The Summer of Informal Education

Explorations yield learning and if not, we would not know the things we do today. Because men and women from our history undertook the endeavor to discover, we thrive today on the knowledge of their experiments, thoughts, and ideas. We hear many great stories about Aristotle who was a scholar among scholars. In his life time, he studied physics, math, language, and theater. He acted as both a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He sought knowledge and enlightenment throughout his life, but had no formal education.

Aristotle believed that education should evolve from a form of habit, a general curiosity to learn more about the universe and humanity. He laid the foundation for the essential liberal arts education.

To truly enjoy life and learn about ourselves, we must explore beyond ourselves, our comfort zones, and even our fancies. Should a physicist be able to write poetry? He should not have to, but to do so would make his life richer. Can a musician also talk about the aesthetics of logic, about metaphysics? Why not? We’re pigeon-holed into believing we must study only what can flourish an occupation. While it is extremely important to learn a trade, we misuse education as a means to entering a higher strata of income.

What education should really be, rather than a means to getting a degree to start a job, is an exploration of humanity. Aristotle learned from Plato this way, not simply focusing on one subject but spanning all subjects. Wait, you may say, but then people will waste their time and money at college. They will take courses they do not need like sailing, basket weaving, or medieval literature when really, they only wanted to become doctors. I agree fully that pursuing a degree in something you may not want a job in is worthless, pointless, but that does not mean we cannot study these things.

Over the summer, students tend to dull, the sharp wit and sword-edged intelligence becoming rubbery and useless. Why do so many high school and college students cease to learn over the summer, stop challenging their minds? Simply, we base our education around not learning but a structured way of doing something. We toil at projects not designed to teach us, but to keep us busy. We spend our high school careers completing tasks, checking off all the boxes so we can receive a degree at the end of four years. But how many of us truly learn mitosis or cognitive psychology or function integration? If we do not retain this knowledge, what is the purpose of high school? A time when we simply prove we can temporarily gain knowledge and regurgitate it? We do not prove anything else, that we have truly figured out something or that we can do something useful.

We should not show up to class simply to show up. We need to learn something, and the lack of learning is the fault of the system, the teachers, and the students combined. Somewhere, everyone is doing something wrong and that became the huge gap of true education we now face.

Sadly, a degree does not signify that you have learned anything, only that you’re willing to put your mind to tasks (which is a mightily useful skill, true). But how about those things we must learn about philosophy, humanity, music, arts, communication, bar tending, swimming, sky diving, Batman, and photography? Surely we cannot get degrees for all these things, and we don’t have to. We only need to follow Aristotle’s example. If public schooling fails us, we can at least take it upon ourselves to continue learning things that interest us to better flesh out who we are.

I encourage you, especially if you’ve just graduated high school but even if you haven’t been to school in fifty years, to continuously educate yourself. There are books written on everything possible, and with the advent of the internet, we cannot be excused to not know something. No, you don’t need to go to college to learn something. Professors offer insight and structure, but you can create your own structure and form your own insights.

When studying like this, we can use our own ethical, moral, and cultural views to examine the views of others’. We can learn almost anything as long as someone else has learned it already, and through introspection, experiment, and thought, we can discover new ideas no one has ever considered before. I will certainly be devoting a lot of my free time to independent study. Not oppressive, like school, where we are forced to work on things we will soon forget. Instead, I will explore things that interest me, things I won’t be able to study in college.

For example, I’ve taken a hobby-like interest in higher physics. Now, I’m terrible at math, so to actually pursue physics at school would be suicidal. But my interest can afford me the time during this buffer summer to explore the ideas. If I took a class, I would fail. My curiosity would be punished. But here, I can safely learn about something without the repercussions of failing out of college. Do you realize the significance now of pursuing an informal as well as formal education?

I will also be studying comic books, not just reading them, but trying to understand how they have affected society and how superheroes can reflect each generation’s ideals. Again, not something I’d suggest taking in college, but very interesting none-the-less. Therefore, when I enroll in school as a Freshman next year, I won’t be totally clueless. I won’t have let my brain rot into a gelatinous mound during that summery hot weather time.

I will also of course continue writing. With much free time comes much responsibility to do something useful. I’ll blog more about the project I’m working on as I draw closer to finishing. Needless to say, I have been rethinking how to approach my writing career and have been whittling away at something big. Watch out for that announcement.

