tumultuous.

I once had a dream that I was standing near a dock with girls I had grown up with in the church. As...

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 21:38:00 -0500

I once had a dream that I was standing near a dock with girls I had grown up with in the church.

As we stood there, chatting idly, the sun began to set. Instead of changing to night, however, the sky became more and more blood red.

Then, purple and white lightning ripped through the sky. We could feel the static in the air as the wind picked up and the waves crashed against the dock.

Finally, a thousand voices rang out, “I AM.”

And I woke up.

And I’m still afraid of lightning sometimes.

Because I’m afraid that on the other end of it is God.

Much like a child thinks that the boogeyman is squatting at the far end of their bed.

it’s not real.

I’m not sure what’s up with the yellow tint, but...

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 23:56:04 -0400

I’m not sure what’s up with the yellow tint, but whatever.

I’ve always disliked Jude Law’s character, but now I’m starting to think he and I have a lot in common.

Photo

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:17:56 -0400

gingerhaze:

Tue, 10 Jul 2012 12:27:25 -0400

gingerhaze:

Harsh? Yes. But necessary.

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 12:33:59 -0400

Harsh? Yes. But necessary.

"you're just angry."

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 09:25:00 -0400

Damn right, I am.

So, I’m aware that I rant incessantly about the dismissive attitude of Christians, but I want to address a particular phenomenon that falls ignorantly from people’s lips every single day.

“I’m sorry you met bad Christians.”

A few things.

First, you are that Christian. Every Christian is the Christian for which others must make that excuse. While you are saying it to one person, someone else is saying it to another. Probably because that person met you. So, do us all a favor, and remove the idea from your head that you are somehow the ‘good Christian’. You are not the exception. Ten minutes beneath anyone’s carefully constructed motives will reveal who we really are, and it’s rarely who we say we are.

Second, if Christianity doesn’t transform the material, it’s fiction.

Last, there are millions of stories of people who have been hurt and abused by the Church. By Christianity. In the history of humanity? Probably billions. If any other institution carried such a marring reputation, would you still defend them? If millions of people, from wildly different backgrounds and Christian experiences, all professed that they had been psychologically, physically and/or emotionally damaged by the same thing, would you dismiss all of their stories?

I get that it’s easy to do on a person-by-person basis. You meet one individual one day, you dismiss their pain. Sure, you were hurt, but Christianity is more than that. I can’t prove it, granted, because I’m going to do exactly what everyone else has done to you, but you need to buck up and stop hating.

You see another individual later on. Same story. It’s not that hard to see it as one irrational individual out of millions of miraculous, incredible stories.

I’d kind of like to see you handle a million stories. All at once. My guess? Many would still dismiss them. All of them. All at once. Our selfish need to remain atop the spiritual food chain does crazy shit to our humanity, my friends.

Getting hurt once is never an indicator of the whole. Getting hurt multiple times…well, the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over expecting different results. The system blesses some and condemns others. To demand the condemned to look past your privileged position and the way they are consistently shit on, is to think of yourself first. Suddenly, God is real only because you need him to be.

I’m reading The Antichrist by Nietzsche. Growing up, the people around me, all Christians, would usually react with disgust and/or wariness when someone would say his name. You know what I’ve found? I’ve met very few of these disgusted or wary Christians who actually know what he had to say about Christianity. They just know he critiqued it harshly. Seriously? You know, I think that says something. People invest their egos in Christianity. When they find out that someone doesn’t agree with them, they react negatively, and will hardly listen to an opposing opinion, no matter how reasonable. Even if they do listen, they are only half listening - seeking endlessly for a way to poke a hole in it.

Even the calm, collected Christians half-listen. There are some things you simply cannot dismiss, but when faced with them, they usually put on a ‘kind’ voice that is actually infuriatingly demeaning. The voice of, “Oh, let me explain that to you…” There’s nothing to explain. You are simply of the belief that you are spiritually superior. Perhaps your conscious doesn’t think so, but I would guarantee that your subconscious does. No one of any actual spiritual significance answers another’s pain with such certainty. No one.

Investing our egos in Christianity…that, my friends, is all the evidence I need to be suspicious. If we have sewn our egos so intricately into a mystical idea, we’re clearly in it for something else.

Photo

Sun, 01 Jul 2012 21:24:18 -0400

I chose Destroy. Why? Because Synthesis was the opposite of the...

