Christian Humanism

Hello, dear readers! To those of you familiar with different schools of philosophy, you might be looking at the title of this post and thinking, huh? That’s an oxymoron if I ever saw one! But it’s an idea that’s been rumbling in and out of my head for about half a decade now, so hear me out. First, though, let’s dive into the individual concepts.

HUMANISM

Humanism is a branch of philosophy that was officially set off near the end of the 19th Century, though there are some who claim its roots go back to the Middle Ages. At the core, it emphasizes the value of humanity and praises human achievements. For example, when discussing a particularly cruel act, one might describe it as “inhumane.” An act of kindness, on the other hand, can be described as “humane.” This is because the root suggests something inherently good, or noble, in humanity. Humans are not monsters at the core, but something special, even praiseworthy. It is human compassion, ingenuity and a host of other unique characteristics that make humans good.

However, from the start, this philosophy has had problems, and it’s understandable why. Any philosophy which holds at its base a praise of the human person will, if left unchecked, inevitably lead toward arrogance, vanity and pride. And so it was with humanism. At a meeting held in the 1930s, a group of largely Unitarian preachers and scholars drafted the first “Humanist Manifesto,” setting the philosophy on the road toward intellectual arrogance. They envisioned empiricism replacing traditional belief, with human intellectual prowess being the defining characteristic of humanity. As a result, this view is known today as “Secular Humanism,” and it is almost completely atheistic. As a matter of fact, many atheists today – notably those arrogant militants who argue against religious belief, rather than the respectful ones who engage in open discourse – identify themselves as “secular humanists.”

THE SINNER’S DEPRAVITY

It’s not as bad as it sounds. Okay, it actually is as bad as it sounds, but let me explain. As atheists have become polarized as secular humanists, many Christians have run in the opposite direction and begun to adopt the exact opposite view. They’ve taken one of the chief bullet points of Calvinistic predestination and applied it more openly: Total Depravity. Total Depravity is the idea that all humans, upon having their nature marred by the Original Sin, have become turned wholly toward evil and are incapable of doing good. However, due to Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit, good can now be done. It must be noted, though, that it is not the human person who does the good, but only the Holy Spirit within them. Humans are completely incapable of doing good; only God can do that.

Total Depravity not a widespread belief across all of Christianity, mind you, just as Secular Humanism is not a widespread belief across all of atheism, but it’s gaining some serious traction. Primarily, Total Depravity is popular among Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, who also just happen to be the loudest factions of the Christian Church. These Christians look at the human person and see only a broken, evil, corrupt sinner who can do no good on his own and needs God to rescue him.

CHRISTIAN HUMANISM: A BLENDING OF THE TWO

If I’m being honest, these both sound horrible. One leads to an unbridled arrogance and self-idolatry, while the other leads to misery and a self-loathing sense of helplessness. That doesn’t sound like a very happy world, if you ask me. But what if there’s a middle ground? What if there’s a more reasonable median between the two, somewhere where the sinner meets humanity?

On the one hand, I don’t think that intellectual prowess should be the defining characteristic of the human person. I used to be intellectually arrogant, and it was, quite frankly, miserable. So while I still strongly encourage intellectual development, I don’t believe it’s all there is to humanity. I believe we have compassion. I believe we have fraternity, and depth of emotion, and a sense of awe that brings joy to God. But we are not the crowning jewel of the universe. Too often, we fall into our selfish, self-oriented trap, and we act against those humane callings. We are imperfect and flawed, like diamonds with a big chip in the side or an impurity in the middle. And that’s why we need God. It’s only in the sacrifice of Christ that we can, by the guidance of God, become those perfect diamonds that he intended us to become.

But we are already shining reflections of our maker. We’re not mud-covered cockroaches incapable of any true achievement or good and noble action. If we were sinners and nothing else, then why would God continue to love us, to love us so much that he suffered a shameful death in an effort to save us? Why would God bother coming to us in the form of a savior if there was nothing redemptive in us worth saving? The answer must be that there is something within us, something humane, that indefinable characteristic that the humanists got lost in their attempts to find. And it’s only by the power of God that it can be uncovered.

