11.15.2010

Autumn: A Season of Change

 

I caught a show on Cartoon Network that I used to love as a kid. It was one of the first all-CGI, 3D cartoons to be a series on TV, called Reboot! From what I can remember it was about a civilization that lived inside a mainframe, and when ever the user wanted to play a game, it would crash down on the city in a huge purple block, and who ever was trapped inside it had to become a player in it. There was also an Antagonist who's sole purpose was to shut down the "mainframe" and if things got too hairy, the protagonists would simply call for a Reboot - but only if necessary, because everything would get destroyed.

Looking back on it, it sounds like the entities in the game were just bits of RAM trying to live their life uncorrupted without having to reboot the system - since that causes all the RAM to reset. But I was a kid back then, and I didn't know anything about computers. I just saw it as a flippin' sweet cartoon. But watching it now on TV doesn't hold the same excitement as it did 15 years ago.

In fact, many things that I once loved I can't get into any more...even things that are fairly recent. I guess it's just that time of year again, just as a Freshman English paper I wrote was titled - "Autumn: A Season of Change."

With the wedding being less than 365 days away now, most of the big things are taken care of. We have picked out the date, the venue, the time, most of the guests, the caterer, the colors, the concept, the honeymoon, and most of the people in the wedding. All that's left are the flowers, the clothing purchases, the ring purchases, and all the parties/get-togethers in between.

Yet, people on the outside don't get to see all of that which is already in place, they just want to ask questions about the frilly stuff...which is all the stuff we haven't picked out yet. The reason we haven't picked it out is because it doesn't matter if we don't have an infrastructure in place for the wedding first.

Going through all of this planning, with the understanding and realization that there is a pretty good chance we're going to have to pay for it all ourselves, puts many things into perspective. It requires a change in how we live our current lives, what we spend our time doing, and making sure that things get taken care of (especially on my part) so that we have an uncharacteristically smooth wedding day, and first couple months.

All the sudden, playing World of Warcraft is much less important in our lives. However, its time allotment has been filled by Sims 3. The game is cheaper (since I didn't pay for it) and it helps put things into perspective. It shows you just how much you focus on your character versus the other characters in the house - especially if the other character is designed as closely as possible to your future spouse.

Both times that I have spent a significant time playing the game, I have found that once my child character has lived to reach her true potential, I am no longer concerned about my character and am ok with it dying. It was strange the first time I played it, because it felt like a piece of me was dying - but I was ok with it since I knew that my kids would live on to be successful.

I guess that is the kind of experience that actual parents have in some form or fashion when they realize that they aren't the 20-somethings their mind's eye thinks they are - but are actually 40-50-60-somethings who are biding their time, enjoying the rest of their life, knowing that their kids were raised right, and will be just fine when their time is up.

Something else I can't seem to get that into this season is sports. With the Official NHL Team taking over the Dallas Stars twitter account, and posting updates manually (as well as Twitter changing their authentication methods, breaking my simple bit of code I was using), I don't really have much reason to keep up with the Stars as often as I used to. I'm sure that comes as a disappointment to the couple thousand people who follow The Dallas Stars and Dallas Stars Live, hoping for live updates during the games...but it's just not there for me. I think 3 years is a pretty good run, and enough time for the actual team's marketing department to pick it up.

I was very hopeful for the Cowboys this season as well, but after going 1-7 in the first 8 games, that quickly went out the window, until their most recent game put them at 2-7. I was glad to see that Wade Phillips was fired - it sucks for him, but he wasn't able to cut it with the Cowboys. Perhaps Jason Garrett can pull them out of this ditch and get them to round 2 of the playoffs next season.

I'm also finding it hard to get back into photography. I picked up the FlipVideo camera, and that goes with me nearly everywhere these days. However I record very little with it - and mainly intend to use it for important events related to the wedding and family firsts. When it comes to photography though, I am forced to rely on the technical shots instead of the artsy ones - I just don't feel the art in me any more. Maybe it's because I've all but lost my Muse, or perhaps I have just been out of it too long, I lost my touch.