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 20:01:17 -0400

I chose Destroy. Why? Because Synthesis was the opposite of the life EDI was willing to die for.

“But only now do I truly feel alive. This is your influence.”

Chaos gives depth to love.

There’s a reason she’s on my arm.

"Weirdest realization: I am the thought police. I am raised, trained, whatever, to keep myself..."

Tue, 19 Jun 2012 12:09:18 -0400

“Weirdest realization: I am the thought police. I am raised, trained, whatever, to keep myself trapped. Every original thought triggers an instilled thought, and they wage within my head. I am condemning myself.”

Allow me to tell you the tale of how little Birmy had to fight...

Sat, 16 Jun 2012 15:23:02 -0400

Allow me to tell you the tale of how little Birmy had to fight for her Pokemon games.

My parents found out that Pokemon ‘evolved’ and flipped. One day, my mom asked, “Do the Pokemon evolve into something similar or into a totally different creature?”

I was fairly confused by this question, but explained that they all turn into something similar, just cooler.

She then had my dad play it to make sure it was okay.

He walked in circles on Cinnabar Island for about ten minutes, handed it to me and said, “Looks alright to me.”

It’s only now, having heard dumb Christian stuff like, “If we evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?!” that I realize what she was asking.

Nowadays, when I try to explain evolution, she always replies, “That’s adaptation, not evolution. Evolutionists believe a fish turned into a horse.”

Facepalm.

Anyways, clearly I should have just quit and read the Bible. Obviously, it’s much more wholesome.

"The Government’s plan to introduce same-sex marriage is one of the most serious threats to the..."

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 19:05:00 -0400

“

The Government’s plan to introduce same-sex marriage is one of the most serious threats to the Church of England in its 500-year history, senior clergy claim.

The Church today outlines its opposition to the Government’s proposals in scathing terms. Anxiety among Church leaders is so acute that they raise the spectre of disestablishment, warning that any attempt to alter the definition of marriage could fatally undermine the Church’s privileged position.

”

- The Independent, 12 June 2012

Am I the only one who reads the church’s fears of disestablishment and the loss of ‘privileged position’ and think, “Rear your ugly, controlling face; you are only destroying yourself. Thank you,”?

Also, if ‘privileged position’ doesn’t reveal their intentions and disgust everyone, I don’t know what will.

"I’m almost 1000% sure that every positive thing a Christian could possibly say tends to end..."

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 18:45:56 -0400

“I’m almost 1000% sure that every positive thing a Christian could possibly say tends to end with, “…unless, of course, you’re gay.””

"one of worst threats in 500 years"

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:49:00 -0400

Recently, the Church of England declared that the issue of Gay Marriage is one of the worst threats to the church in the last 500 years. You can read the article here.

Before I continue on, I’d like to quote an article from Rachel Held Evan’s blog:

Later research, documented in Kinnaman’s You Lost Me, reveals that one of the top reasons 59 percent of young adults with a Christian background have left the church is because they perceive the church to be too exclusive, particularly regarding their LGBT friends. Eight million twenty-somethings have left the church, and this is one reason why.

I would highly recommend you read the article. Regardless of your stance on the issue, the fact remains that it has been handled poorly.

Continuing on, I found the article, regarding the Church of England, in /r/atheism (a subreddit of Reddit.com). The few people who commented on the the post expressed incredulous humor over such a bold statement. One of the worst threats in 500 years? Seriously?

While I had a laugh myself, I couldn’t help but agree - gay marriage is one of the worst, if not the worst, threat to the church in the last 500 years.

Now, this probably sounds counter to my usual stance, but allow me to expand.

To say the Church has responded poorly to the issue of homosexuality is an extreme understatement. Of course, many who read that would like to say, “Well, some people, who think they are Christians, have responded poorly…they don’t speak for all Christians.”

Hate mongers aside, let me establish the group: If you were silent, you have responded poorly. If you didn’t ‘agree’ with the tactics, but agree with the overall message of the opposition, you have responded poorly . If you use the phrase, ‘love the sinner, hate the sin,’ you have responded poorly. If you told people they could be ‘healed’ because you refuse to read anything other than junk, Christian science, you have responded poorly (we all know the actual scientific process is just Liberal propaganda anyways). So, I’m guessing that encompasses a huge chunk of Christians. So, the Church, essentially.