This is what I mean by Christian Humanism: we are broken, amazing beings, capable of wondrous acts, but only when we let God put us back together.

Until next time, friends…

The Genes of Gen-X

Hello and salutations! I hope you’ve had a good few weeks. Mine have been extraordinarily busy cleaning carpets, couches, stairs, etc., but now I have a free day, so I intend on using it…I don’t know, probably just to get random chores done. Anyway, for those of you who haven’t yet taken my Outside View Survey, please do so by clicking here. It’ll only take 2-3 minutes at the most and it’ll definitely help me to improve my content for you.

Last time, I talked about the minds of Millennials, and most importantly I discussed their (actually our) relationship with higher institutions, most notably the church. Now I want it to be clear that I was giving a cursory overview, and it was by no means exhaustive, as there are many more factors that go into how we became the particular way we are.

Today, I’d like to take a step back and do a similar investigation with the generation that came before us, known most popularly as Generation X. This age bracket (early 1960s to mid-1980s) actually lacked any formal designation until well into the 1990s. Initially they were called Late Boomers, a play off of the Baby Boomer generation that preceded them. But in the past few decades, they’ve come to be known as the MTV Generation, Latchkey Kids and, most importantly, Generation X.

Generation X grew up in a time of great diversity and change. They were the first American generation to experience a purely desegregated society, having grown up during the Civil Rights Era. Birth control entered the market, which decreased their numbers compared to both Boomers and Millennials, but this was counterbalanced by new heights in immigration, resulting in an extremely diverse culture. They also grew up in the days of the Sexual Revolution, which caused notable confusion and turmoil between them and the Baby Boomers. But one of the most important factors in their youth was the seeming absence of parental involvement. Divorce was reaching record levels among Boomers, and – because Congress began diverting financial resources from lower and middle-class families to social security and elderly care – this generation was growing up in families with two working parents, rather than one. Because of these things, it was extremely common for children to be left alone and unsupervised in the hours between the end of school and dinner.

In light of these factors, the children of Generation X grew to adulthood with a focus on peer pressure and rivalry, rather than an overt obedience to authority. For them, authority wasn’t always present, and so they exercised their freedoms by rushing toward adulthood with a hopeful attitude of conquering and accomplishment. They pushed the economy forward with the entrepreneurial spirit, but in doing so, they tend to show great skepticism toward higher authorities over which they can exercise little control.

Those in Generation X are more active in church life than are Millennials, perhaps due to their positive outlook and focus on ingenuity. When thinking of these so-called Latchkey Kids, I can’t help but think of my old San Antonian friend, Marcelo. He’s a Catholic who’s intimately dedicated to growing in his walk with God, while also balancing a high-energy career and enjoying a successful marriage. His generation grew up in a time of unparalleled freedom and opportunity, ideals which Millennials like me feel have been lost. Generation Xers, it could be said, are becoming the modern movers and shakers in our church, and I pray that they can lead us to a brighter future, a day when freedom and opportunity are as pervasive and powerful as they were when the Xers were young.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which we dive even further back into the generation of the Baby Boomers!

The Minds of Millennials

Hello, dear readers! Before I begin today’s discussion, I’d like to thank those of you who have taken the survey for my blog, and for those of you who haven’t yet had a chance to do so, please click here. It’ll only take about three minutes, I promise, and it’ll help me to sharpen my content for you.

Recently, I finished watching the first season of the new graphic-novel-turned-television series, Preacher. It’s a quirky combination of weird and fascinating paired with a season finale that, for reasons I’m not getting into, I found offensive as a writer. Nonetheless, I found something quite intriguing about it. You see, one of the story threads involves Jesse, the local town preacher, getting his hands on a miraculous phone system that gives him a direct connection with Heaven itself. After promising his congregation an interview with God, he gathers them all on a Sunday morning and makes the call to a glowing being with a flowing white beard. The meeting goes sour, however, when he discovers and promptly reveals that the being is actually an angel impersonating God, and when forced by Jesse’s strange power to reveal God’s true location, the angel cries out “I don’t know! None of us do!”