Whatever the reason, stuff is changing for me, only this time it's different from the others. I guess it was like when I moved to Plano back in 2008, and I wanted to cut ties with just about everything that tied me to Fort Worth. I didn't do anything the same as I did back at my old apartment - I wanted to feel completely new. Perhaps I'm getting to that point now, with this marriage on the way, and plans to move into a Rental Home somewhere in Plano the month after.

It's nice to have a season of change every once in a while; I just wish it would progress a little faster sometimes.

10.18.2010

A fairy tale beginning...

A little more than a year ago, I posted about my "new girlfriend" and how everything came to be in the process of meeting from match.com, and meeting all my friends, going to Quakecon, and then making it official.

During the past 14 months, 10 of which were spent living together, everything has gone pretty smooth. I've been able to adjust to having someone else around the house with me - which has been aided with her busy schedule, giving us each some alone time during the day, but also some time together. I think it has reached a good balance.

We have our share of tickle wars and face-noms (think: goldfish lips on your cheek, with each "nom" counting as a fictitious +1 point.) games while laying together on the beanbag. Things have been about as easy-going as I suppose they should be.

I am pretty sure that there is no one else who could fit my personality better than her, except myself. We provide a good balance for things we see differently, and share enough common quirks that it keeps things fun.

So this past August, I started looking at engagement rings trying to match what she was interested in (and not interested in)...I wanted something red, without much diamonds, and uniquely her. My original thought was to find the reddest pearl I could get, but after a search online, most of them were a light pink, and difficult to find. So I turned to the gemstone variety. But the ring I wanted was out of stock until October. So I had to wait.

Jenna's Engagement RingMeanwhile she kept dropping hints including the phrase "I have to marry you." If that's not a big enough hint for a guy at a positive answer, that guy doesn't need to be in a relationship. October came, and I had enough money saved up, so I bought the ring...a 10k Gold Garnet ring with very few diamonds on it.

When I ordered it, it was scheduled to arrive the following Monday - so I ordered a couple other things so that I'd get a barrage of packages, hoping to conceal its arrival amongst all the others. I bought a customized FlipVideo ultraHD digital recorder (to record everything from the Engagement, to the Wedding, to our kids first what-evers...since I've never owned an actual video recorder), and (what turned out to be a dud) a VGA-to-RCA/S-Video adapter to connect my laptop to the tv in the bedroom.

Unfortunately, the video recorder arrived while she wasn't at home, but the ring and adapter arrived when she was...and the ring came that Friday instead of the following Monday. Since she intercepted the package, I had to go find things that would look like I could have ordered them, but didn't want her to see. Fortunately, that Friday was also the company cookout at work, and I needed to go to the store to pick up some food to bring for the lunch. I grabbed some bags of chips, and happened to see Iron Man 2 on DVD while checking out - perfect! She loves Iron Man, and Robert Downey Jr. even more.


Once I had that part of the package, I had to find something that could have represented the bulge in the envelope where the ring box was, since she got to touch it. It was off to Toys R' Us to find an Iron Man action figure that could have fit inside the envelope. It turned out that the Toy's R' Us shut down where I live, and was converted into a Halloween City. Lame. So it was off to the Target right across the street in hopes that they too would have some toys. And they did...


While I was about to leave, I decided to stop by the Video Game section to see if they had Boom Blox for Wii, since I'd been wanting to pick that up for a couple months now...and I needed a reason to have a Target Bag in my possession...and as luck would have it, they did! So then it was off to her work to tell her that I finally got the video game we have been looking for, and that I had "some surprises at home for you. You'll have to wait and see what they are when you get home. I'm not going to tell you what is in the envelope."


[After everything went down, she said she remembered the name on the envelope from the ring website. So she didn't really buy into the notion that I ordered anything Iron Man in the mail. Oh well...my fault for not having the ring sent to my work instead of home.]

