Upbeat Update

I am afraid my posts have been coming off a bit negative lately. Maybe somber would be a more accurate description. In no way do I want to present myself as some "brooding scholar" locked away in his room typing away furiously to capture his random thoughts. That's not me at all! Also, by no stretch of the imagine is my life rough. My roommate teased me the other day and said he sounded like me for "complaining about everything when life is great".

Work continues to go well. I am fortunate to have a job (that I like) and although our company is hurting, I don't feel at risk of losing my job. However, I am going to watch my spending a bit more and try to squirrel away some money in case 2009 does see me unemployed.

My brother is back in the States with his lovely fiancé. They are quite cute together. I bought her a couple of sweaters since Mexico is a bit warmer than here. She loved them and said I have great taste, what can I say? She also wondered why my brother did not dress as nice as me. I found it amusing. Having extra money to spend on wardrobe is quite nice.

I am going to get a new haircut! My hair is not that styleable, but I think I can make a new look work. For those of you know me in real life (if you even care) I will try to include a new photo when I relaunch my Facebook account. Wow, that whole paragraph was really vain.

Plans for moving next spring have been set! A coworker needs a roommate and I think it will work splendidly. Now, I can see the worried look on some of your faces. There will not be any conflicts with work. She works in a different building (across town) and reports to a completely different management team.

Next month I am going to the optometrist and getting new frames. This always excites me.

This week at work we are having a door decorating contest. I have gotten very into it. It's going to be great!

This morning I intentionally mismatched my socks. This was to counter the socks I unintentionally mismatched last week. One was tan, the other cocoa.

Saturday the family leaves for vacation! This is only the third family vacation we have ever had and the second I can remember. My brother and I told my parents we were going to have a marathon session of Disney parks to make up for the crushed dreams of our youth.

The Wall-E soundtrack is delightful.

That is all.

Faith

"'You are accepted. You are accepted, accepted by that which is greater than you, and the name of which you do not know. Do not ask for the name now; perhaps you will find it later. Do not try to do anything now; perhaps later you will do much. Do not seek for anything; do not perform anything; do not intend anything. Simply accept the fact that you are accepted!' If that happens to us, we experience grace. After such an experience we may not be better than before, and we may not believe more than before. But everything is transformed. In that moment, grace conquers sin, and reconciliation bridges the gulf of estrangement. And nothing is demanded of this experience, no religious or moral or intellectual presupposition, nothing but acceptance".

I have experienced grace. What I mean is the feeling above described by Paul Tillich. My experience with grace came last Easter. I was coming out of a spiritual funk and during church I started crying. It was during the time that I was ready to come out to my family and the emotion was overwhelming. I was sad, angry, and confused, but the feeling of grace overwhelmed me and I knew everything would be okay.

Amazing Grace. For a long time I never really understood that song and felt weird singing about it because I did not like to admit that I was a wretch. I never felt like a bad guy. Of course, I know I am not perfect. I guess I just felt that saying you were a wretch was a bit harsh. Plus, from where I stood I was morally superior to most of the people in my life.

Now my faith is radically different than it was before. It lacks the black and white that I had before. I fought through nihilism over the summer to reach the point I am at today. However, I am not sure where that is.

I grew up in a very conservative Christian home. The fall from this conservative Christianity was brutal. I just finished reading a great book by Peter Gomes: The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus. It was written for people new to the Christian faith and to people like me who have fallen out of conservative/evangelical Christianity. I can't think of anything in particular I took away from it, but nevertheless I recommend it. I have a hard time evaluating my previous Christian faith. I know it was quite self-centered and immature and dealt a lot with me failing in sin (being attracted to guys) and asking God to heal me. A lot of it was me being angry at God for withholding my dreams from me. I thought he was punishing me. However, my firm belief in there being "a plan (Providence)" allowed me to bear the suffering for years. My faith was also about works, and I tried to be a force for good in the world. However, I don't know how much of that was really tied to Christianity.

Today I am trying to live a moral life. I find this is a lot harder than I ever imagined. It requires, like Jesus said, "mercy not sacrifice". This does not mean that sacrifice is unnecessary, it just means mercy trumps it. I am now much more cognizant of my actions and the way my life impacts others. I have always had a passion for volunteering and a soft spot for immigrants. I'm working on increasing the time I give to others. Now that my life has become more devoted to morality I wonder what's the point? If there is no God, I don't believe in salvation through Jesus Christ, and I am highly skeptical about there being anything after this life, why should I care about this world? Shouldn't I just do everything I can to ensure my security, protection, and comfort?