This brought to my mind a recurring theme in the popular supernatural television series, Supernatural. Multiple times throughout the series, the characters have gone off looking for the Almighty, only to be disappointed again and again. Even among the four archangels of the series (Michael, Lucifer, Raphael and Gabriel), God’s whereabouts are unknown, with Raphael even believing that “God’s dead.” At one point, one of the two protagonists of the series converses with an angel who regularly communes with God, and he’s told by the angel that, regarding the Earth’s various apocalyptic situations, God “just doesn’t think it’s his problem.” Of course, God does finally reveal himself and enter the scene in the show’s eleventh season, but there are no less than seven seasons in which God is simply and questionably nowhere to be found.

So why am I talking about the seeming absence of God in different TV shows? Well, this theme of God having “vanished” or “gone underground” is called, in theology, Deism. Deism is the belief that God exists, that he created the world by his own imaginative creativity and power, but for some reason chose to abandon or distance himself from it. Deism sees the universe like an enormous clock which God designed, built, wound up and then left on its own. This is, to the letter, the view of God seemingly espoused in both Preacher and Supernatural. Granted, Supernatural took a moderate turn from this in its most recent season, and I can’t with any certainty say where Preacher is headed, but deism is, in the very least, the theological appearance in these shows.

Now I’d like you to take a wild guess as to which age demographic forms the target audience of both of these shows. Here’s a hint: the generation is in the title of this article. The answer is Millennials, those youths born between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s. I, for example, am a Millennial, as are my sister, her husband, my wife and her siblings. Millennials are the target demographic of two shows espousing a Deistic view of the universe. Could that be a coincidence, or is it perhaps indicative of something far deeper? After all, the more successful shows are those which conform their content to match the mindsets and personalities of their target demographic.

To add fuel to this incidental fire, social surveys have found that, among Millennials, the percentage of those identifying with any particular religious denomination (or religion at all) is decreasing. However, the percentage of those identifying as atheistic is not increasing, meaning that Millennials aren’t becoming more atheistic or less religious; rather, they’re distancing themselves from the organized structure of religious faith. They are shifting into views like agnosticism, deism (as we’ve discussed) and rudimentary or esoteric spiritual exploration. Millennials, it seems, are having a tough time trusting and then ingratiating themselves into the organizational structure of the local church.

This mindset is not limited to the church, however. Among Millennials, surveyors are seeing a trend in which this generation, having been raised on the idea that they could accomplish or be anything they wanted when they grew up, have been met with the harsh reality of a job market far more competitive than it has ever been in recorded history. From this, there has been the natural tendency toward disillusionment, and this in turn has fostered a distrust of authoritative institutions. Have you ever heard Millennials who were actually happy to be told to obey their spiritual authorities (their preacher, Bible, church doctrine, etc.)? While there are definite exceptions to this trend, the natural trust that other generations had in higher authorities has been eroded away among Millennials. This generation has difficulty trusting their employers, the government and even the church. And, of course, this means a powerful struggle with the God who established these systems. Even I, at times, feel as if God has abandoned me.

But all is not lost with this generation, I think. Sure, we often seem like we’re lost. We struggle to make ends meet in a job market that increasingly devalues our financially burdensome education. Yes, we have our struggles with authority, with truth, with morality and even with God. But Abraham spent decades fighting to trust God. Isaac probably struggled to trust his father after being bound by him and laid upon an altar. And Jacob, father of the twelve tribes of Israel, spent a whole night fighting God with a powerful ferocity. Yet they all received God’s blessing, and they always found their creator in the end. Perhaps the same can be said of my generation. Perhaps in this world where we’ve become so lost and disappointed, we can find our way to God. This is my prayer, and my earnest hope.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which I go further back and explore Generation X!

A Better Perspective

Good day, all! I now speak to you as a Hoosier, as my wife and I have successfully completed our move from the heart of Texas to the heart of Indiana. We had a fair amount of bumps along the way, but before I get into that, I wanted to let you know about last Monday’s premier of my new, ongoing steampunk series, The Remarkable Rift! It’s on wattpad, so if you want to read my new series – which will feature steam-powered airships, electrical sorcerers and dimensional beasties – you’ll have to create a free account, and there will be plenty more for you to find there beside my own works!