When she got home that night we watched Iron Man 2 and she opened her toy, and everything went as planned.


After about a week of sitting on the ring, I couldn't think of any special events going on in the coming days, to actually base the proposal on. I did find out via one of my friend's blogs that he was also working on his "big news" for next month - so I had to get mine taken care of now (in time for it to wear off for his) or push it back till December. But sitting on a perfectly good ring for another 2 months, when she could be wearing it didn't make any sense to me.

She mentioned that she had Saturday night off since she only worked during the day - so I figured we could go to Downtown Fort Worth, to Sundance Square and have some Uno's Pizza, and then I'd go to a little gazebo area between a couple restaurants, and if it was secluded enough, I could propose there. Then afterward, we could hit up the Theater, and watch RED.

The Plan for notifying everyone was to check in at Uno's Pizza with "pizza with the gf @ Uno's Pizza", and then to check in at the theater with "going to see RED with the Fiance @ AMC-9" and let people gleam the excitement from just those two posts until I could update my status on the computer.

It didn't quite work out like I wanted, because my phone couldn't get GPS coordinates inside the pizza building. While we were eating though, we did shoot a video for her sister to show just how deliciously messy the Pizzaria Uno's Chicago Classic pizza is...


Then we headed off to find the gazebo since we still had another 2 HOURS before the movie started. The gazebo was full of people eating from all 3 restaurants, so that wasn't going to work - and I was at a loss. Things just weren't coming together quite right. On the way to the car to drop off the pizza left overs and pick up her sweater, we happened to see a Cinderella Carriage pulling some folks down the street, and she commented "that would be fun to do if you had to ask me, say, an important question *wink wink*" which I laughed off and commented that I've never been on one before, but since we have 2 hours, we could check it out.

I flagged the driver down and found out where they were loading, and then we headed over there to find out how much it cost and played with the video camera a little bit. The guy that was handling the transactions was also taking pictures for people with their cell phones, and I took a couple shots to make sure my phone would produce a decent picture.

Jenna had a couple sips of some Sangria at Uno's and I had some Raspberry Colada. alcohol doesn't affect me at all, but for her, just one drink will do it...and she started getting goofy while we were waiting for the carriage to return...


I don't remember what started the "in the butt" phrase for that video, and I wasn't intending on recording anything she said - I was actually testing out the night-capabilities of the FlipVideo ultraHD and she just started talking.

The carriage arrived, the guy took an unflattering picture that included my unflattering belly, and then we were off. During the first part of the ride (when the camera was on) I found it difficult to not look at the camera to see if it was pointing correctly...but I also looked nervous because it was a 10 minute ride, and I had to find a time to sneak the ring box (which had a lot of purple frilly wrapping and a tassel rope) out of my cargo pocket, while she wasn't looking. Fortunately, we passed by the Reata and the roof-top plant sculptures caught here attention. So I pulled out the box, and after a few seconds she finally noticed it on my lap by our hands...


And the rest is history. We finished the ride, then went to hang out at the Barnes & Noble/Starbucks where I finally updated all 3 check-in's at once, and about an hour later we saw the first movie of our Engaged lives.

I didn't think any girl would actually want to have a Cinderella Carriage ride - I figured that was too cheesy. But she said it was perfect, and even though she knew I had ordered a ring, she was still surprised that it was happening.

10.01.2010

I Write Like Results


After submitting my three most recent blog posts to the I Write Like text analyzer, I apparently have different writing style for each post - these three I can definitely see as being the ones I write like:

8.27.2010

Faith like *whose* child...?

If you're new to this blog, this post will probably hurt your head as it will pose an idea you may not be familiar with. You've been warned.

Ever since adopting my most recent perspective on life, everything has just made more sense than it ever did before. I no longer have to struggle with the same things I used to deal with when trying to solve life's issues. Things have just become easier to accept and understand now that the complexly abstract (and rather unfounded) anomalies have been removed from the equation.

