to refill our "straws" of patience. It doesn't help either that our friend group has dwindled. We lost several key members this year, both to studying abroad and switching colleges, and it has been painful. We can barely fill up a booth now in Chester's, and we've run out of exciting things to do. I feel like we need to reexpand our friend group, but how do you even go about doing that? Hold auditions? That would be fun, but I doubt it would work...

On the upside, my floor this year is the best I've ever had. We got a bunch of new freshmen, and all the stuck up seniors from last year have fled the premises. It's so much easier to have community when everyone actually wants to get involved (which is more than I can say for my roommates =P). But for the first time since I came to Gordon I have a floor that I can connect with, and it's amazing. I love it. And also on the upside, even with a smaller group of friends, I think that has allowed me to grow closer to my friends, to get to level of friendship that we didn't have last year or two years ago. I'm not very open by nature, I'm used to holding myself back(more because I don't know how to let it out than because I'm afraid of getting hurt or anything like that), and because of this closedness I feel like there has been some distance between the others and I, there has been a lack of depth which I have been desiring for quite some time now.

And on a final note, I think that depth begs more than simple friendship. I might actually be looking for something more serious, or to put it better, someone more serious. I've noticed over the past several months that I have been longing for something, something deeper than what I have. Something more relational than I've ever had outside my family. I've been longing for a relationship with a significant other, someone to share my experiences with and grow close to.

And just so I don't get too focused on that before I go to bed(yes it is that time of night), let me just say that squirrels are awesome, guns are cool, and I might need some tape because I am ripped!

Family Versus Friends

This is less of a philosophical post than previous ones, I'm trying to figure out why home has become so dreary since college started, and I think I have come up with an adequate answer. The answer is a social life, I finally got one and every break(Quad, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Spring, Easter, and Summer) I desert my social life for my family.

I suppose this is putting it a bit drastically. I mean, I love my family, I would not have ever survived my childhood with any other family(they would have killed me). But there is something about friends that make life more interesting, they make life, at least my life, worth living. I have found that I am more free to be who I want to be when I'm around my friends than when I'm with my family. When I go home for breaks I go back to who I used to be, to some degree, because I'm placed back under the direct authority of my parents and the expactations of my family. They expect me to be the same person I was when I left, and while I still am for the most part, there is change and I like the change.

Like I mentioned, I now have a social life. Before college, I had friends at school(not many mind you), friends at church, and once upon a time friends in my neighborhood. But I never really hung out with anybody outside of those areas. Most of my time was spent at home, playing videogames by myself or watching tv or some other mindless activity. When I went to college, I got to experience what it was like to go hang out with people whenever and wherever. Spur of the moment trips to Starbucks or just about anywhere off-campus, latenight movie nights and Claymore runs. I got to hang out with people my own age, schedule my own time, and do essentially whatever I wanted to do. (Of course I still had hw and stuff I had to do.)

Going home, while there is no work to be done(homework-wise), there is no one to hang out with either. I get to spend time with my family, but its just not the same... And since I totally just lost my train of thought, I'm going to say that the new Pirates movie was freaking awesome and end with that...

P.S. The whole point of this post is to say that I miss my friends, and its only been two days for some of them... If any of you are reading this(though you had better not be, because that means you are probably following me), I miss you.

Hell, A Nightmare?

Can we imagine what Hell is like? Can we experience "A Hell on earth", as the expression goes? I think because of sin we get little snippets of Hell here and there. The consequences of a lie, rejection, the loss of loved ones, bad break-ups, divorce, miscarriages, rape, war... These can all give us a taste of what it's like to be apart from God. But what is Hell, really? What makes it so bad? Is it really a pit of fire that burns our souls for eternity? I don't know for sure, no one does. But we can speculate.

Personally, I believe Hell is simply the complete isolation of a person for all of eternity. The pain that is described as fire is the pain of complete loneliness. Think of a time when you were left alone at home, or got lost in the woods, or found yourself alone working on hw when everyone else has gone to bed. Think of the pain you felt when you realized there was NO ONE else around, that there was absolutely no one to talk to, no one to help you find your way, or to comfort you. Then try multiplying that pain by infinite. Hell is complete separation from God, and I take that to mean that a person in Hell is completely isolated from everyone and everything else in existence. No God, no family, no friends, no pets, not even any enemies. Nothing but yourself.

Maybe you're ok for a day, maybe you like being alone. But after a week, a month, a year, a decade, a century, a millenium, you might begin to long for companionship. The loneliness will creep up on you, it will begin to consume you, every fiber of your being will be racked with the pain of the absence of others. What's worse, you might even be able to remember your time here on earth, so you remember what its like to have friends, or at least someone to talk to and hang out with. You remember what it's like to not be alone.