Now back to the topic of today: stress. Er, sorry, I meant perspective. When I was growing up, I always saw myself as a pretty optimistic kid. I felt like I mirrored my mom’s outlook on life, whereas my dad seemed to be the pessimistic – albeit fun-loving – member of the household (Dad, if you’re reading this, just bear with me). I saw infinite possibilities with a bright, glowing future ofcareer success laid out before me! But as I grew older, that outlook began to change, to mutate into a more downtrodden way of thinking, and this has steadily worsened over the years, ultimately culminating in a minor depression last year. I’ve thankfully pulled out of that thanks to my supportive wife and a diet of vitamin D supplements, but the outlook still remains the same.

Now in the past week, I’ve seen that negative outlook strongly intensified with a great deal of stress. Last Tuesday, my jeep wouldn’t start, so we had to have AAA come out and replace the battery. Then our credit card couldn’t cover the cost of our U-Haul truck, so we had to use half of the emergency cash we had on hand. Then on Thursday, our credit card went through the roof due to complicated processing issues, and ten minutes afterward, I actually drove our U-Haul rental truck into the awning of a hotel in Missouri. We made it to Indiana with a maxed-out credit card and $7 in cash. Two days later my jeep wouldn’t start, resulting in three hours of inspections and towing before I ended up with a final bill of…$32. I’d been expecting the worst, like a $600 bill for a part I’d never heard of, but to have it running smooth for $32? That seemed unthinkable to me today.

I know, it sounds like I’m venting like a child. But I’m trying to give you a context for my current scenario. There are many negatives I can focus on, and the pessimist I’ve become wants to make it clear that there are far more negatives than positives. But…that pessimist would be wrong. I’m blessed with a helpful family, a loving wife and a very excitable dog (who currently struggles with the same noise phobia plaguing many dogs these days). I have my education, my health and, most importantly, I have my faith. It shouldn’t matter that I have these hiccups, or that I’m unemployed and living with my parents. I have dozens of reasons why I should be joyful right now.

It’s a matter of perspective, of focus. What is it that’s the focus of your attention? Are you seeing the series of potholes and establishing it as rough terrain, or are you seeing a series of mountains to be conquered, a land to be explored? You see, today, I got to spend those three or four hours alone with my dad and, lo and behold, he was the positive one. He reminded me how fortunate we were that the jeep’s problems happened just before and just after our cross-country journey, but not during. He reminded me of how the problems with the jeep happened during a dry spell between storms today. And he seemed so excited to be able to spend this afternoon with me. Somewhere in the past decade, it seems, we reversed roles: he’d become the happy optimist, whereas I’ve become the pessimist. But I don’t intend to stay this way. Positivity is what I seek, and perhaps in this time living with my parents, it’s the lesson God intends to teach me. All I need is a better perspective.

Until next time, friends…

What’s the Gospel?

Good day and salutations, fine readers! You know, for the past few days, I’ve really been putting some heavy thought into my faith, namely discerning what the core of my belief is. This has led, inevitably, into the question: what is the Gospel? I was taught by many that the Gospel – which the Bible commands us to share across the whole face of the Earth – is the belief in the atoning sacrifice of Christ. It’s the reality that Christ died on the cross to atone for our sins so that we can be saved from Hell and instead go to Heaven after we die.

With this in mind, I was struck yesterday when my wife and I read a passage from Philippians during the Bible study we do together. The passage is from the third chapter, in which Paul is discussing all of the things that made him special as a Jew: he was circumcised as a baby, came from the tribe of Benjamin (thus, he was not technically a Jew, although he was still a Hebrew), he was a zealous Pharisee and (most importantly for my current train of thought) “concerning the righteousness which is in the Law, blameless.” This brings up the further question: if someone can possibly be found righteous by the Law, blameless, as it were, then do they need the atoning sacrifice of Christ? Do they therefore even need the Gospel?

Now despite these things, Paul goes on to praise the Gospel of Christ, citing it as worth far more than any of those earlier things which made him stand out so famously in Judaism. Paul describes the sheer awesomeness of Christ, saying how being resurrected with him will be the pinnacle of all that’s great in life. Do you see what I’m saying? Paul is praising Jesus with almost no mention of sin or atonement! How weird does that sound?