The Church, arming itself with a few mismatched Bible verses, extreme ignorance, social stigmas, and personal discomfort, decided to wage a culture war against the LGBT community. It started with outright slander (well, after the hundreds of years of enforcing the death penalty, mind you) and a story crafted from ‘Biblical’ idealism. “If someone is gay, they must be morally bankrupt. I don’t know any of them personally, mind you, but the Bible says so…so therefore, it’s true.”

For the past several decades, the Church has excluded, slandered, ‘healed’, and created the problem they condemn in the first place. Example: A young teen is found to be gay. The Church excommunicates, excludes, whatever - they kick him out - and he is now on his own. Now, one of the only communities that accepts someone in his position is one that is involved in a wilder lifestyle. Drugs, alcohol, casual sex. So, in desperation born from extreme fear and loneliness, he turns to those who will accept him as he is. The Church then points and shouts, “See! The homosexual lifestyle leads to drugs and sex!” If I could rage about the sheer stupidity forever, I just might.

Anyways, the Church’s response to homosexuality has done one thing: revealed who they really are. Their behavior and attitudes have been horrid, as well as their inability to live up to their idealistic ‘born again’ love in the face of a social stigma that causes them personal discomfort.

There are places where people subconsciously remove their ‘Christian masks’ and revert to ‘themselves’. I have worked in a few of these spaces, watching as Christians shed the beautiful person they are during the week and become an impatient, hurtful individual (and a hurt individual at that). While I find the latter to be more beautiful than any ideal (if we cannot embrace ourselves, we have no hope of being any different. You are human. Be a human.), I understand that Christians uphold the idea of ‘perseverance’ or ‘sanctification’. This ideology is being tested by the issue of homosexuality.

And I think it’s safe to say that it failed the test.

So what does this mean? How do we go from ‘the Church has failed to respond well to the issue of homosexuality’ to ‘gay marriage is one of the worst threats to the Church in the last 500 years’?

The answer is surprisingly simple: The issue of gay marriage has spurred younger generations to ask the questions they were taught never to ask.

Or at least, were given permission to ask…as long as they knew they could only settle for the ‘Christian’ answer.

The Church has found an issue that it is struggling to respond to well. The younger generations, such as Generations Y and Z, have observed their elder’s response. From hateful exclusion, to fearful compromise. None of the answers seem to work, but it all seems to point to one thing: an attempt to hold together their Jenga-style faith by twisting reality. They have a pile of doctrines and ideas about God that have to be true. So they try to squash the opposition. This is true of anything that does not fall in line with Christianity. Since Christianity is slowly losing its position as ‘The Man’ in the West, and since squashing clearly didn’t work, Christians are now pulling back a bit and acting ‘mousy’. “Okay, well, perhaps gay people aren’t the evil people we made them out to be…but it’s still a sin!”

Honestly, even that statement questions the assertion that all things bear fruit. What about the healthy, Christian gay couples who bear beautiful fruit? Satan tricking us? Probably.

But the younger generations are seeing through that. They know members of the LGBT community and they know that something is not adding up. Something about their faith is not so ideal and fulfilling - it’s suddenly not the loving religion they were always taught to think it was.

Which, for many, leads to other questions. As Peter Rollins said this weekend, “I’m concerned with the material. If Christianity does not transform the material, it’s fiction.” The issue of homosexuality is peeling back the layers, revealing that Christians aren’t really as ‘radical’ and ‘transformed’ as they profess to be.

Who would want fake transformation? Unfortunately, many Christians do. I can’t even fathom how tired they must be.

But the younger generation doesn’t want to fake it anymore. They don’t want to settle for an ideology simply because it secures life after death.

They would rather focus on life before death.

I’ll finish with an example (and a final afterthought).

In Parent Trap (1998, suckers), Meredith Blake is about to marry the twins’ father, Nick Parker. He is thoroughly convinced that she is a lovely person. The twins, however, know that she’s actually quite terrible, so they hatch a plan to reveal her true nature. After endlessly pushing her buttons during a camping trip, Meredith finally snaps, snarling about how she’s going to ship the ‘little brats’ off to boarding school. In a moment of weakness, Meredith reveals her true nature, and Nick realizes how awful she really is.