I’m going to relax, of course. Sleep in, yes. But I won’t stop learning just because summer has come. I hope I never will.

Want to learn something but don’t have a lot of extra time. Check out TED talks on a myriad of subjects. It will take maybe 10 minutes to learn something incredible.

Billy Collins Teaching

 

Check Out My Newest Spoken Word Piece “Knockout”

Over the past two weeks, I’ve performed this one poem at about five different venues. Tonight, I have just arrived back from an open mic at Cafe Chartier in Lexington, SC. The video below is from last night’s performance at Sit-a-Spell Cafe in Augusta, GA. It is a fairly new piece called “Knockout” first performed at the Black Box Coffee House Show at the Aiken Community Theatre. Enjoy and leave your thoughts below. Tis the season of poetry readings and great thought.

Bittersweet: End of High School

School emblem

If bittersweet were an actual taste, who would buy that candy? That caramel mellow finality, the sugary rush of the future, the dental office War Head zap. Candy companies would fall. Ice cream trucks would cease to echo their repetitive jingles through suburban streets. Bittersweet is nothing but an ending, impossible, too soon. Once you taste it, the best you can do is simply move on.

We have the future to look forward to, however bleak or bright or vague it may appear. That’s the problems with endings. They’re never final. You expect that lump to rise in your throat, your fists to clench with the pain of nostalgia. But you drive off the lot and feel nothing. Not until years later will we realize we may not see most of those people ever again. Never sit in plastic-bucket-seats, cracked down the middle, the desks chipped away, the metal bars twisted to form cages against our legs. Even going back to walk across the campus, we won’t belong there. Everything may look the same, but it won’t.

We’ll become the ghosts haunting students of the future. Our memories are imprinted there like footprints on the moon, but for such a place so used to change, we can be swept away like the dead autumn leaves.

So long we’ve complained about how hard it is, how terrible it is, when really we will pine for such easy days when we knew exactly what we were supposed to do. Knew where to go and when by the ring of bells. Everything was certain, concrete, and final. And now we’re left with the task of undertaking a new phase of life. We’re leaping off the cliffs into dangerous waters, waving our arms, hoping we’ve learned how to swim.

At a basketball game, cheering on. Oh, look, there’s me in the top-right corner!

 

 

An Elegy of Consciousness

The strangest thing is to be alive. Or to be conscious. Especially to the fact that, right now, you’re alive. And that your body will keep pumping blood through your heart down miles of thin veins that dangle like the fragile yarn of the Fate’s within your living carcass. One day, your body will die. Unless you do not die, which might be possible. It has yet to be proven that either you or I (unless either of us are zombie or ghost) can die. When someone proves us wrong, it won’t even matter.

But being conscious does not simply mean being awake, yet it means exactly that. Not simply entering into daytime out of deep REM cycles, because even waking, we sleep. Our minds are passive rather than active. We spend a lot of time watching cat videos on YouTube, passively processing information we might possibly forget. That’s why it is strange to finally take deep breaths and truly consider your existence. To ask, what is my purpose here? Why am I alive right now? How am I alive right now? What will happen next? Or most importantly, what will happen when this body of mine crumbles to dust?

Even overweight and overly hairy, I’m not too fond of the idea of my body deteriorating underground, the diet of worms. But we must face the truth of death; we all must. Death is the only disease no doctor can cure. So, if we’re not dead, why are we not alive? Why do we drool while living droll lives? Why do we stare so often at nothingness so that we forget ourselves, forget we even exist?

It is strange to be human, strange to be anything at all. If we were simpler animals, then the existence from moment-t0-moment would make sense, acting on whims and fulfilling basic needs. Yet we are capable of higher faculties, able to wield our minds like razor-sharp swords. We are intelligent with powerful, breath-taking bodies. What our brains do without us even trying, that is incredible in itself. But with application, what our brains can comprehend, explain in words, calculate– those things are worthy of some consideration.

I have undertaken this notion for some time now. To truly consider what it means to be alive, to experience everything as novel and incredible. Even getting a tooth pulled can be a worthy experience. Edgar Allen Poe, as we can see from his gruesome stories, was obsessed with sensation. He once suggested that any prisoner being beheaded should take heart that he is experiencing what not many are able to experience. But it is difficult to think about pain as good, as useful, but even pain is a teacher. For anyone to truly understand himself, he must experience grief, heartbreak, and ultimately death.