And yet, it bears similarity to what I’ve felt for the past few years: that the greatness of knowing Christ is not in being saved from Hell and gaining paradise, but, quite simply, in being able to be with God. Now I’m not saying that the atonement of the Crucifixion is unimportant, of course; that event was monumentally paramount in our ability to walk with God and Christ, and it was the ultimate expression of God’s love for humankind. But what I’m saying is that there’s more to Christianity than simply being rescued from damnation. My focus, and indeed my very reason for being a Christian is no longer predicated on that salvation. Rather, my decision to be a Christian is simply a desire to spend time with this awesome God-man we call Christ. My desire to be with God for all of eternity makes all else – even salvation – pale by comparison.

So with this in mind, I want to look more closely at what it is that makes a Christian different from everyone else in this world. Is it that we’re better than other people? Nope, I think everyone on this Earth is on the same moral ground. Is it that we’re sinless, while the rest of the world is sinful? Nope, I’ve seen Christians (myself included) do some pretty terrible, mean-spirited, downright wretched things (do the Crusades ring a bell?). Is it that we help our fellow humans more than anyone else does? Maybe, but while it is a statistical fact that Christianity does more good in the world than any other political or religious system, a lot of us in particular can often be indiscernible from the non-Christians in our midst, so I’m going to change this back to a contextualized negative. So what is it that makes us different among all the peoples of this Earth?

I think I’ve come up with two main points that adequately express what sets us apart. But as I give these, keep in mind that they’re not universals; there may be many Christians who don’t fit these criteria, and many non-Christians who do. But in my mind, this is what sets apart the ideal Christian from the regular everyday non-believer.

1. The ideal Christian tries to improve himself. This doesn’t necessarily mean physically or mentally, but spiritually. Using scripture, prayer, fellowship and pastoral guidance, he tries to become a better person than he is. He’s always striving for new levels of spiritual maturity, conforming his heart and soul to be in line with Christ’s. He tries to become bother wiser and more loving.
2. The ideal Christian carries a special message, this good news which we call the Gospel. It’s a little piece of awesomeness that he is called to share with the rest of the world. This can’t necessarily be recorded and memorized word-for-word, for the specifics of it, and the way it’s explained, are unique to each Christian carrying it. But the core of it is the same: love. It’s the reality that God loves his creation, and that there is a way of life so much better than simple salvation (although salvation is that key component in crossing from non-Christian to Christian).

So what is this special message? It’s love, and the reality of a life spent with Christ. When I’m with Christ in that new world which he’s creating, I don’t think I’m going to spend my time looking back and saying to myself “well, I’m glad I’m not in Hell!” No, I think I’ll be looking forward, into the glow of God, and thinking “it’s just so awesome to be here.” That, I believe, is what the Gospel really is, and I think it’s what Paul discovered in his blindness. It’s what it means to follow Christ.

Until next time, friends…

The Intermingled Roots

Hello! As I’m writing this, I’m gearing up for a vacation back home, so this will be my last blog post for about three weeks. But rest assured, I will return when I have made it safely back to Texas.

Now recently, I read an online article about millennials leaving the church. For those of you who don’t know, “millennials” refers to the generation from approximately the early 1980s and into the early 2000s. Basically, you have the “Baby Boomers” who were born to the generation that served in World War II, then Generation X which followed them, then Generation Y, also known as millennials. Anyway, this article examined the steady decrease of those among millennials who identify as Christian. Statistics seem to indicate that those identifying as Christian in America have decreased by almost 10%, with steady decreases across most denominational lines (Catholic, Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, Fundamentalist and Charismatic). Now why is this the happening?

The article proposed a number of reasons why people across the board are walking away from their faith, but what struck me most was the suggestion that millennials in particular are leaving due to a lack of intellectual engagement. Essentially, the majority of churches are more obsessed with purity and internal squabbles over social issues like homosexuality, traditional sacraments and the like that they’re not adequately engaging the generation which doesn’t really seem to care about those issues. It doesn’t help that (according to the article) nearly 70% of all youth pastors have absolutely no theological education whatsoever. And with a lack of intellectual involvement, the millennials have few ties other than the familial variety really anchoring them to the faith.

