Sing Out Your Version Of The Truth

Every day I go to this class (which is actually very few days, but when I do:) I sit down and think “inspire me”. I know this is the wrong way to be living my life; I can’t just sit around and wait to be inspired. I need to DO something. I need to INSPIRE. But for some reason, in Shane’s GNST 300 class, this works. I sit down sleepy and confused and distracted, I set up impossible expectations, and I leave dazed, more confused, and on fire about something new. I wish I had journaled my experience of this class. Okay, I wish I had actually gone to this class regularly. But the overarching realization that I keep getting from this is that we need to stop waiting around for the world to improve and start improving it NOW. I read about all these amazing philosophers who risked their lives by publishing truth at a time when no one wanted to hear it but it was so desperately needed. And time after time I read on to find out that The Church, the one body whose main purpose is to seek out and defend truth and protect those who are oppressed by lies and tyranny- THIS BODY- is the body that repeatedly blacklists these amazing pieces of literature as being “too dangerous” or “heresy”. Then several centuries after the guy who wrote it dies, the church comes around and says “oh, maybe this guy got it right. Let’s start doing it this way.” How can anything that pushes humanity towards greater compassion, liberation, freedom, love, and tolerance be AGAINST Christian teachings? How can we be afraid of the truth and cast it as being “dangerous”? It is our duty to seek and defend it, to refine it and leave our minds open to the idea that maybe we don’t have it right just yet, but we must continue to progress. Sometimes the truth is dangerous. Sometimes it rattles our realities. It shakes our world. It threatens our ideas of economics and prosperity and our personal desires for what our life will look like. SOMETIMES IT IS DANGEROUS, and that is okay. It is our absolute responsibility to work towards something greater and more inclusive and Christ-like, and often throughout history it has taken an atheist or an agnostic to remind us of the basis of our faith, to remind us what we are all about. The hypocrisy is disgusting. We need to wake up NOW. We need to realize the truth NOW. We need to make our world more tolerant and humane and egalitarian- not several centuries from now, not 50 years from now. We need to open our minds and take some risks right now. 

My children will grow up in a home where diversity is valued, where sexual orientation is understood to be not a choice but a reality that is to be embraced, whatever that is. Creationism will be seen as a beautiful and valid belief, but at the same time evolution will be held in equal regard; no one knows how the earth was made, and science is a tool for helping us understand our world. Where is the danger in theorizing, wondering, asking? Jesus will be the basis of our understanding of how we should interact with others; absolute compassion and non-judgement. But wisdom will be valued, regardless of where it is found. My children will come to respect and understand other faiths, to see the truth and wisdom that is shared by humanity as a whole, and to value the beauty found in every culture and belief system in our world. My children will be free to ask any question, to entertain any idea, to be curious, willful, dedicated truth seekers.

God doesn’t need humans to defend Him. If our faith is dependent upon the backbone of The Church’s decisions, judgement, and defense, it will be too easily broken. If our faith requires us to uphold lies for fear that it will crumble if a greater truth is discovered, then it is not real to begin with. I won’t stand for a faith that requires me to shelter and guard it. My Christ, my faith, doesn’t need me. It can stand alone without me. God doesn’t need my help to be real, or good, or just. He is already. I won’t live in fear that one day I will discover something greater than God. That is not faith in God at all. That is desperately clinging to some human construct. Bring me truth. Show me danger. Let me ask questions and follow my heart. I won’t allow the church’s fear to stifle my voice anymore.

From now on, I am not going to sit around and wait to be inspired. Nothing will ever change if I live that way. I am not going to cling to my ideas or wait until I know something for sure; I am going to accept that I might be wrong now and I might be wrong later, but I need to keep seeking and changing and moulding my world. I am not going to wait for my own children to arrive to share my ideas and beliefs. I want to learn and share now, to infect and be infected. I see my little brother with a strong, sturdy faith. But it is built on the idea that someone has to be right; that someone must have it figured out already and that we must cling to one understanding. This is dangerous, because I can already see it being hardened into judgement, intolerance. I admire his resolve to share what he believes, but I fear for the way he is taught to understand. It is a narrow understanding. It does not encompass the broad span of human experience. It alienates much of the world and the wisdom that is offered from diverse corners, GOD’S WISDOM, which is found in so many places. I want to engage with him, to help him see a larger picture- but I risk being labelled and rejected, the process that accompanies judgemental understanding, over-critical thinking. But that risk is something that I will encounter everywhere, and that I will have to learn to deal with. Where better to start than with those who will most likely love me anyways, respect me regardless, and perhaps even be more open to what I have to say? It is my challenge to myself: to kill my own hypocrisy and stand up for what I believe in. It’s something we hear since kindergarten, quickly followed by the message “conform, conform, conform” so that sometimes we forget about and lose track of that original message, that message that burns in our souls and that is so easily hidden by the pressures around us. We need to uncover it. We need to alight our passions. We need to have our hearts broken for the world around us. We need to wake up.