I don't know about you, but I couldn't take it. I like being alone for a little bit here and there, I just need to get away from people and breathe. But even then, God is with me. He is always by my side keeping me company, guiding me through my life, giving me strength to go on. Without Him, I don't think even my friends could begin to fill the gaping hole that would be left in my life. I've got wonderful friends and I don't know what I would do without them, but they can't take the place of God.

Hell is too much, way too much for me handle. If anyone truly thought about it, they wouldn't be able to handle it either. There would be no choice left to them but to accept God's free gift of salvation. And I realize that I haven't said much, nor have I put much structure in these paragraphs, but whatevs, right? It's just a blog, not a term paper for Historical Perspectives or anything serious like that, so get off my back. =P Also, I'm definitely too self-critical...

End of Evil?

After the last post I decided to go back and look over some of the other handouts he gave us, remembering that I had a similar spurt of writing at another time. In class we were talking about deconstuctionism, whichdoes not look to resolve conflicts or derive true meaning in a text, it simply points out inconcistencies and how the text unravels itself. Here is what I found:

"Evil won't be done away with because God destroys evil with evil, inflicting pain and suffering upon those who do not submit to His will.
- However, one must consider that if God truly is the Creator of this world, He not only has the right to exert authority over us, but also the authority to determine what is right and wrong.
- Sin is defined as an act of disobedience to God. Therefore evil must be defined as any force acting in opposition to the will of God. If this is the case, God truly cannot sin, because He cannot act contrary to His own will. In this way, His actions in Revelation are not evil, they are a judgment against those who do not/did not follow the rules He set out for us to live by. Christians are exempted from most of this judgment because we have chosen to accept the gift of salvation that God gave to all who were willing to accept it.
- Hell is defined as complete separation from God. I don't believe there is any fire involved, just the pain and suffering that comes with being totally and utterly alone. When God condemns all unbelievers to Hell, He is essentially giving them what they want in that to them He will no longer exist; they can no longer know Him."

Once again, I think there is a bit of a lack of transition between my thoughts, but at least they are separated by bullet points, right? And the conclusion I have come to here is that God cannot sin, nor is He evil. Christians are not judged as harshly as non-Christians because we chose to at least try to follow God. And when non-Christians go to Hell, they suffer from complete and utter loneliness, there is nothing worse than being alone, and no pain greater. Fire is simply used to elaborate the fact that its a constant, searing pain.

There will be an end to evil, as we see in God's act of destroying it which I touched on a little bit in my previous post. Also, I have decided that short posts are useless in this blog, so don't expect to see any more...

The Origin of Evil

So I haven't posted in forever, not like it matters... But anyway, this semester I took a course on Biblical Hermeneutics, which is the study of interpretation and translation in regards to the Bible. Well at one point in class the professor mentioned a passage in Revelation which refers to the sea being no more, and he interpreted that to mean that evil would be no more, because earlier in Revelation the beast, which definitely represented evil, rose up out of the sea, and so the professor proceeded to equate the sea with evil. Well, this did not sit well with me, and so I began to write furiously on the back of our handout(he loves handouts). Here is what I wrote:

"When John mentions/adds the fact that the sea will be gone (no more), I do ont think it is the case that he is referencing the evil represented by the sea. A close reading of Genesis 1 will show that there is no mention of the creation of the sea (water). "The Deep" is mentioned, and God separates the Deep into the sea and the sky. He does not create it, He only separates it. So the significance in John is that not only will God destroy created things but pre-creation things as well.
It is possible that one can still allude the sea to evil, since there is no explanation about how evil came to be. In this case, the Deep could be a possible source of evil, as most Christians will not tolerate the thought that God created evil. Which begs the question, If not from God, where did evil come from?
Personally, I believe that in some way evil came from God. Without evil, He cannot be glorified in every aspect of His being. His goodness cannot be glorified if there is no evil to compare it to. His mercy and grace cannot be glorified if we did not fall and become in need of it. Therefore, in order to be fully glorified, I believe God created evil. It's that or evil is also eternal. Once again, the significance of the destruction of the sea can be seen as God destroying something that He did not create, which would glorify His omnipotent power."

As you can probably tell, I was writing fast and didn't really pace myself enough to make transitions between thoughts, so it might a little difficult to follow, and I apologize for that. Basically the conclusion i came to is that either God is the creator of evil, and ultimately its destroyer as well, or evil, like the sea, is an eternal object like God, and that He is so powerful that He can destroy even other eternal things (which of course would make them a little less eternal than they thought =)).

I've never really heard any other suggestions for the origin of evil. I feel like Christians like to believe that Satan (or Lucifer) created sin, although they would probably never actually say it, because that means that God is not the only being with the power to create. Maybe He is, maybe He isn't. I'm not sure that we can really know. But my purpose in writing this is to put some questions in your head, and if you don't like it, that's too bad because you shouldn't be following me anyway...