To me, this seems like the natural result of a trend I’ve been seeing growing in the church. I (and others) refer to this trend as “anti-intellectualism,” the tendency to not trust reason, science or any intellectual capacity in the realm of faith. People are convinced to believe what they’re told by pastors and Sunday school teachers and only read devotionals written by evangelists who – while their writing may be good – lack real, deep academically-developed knowledge of Christian history or Biblical exegesis (that is, Biblical interpretation). Now don’t get me wrong; I applaud Christians like Joyce Meyer and John Bevere for spreading the gospel. But at some point in your Christian walk, it’s not enough to hear testimony and evangelical thoughts. At some point, you need to dig deeper. In that regard, you need to start reading a little bit of Bart Ehrman, or Julius Wellhausen, scholars who wrote about the Bible for the sake of deepening one’s biblical knowledge, rather than just one’s emotional connection to the Bible.

Some have speculated that this “anti-intellectualism” revolves around the concept of evolution. Around the middle of the last century, Fundamentalists began throwing a fit over the theory of evolution, and this led inevitably to a general distrust of science and, and now that distrust seems to have spread toward reason as a whole. At a Bible study I attended this year, I even heard the speaker saying that “the Bible isn’t here to tickle your intellect.” But it is! While it’s not here only to tickle your intellect, that is one of the things that it should be doing! If you’re not developing an intellectual – as well as an emotional – advancement in your spiritual life, then your spiritual life will eventually become lopsided.

Let me discuss this another way. In Matthew 13, Jesus speaks of some seeds which “fell on stony places, where they did not have much earth; and they immediately sprang up because they had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up they were scorched, and because they had no root, they withered away.” When we, as Christians, don’t develop that knowledgeable root, when we don’t really dig in and see what the Bible says and what scholars have learned about it, then when the sun burns hot we burn away. This is what’s happening to millennials. With no intellectual engagement, and only the emotional connection to their faith, they stay in the faith during their youth. But the anti-intellectualism has prevented them from growing deep roots, roots which spring from true engagement spiritual lives. So when they leave home and go to college or enter the workforce, there is little tying them to Christianity, and many of them wander away, scorched by their lack of a deeper connection.

That deeper connection should be the intermingling of emotion and knowledge, head-knowledge as well as heart-knowledge. One without the other will stunt our spiritual growth, and the growth of our children to come. We owe it to ourselves and to everyone we know to engage deeply, mentally, emotionally, academically and in so many more ways with the precepts of our faith. And then we’ll have the roots to outlast the very sun in the sky.

Until next time, friends…

The Unique Weirdness in You

I like to think that we’re all weird. All of us. I heard that Mark Twain once said (though I haven’t verified this) that “everyone is stupid, just in different ways.” Similarly, I like to think that “everyone is weird, just in different ways.” Everyone has the odd quirk, interest, skill or expertise that makes them stand out as weird. But you know what weirdness really is? It’s uniqueness. A weird person is a unique person, and I don’t think God designed any of us to be exactly alike. After all, if God created each of us to be loved, as I believe he did, then what’s there to love about someone who’s exactly like the next person in line?

In high school, this was exemplified among my circle of friends. We came up with the idea that we were all nerds, just different types of nerds. We had a Car Nerd, an Orchestra Nerd, a Band Geek, even one friend who was the self-proclaimed “King of the Nerds.” I, myself, became known as the Horror Movie Nerd (if you can’t figure out why, try reading the name until it comes to you). Not only did I love watching horror movies (the well-made ones, I must stipulate, not the exploitative torture-porn that nearly ruined the genre), but I even went so far as to make a few. I started off small, with an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” before writing my own 45-minute film called “All Alone.” That movie featured the classic plot of a killer who escaped from an insane asylum and ran amok at a high school party. Then, I ended my brief film-making career (or perhaps put it on extended hiatus) with a feature length film entitled “Hall of Shadows.” This one features a group of college students who wake up one morning to find their university completely abandoned, and ultimately they realize that they are trapped in a purgatorial limbo between life and death, and one of them is not as they seem. This ultra-low-budget film can be found online in 12 segments (owing to the 10-minute video policy which YouTube enforced back then). But even though I no longer make horror movies, I still enjoy them.