This is a blog entry posted by someone very dear to my heart. She is a beautiful, brave, artistic, loving individual and I admire her in many ways. I admire her for the way she lives, for her openness, for her sympathy. But when it comes down to things that really matter, sometimes I feel like she doesn’t know anything about me. Sometimes I feel like she assumes that she knows things about me because of some label that has been placed on me. I wanted to respond to this post on behalf of those who live for love, but who the world labels as judgemental, selfish, condescending, and outdated based upon a label that they are associated with. Here is what she said:

LOVE IS MY RELIGION. [RANT].

these are the thoughts of a 20 year-old atheist. i do not aim to offend, nor to shove my beliefs in your face. i respect religion, but i do not believe in it. if it works for you, great, whatever gives meaning to your life is fine by me. love gives my life meaning. i suppose that you could say it is my religion. i do constantly struggle to become a better person, to judge people less, to do the right thing even when it is hard, to tell the truth even when it would be easier to lie, and to show love to everyone, even if they do not show it to me.
*commence rantings*

there is so much more to being a good person than your sexual orientation or whether or not you have sex before you’re married or that you have “wrongful thoughts”. thinking something does not make it the same as acting upon that thought. i hate the view that lustful thoughts are “sins”. human beings are sexual creatures, and i believe in exploring that sexuality. i believe that it is important to exercise caution, and to be sure that you aren’t harming yourself, emotionally or physically (unless you’re into that). i believe it is important to be sure that you aren’t engaging in sexual encounters to try and fill a void or to feel valuable. it doesn’t end well, in my personal experience. sex is a wonderful thing…but it can hurt you if you overestimate your ability to keep your emotions separate. i believe that sex is a very important part of any relationship, and that its important to know whether you are sexually compatible with someone. not because it is everything, but because it is important. my mother once said to me: “you wouldn’t buy a car without test driving it first!”, and i definitely agree with her metaphor. sex is NOT, by any means, the most important thing in any relationship. all the same, it can be the ruin of one. i believe that it’s important, that it keeps you young, and that it can be used to dispel stress, bad moods and petty arguments. one look at the star of Lets Talk Sex with Sue…and it becomes very apparent that sex keeps a person young and vibrant. i hope that i’ll be as sexually vibrant as she is when i am 82.

i hate the word “sin”. i do not believe in sin. i believe in choice. i believe in living your life in a way that is right for you. that doesn’t mean that you should go around stealing, cheating, and hurting people. those things are easy, but they aren’t right. i know that i said that it can’t be said that one thing that is right for someone should apply to everyone, but if everyone did these things, the world would be in complete chaos. it already is, in many places. this sounds elementary…but it isn’t nice to lie, cheat, steal, and kill. i don’t really think many people can argue with that. i believe in being kind to others, in taking the high road. i believe that the hardest roads in life are often the best ones to take, because they make you stronger. i believe in solving problems without violence. i believe in love. i believe that everyone deserves a second chance, and that it is wrong to say that something that is right for you should be right for everyone else. i believe that sometimes you have to learn things the hard way, but i don’t think that anything is truly a mistake. i don’t believe that regret should be held on to…it is not productive, in the long run. i believe that one’s sexual orientation is NOT a choice. i believe that love is love, and if you find that in someone of the same sex, that is more than okay with me. everybody deserves to be with someone that they love, someone that they are attracted to, someone that makes them feel happier than they have ever been. 

[end of her rant]

I find it interesting how she has separated “religion” and “love”, as if they are separate ideas. Yet, the mantra of many religious faiths is love. Unconditional love is the absolute bottom line of many faiths, including Buddhism and Christianity. Faith is so diverse, so differentiated. It’s hard to make broad, sweeping statements about any of it— including atheism. I include myself under the label of “Christian”; Christ is my reason for life, for love, for my future. But why does that have to be separate and compartmentalized away from this idea of unconditional love? My faith has two points to its doctrine: the first is to love God. My God is justice, peace, understanding, forgiveness, equality, fairness, mercy, graciousness, patience, and LOVE. The first pillar of my faith is to love LOVE? Sounds like it’s along the same lines here. The second main point is to love people. You might think of the ten commandments when you think of Christianity. The first commandment is to love God, the other nine fall into how to love people; do not kill, do not steal, do not lie. These are things that society as a whole accepts as innately wrong, and that hurt people when you do them. So the entire basis of my faith is LOVE. LOVE is my religion.

Honestly, I agree with her on a lot of these points. I agree that homosexuality is not a choice, and to love someone of the same sex is not a sin. I also hate the idea that lustful thoughts are sinful, because I think you can have lustful thoughts about someone you love and it can add to your sexual drive for them. If you always stifle your sexual drive you might just turn it off altogether. I think a healthy sex life is one hundred percent important for a relationship, and requires some adventure, imagination, and fantasy.