Unfortunately the same zeal I used to have for convincing people to believe has been hard to subside when it comes to convincing people to question what is going on around them. It's also a little difficult to see people putting complete trust into something that doesn't intellectually make sense (i.e. prayer).

To read that someone has made an attempt at something, and is now awaiting the outcome while fastidiously praying and asking others to pray seems like more of a reliance on Luck than a request for a "divine intervention." They would actually have a better chance of getting their outcome if they do something to work towards the outcome they desire. This reliance on prayer gives me a visual of sitting in a windowless room, alone, rehearsing pleas in their mind - essentially thinking "please let this happen, please let this happen, please let this happen." It's the same chant we did as kids, fingers-crossed, and eyes tightly shut after we ask our parents to take us to the arcade pizza parlor, Chuck E. Cheese. The only difference between then and now, is that if it doesn't happen, we chalk it up to "oh it just wasn't God's Will" whereas a child will ask "Why not?"

Doesn't the Bible talk about seeing the world through the eyes of a child? That only one who has faith like a child will get to Heaven (Matt 18:2-6)? Surely this doesn't mean someone that "believes blindly." If you're around any child who can form a complete sentence with a cognitive thought behind it, there is no such thing as blindly believing. The path of questions quickly goes from the simple to the completely abstract and existential...all with the simple, one-word question: "Why?"

So, what if "Faith Like a Child" meant putting in the time, effort, and questions to find the real answers to problems...answers that dive to the nth degree of the problem? What if there is a nugget of truth to some of the Far Eastern religions related to reaching "Enlightenment" by obtaining a more complete understanding of the world they live in? What if the end result of those questions is coming to the conclusion that you are what you are, and the world is what it is, and that in the end the circle of life just goes on and on...that the only thing you have control over is how you live your life, and nothing else. What if Heaven and Happiness is finally letting go of everything except that which you're responsible for, so that when your life is over, you have reached the realization that this is inevitable, and you've done all you can with what you can - and are able to go in peace?

I don't know the precise answer to these questions, nor do I know if anyone else actually does. I do know one thing though, and that is the less I have worried about how other people act, and the more I try to understand my own personality and thought processes, the less stress my life has and the faster my time flies by.

For me, prayer was never a big part of my life. There were phases during which I would go through the motions (before meals, at church, prior to reading my Bible), but never would I find myself praying for help, or things, or anything else that I could take personal responsibility in achieving myself. I also never asked others to pray for anything related to me, as prayer requests (especially requests made by proxy for third-parties) seemed more like gossip than a plea for help. And even those that were pleas for help were only prayed for in the capacity of "Lord, you've heard all these things mentioned here today...." Really? Then why even bother bringing them up?

We were taught in Church to turn everything over to God through prayer, but that always seemed burdensome and weak to me - especially when it was taken to the extreme during prayer requests for the stupidest stuff. "No, I'm sorry, I will not pray for your family member to change his mind about something...I will not ask God to override his free-will to meet your whims and limited understanding of how this experience is going to redirect his life's path."

The only benefit I can see from prayer is to turn over something that is ailing your mind and causing you to worry and stress. It's the same benefit that Forgiveness brings, except the issue is internal, and not against somebody else. Sometimes people need an outlet to vent their stress and talk it over. Mine is a blog, for others it's a friend, and for still others it could be prayer.

My concern is not that people pray, but that they let it become the sole decision making engine in their life. It would be akin to me posting a question on my blog with an expectation of an answer or request for an item at the end...and then I sit back and wait for comments or for someone to send me the requested item. And if I don't get them, I assume the answer is "No"...

...when in reality no one read the post at all.

5.14.2010

How I see it (part 4)

This is the last segment of this series.
So why is it that some people have to tout these stories as absolutely true, instead of a possible 40-chapter parable? And who told them these stories were true to begin with? And what basis did that person give for them being true?
The main issue that I have with people who want to pronounce things as absolute truth is that they are doing so using the material in question as the authority of it's validity.