No. I love creation. I want to build community. I want to share grace with the world. I want to usher in a messianic age (to borrow from Reform Judaism). Many people say that you can't be moral without believing in God. Maybe that's true. Maybe atheists don't know the source of their goodness.

I don't believe in cheap grace. It seems to me that many Christians (myself included) have a tendency to do immoral things and treat them as a "stumble", but that's all well and good because Jesus forgives. Now that Jesus has lost that role in my life, I find all of my decisions have a lot more gravity. Before I speak a slanderous word I mull it over. I realize that I will be living with the consequences. I can't just hide my conscience behind the cross.

I very much want to be a follower of Christ and I very much want to believe in God. However, I don't really believe in the theistic God that I held on to for so long. I also don't buy into the doctrine and dogma peddled by the church over the millennia. Lately I am especially irked by Augustine, Calvin, and rapture "theology". I feel so much hatred simmering when it comes to evangelical Christians and fundamentalists. I want to wake them up but would hate for their beliefs to crumble as mine have. It's not like I have anything better to offer them.

I like religion. I really, really do. I am a constant seeker and studier. I still pray, though prayer life has been severely damaged by my feeling of God's departure. Seeing all the hate and ignorance in the world I often wonder if it would just be better to jettison religion altogether. However, I am not the biggest fan of secularism.

This post didn't go anywhere and I am sorry to be so bitter and blunt.

I will leave you with one thing to mull over. During church today we talked about how easy it is to "love humanity, but no one in particular". So true.

Nothing Better?

I want to welcome the handful of new readers who know me in real life and are now reading this blog. To the left you will notice I have diversified my links. Enjoy.

A few weeks ago I was reading this article and was caught off-guard by this line:

"And, just as JPL pitched in to help create Wall-E, now the movie's DVD release will help NASA name its newest robot: NASA announced a naming contest for its Mars Science Laboratory rover scheduled for launch in 2009. This will be JPL's biggest robot to date -- about the size of a compact car, compared to the kitchen table-size Phoenix."

"Kitchen table-size?" How big is that? What kind of measurement system is that? Does this table have leaves? How many? Is it a table in a formal dining room? Is it eat-in kitchen size or breakfast nook size? I am not satisfied with this description!

I thought this was a rather odd, yet hilarious way to describe an object's size.

This I Believe

"God is dead". Nietzsche's famous declaration. I wondered how on earth anyone could have the audacity to utter those words. How arrogant! What a poor, lost soul...

Ironically, I am here today to make the same statement. However, it must be tweaked to say "god is dead" for the God I worshiped so long was an idol. He was an old man god, anthropomorphic, picking up fallen sparrows and doling out wrath and smitings.

As I continue on my "faith journey" (conservative Christian vocabulary) I am unsure of where I am going.

However, there are a few things I do believe. I believe in resurrection; new life from what was once a corpse. I have seen and felt it in my own life. I believe in casting off the things that have weighed us down. I believe in humility. I believe in charity. I believe in justice. I believe in mercy. I believe in grace. I believe that despite evidence to the contrary there is more to life than what we see. I believe in transcendence. Tomorrow offers hope. Tomorrow offers new life. With resurrection comes insurrection, a casting off of the old order and the building of something new and better.

As I have mentioned before, God and I have been wrestling it out, and I think I have emerged from the fight, limping and a bit disoriented, but understanding things I never did before.

I will not apply a label to what I am now: atheist, agnostic, deist, christian atheist, Christian, liberal Christian, liberal Quaker - I don't think any of these are fully applicable.

This has not been easy. I have always considered myself an intelligent person and have pursued understanding and knowledge with a passion. However, it appears I had neglected to apply this same trait to religion. I will not fault my parents for raising me in a conservative Christian home. They were doing what they thought was best. Growing up there was no "metaphorical" interpretation of biblical events. As a child I converted cubits to feet to see if a full-size brontosaurus would fit on the ark. God really led his people out of Egypt with a pillar of fire and a pillar of smoke. Jesus was coming and the rapture was real. A younger me would often fear Jesus would come before I had a chance to grow up and that I would not get to experience being an adult.

I have come a long way from the faith I had as a child, yet I don't know what or where I am going to end up. Atheists seem so arrogant and agnostics so Charlie Brownish in their convictions.

All I know is this:

"Lord, we ain't what we want to be; we ain't what we ought to be; we ain't what we gonna be, but, thank God, we ain't what we was."