He must stand at the abyss of eternity, looking into the dark, uncertain depths. He must teeter forever at the edge, since we can never prove eternity exists or does not since we will never reach the end. And if we do, those who might could have gloated will not be able to.

It is difficult to imagine ceasing to exist while it is also difficult to imagine existing forever. And at least as humans, we can take solace in knowing we were made into being, that we have some origin. When we consider God, who has no origin or end, our minds fail to come to terms with these things. Yet these are the unsettling, fascinating thoughts that make us lie perfectly still in our beds just before sleeping. Those overwhelming questions that can leave you weeping in confusion, that can blast the breath from your lungs with their pure incomprehensibility.

The best we can do, perhaps, is concentrate and appreciate the present as we often do not do. I do not suggest you forgo the past or eschew anxiety for the future, but perhaps to live as we are now with eyes open. Notice what happens around you. Consider who you are and who you want to be. Compare everything you do, each trivial action, to those visions. Often, they collide because we do not live with the constant consideration of our own core beliefs. We stuff them down our own throats for the sake of personal benefit, laziness, and selfishness.

But one of the only ways we will learn to consider others, to consider our own actual beliefs, is not to live so sleepy, where we must consume energy from aluminum cans. You are a body brimming with energy if only you breathe, if only you use it. If only you begin to truly pay attention to the fact you’re even alive.

Tuesday Musings: Paint Splatters

Watching paint dry is perfectly alright as long as you’re getting paid for it.

While at work, I painted a wall. I painted hard, digging into the crevices between the bricks, painting over cobwebs and the flecks of paint peeling from the last rushed paint job. I worked like it was my job, and it was my job to work. I forgot it was Tuesday, musing Monday. The paint splattered onto my clothes, and my fingers were sheathed in thin layers of black and green.

When I washed my hands, I rubbed my palms raw, stretching back the paint latex like it had been the Venom/Spiderman suit that wraps itself around someone’s body. Then I spent an hour scraping black paint from underneath my clipped fingernails.

I painted the stairs leading down to the wall as well. Unfortunately, some black paint splashed on the green stairs and some green paint smeared on the black walls, like both were trading spit while making out. Not that paint could actually be personified in such a way, since paint does not have lips. Unless it’s a painting of a person. Unless that person is Mona Lisa, who has thin lips and also no eyebrows or eyelashes, for dubious reasons.

As I drove home from work, however, the sky began to slobber raindrops. But the tinkling became a full-stream just-ate-asparagus urination. Accompanied by that thunder that shakes your house. Maybe there is a large child, sky-scraper-sized, dissembling the city he’s built out of Lincoln Logs, that city you happen to live in.

And as I realize the rain will probably ruin if not completely wash away the paint on the steps, I realize I’ve run out of metaphors. Like the lemons that life gives you that supposedly you’re supposed to make into lemonade. Though before hearing this cliché, we perhaps never realized that’s what lemonade was made of, actual lemons—in which case, it tastes foreign. I personally prefer my lemonade conjured from a magical yellow powder and a pitcher of water.

With lemons, however, it is very much impossible to paint anything. I would have no use for lemons.

(More daily musings coming soon, for days I don’t feel like expressing anything of worth, but instead want to talk about painting, making out, and lemons (life’s most sacred things). they will not be daily nor will they be your muse. Unless you don’t want them to and would prefer they flop as bad as John Carter did.)

Tuesday Musings: Pasta For Lunch

When I cook pasta

I always seem to throw the box away

Before I start cooking.

So I’m standing with a pot of boiling water, milk, and butter

But absolutely no instructions.

To stand in such a metaphorical lava pit,

that makes me long for better metaphors as

lava is too often used to describe red-hot situations.

Then maybe I can metaphorizize pasta as a nuclear bomb

needing to be disarmed in some B action movie

that I began watching on Hulu the other day but never finished.

So, here I face nuclear pasta,

possibly the most volatile of all pastas.

Just like in life, however,

I must do my best, pour in the ingredients, hoping for something edible,

Stirring occasionally.

Evolution of Writing (Part 4): Where We Write Matters

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

An environment in which to write in is fairly important for us. Where we write can actually affect how we write, whether at home or in coffee shops, on trains or in the park.