Now, to be fair, the twins did treat her horribly on the camping trip. If that had been me, ~~I would have set their hair on fire and laughed, eyes bulging all crazylikeandshit~~ I would have been angry, too. The difference, however, is that Meredith was always terrible. Scenes sprinkled throughout the movie reveal her actual intentions. But Meredith is an excellent liar - hell, her mother is the bad guy from the first Parent Trap! She’s well trained in being a nice person on the outside. Because of this, the girls know they are going to have to do something extreme in order to get her facade to break.

In the same way, homosexuality made people uncomfortable enough that they let down their guard, and the hurting, angry person finally removed their mask. And everyone saw it.

Nick saw Meredith’s true nature and didn’t marry her. Why would he? In the same way, the younger generations saw the face of Christianity and chose to walk away. Why would they stay? Would you accept excuses or the ‘no true Scotsman’ fallacy from Meredith? Why should we accept that from Christianity?

So, yes. Gay marriage is one of the worst (if not the worst) threats the church has faced in the last 500 years. It’s robbing it of control and power. It’s tearing the curtain. The people are disillusioned with the hurtful, broken system. They want something more, something better. Something where humans can sit together at a table and celebrate love and life. Not sit together fearing a God who hungers for his own glory and what might happen to our souls long after we are dead.

Anyways, anyways. Final thought.

Isn’t it funny that homosexuality actually isn’t that big of a deal? I mean, the Bible has six verses that may or may not take a stance on it. It’s hardly core to the teachings of Christianity. It’s far from the focal point. But, out of sheer discomfort and a hunger for control, the church pounced, viciously attacking their opponents. They can say gay marriage is destroying the church, but really, they destroyed themselves.

"So what is the question that presents itself at this time in the history of Christianity? What is..."

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 09:20:00 -0400

“

So what is the question that presents itself at this time in the history of Christianity? What is this point from which we may gain the leverage to overturn the Church as it presently stands (in its conservative, liberal, fundamentalist, and orthodox forms)?

The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer succinctly articulated the answer shortly before his execution by the Nazis. In a compilation of his personal correspondence entitled ‘Letters and Papers from Prison,’ he wrote of how the question for us today is whether or not religion is necessary in order to participate fully in the life testified to by Christ.

For Bonhoeffer, religion at its most basic defined a particular way of of thinking about and relating to God, a way of approaching God as the solution to problems such as fear, ignorance, or despair. He wrote of the next epoch in Church life as one that would utterly transcend this impotent God whose only job is to provide us with a psychological crutch (what we will call the God of religion, or the religious God) and usher in what he called “religionless Christianity.” Bonhoeffer was executed before he was able to develop his project, and we are left with only fragments of his vision, fragments that are pregnant with possibility.

”

- Peter Rollins, Insurrection

Current Reading List

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 19:30:01 -0400

Books I’m Actually Reading:

The Alchemist

A Wrinkle in Time (second time)

Insurrection

The Greatest Show On Earth

Books I started (and sometimes very nearly completed) and then said, “Meh.”:

Everything Belongs

Pagan Christianity

90% of the never ending stacks of books in my room

hellanne: (by lucybrockman)

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 18:27:16 -0400

hellanne:

(by lucybrockman)

A comic

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 16:15:28 -0400

A comic:

gingerhaze:

about a night last year when I walked out of church for the first time.

I’ve been sitting on this one for a while, partially because I wasn’t sure if it made any sense, but also because I was scared to show it to anyone. I’ve never talked about this kind of thing on Tumblr before because it’s such a touchy subject. But it’s Holy Week, and it seems relevant somehow.

I sent a message to the artist, asking if she would help me find this comic. I remember reading it a while back and being totally blown away. I love that she admits fear - the fear of letting others see it - because it gives voice to the flaws. They say it’s heaven, but somehow, we all know it’s hell. And when we get up to walk away, they tell us we’ve fallen. They tell us we’re going to hell.

When really, we’re leaving hell.

Thank you, gingerhaze.

Photo

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 16:11:37 -0400

Cheesy cinematography. Incredible thoughts.

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 15:35:26 -0400

Cheesy cinematography. Incredible thoughts.

"I curse the day I received the light, for my home is in Babylon."

Sun, 10 Jun 2012 14:48:47 -0400

“I curse the day I received the light, for my home is in Babylon.”