Worst Side

I recently made a new acquaintance. During the course of our conversations I found out his parents are building a house. They own a business in town and appear to have a decent amount of money. It turns out the price of the house they are building is between 2-4 million dollars (by my estimates). Knowing this sparked an intense jealousy. I started looking at houses online that were in a similar price range and began fantasizing about buying one. It was absurd.

The biggest struggle I currently face is overcoming my desire to buy things. I am hyper-materialistic. I love things. Shiny, new things. I will openly confess that I also want money, lots and lots of money. I can easily see myself becoming a millionaire and traveling the world floating from one luxury hotel to another.

The question that arises is why? Why do I want all this stuff? There are two main reasons. The first is to impress people. I enjoy complements and desire people to admire the crap I own. Second, a part of me still thinks things will make me happy. It's true. I feel entitled to things that will "make my life wonderful". Funny, my DVD collection contains movies never watched, and the Wii with several awesome titles sits unused. The idea that these things are adding value to my life is nonsense. Any joy they bring is fleeting.

I used to attribute my financial blessings to God and was so wrapped up in praising the blessing I kind of forgot about the source. I cannot begin to describe the changes that have occurred in my heart over the past 4 years. Back then I would not have realized how immature I was. I am quite certain that future Joseph looking back 4 years from now will be equally astonished at the growth that has occurred.

My motto for 2009 is "Here's to less". There is no need to purchase everything my heart desires. Soothing existential emptiness with stuff is idiotic. Drawing the line about how much constitutes "less" is still tough. What constitutes "enough" to where I don't feel the things I have are causing me to live immorally? I very much like my Burt's Bee's lip balm, J. Crew peacoat, and P.F. Chang crispy honey chicken. Also, a new digital SLR camera is hopefully in my future.

In seeking an answer to this question about balancing giving and having I asked my father. For several weeks I had been debating buying a new peacoat. I ended up buying it but was torn for quite some time. Lately, giving has not been the priority I had told myself it would be. In talking to my father he made the statement "it's not the coat's fault". Buying the coat does not prevent me from giving to the poor. It does not prevent me from volunteering or helping widows and orphans. He also stated guilt should not motivate my giving. Referencing the sermon on the mount he implied that the hand that shops should not know what the hand that is helping those in need is doing. I love my parents.

Moving forward I will strive to have a more generous heart. Slowly but surely I will keep changing and growing into the person I want to be. Hopefully the worst side of me can slowly be killed.

Changes

9 months.

It is amazing how much has changed in such a short period of time. In 2006 I came out to the first person ever. It was a girl I had become best friends with. Everyone thought we were going to get married. In fact, I spent a lot of time agonizing over whether or not to marry her. That's another story for another day, maybe.

Fast forward to now. I am relatively comfortable with my sexuality and more and more people know. This has moved from consuming all of my thoughts and energy to just being a part of who I am.

It has been interesting growing as an individual. It has been painful.

After regaining my sanity and mending my soul I was still left in the midst of rubble. Most of my dreams had gone up in flames. The fire consumed the dream of a wife and kids, my midtown home, hosting the church home group, my heirs. However, it did not stop there. It continued to consume my faith and all the assumptions and convictions I had previously held.

I refuse to live life afraid of the future. Daily I will strive to overcome cynicism and my own ego in order to make a positive impact on the world.

November Recap

I have decided to resume my posting by catching you up on what has happened while I have been away.

First off, I was not as successful during NANOWRIMO as I had hoped. However, I did much better than I did than last year.

The reactions to the outcome of the election almost caused me to lose all hope in humanity. If I had to read one more Facebook status mentioning "how far we strayed" as a nation in God's eyes I would have lost my mind or been arrested for assaulting horribly misguided people with a big stick.

I was convicted this month about my spending by a friend who rarely offers critique. I am redoubling my efforts to get out of debt. The fact that I have any right now is a shame.

Facebook and I decided to take a break. I will probably come back in 2009, but we just needed some time apart. I was spending an unhealthy amount of time on it and needed to disengage.

I did something I don't regret, but I do regret the motivation for doing it. I asked someone out for the first time. I was rejected, but not offended or hurt. He was gracious and I have learned an important lesson about listening to myself instead of the voices of others. I will also not let jealousy of others lead to me to such rash decisions in the future.

I have finally decided that the idea of me buying a house is utterly ridiculous. I do not need to take on that burden and at the age of 22 there is no need for me to own a house in the first place.

I am headed out of town for work and it's going to be cold and snowy. I bought some gloves.

I have been thinking a lot about faith/God/religion lately and will probably be posting a few things that I have written over the past few weeks.

It's good to be back.