Sunday, November 20, 2011

When You Have no Idea

This post is a somewhat a departure from religion and other themes I cover. I was reading some fitness blogs, as I often do. I am also thinking of starting taekwondo again, the popular and greatly criticized sport (criticised by people who don't understand the point of it). So I have been thinking about fitness and body image a lot. I think I understand how it is for people who are overweight and are trying to get into shape. Hard, that is what it is. Slow progress is also what comes to mind, nothing like what shows like the biggest loser would have us beleave.

Still the truth is, I have no idea what this feels like. I have never been overweight. I have never been so out of shape I was endangering my own health. I do know what it is like to struggle to get back to my prepregnancy weight and not achieving it for years, but that is not the same thing, because I was normal weight through all this. I was "overweight" slightly during my pregnancy but the second I gave birth I was normal weight for my height, so not the same thing at all.

I don't undertand what it is like to carry another me in excess fat. I do know what unexpectedly gaining weight does to my running. I do know how it slows me down and makes my runs shorter and frustrates me, but that is not the same thing.

I am not writing this to show off the excellent convergeance of nature, nuture and will. I am saying that we do not understand the strugles of others especially when we have not lived through them. It would be arrogant and selfabsorbed of me to think these minor physical problems I have gone through tell me one thing about the struggles of truly overweight people.

People who are thin often think they know what is going on and compare it to their own struggles and come up with an offensive and wrong picture of overweight people. They are not any lazier than the general public, they can be extremely hard workers and that may contribute to their weight problem. They do not necesarily gorge themselves, just a few extra unused calories a meal over a few years can do more than a few weeks of total gluttony. An extremely large person can't just get on a treadmill and start sprinting away the pounds, no matter what the biggest loser would have you beleave.

Did I get it right? I did say I do not know what it is like to be overweight or the struggles but like with any people who are different from me I try to encounter them as people and look past the differences and try not to explain them away using my own experience. If we do try to explain things using our personal experiences to explain other people in areas we know nothing about we end up with statements as stupid as: "That person is black because they haven't bathed in a while." That statement is offensive and completely incorrect, unless the person we are talking about is a caucasian coal miner. Weather or not a person's circumstances match ours, or not, we should attempt to get to know them as real people and not lessen their humanity by turning them into objects and narrating their stories outselves.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

The Lies we Believe

I never accept what people say at face value. I do not think this makes me a cynical person nor does this make me an ass. You may say: "But you gotto trust someone. How can you live like that?" Quite well, thank you. That is not the point, I trust my husband. The point is he is a human being and he might be wrong and frequently is. I am wrong a lot too so don't just accept everything I have to say because I am so impressively intelligent and silver fingered. If you do the next thing you know you will be in some jungle drinking poisoned kool aid. I will start a cult, if I can't get people to think for themselves. There is good money in cults.

Good people, honest people, trustworthy people, intelligent people are often wrong. Remember back when e-mail was the thing and people sent forwards? Remember the" Hotmail will start charging", " they will deactivate your account if you do not forward this", "SUNSCREEN CAUSES BLINDNESS, wont somebody think of the children!!!!". Now we have similar things on facebook too but let’s use the e-mails as examples. All these were false. All these were sent to me by honest and trustworthy people yet they were false. These people assumed because they got them from honest, trustworthy and even intelligent people that they must have been true. After all honest people would not forward these. The people who sent these to them thought based on the exact same principle and all quickly pressed the forward button without looking it up and verifying it. After realizing how the chain worked I started to look stuff up.

There are people out there who knowingly deceive people. Are they evil? I don't know. I do know they are sometimes looking just for a little fun at our gullible expense. Sometimes they want our money and at other times they are trying to do something good and will lie to achieve it.

People tell little white lies for ideological reasons all the time. This very much includes Christians. I do not trust Christians at face value. They spread misinformation sometimes because they just heard it from someone they trust other times they think a little white lie will bring glory to God better than the truth. Here are a few examples: condoms don't prevent HIV, abstinence only (condoms are great at preventing the sexual transmission of HIV, so is abstinence, but abstinence is preferable to ideologues so they outright lie). Darwinists (term for a group of people who do not exist in reality) believe life started from nothing (if they mean evolutionary biologists, they lie. Evolutionary biologists do not officially care where life came from, just how it changed overtime). So there are some, of many lies, perpetuated by Christians for good causes. I picked a few obvious ones.

Don't trust in humans without question. I only trust in God fully because he is the only one worthy of it.

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

FIrst Vlog!!!!

So, made a vlog. My accent in English has gtten atrocious and stuff but hope you like it. My face also looks super long and other self criticisms but I think I did pretty well. I used the abilities gained from talking to myself all the time so I felt pretty comfortable talking to the camera.


Monday, September 26, 2011

Love

Many times we forget the concept of love. It is a central principle of our faith but it seems like it is talked about very little at church. We Christians seem to skip over it as a kids lesson. It is alright for the little ones at children's church but not for us mature Christians. We like to deal in mature stuff like financial stewardship or church growth. Those topics maybe mature, and boring, but very much not important compared to love. ”And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (1 Corinthians 13:13)

I see Christianity like the game of Othello. Easy to learn lifetime to master. Just like the game after we learn how Christianity works we just want to play, have fun and start mastering the game. Any player of any game like Othello and chess would tell you practicing the basics is key. Terrible is the chess player who does not have the basics down but knows the most complicated moves. We should still remember while reading my clever analogy that Christianity is not a game it is our lives and who we are. We don't need to win. It is not a game of who can be more holy. In fact one upping others in the Bible is frowned up on. It is said to be Pharisee like behavior of showing off.