However, I very strongly dislike the car metaphor. I don’t think these things are even remotely comparable. Are we all just products to be bought? Sexual compatibility is important; but it’s something that you grow into. We aren’t all born knowing how to be good lovers, and while some might pick it up pretty naturally, others might need a little more practice and work at it. So why would you dismiss someone because they are bad in bed? If you love everything else about them, then you would be willing to work on their love-making. It’s something to work at together. It’s something that takes communication and diligence and practice, getting to know each others’ bodies, to state what you want, to stretch and explore each others’ comfort zones. To stick with the horrible car metaphor, just because you don’t like the way your car runs on the test drive doesn’t mean you can’t soup it up after purchasing. Sex is your adventure together. Make the most of it, work hard, and trust that one day it will be intuitively, naturally, effortlessly beautiful. If you spend a lifetime with a person you are bound to become a natural at how to drive them wild and get their heart pounding.

Lastly, the idea of there not being sin is troublesome to me. I don’t care what you call it, but some things are just wrong. I think you have to have a moral compass for some things. Killing is wrong. Stealing is wrong…etc. These aren’t just choices. They are BAD choices that hurt other people, and that is ultimately what sin is. So while my friend contradicts herself here, saying at first that there is no such thing as sin and then progressing to talk about things that are morally wrong, I understand what she is trying to say. She doesn’t like the idea of a God that sets up a moral foundation. She is more comfortable with the idea of the law, of man and society creating these moral boundaries. It is certainly easier to grasp in this sense, but the basis of our North American laws was Christian morality, and the idea of the 10 commandments and how to best love other people.

In closing, I wish to re-post her blog entry with my own additions and alterations. What I add is in bold or [brackets]; I have un-boldened everything that is her original thought:

LOVE IS MY RELIGION. [VALID THOUGHT].

these are the thoughts of a 21 year-old atheist Christian. i do not aim to offend, nor to shove my beliefs in your face. i respect all religions [including atheism], but I do not believe in all of them. Whatever works for you, great, whatever gives meaning to your life is fine by me [if it does not hurt others]. love gives my life meaning. i suppose that you could say it is my religion. i do constantly struggle to become a better person, to judge people less, to do the right thing even when it is hard, to tell the truth even when it would be easier to lie, and to show love to everyone, even if they do not show it to me.
*commence rantings*

there is so much more to being a good person than your sexual orientation or whether or not you have sex before you’re married or that you have “wrongful thoughts”. thinking something does not make it the same as acting upon that thought. i dislike the view that lustful thoughts [that do not objectify people as mere bodies] are “sins”. human beings are sexual creatures, and i believe in exploring that sexuality. i believe that it is important to exercise caution, and to be sure that you aren’t harming yourself, emotionally or physically (unless you’re into that). i believe it is important to be sure that you aren’t engaging in sexual encounters to try and fill a void or to feel valuable. it doesn’t end well, in my [friends’] personal experience[s]. sex is a wonderful thing…but it can hurt you if you overestimate your ability to keep your emotions separate [so why not just enjoy it when you are in situations where you don’t have to keep your emotions separate? Why not enjoy it only with those who love you completely, so that you can be free to enjoy it to the full- in your heart, mind, body, and soul?]. i believe that sex is a very important part of any [committed] relationship, and that it’s important to know whether you are [become] sexually compatible with someone. not because it is everything, but because it is important. my [friend’s] mother once said to me [her]: “you wouldn’t buy a car without test driving it first!”, and i definitely [do not] agree with her metaphor [because I believe that sexual compatibility is something that can be worked towards, with practice. And who doesn’t like practicing?]. sex is NOT, by any means, the most important thing in any relationship. all the same, it can be the ruin of one [especially if it’s used as a weapon, or used out of the context of a committed relationship]. i believe that it’s important, that it keeps you young, and that it can be used to dispel stress, bad moods and petty arguments. one look at the star of Lets Talk Sex with Sue…and it becomes very apparent that sex keeps a person young and vibrant. i hope that i’ll be as sexually vibrant as she is when i am 82 [hell yes, sista!].