People say the Bible is true because God wrote it through man. How do we know that? Because in the Bible, it is written that these words were inspired by God, and thus are true.

That's circular logic, and being a programmer I cannot accept that.

Then there is the chronology of Jesus. Now, I'm not so bold as to claim that no one ever existed named Jesus - I am inclined to believe that the stories about his life were embellished over time. Consider the "man to legend" of common-day individuals: all the Chuck Norris jokes, the stories surrounding those who fought in the Alamo, or those that lived in the American Frontier. Those people haven't been around nearly as long as Jesus' legacy has, yet they are already attributed fantastic feats.

If one portion of the Bible is to be taken figuratively because "that was the writing style of the time," then it would follow that all books in either Testament of the Bible were meant to be taken as figuratively or literally as any of their adjacent books, because they were all written around the same time.

In conjunction with that, is the fact that written records were few and far between. And the finding of the dead-sea scrolls merely indicates that there was a point in which the stories were written down - but up until that point, they were passed down generation to generation by those charged with maintaining the historical folklore.


Then there are the many religions across the world that share the same stories. My reaction to this is that it was because up until Issac and Ishmael, the Middle East followed the same teachings in the Old Testament. After that point, it split. My concern comes up with the similar stories told in different ways, for example the two stories of the Flood of Noah.

Both Flood stories in the Bible vs Koran are similar, except the Koran shows that the flood only covered the known world. The Bible indicates that it covered the *entire* world. Same event, two different tellings - each with different implications.

If the flood covered the whole world, where did the water go? We'd be crushed by the atmospheric pressure if it is all in the sky. If it did not cover the whole world, what else didn't actually happen as described in the bible?

These exaggerated stories make for good examples of the Power of God, but they don't lend credibility to the book they're in when it says one thing happened as described in infallible text, when something else actually happened.

And if it's meant to be a hyperbole to describe some kind of life lesson, then one cannot take that explanation for one story and but revert to a literal translation in other areas where it fits better.


I guess my main concern with all of this is whether or not I want to choose to give up my life - the only one I have - to follow the instructions of one of many religions, with expectations of a reward after death. That's where the Faith part of it all comes into play - whether you choose to believe and have faith that the things you've read in the Bible are true, and will actually take place.

If that were the case, and there weren't so many exaggerations in the stories of the Bible that people get upset about when you counter them with reality, then I probably wouldn't have an issue believing it.

My second concern though, is whether or not I will get to enjoy the "afterlife" period or if my behavior on earth is merely for the reward my soul will get, and I'll have no participatory privileges when the time comes to transition from the physical to spiritual realm.

If I am not going to be aware of the reward or punishment my soul must endure (just as I was not aware of any spiritual existence before birth), then I don't care if it goes to heaven or goes to hell. If I do get to participate in the resulting consequence of my life on earth, then obviously I am strongly inclined to do what it takes to make sure I am on the right side of the pearly gates.

Either way - heaven or not - Jesus says in Matthew 7:13-14
13"Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. 14But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
If the gate to heaven is narrow, and only a few will find it, then how crappy it would be to find out you wasted your life on earth avoiding things, and doing other things that you might not have otherwise done, only to find out when you died that you didn't make it on the guest list to heaven? Why do Christians think they are automatically going to heaven when it's clear that only a few will make it?

I think this is one of the more overlooked passages related to Christian lifestyle and the promise of eternal life. Live a good life, live like Jesus, and follow the rules, and *maybe* you'll get into heaven.


I'm not going to deny the existence of Jesus Christ, or the possibility of God, but I think from this point onward, I'm going to live my life as I see fit, and make adjustments where necessary from a logical/physical standpoint. I just don't see it anymore, when it comes to the spiritual realm and things of the supernatural. There is too much reality getting in the way of faith.

