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| I'm not a Christian but I:
a. *insert something positive*
b. *insert something positive*
c. *insert something positive*
d. *insert something positive*
...
...
z. *insert something positive*
And at least I don't:
a. *insert something negative*
b. *insert something negative*
c. *insert something negative*
d. *insert something negative*
...
...
z. *insert something negative*
But that's not good enough for Christians. It just doesn't work out when believing in Jesus means so little to me and everything else means so much. Jesus is the key. I don't have the key and it doesn't matter what else I carry. Somehow, the key is a defining item.
So today I figured out why I don't drink when all my peers do and I don't think it's wrong.
"I'm not Christian but at least I don't (a) drink."
And I've also figured out that I compare every action done by anyone with a plausible and probable action governed by Christian values.
People. There may or may not be objective moral truths. There may or may not be a high possibility of one over the other. There may or may not be sufficient evidence to convince anyone.
So few people seem to think this way. Somehow, that hurts.
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| I've noticed in everyday communication (especially talking), we qualify almost everything we say. By qualify, I don't mean "to meet certain requirements or standards". The way I'm using it, to qualify is to weaken, soften, or make less severe/blunt. For example: to qualify the statement "He's cheating" we can say "He's practically/like/basically/sort-of/kind-of/literally/virtually/more-or-less/etc. cheating. We can clearly see that when we don't qualify it, the statement is more serious.
Often times, qualified statements have a completely different meaning than non-qualified statements - "He's practically dead" vs "He's dead". Using qualifiers this way is necessary to convey different meanings. If we wish to say someone is still alive but in an inauspicious situation, we can say "He's practically dead". If we wish to say someone really isn't alive, we would omit the qualifier. I realize that context has a lot to do with everything and saying "He's dead" could mean "He's not dead" in a metaphoric way, but this post is not about metaphors.
However we qualify our statements more often than necessary (and more often than I'm comfortable with). I always hear people say such things as: "I was like, walking down the street" or "I was basically talking to her" or "I am more-or-less an average student". No, they didn't mean those words. What they were trying to say is "I was walking", "I was talking", and "I am an average student". The result of these unnecessary qualifiers is saying more to convey what you do not mean. Why would we do that?
Because the world is better when it's soft and fuzzy. When you're precise and blunt, you have to actually face facts and you're more likely to be wrong. Who wants to face reality? Who wants to be wrong? In response to this fear, we pad our sentences with qualifiers. "I was, like, cheating" means you were doing something that might be considered cheating but not always. "I was cheating" means you were cheating. Ouch. But does it really have to hurt? The idea of everyone using these qualifiers to protect themselves hurts me even more. We should be able to come to terms with our flaws and just move on. But wait, we don't always qualify to protect ourselves.
That's right, another part of qualifying is what I think of as the "like" culture (which everyone is a victim of, me included). Maybe this actually has a name (Valley Girl Talk?), but it seems we've gotten so used to saying "like" before everything, like, it's like a problem or, like, something. It's annoying, makes you sound uncertain about your words, and gives you a seriously unintelligent facade. I sometimes just want to scream "Come on, spit it out!" Try talking w/o saying "like" unless it's necessary - your IQ would double.
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| What is it?
It is easy to see the foolishness of wanting such a thing for the body (as well as the pros mind you). But how is it desirable for the soul? How would eternity/time even apply to the soul?
The neurons in our body fire at approximately 200 mph. Hence, we are able to perceive time the way we do. To other animals (e.g. the fly), we move in slow motion. On the other hand, starfish perceived time in much longer intervals than we do. The perception of eternity could exist in one second if our rate of perception increases at an exponential rate. In that case, the span of one second would draw out longer and longer as we get close to the end of the second - but we'll never witness the end of the second.
If we perceive time through the mind, and therefore the body, how would time apply to the soul?
You can say eternity does not exist within time. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds right. If our souls are eternal, and eternity does not exist in time, then everything that has yet to happen, already happened.
Hmm.
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| 1. God
2. Christian's perspective of who Jesus is/was/will be
The two are different in my mind.
God, to me, cannot be conceptualized because he transcends everything. He is more than good and evil, truth and lies, and power and weakness He is more than an infinite amount of ideas and anything we think to be vicious or virtuous. He simply transcends and cannot be identified.
The Christian Jesus = The Christian God. Jesus is good. He both speaks truth and is truth. Jesus has desire, will, power, and knowledge. His existence is contrasted with evil, which is Satan, as well as the less perfect good of other beings such as Angels.
I dislike very much the idea that Jesus is *only* amazing, great, wonderful, good. I suppose that the reason I don't like this idea is that I believe it's both faulty and dangerous to claim there is an objective good and evil. There is no doubt in my mind that good and evil originate from emotions both pleasant and unpleasant. Our association of a good feeling to an object makes the object virtuous and our association of a bad feeling to an object makes the object vicious. Now, to claim that something is objectively good or bad is to claim that the object's status has nothing to do with your relation to the object. But what do we have but relations to everything in this world? To say an object is objective is to say that its status is separate from everything. Now, let's assume you think chocolate is tasty. Let's also assume that chocolate is objectively tasty. Your thinking that chocolate is tasty has nothing to do with the actual tastiness of the chocolate. Although they are in agreement, the objective value of chocolate actually has no relation to you. You identify with the part of you that says chocolate is tasty but not the part of the chocolate that makes it tasty...
I could try to clarify this idea some more but here's the actual issue. I need to be Christian in order to be with someone very important to me. I do not agree with the philosophies of Christianity. Again, I need to be Christian. Reasons for being Christian: my girlfriend is Christian.
Reasons for not being Christian: everything else in me says "no"
Subsequent reason for being Christian: I'm tired of trying to be Christian, but I'm even more tired of giving up.
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| A non-Christian is just a potential Christian. A Christian is just a potential non-Christian. A non-Christian has everything to gain and a Christian has everything to lose.
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