What I’m trying to explain here is that each of us has something unique, something that makes us different from all the rest. While we’re in school, and sometimes even into our adulthood, we develop this desire to fit in, to be just like everyone else, and in our attempts to do so, we downplay our unique characteristics. But in doing so, we’re inevitably burying a part of ourselves that God created with intense care. We’re denying part of our very souls, and little good can come of this. I think too many people are facing identity issues, anxiety issues or depression simply because a repressed part of themselves wants to be accepted. (Special note: I’m not saying all identity issues, anxiety disorders or depression are caused by this, but a great deal of these, I suspect, are). So what are we to do?

Accept these parts of ourselves. But, and this is of the utmost importance, we can’t just demand that other people accept these unbridled parts of ourselves. We can’t just assimilate the parts of ourselves that we’ve rejected and think that everything’s going to be hunky-dory.

First, we must train and hone this part of ourselves, utilizing it for a greater purpose. If I just wrote horror stories with no purpose, I’d be wasting my talent at best, and poisoning people’s minds at worst; instead, I must use these stories to help people with their issues, or to share the gospel, or to bring new understanding to judgmental audiences. We need to own and control these parts of ourselves and channel them toward something greater.

Secondly, we need to work hard so as not to collapse in the face of rejection. If Martin Luther King, Junior had buckled in the face of rejection and threats, the civil rights of Americans would have taken much longer to improve. If Joseph Merrick had given up when hated by mobs, he wouldn’t have become the inspirational Elephant Man.

So accept the parts of yourself that are unique, but not without taking control of them in the process. Use them to grow and make the world a better place. Don’t give in or give up in the face of rejection and hatred, for where there is hate, your uniqueness – if properly utilized – will sow the seeds of peace. And then, not only will you be a healthier person, but the world will become a slightly healthier world.

Until next time, friends…

Discover Who You Are, Part Two

Good day! Last week, I began a series about finding your identity. Indeed, your identity is a very personal thing, and to keep it absolutely secure, it shouldn’t be connected with your employment or with what others think of you; indeed, the latter suggestion is the reason so many Hollywood actors seemingly go nuts: they derive their identity from their fans, and when their fans begin to drift away, they lose their identity and, hence, their stability. If, following the suggestion of my last post, you found a love of acting, then my recommendation is that you make sure you love acting for the sake of the craft and not for the sake of the fans or recognition. This is actually a problem that I face, because as a writer, I often dream of being famous like Stephen King, Ted Dekker or Dean Koontz. However, if I really want to be a good writer, I should write for the sake of my stories and their purpose, not for the recognition of my readers. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but a necessary one. Sorry for the digression.

In any case, learning what you love is only the first part of our study. Now, having that in mind, I want you to set it aside for right now. Don’t forget about your hobbies and interests, just keep them on the back burner, because next week, we’re going to bring them back. For this step, I want you to focus not on what you love, but on what you believe. Now this has a series of sub-steps that I want you to follow in this order:

1. Cosmic Belief: what do you believe about the universe? How do you think it came to be? Personally, I know that it was made by God. I don’t know how he made it, and I can only speculate on why, but I know deep down, in that place at the core of my being, that the whole universe was brought into existence by a being with an operating mind beyond our comprehension.
2. Others Belief: what do you think about other people? How does this connect to your Cosmic Belief? If you think God made everything, then how does that affect your view of other people? For me, God made other people just like he made me. I think he made us all because he loves us, and so I should, therefore, love them, too. It’s hard, and I often fail at it, but I keep trying.
3. Moral Belief: what kind of morality do you think you should uphold? Where do you derive your morals from? From the Bible? The Quran? The Bhagavad Gita? Or from what your parents or mentors have taught you? What you need to do is not just figure out what you believe to be right and wrong, but why you believe those things to be right and wrong. Remember, whatever sort of morality you decide makes the most sense must agree with your Cosmic and Others Beliefs. Otherwise, your Moral Belief will crumble at the slightest touch.
4. Telos Belief: telos is a Greek word for “goal” or “end” or “purpose,” and it’s the most important of your beliefs in regard to our current study. It’s also, unfortunately, the most difficult of the beliefs. This relates to your purpose in life, the things you want to accomplish; essentially, what good do you want to do? For me, I want to have a family of my own, I want to educate people about the Bible, I want to tell stories and I want help people find their own identities. But if you go to the ultimate basis of my Telos Belief, it’s that I want to serve God. And for me, serving God means helping other people in whatever way I can.