As Lewis Black said "I would love to have the faith to believe that the world was created in seven days... but I have thoughts... and that can really f@#$ up the faith thing...."

4.19.2010

How I see it (part 3)

[[This is a blog series - if something doesn't make sense, wait until the series is finished]]
And as such, I have often tried to explain these kinds of things to people who attribute them so, and encounter a closed mind (of which I have been a victim during my religious hay-day), and an unwillingness to even consider there may actually be a physical explanation for things.
It wasn't until I lost my job for the first time, not of my own volition (fired) back in 2006 that I realized what some people tended to do with religion. I was sitting at home, having talked to some people, and found that there were those out there that advised I "pray for God to provide me a job." Pray for a job? Like, ask God to up and give me one? Where's the personal responsibility in that? I've heard it said before that "God is not a cosmic bellhop."

That being the case, there had to be some participation on my part to make this effort come to fruition: getting my resume out there. The odds of me landing a job, simply sitting on my couch praying day and night were extremely slim. Someone would have to do the leg work - whether it was me actively looking, or someone who knew me and my situation actively looking. It wasn't just going to fall into my lap through prayer.


Several other times throughout the past couple years, I've heard similar statements: "It's in God's hands." Or "It wasn't God's Will." And even something along the lines of "You're not asking for the right things."

It wasn't until just recently that I had heard similar after-the-fact statements in a religious discussion on my website, www.the-spot.net, dealing with Job and how God let Satan do whatever he wanted to him, that things became clear. That clarity was how convenient it is to say that something is the cause, after the fact, when really there is a direct cause before it.

If someone dies of cancer, there are 2 ways of looking at it:
1.) They couldn't beat it, and the disease destroyed their body.
2.) God called them home.

But what if they weren't a Christian? Did God call them home? Or did he decide it was time for them to go to Hell, so he pulled the plug. People seem to overlook that part of the scenario when they're at a funeral of someone they know never went to church, and didn't believe in God - they simply look at the crying family members' faces and lie to them about their relative "being in a better place." A lake of fire is a better place than what? Here on earth?

Consider Job from the Bible. Per the discussion on my website, started by others, not me, God let Satan mess with Job - took his job, his possessions, his wife, his family...everything Job had. Then in the end Job got everything back (different, but restored). And throughout it, Job didn't lose his faith.

The commonly voiced theme of the story says God knew Job would be faithful, and he let Satan do all that stuff because God is omniscient and knew Job wouldn't stray. If that's true, there is no Free Will. If it's not true, God isn't omniscient. If it's both true and false simultaneously - then either God knows all possible outcomes to any possible decision branch to infinity - or the story was written after-the-fact in order to prove a particular characteristic of a supreme being that the Bible is in the process of defining to the reader.

I provided the example on my website that back in July of 2008, I knew Obama would become president (for various observances of the national psyche). I also knew that the Health Care Bill would pass, for those same reasons. I could have easily said that I knew the future of both instances, and thus didn't need to vote for Obama, or need to write for encouragement of the Health Care Bill. On the other hand, if they had failed, they would not have shown up as examples in this discussion.

The same goes for various books of the Bible that are often used to pronounce something as definitively true. Saying that I know the future by telling this story is only knocked off its metaphoric-parallel to the book of Job and God by the fact that I am not a supreme being. Writing the story of Job after the fact, and attributing its outcome to God is the same thing as one of my friends writing a blog post about how I predicted the future president and the passing of legislative bills. Creating evidence to prove a case...aka circumstantial evidence.

Unfortunately, extrapolating this throughout the bible brings into question what other stories are circumstantial and written with the purpose of describing God, but after the fact. Nearly every book (if not all of them) in the Bible is written years, decades, sometimes hundreds of years after the fact. Some of them (like Job) are purely about a single person, with a major life lesson in them (and possible other smaller bits one could extract for themselves). In other literature, those life-lesson stories are called "fables." Jesus called them "parables."