Credit: http://www.nathalydeges.de/

I write in two main places at my house. In my room, I sit at a very cluttered desk to write because it is quiet. My bedroom sits at the far end of the house where no one ventures unless to talk to me. But because the room provides neither heating nor air conditioning, it can be quite uncomfortable. We recently bought a new small recliner with awesome back support. Whenever my other family members are not occupying that room, I set myself up in the chair to write. Sitting up in such a chair really helps my brain function for some reason.

There is also a local cafe in Aiken in which I enjoy the write. The mixture of coffee smells, light chatter, and my blood pumping full of caffeine get me in a hyper-writing mood. My muse comes out to party like he/she has just taken LSD. Well, there are some interesting things about where we right.

Firstly, we must consider the variable of habit. If we associate a certain place with creativity, we can breed creativity in that place. For me, at times, it’s new places. Whenever I visit where I’ve never been before, I feel out of habit and also feel a great need to express my impressions, that I am seeing, hearing, and smelling. Either way works, depending on how dependent you are on place.

Although it is a cliche to see a lone writer typing at some coffee shop, it has been scientifically proven that this helps. Check it out: http://litreactor.com/news/study-shows-coffee-shops-foster-creativity-through-ambient-noise

Another factor to consider is actually the absence or presence of wi-fi. When we have access to the internet, we are more likely to get distracted by social media and Youtube videos of cats playing with balls of yarn. You do, however, have the accessibility to research which (unlike books) is usually up-to-date and more vague, less accurate.

Where we write, how we write, why we write… these are all interesting questions to consider.

Is there a particular place you write that helps you?

A Writer’s Duality

Over the weekends, I like to hold conferences with myself. My other self, I mean. My writer self.

He looks like me, I’m told, but has a different, vague accent. He is creative, always plotting and building characters like pyramids of flesh and blood and words. He absorbs the world and spurts out creativity like it’s Mountain Dew and he’s just eaten asparagus.

Every writer has such a duality, another side to himself. Mine is much more serious, more suave, and a bit crazier. Antsy and energetic, he wakes me while I’m trying to fall asleep. We must live with each other, work with each other, and write with each other. He spits out craziness that becomes words, also giving me interesting ideas at 2 in the morning. But I’m in charge of working it all out, publishing the works he produces to haphazardly. Also, I’m absolutely sure he doesn’t know how to spell or use proper grammar because when I proofread his work, it is usually riddled with mistakes.

But to work together, we have to talk, which is why we talk regularly.

We sit across a table, eyeing each other, discussing things. He exists for a very important reason. Writers sometimes seek to separate themselves from their work. Not that we’re embarrassed by our work, but at times what we obsess over writing comes to interfere with our own lives. For example, while writing a graphic story about a serial killer, I’d often ponder how I might kill one person or another. Not the healthiest habit. Recently, I finished a chapter in my current work-in-progress about a boy’s addiction to meth. I asked someone, “Did you know they sometimes put nail polish in meth? All sorts of acidic things, and that’s why your teeth fall out.”
Often, I encounter the problem of differentiating between what I believe and what the writer believes, for if he writes something, it should be true, right? Or is that something the character believes? The writer must be me, correct, if he lives inside of me. Which he may not. He may be an evil, jovial spirit who occasionally enjoys hanging out in my body and pounding madly on a keyboard until I sweat coffee all over my notes.Well, I tend to write very dark fiction and yet very fun, light poetry. At the best of times, what I

produces falls in between these two extremes, being both comical and emotionally relate-able. But sometimes, I can’t simply be known as the writer, can’t live in writing mode 24/7 which is why I’ve split myself. I’ve created a double-persona: myself and my writer-self.

He sits across the table from me, holding steady discourse. He is a ghost whispering in my ear.

The idea of separating your writing from your personal life is rather obvious. While, yes, I love meeting and spending time with writers, I cannot allow my life to completely revolve around writing. Would Stephen King

still be sane if all he did every day was wonder whether a killer clown was stalking to him or the teenager would set him on fire with her mind? No, he’d go crazy and lock himself in a padded room.

Conversations with my writer self certainly keep things interesting. When I’m performing poetry, I also morph into this other self. Maybe I’m more confident, a little more mind-cluttered. But together, we work like gears. We’re a team.

How do you approach yourself as a writer versus yourself as a person?

Review: Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

One of the coolest covers ever.

I first encountered Chuck Wendig on Litreactor when he was interviewed about his upcoming book. I began reading his very cool blog terribleminds and was hooked, so when his first full-length novel was released, I bought it for my Nook.