With that, I think we’ve covered enough ground in terms of beliefs. Once you’ve figured out your Cosmic, Others, Moral and Telos Beliefs, you’ll have a much firmer grasp of how you view the world. Next, week, we’ll see how we can bring our beliefs and interests together into one, supreme thing: our identity.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which we’ll unite interests and beliefs into one super-awesome identity!

Discover Who You Are, Part One

Salutations, fair readers! Today, I’d like to begin a very special series about discovering your own identity. Indeed, your identity is one of the most important things about you; it affects your behaviors, your beliefs, your self-esteem and self-worth, even how you view and engage with other people. To be clear, your identity is who you see yourself to be, and so it is intimately tied up with your sense of personal worth. Most people take years – even decades – to discover their own identity. They may move from place to place, from country to country, job to job or even from religion to religion trying to figure out who they are. The years we spend as teenagers are especially difficult because those are the awkward years between not-quite-kid anymore and not-yet-adult. We make stupid decisions because we’re in the process of discovering ourselves.

Many people find their identity in what they do for a living. As a matter of fact, when you meet someone new and learn their name, is there any other question that comes to your mind before “what do you do for a living?” Writers, lawyers, doctors, janitors, teachers, even astronauts tend to find their identity not in who they are but in what they do. This may work for a long, long time, but it becomes a serious issue when the person gets fired or retires. Suddenly, their identity is lost and they’re left wondering: if I’m no longer (insert occupation here), then what am I? This can lead to anything from wild, reckless living to huge impulse purchases to devastating despair. But good news! There’s a way around this, a way of finding your identity that makes it resolute and set in stone. This is a process that’s actually fairly simple, and I want you to follow me on it.

Today, we’ll cover step one: finding out what you like. This may seem a bit selfish at the start, but just go with me. Make a list of your likes and dislikes. Now I’m not saying that you should list your favorite foods or the smells that you can’t stand. Instead, focus on your behaviors and hobbies. What kinds of things interest you? What things make you excited?

Take me for example. I’ve found that I love stories, especially those about monsters. I also like to wonder about philosophy and the universe. From this, I decided to spend my college years studying religion and philosophy, wherein my most passionate focus was the stories of the Bible. I often couldn’t care less about the politics or practical applications of the Bible; no, what I loved were the stories and the philosophy. In addition, I also majored in astronomy, exploring the universe through my studies. My wife, on the other hand, discovered in high school that she has a deep love of the German language, so she made that the focus of her studies.

But you don’t have to be in college to explore these things. You can go to a bookstore or bum around online, looking for anything written about your topic (though I would earnestly recommend that you seek out the experts and educate yourself as much as possible). You can begin focusing on hobbies that allow you to engage with your hobby. When I was in high school, for instance, I became involved in the theater due to my love of stories and storytelling. If performing is your interest, consider a sport or Speech Club. Even if you love something as strange as arguing and yelling, then the Debate Team awaits, you weirdo! (Don’t be offended, I’m a weirdo, too, just in different ways!)

So take a nice, deep look at yourself and see what you love to do or learn about. Figure out how you can put that interest into practice so that you can get better at it or more knowledgeable about it. Whether it’s Civil War reenacting, camping, spelunking or reading mystery novels, find what you love and do what you love (as long as it’s legal). And if you have the time, begin prioritizing those hobbies, ranking them based on what you love most down to what you love least, and put your most effort into the ones on top. That’s more for the sake of not over-extending yourself, which is an easy way of pushing yourself too far and sucking the joy out of all of them. Try and whittle your interests down to your top two or three, or maybe even four if you just can’t get the list any smaller. Then, when you’ve figure this out, you’ll be ready to move to step 2.

Until next time, friends…

Stay tuned for my next blog post, in which we’ll get to Step 2!