Tomfoolery

A slap of humility might do the trick. That's what I keep telling myself. Where I'm at, what I'm living for, where I'm going. Once I stopped living in my head filled with lofty concepts and amorphous understanding, I realized many things about what I don't know and several things about myself. I'm at a spot where everything is constantly in motion, I like motion, I'm never bored. My last entry was named Process but that's exactly what I was neglecting to jump into, until now. I feel I've always been in a state of awareness about my character flaws and road blocks that hinder me from my potential, but I've never had the courage to do anything about them. I've mastered a technique of manipulation and control to weave in and out, up and around, issues I don't want to process. I have had a lasting trend of presenting my problems in only a partial light. It was about accepting my sin nature and forcing content rather than a healthy method for healing. Healing has a knack for hurting, especially on a relational level. Some of the deepest wounds you carry, come from those who you trusted most. So what does starting a process look like? Productivity has to have some kind of face right? It has to be beyond conversation, it has to take effort. I used to leave the majority of my growth up to the conversations I had with people, somehow convincing myself I was changing and moving forward with a long talk and a challenged perspective, however what happened in between those dialogs never amounted to what I was advocating. There was no continuity in what I was dialoging and how I was living. This is a huge conviction of mine and should hold much more weight than it does in especially those of my community. So for awhile there I was quiet. I felt like a hypocrite, and we're all guilty of that on on some level aren't we? I still have a healthy fear of hypocrisy but instead of letting it stop me, I try and flip it and let it motivate me.

I recently wrote a paper on religion and its major influences on the modern world, broad I know, but it forced me to do something that I realized I never took the time to do before, at least holistically. I was forced to consolidate my perspective and firmly align myself somewhere, I couldn't just default to what sounded good at the time and play off why or why not I agreed or disagreed. That weaving in and out, up and around issues wasn't possible because it was me giving the opinion, I didn't have the option to wait for someone else to make the stand first. Prior to Jesus I describe my worldview as liberal, secular, and pragmatic. How typical. Do whatever works for you, because in the end it's all relative anyway, oh hey Oprah. That's where I thought the freedom was, boundaries where just annoying and in the way so I started that process of avoiding them in order to really grasp that liberty that I knew was out there just waiting for me to come and take it. I don't need to elaborate on where that got me because I don't like to think of myself as a common statistic, and because there are enough stories like mine out there as it is. My point is, that indeterminate worldview wasn't fully eradicated when I accepted Christ and ended up bleeding into my perspective on the world affecting much more than I ever intended it to. So this paper, if haven't digressed enough to lose your attention yet, was extremely difficult for me to dictate. After 6 or so hours of meditation on what to align myself with, I came to a point that was essentially a soup of our right to religious pluralism, freedom of conscience, coexistence, moral upholding, and Christ. It was a mess, but nevertheless very grammatically organized and pretentious because I needed an A, and I enjoy any excuse I get to use ridiculously big words. Shortly after emailing the piece to my professor I immediately went back to Word and began to edit and change the content of my paper, meaning that it took only seconds for my opinions to reshape. At first a feeling of hypocrisy crept in, I felt like I had drastically misinterpreted extremely definitive notions and that I was doing a disservice to those who call themselves Christians . It was like I was driving a car without a license or something of that tomfoolery. Basically ill-equipped and unprepared. I think this can be interpreted into one of two things, either I am ignorant to the necessary facts about life that are required to set an opinion, or I am growing at a rate where my opinion cannot be set in order for growth to be continual. I think most of us that desire growth and maturity default into the second category, I happen to be completely satisfied with that spot if I reside there. I'll let application seek in for an attempt to bring this all back down to the ground. In correspondence to my constantly transforming opinion on life, I believe that the world is constantly changing and one should consider that changing patterns may be in need, and that the classical approach may not be the only way. Also, and more importantly, God is more concerned with who we are, not where we are. For me this means I have finally become extremely content with not knowing everything or having a legitimate answer to every philosophical question asked of me. Why submit to the notion that humans aren't the perfect beings capable of putting a lid on all understanding? Why accept that I was created and placed on this planet by something else, somewhere else, with capacities far greater and more intelligent than mine? Why, why, why, I can go on forever. When it comes down to it, a simple trait can be used in describing secularism (and atheism, while I'm at it): boredom. Why would I put a period on the meaning of life? To say I conquered it? To feel better about myself? In my natural frustration from lack of definitive purpose shall I just create one for myself so that I can feel whole? We have become a generation that is very confident in ourselves and less confident in what we believe. We must keep in mind that it is a very lonely place for finite man to be on the throne that was meant for an infinite being. I'd rather keeping playing the guessing game, it's more entertaining. I recently heard something quite impacting from a man that I hope I'll get to meet sometime in my life, I'll share it:

The secularist looks at his city and says, "I don't need any walls." A pluralist man goes to debates and asks, "which kind of a wall are we going to build anyway?" A privatized man says, "I'll build my wall, you build your wall." The Word of God says, "There is only one way amongst men that they will find life and security and that is through Christ."
-Ravi Zacharias

I say that knowledge is a deadly tool when no one sets the rules.

I will say in confidence, that whatever I may be facing, whether it be trials or no trials, heartache or no heartache, struggles or no struggles, if I submit my will to God He will guarantee me victory. There you go, I'm set in that.

It is a very long process to become fully prepared and armed but know that you can do much more detrimental damage in your immaturity than you can in waiting and striving to reach your capable potential. I really don't know what the point of this post amounts to, but whatever, my intent isn't to be your teacher, just to let you in on a tiny bit of my conscience. So, in that, I think this has served its purpose. Someone please disagree with me on some level, I'd like to learn from you because I in no way do I want to come across as having it figured all out.

Dicky.