Well, I both enjoyed and disliked the book for several reasons. Perhaps reading it was a bit out of element though I can’t say anyone would not be. While it falls into the category “urban fantasy,” I read it more as a horror-drama with smatterings of snarky humor. In a moment, I’ll give you its high and low points, which seem intricately intertwined.

Here is the Amazon low-down:

Miriam Black knows when you will die.

Still in her early twenties, she’s foreseen hundreds of car crashes, heart attacks, strokes, suicides, and slow deaths by cancer. But when Miriam hitches a ride with truck driver Louis Darling and shakes his hand, she sees that in thirty days Louis will be gruesomely murdered while he calls her name.

Miriam has given up trying to save people; that only makes their deaths happen. But Louis will die because he met her, and she will be the next victim. No matter what she does she can’t save Louis. But if she wants to stay alive, she’ll have to try.

- Amazon.com

The premise is probably one of the best things about this novel, not because it is entirely unique, but because of the approach Wendig takes. So she can see how you’ll die, but hey, instead of saving you, I’ll hook up with you and then rob your dead body. We encounter Miriam while she’s travelling cross-country, conning sleazy men so she can thieve from their corpses. She’s vile, dirty, and caustically sarcastic– not to mention a bit hilarious. The opening was one of Blackbird’s better segments as it allows us to see into the grim life of Miriam, a simple slice of the last few years. But as much as the opening chapters gave us, I wanted more.

Blackbirds is mainly about Miriam’s transformation, from sly psychic temptress to sly psychic temptress with a heart. But I don’t think we got to see enough of Miriam’s previous life to fully appreciate where she ends up in the end.

On the road, when she encounters Louis, it’s almost sweet. Probably because he’s the only character not interested in killing and thieving, he is my favorite character. Miriam’s ultimate attachment to him and her eventual attempt to save his life give this book emotional impact.

The book reads like an underworld travel guide for debauched clairvoyance-catchers. I really enjoyed the viciously dark tone, the gratuitous cussing, the extremely realistic violence, and the general air of pessimism. But still something felt very off as I was reading. Maybe I never allowed myself to be fully sucked in. It’s not that the main characters were not compelling enough but perhaps that the plot was predictable.

Which is very nearly the point. Miriam sees the future and she decides finally she should try to stop some guy’s death. The tension is somehow lost because we know exactly where we’re going to end up and if you try hard enough, you can figure out what might happen when we get there. Not that there are not small surprises, but those feel small once you worm through the main mystery.

What did carry better tension than the main Louis-based plot were brief interludes during which Miriam told her story to a young interviewer. Whether this was in the past or future, we do not know. We get flashes of Miriam’s past, her troubled childhood and eventual pregnancy. And this backbone for the character certainly gives her better weight. It gives you a little bit of the unexpected I was expecting. Which is what I want. Chuck Wendig, I just want you to sneak up on me from behind and twist my neck and break it.

Don’t get me wrong: I really enjoyed Blackbirds and will be tuning in for the sequel Mockingbirds coming out this September, but there is one major flaw, a distracting flaw in this work: Chuck Wendig is a blogger at heart.

He writes funny but passionate passages full of sarcasm, wit, and satire, but this satire sometimes overwhelms the actual story. He spends so much time saturating the atmosphere with the scent of urine and blood that we realize, no this isn’t just a diatribe about the nastiness of truck-stop bathrooms and Waffle House’s, it’s an actual story about an actual girl. This sort of tongue-in-cheek writing best serves blogs, where he is absolutely brilliant. But the same sort of style crosses into his book, which feels strange and very distracting. There are times he gives in to some of the most conventional literary tropes, then whips out very imaginative sentences. So, the writing is hit-and-miss.

I would probably give this story a six out of ten stars if I proscribed to such rating systems, but I don’t, so I’ll leave it at “Read it.” It’s a short, fun novel that slightly blackens your heart and eye. Fans of Chuck Palahniuk and other subversive writers will probably get a kick out of Miriam Black.

Want to hear other’s thoughts? Check them out here:

http://sqt-fantasy-sci-fi-girl.blogspot.com/2012/02/blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig-brash-and.html

http://iwishiwasabook.com/blackbirds_by_chuck_wendig.htm

http://www.myshelfconfessions.com/posts/review-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+shelfconfessions+%28my+shelf+confessions%29

http://thebooksmugglers.com/2012/04/book-review-blackbirds-by-chuck-wendig.html

Is It a Sin to Be a Christian in America?