So why is it that some people have to tout these stories as absolutely true, instead of a possible 40-chapter parable? And who told them these stories were true to begin with? And what basis did that person give for them being true?

[[Part 4 coming soon...]]

How I see it (part 2)

[[This is a blog series - if something doesn't make sense, wait until the series is finished]]
Consider this: all the time the earth has existed before you were born, you have no recollection of. That is BILLIONS of years of things existing prior to your cognitive recognition that anything could exist.
Now consider this: our life span is merely 120 years tops...often less - far less.
Finally consider this: when you die, without religion in the picture, there is no more cognitive recognition of existence. There is no realization that you are dead...there is no realization that you were ever even alive. There is no realization period - everything in the world will go on without you, and you will not be the wiser. People will continue to be born, and die, and you will have spent your one blip of life doing things that were supposed to make you happy.
What a bleak picture that paints. Rationally thinking, though, it begs the questions - what if religion was put into place to help people cope with such a bleak result to life? What if people knew this was what happened, but in order to console others they conjured up a place of happiness and joy to give people something to look forward to when they died?

This happens to be the premise of a movie called "The Invention of Lying" but there was a time before that movie was even released that I was contemplating such a possibility.

Consider all the rules in the Old Testament that the people and priests had to follow. The long list of things that were unclean to eat (pigs, aquatic animals with out the combination of fins *and* scales, buzzards, rabbits, hawks, camels, etc) usually were carriers of disease or created health concerns. Sleeping with relatives and being gay produced genetic disorders and/or transmitted diseases. Disobeying elders, or authorities, created chaos for a civilization. Worshiping other gods and introducing other religions into the society undermined those which were put into place to maintain order and consistency.

If read from a worldly point of view, it appears that the rules of the Old Testament were to get people into some kind of civilized fashion after having just come out of an environment of slavery and thrust into complete freedom. Such freedom to do and be whatever you want requires constraint or the result is bad...like a teenager moving out on their own for the first time, and realizing they can stay up as late as they want, go out to eat as often they want, and buy whatever they want - only to find responsibility waiting for them in the morning, and when bills come due.

Consider the New Testament: it's mostly about loving each other and not focusing so much on the Law of the Old Testament. After generations of generations had dealt with the Law for so long, the ones who prided themselves on keeping the Law took it upon themselves to make sure others did as well as they had.

Jesus came, saying in Matthew 5:17-20 that he did not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it...that the law was still in place, but his role was to provide an example of how to live according to the law and what that kind of lifestyle should look like.

He spends much of his time teaching people how to love each other and how to forgive. He also spent a lot of time explaining that in order to get to heaven you have to believe in Him, and get others to believe, and also still live according to the rules. He doesn't go into what heaven is like all that much - and if the thought is followed that it's simply a reward-stimulus, it makes sense not to describe it any other way to that to say it's amazing beyond words. After all, I am not interested in going to heaven to spend all my time singing church hymns and being with my family...that sounds pretty boring and stressful to me. I'm also not interested in the proposed alternative either.

The reason I'm not interested in being around this stuff is the people that I've been around here on Earth. It's so often misconstrued that it is the Job of a Christian to go and recruit people into Christianity, no matter what it takes, and whether they want to or not. I've seen it attempted nicely, through guilt trips, and through insults. I've rarely seen it actually be successful though. Someone has to be looking for something else out of life to take on a religion and belief factor. As an academically-minded person, there are too many things that offer more realistic explanations to the very things people attribute to be Works of God. And as such, I have often tried to explain these kinds of things to people who attribute them so, and encounter a closed mind (of which I have been a victim of during my religious hay-day), and an unwillingness to even consider there may actually be a physical explanation for things.

4.16.2010

How I see it (part 1)

[[This is a blog series - if something doesn't make sense, wait until the series is finished]]

I am a programmer and system developer.
It is my job to understand how systems interact, and how data relationships are interconnected.
It is my nature to dissect things and reassemble them to learn how these relationships exist.
I am actually in the process right now, at work, developing a piece of software to manage the intrinsic relationships between our ecommerce store platform, and how we manage our site.