i dislike the word “sin”. i do not believe in sin [as being poor choices that hurt other people or yourself]. i believe in choice. i believe in living your life in a way that is right for you [and that doesn’t hurt others around you]. that doesn’t mean that you should go around stealing, cheating, and hurting people. those things are easy, but they aren’t right [hence, I believe in sin]. i know that i said that it can’t be said that one thing that is right for someone should apply to everyone, but if everyone did these things, the world would be in complete chaos. it already is, in many places. this sounds elementary…but it isn’t nice to lie, cheat, steal, and kill. i don’t really think many people can argue with that. i believe in being kind to others, in taking the high road. i believe that the hardest roads in life are often the best ones to take, because they make you stronger. i believe in solving problems without violence. i believe in love. i believe that everyone deserves a second chance, and that it is wrong to say that something that is right for you should be right for everyone else [except in these cases mentioned above, where your choices hurt yourself or others]. i believe that sometimes you have to learn things the hard way, but i don’t think that anything is truly a mistake [and I think that poor choices that you regret are mistakes, but they can be learned from in order to make wise decisions in the future]. i don’t believe that regret should be held on to…it is not productive, in the long run [you should use your regret to fix things; to apologize to people you hurt, to forgive those who hurt you, to make a promise to yourself that you will make better choices. Feeling regret is a good thing- it shows that you are in tune with the consequences of your actions, with your effect on others. You should use your regret, deal with it, make the most of your situation and move on]. i believe that one’s sexual orientation is NOT a choice. i believe that love is love, and if you find that in someone of the same sex, that is more than okay with me. everybody deserves to be with someone that they love, someone that they are attracted to, someone that makes them feel happier than they have ever been. 

[End of MY rant].

The point of this exercise? We are more alike than you think, friend. We both believe in love, but our basis is different. I believe in love because I believe it is the most beautiful expression of perfection. I believe in a God that imprinted a desire to love and do good to others upon each of our hearts. You believe in love because it is beautiful, productive, and makes you feel like you are contributing something positive to this world, even if it only lasts as long as the atoms that make up our bodies are here to experience it. But see? We’re not so different after all.

All I wanna do is love you,

But it’s hard to keep the fear at bay.

All I wanna do is hold you,

But it’s hard knowing you can’t stay.

They wear optimism masks like a perfect disguise.

They smile with their lips, but their faces are lies.

They’ve seen the end to this story, and they try to hide

The fact that you will leave us but it’s there in their eyes;

You can see it in their eyes.

You might not be able to pick me up

But you hold my heart in your hands

And it’s more than enough.

We all live for a dream, for something we need,

And in mine you are running.

How is it that in your limited state

You learn to love better and to smile anyway?

If all a person needs to run on is faith

Then you’ve lapped us all once and you’re winning the race.

I don’t know what to say, I can only cry

When you get scared and say “I don’t want to die”.

But it makes my heart laugh to see you turn it around,

To see your tears become a smile; you have this moment right now.

You make the world your adventure.

Life is your song.

You’re not invincible but you’re sure damn strong.

I need to learn to let me love you

Even though you can’t stay.

I need to hold you in this moment

And to smile anyway.

Let’s let the tears run down

And the laughter ring out.

I want to be like you someday.

It’s Valentines day. I love my man. A little candle light (courtesy of my ever-thoughtful roomie), some Coldplay, he made some killer pasta and I threw together an apple crisp. Found some wine in the fridge, made some fruit juice too. After dinner we tackled the attic repair job. Nothing more romantic than duct tape, makita drill, a flashlight, and just the two of us up there in the -10 attic. Ran the dishwasher, did some laundry… tried to watch a movie but it wouldn’t play, so we just relaxed on the couch together then turned to some Big Bang Theory. He makes me so happy. I can see us growing old together for sure. <3

Ah, what can you do?

There’s nobody like you.

Nobody knows me at all.

-The Weepies

I used to enjoy the idea that nobody knows the real me; everything that lies underneath the surface of sweet nothings, of exterior serenity. I was my best-kept secret. No one could hurt me, no one could touch me if I just kept all of me inside of myself. But then I realized, what good is that? How do you grow and change and morph and flower if you are stuck inside a box of filters and lies? What good is it to you to be unknown? What good is it to the world to live as a hermit in the midst of chaos?

The best lesson I’ve learned is that you don’t have to have it all together to let someone in. Life, like love, is messy, and the only way to get anything out of either is to share it. I am still learning how to let people know me; it is a hard thing to do. It is risk and danger and hurt and joy. I don’t want you to see my dirty socks strewn across the floor; I don’t want to cry in front of you and let you see my tears. I want to let people in when I’ve managed to get all the socks in the hamper and when I’ve let all the tears fall from my eyes. But don’t we all have dirty socks and uncried tears? It’ll never be perfect, so why not let others come join you in the depths of the mess, to add to it and help you clean it up, to laugh and cry about it and roll around in its messiness?

You can’t love the world and remain detached from it at the same time. And that is what it ultimately comes down to; what you are, who you are, is defined by how you love. Love is the ultimate, absolute, consummate expression of perfection, messy as it is. We don’t always do it right, but when we do, nothing beats that all-connected, relational, understanding moment of letting someone know who you are straight to the core and having them love every bit of it, no conditions.

Better than a secret I can only share with myself; it’s the greatest truth, and it’s dying to be known.