Warning: Author expresses his actual opinion without succumbing to popular beliefs. Be forewarned if you disagree. And here’s the great part: if you disagree with me, you can do that and I won’t hold it against you. It’s your right as an American.

America was founded on great principles, the freedom to believe whatever you wish and act on those beliefs without government officials knocking down your door and shooting you in the head. We have an idea in this country that if you believe in something, you should be allowed to believe it, no matter if other people do not. For the past two hundred years, however, the major religion in America has been Christianity. And interestingly enough, it still is statically so. We, however, have perpetuated a weird illusion that to believe in something that popular and well-known is to “be ignorant,” to be a simpleton. Why, then, if the majority of Americans profess themselves to be Christians, is Christianity attacked so often?

Let’s get down to brass tacks. As a group, we Christians haven’t exactly been the most accepting sort of people. In the past, The Church has prosecuted non-Christians, but those who did do not represent the whole of the Christian nation.

For the most part, presidents have been predominately Protestant which keeps politics mostly in line with the Christian doctrine. In fact, because of the Christian majority, many laws have been made that somewhat delude the rights of other religions. Before reading on, understand that I understand that. I totally get that the establishment of “The Church” has done some really despicable things throughout history, and because most people do not differentiate between “The Church” and the body of Christ, this makes Christians look pretty bad.

It seems now the tables have turned and it is Christians who are being persecuted for their beliefs. Before you stab me with pitchforks and burn me with torches screaming “There’s no real WAR on Christianity,” think again. The truth is, those in power have a very difficult time coinciding their personal beliefs with their jobs. Think about this. You have very strong views on something, let’s say… anything, but you also have an obligation to listen to the will of the people. Which means putting aside your personal beliefs to kowtow to the wants of the people who put you in power. You are their figurehead, after all, right?

This moral dilemma of doing what one personally feels is right and what others believe is right has caused serious schisms in the political world. And as long as we’re being completely honest, there are really only two groups taking part in this argument: Christians and non-Christians. Those who are Christians say that what they’re doing is exactly what America wants, but those of other religions and those who do not proscribe to any religious beliefs claim that Christian lawmakers force their own beliefs onto the people through public policy. And for the sake of argument’s sake, both groups are actually kind of right.

But now more than ever, in today’s society, it is especially unpopular to be a Christian. Why? Well, it is extremely popular to claim Christianity, to say “Jesus is my homie” and that “God is love.” That’s all fine and dandy as putting a Bible verse bumper sticker on your hybrid car, but saying something isn’t the same as doing something. So, what’s so hard about being a Christian that it causes consternation? Again, being perfectly honest, it’s extremely difficult. When you want to express your opinion as a Christian, which so happens to be what the Bible says, you get labeled as “brain-washed,” a conformist who doesn’t bother to rely on facts. Someone who accepts what he is told.

There is this stigma of Christians as bleating sheep, repeating the same things to each other. But that stereotype simply isn’t true. Just because someone is a Christian  doesn’t make them unenlightened. Forget for the fact I too am a Christian and think of this: if I said that yes, cells are the building blocks of biology, you would not question me. And some people know that as absolute fact who, unlike me, have never studied cells, who have never looked at micro-organisms under a microscope. To believe this, then, takes faith, yes? Some people simply read this in a book and call it fact. So, why are Christians the only seen as the ones believing things they read in books?

Another question we should ask ourselves is this: should we base our political beliefs on our religion? One of my not-really-friends on Facebook once said, “I don’t understand why everyone has to have certain political beliefs just because they have certain religious beliefs.” My response to this is, Huh?! What someone believes about life and about the afterlife, understand, are not at all mutually exclusive. You can’t say, yes, I believe everything the Bible says, but when it comes to politics, I have my own set of beliefs. And the obvious problem everyone will point out is that we’re aligning ourselves with the exact principles of a religion. Which makes us in the eyes of society close-minded. And what ever happened, you say, to the American spirit? So what if your holy book calls a person wrong? They’re entitled live the way they want, right?