It is with this perspective of dissection, and the culmination of certain bits of knowledge, experiences, and observations that I have taken a serious look at what it is I believe with regard to religion, and what I do not.

Such an investigation was spurred by observing several people I had known anywhere from a couple years to my entire life...having been with the assumption that we were in agreement on many aspects of our upbringing.

The turning point for myself was the morning of January 22, 2009 - when I hopped on Facebook to find that everyone I had shared many ideals with were suddenly standing in opposition to what I considered a fair and inevitable event...the election of President Obama.

My primary concern was the status updates and twitter posts from people who had professed prior that they were Christians. However this morning, there was nothing but pure hatred coming from their mouth just as there was the morning after elections in November 2008.

I did not and still don't understand why this is the case - I can only conjecture that it is for the very same reason I considered it to be OK to shun people who did not believe as I did only a few years earlier.

It was over the course of the previous 6 months that I had finally realized that the very things I was taught to believe in was precisely in opposition from what this country was founded on.


Since I was a child, I was taught that I must go out and explain to people that how they are living their life is completely wrong in God's eyes - even if they were of another denomination than Baptist, it was still wrong...priority was on the people who didn't go to church, of course, but even non-Baptists were still subject to be living in sin.

I had no problem patching up the gaps in the Bible between what I had learned via science and what I had learned in church. To me, the idea was to bridge the gap with some kind of faith-based truth, grounded in the Bible.

If I came across people who didn't believe like me, I would just remove them from my life, which was fairly easy, since my step-dad provided such a great example of how to shun friends and family, and to live independently.


Fast forward to 2003, and you'll find me in the process of being kicked out of my parents' house after being pulled out of East Texas Baptist University. Why am I being kicked out? Because I had learned to question that which was presented as infallible truth by my parents. I felt the need to understand why things were being carried out the way they were because I had just spent the previous year and a half being required to make decisions for myself while living independently on a college campus.

During this time, my communications were cut from the people I had gone to church with, and I was made to go to a previously forbidden church (the Methodist Church with the woman pastor) by these same parents who forbade it. Over the course of 5 years, my mom and step-dad had changed from Baptist to Church of God, to non-Denominational, to a break-away church, to Methodist. This went completely against what I had been taught - but I figured if they were doing it, it was somehow OK.


Jump to 2005, and I had been kicked out in 2003, and living with my dad and step-mom for the following 2 years, trying to go to a previously visited church in Arlington, because I knew my mom & step-dad had gone there, so it must be an OK place to go. Unfortunately during the 2 years I attended it, I felt as if the point of it all was very meaningless. I had one semi-close friend there, and the sermons were not very applicative, and the Sunday school was equally weak.

I moved out on my own in August of 2005, and did not feel like it was worth the 25 minute drive to visit the church any more. I also did not want to try other churches for the awkward introduction phase - I simply wanted to go and be left alone, or just not go at all.

Instead, I watched the Science Channel almost exclusively, and learned a great deal about the world around me - nature, space, earth, and people. I learned how planetary systems form, how stars die, and even the projected time left for the sun's energy to burn.

It was during the next couple years that I came to a sobering conclusion: that without religion in the picture, one's life is as bleak as a speck of dust carried away in the wind.


Consider this: all the time the earth has existed before you were born, you have no recollection of. That is BILLIONS of years of things existing prior to your cognitive recognition that anything could exist.
Now consider this: our life span is merely 120 years tops...often less - far less.
Finally consider this: when you die, without religion in the picture, there is no more cognitive recognition of existence. There is no realization that you are dead...there is no realization that you were ever even alive. There is no realization period - everything in the world will go on without you, and you will not be the wiser. People will continue to be born, and die, and you will have spent your one blip of life doing things that were supposed to make you happy.

What a sobering thought about our petty existence in the universe.