Sometimes the holiest people know the value of simplicity the best. It is no secret that my husband is a Quaker and I, while not sure what I should label myself as, have definite Quaker sentiments. I love their adherence to peace, tolerance and the traditional value of simplicity. Love is simple, love is clear, love is joy, love is sacrifice when necessary. Love is the love of Jesus. I have confined my studies mostly, due to time constraints and possible ADD, to the life of Jesus. It has really taught me what is important. Love is important. Faith is important. Looking at the world through the lens of love makes knowing what would Jesus do way easier. What would Jesus do? Jesus would love.

I pray to love more and to act in love. It is something God has given to my heart to do. I could never love too much. I think Christians could use genuine non-self seeking love a whole lot more.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Corintheans 13)



Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Sexism in the Church

his is a sort of an addendum to my post about sexism. I did not want to talk about sexism in the church and among Christians in it because that was not really necessarily a part of the Christian faith but a behaviour of His followers. I thought I would write about that separately here. I hope this will be the last post about sexism I write for a while because I would like to focus on other things and deal with my anger with this issue alone with God, but I am open to chatting about it in the comments.

When I was about 14 and experienced anger toward God for the first and only time in my life. It started out so simply. I was spending Christmastime at my grandmother's house. I arrived with my mother early before my brother and father. They had some business to take care of. Before they came we three took turns doing the dishes and I was fine with it. It was fair and I was happy to co-operate. When they came it came my turn again I stated that it was one of their turns. My grandmother stated, with the support of my mother, that they did not have to because they were men. Why not? Well they were men, like that meant something. They worked hard all year. Well, did my mother not work hard all year to keep the house and she still was? “Women's” work, when done well is not laziness and my mother was not lazy. The men were not working my mother was, the same as ever. I became frustrated and angry in a way only teenagers can manage. Refused to take my turn out of principle and stomped up to the attic and cried from sheer frustration and self loathing remembering all the awful things preachers in church has been saying about me. I really felt worthless in the eyes of God.


Once I went to a Sunday school class that was about marriage. I was only about 19 so marriage was not on my radar but it was the only interesting sounding class on offer. At this point my parents had had a successful marriage of over 25 years, now they are at something like 35, I cannot remember. The couple teaching the class had been married only a mere 12 years. They taught the class they stated, very clearly, that their was was the only “Godly” way to do a marriage. They advocated that all Christian marriages should have the man as the only breadwinner and the woman should never work after marriage unless absolutely, vitally, no other choice about it, necessary. The most infuriating thing was the lack of confidence in his position as the head the man exhibited. He repeatedly said “Christ” pointing to himself and”church” pointing to his wife. He did this over and over and over again. Really? Are you afraid that we will forget or you just have no confidence in your Biblical manhood that you need to keep doing that? It was ridiculous. He also advocated not using birth control and letting God be in control of that. Really, I thought God was omnipotent and therefore capable of being in charge of that regardless of what measures we took? They stated that theirs was the only way. Well, that was obviously false in the fact that my parents had had a Godly marriage of many more years than theirs and my mother had worked during most of it and they had practiced birth control. So, obviously theirs was not the only way. I was angry to have been given false information in such a condescending way. As I left the Sunday school room. A girl, I have no idea who she was, asked me if I had liked the class. I made a mistake and told her I did not like some of the aspects of it, especially the condescending manner in which a man rules over his family. She told me I had a problem with submission. She was right I do, I have a BIG problem with unquestioned submission to some flawed human. True, I suppose the penis is an organ of leadership, but still, even it is fallible phallus (sorry for the penis sarcasm).

So many Christians, men and women alike come up to me and tell me that this submission is noble and Biblical and I don't get it. I mean I get what the Bible says, as far as I detailed in my last post. Still when contrasting it with the explicit spiritual equality of men and women that the Bible claims this is a bit of a contradiction.


These things are white washed to be something noble but they feel like punches to my stomach. The noble job of a woman raising her children in the home, while her husband works. Noble job of cooking, cleaning doing laundry and other assorted things that go into the job of a help mate, that word makes me gag. It is like I am supposed to be the Robin to my husband's Batman. The Cato to his Green Hornet. The Tonto to his Lone Ranger. I am to play second fiddle and like it, weather I like it or not and say “Ugh, kimosabe, the roast is ready.” Then there is the no women preachers thing. Finally the most egregious thing. Men are supposed to be the spiritual leaders of the home. This is the last bastion of the separation of the roles. Many modern churches are willing to give women the same rights as men, except this. It makes me feel like I am inferior to my husband. It really does. I have listened to preacher after preacher try and justify this and make me feel like it is a privilege to be given the same spiritual role as my child when it comes to my husband. I have heard it all, don't even bother explaining it. Men with followings of thousands have tried to explain it. As have women who are happy as their roles not being equal partners with their men. It hurts, it does, it hurts a lot.


Also I admit, I am angry, hurt and betrayed by the Church, not by God but by the Church. I am a little annoyed that God allowed his word to be written in such a manner as to cause this but it is his Church that interprets it and insults my intelligence, talents and worth as a human. It makes me angry about being a woman. I feel like I can't be myself because I am a woman.

How has the Church betrayed you?

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Speaking Christian

This is very interesting and makes me want to buy the book it is based on and it validates some of my previous assumptions and will probably inspire future blog posts.



There is also a longer article that you can read that goes in more detain and then there is a book too. I so wish I could afford it.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

More of this except with talent

Found a great new blog on wordpress, the writer really deals in very similar stuff as I do.

http://moonchild11.wordpress.com/

Go check her out.