Of course they are! But because of that doesn’t negate the fact that Christians too are allowed to hold and voice their own beliefs. I am not trying to say either that people legally restrict Christians from expressing Christian beliefs, only that media construes these beliefs as “bigoted” or “narrow-minded.” When the real truth is that when it comes to beliefs about the afterlife, God, and morality, we are ALL close-minded. That’s right. We HAVE to be, or else we’re left believing nothing. Sure, we’re not going to deny someone a job because of their religion, but that doesn’t mean we’ll agree with them on theocratic doctrine solely because we’re accepting people. No, because no matter what you believe, you BELIEVE that. And by believing that, you are– however unawares you are of it– calling everyone else essentially wrong.

Believe in God? Well, that means that you believe people that do not believe in God are simply wrong. There’s nothing wrong with that. And if you don’t believe in God, that only means you believe those who do believe in God are wrong. And this is a simple example, but everyone facet of life we base on our beliefs: what the purpose of our life is, where we go after we die, who rules the universe, and so on and so on. Only those without any conviction at all are truly “open-minded,” and is that even a good thing? To believe in nothing, flip-flopping, changing opinions based on who we talk to?

Yes, we need to keep open minds. We need to allow others to change us, but that’s a fine line to cross, a difficult trapeze walk. You’ve got to allow yourself room to change for the better without compromising what you know to be true. So, many of you will disagree with me on this and on many other things. If that’s what you believe, that’s fine. If you gain pleasure from shooting down other people for your own amusement, what does that make you?

So, why is that? Why do we claim to be a free country where no one should be condemned for anything, yet Christians are condemned for stating what they believe? The Church is viewed through a skewed lens where it is no longer accepted to act morally. We spend so much time in America defending the rights of those who wish to act immoral that we stomp all over those who want to do any good. Tom DeLay mentioned in an interview by NBC that Christianity is treated as “some second-rate superstition.”

When we approach political debates, like legalization of abortion of gay marriage, and Christians side with what the Bible tells them, people deride them for not being progressive enough. But being progressive for the sake of it means nothing. If people didn’t stick by what they believed, there would be no point in voting on laws in the first place. And it’s not just Christianity, honestly. Almost any religion is seen as a fallback for a belief system when those who believe see it as the truest of belief systems.

Okay, so let’s crack this shell open slightly further. Why, then, does it seem that Christians always side with right-wingers? I have for one hold no political affiliations, and I think one of our problems as a country is that too many belief rely on supporting a party rather than deciding on candidates based on what they personally believe. Because right-wing candidates use religion as a crutch, as if to say, “Hey, I’m a Christian too, so if you’re Christian you should vote for me,” we have an overwhelming amount of Christians voting in the right wing. It makes sense as these politicians have more conservative views. What we fail to realize, however, is that these same self-proclaimed Christian candidates take our votes for granted, then turn around to use their power to make things worse, not better. And if this is an OMG moment for you that, yes, Republican politicians do some very crummy things, then take a big look around.

Christianity has taken a beating in the past decade or so. On television, we’re depicted as Hell-raising fanatics coming from a bloody history. Any Christian character on any Primetime show is there only to show how bigoted Christians are, how hypocritical we are. And because we sin too (of course), we can never really escape that image. We can’t always act exactly how we preach, so when we do preach, it comes across as condescending, even pretentious, a “I know the truth and you don’t” vibe. When really, it should be a “I want to share the truth because I love you” vibe.

Think about this. Around Christmas time, you see a lot of complaints that Christmas displays are too religious. We as a country prefer the secular Santa Claus and his reindeer. But what many people fail to realize is that Christmas is a Christian holiday. We commercialize this holiday to remove the religious aspects from them, pumping it full of sugar and fluff. Why? We hardly ever take other religious holidays and begin making it a secular tradition. The idea of gift-giving and Santa Claus basically override the original meaning of Christmas SO much, that those not celebrating religiously complain about too many religious affiliations with Christmas, even changing its name to X-mas. If you celebrate Christmas for no actual reason, why are you complaining? The entire holiday has been turned-upside-down. This is one more specific example of how Christians are attacked. We have a holiday and are attacked for actually celebrating its true meaning.

If you’re not a Christian, remember to keep an open mind to us as we do to you, and even if you ultimately disagree, don’t hate on what we believe and we will not hate on you for what you believe. As Christians, if you hate others because they don’t believe what you believe, you’re sending a really bad message to the world about us. We’re supposed to be accepting and loving, so think twice before you condemn another to Hell for not agreeing with you.

Again, don’t complain about this being biased. It’s biased because I have something called an Opinion which I’m not at all afraid to voice. Share your thoughts below, but keep it clean.