Wednesday, May 4, 2011
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Guard your heart.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
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Saturday, April 2, 2011
Minecraft!
Friday, April 1, 2011
Faith and Writing
I mentioned on my vlog that I was going to post the devotional I gave for my Advanced Writing of Fiction class, so here it is! Thank you all for reading, and shalom!
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Faith and Writing
Going to a Christian college, it’s easy to get inundated with all the Christian ways to do things. Every class tries to incorporate God directly into what they’re teaching in some way, all the writers on the newspaper seem to feel the need to reference God or Jesus at least five times in their articles, and then there’s the chapels every day, where they encourage you to go even more to some Christian evangelizing event or whatnot evening. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a bad thing, it just is what it is. It comes with the territory of going to a Christian college that we all signed up for and even likely wanted. Now, in writing class, we are asked to contemplate faith and writing and how they affect one another.
The concept of faith and writing is rather simple to me anymore, though it wasn’t always. Before I understood faith, or if I really even had it, I would have broken some synapse in my mind trying to figure this one out. But now, to me it seems, faith and writing isn’t something you do, it’s what you live. I believe that if you have faith, writing your faith will be like breathing; it’s going to happen. I say this because who can honestly say that their biases and worldview and beliefs don’t make it into their own writing in some way or another? To write differently from what you believe, truly differently, you would have to become a different person in the most literal sense. Tolkein didn’t set out to write some Christian novel, and I hear even C.S. Lewis wasn’t planning Narnia to be the allegory that it was, but both wrote compellingly beautiful novels that speak to us of God’s love and the struggle between good and evil.
Many young authors feel like they need to directly reference God in their stories, and squirm a little bit when someone asks what their story is going to say about God or if it even has Christian characters. They hesitantly answer that they don’t know to the first question, and “no” to the second, and contemplate scrapping the idea for something that will be a little more “Christiany.” I believe their stories already were. Should we honor God by writing worlds that he didn’t create? And I’m not talking about fantasy here so much as who people are and what they really do. What lessens people really take from day to day life, and what is simply too disgusting for them to believe in their pain. We all like the characters who stick with God unquestioningly when faced with hardship, but how many people really do that? Don’t most rather whine and complain, like Job did? Or doubt, like Thomas, claiming that they must see God’s hands before they will believe? And what does God’s faithfulness really look like? Does everyone get what they want, and then sing praises in the streets in the end? Or rather, is it a subtle learning of love that takes place in their life when they learn of the grace that God has for them, soon or long after learning of their wickedness?
To write faith into one’s stories I would say, then, simply requires one to have faith. To know God, and then faith and writing will happen.
Vlog 1- Train!
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Music video, head spins and an orientation leader application.
Sunday, March 27, 2011
The next post in my rather inconsistent blog.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Beiber is cool in my book.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
I found a PINK PEN!
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Dirt-sugar drink.
Hey guys, it's me again! So, with this blog I'm gonna do something new (hey that rhymed!) and give a professional review for something. Minus the professional part. And the review part is also still in question. . .Anywho!
Saturday, January 15, 2011
My life is. . .boring?
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Understanding, Pt. 2: Pain.
Society's views on understanding says that when someone is having a bad day, you should try to cheer them up. And apparently, the best way of cheering someone up is to tell them that you know how they feel! That you can understand how they feel, but look at you, you got through it. I'm thinking that many of you will catch on to this at least sounding ineffective. But the truth is, many of us do just this when someone is hurting. But what about the cheering up part? That's still good? I mean, we just need to find another way that's more effective.
Maybe. This is where discernment plays in, because I will admit that if a friend is moping around all the time, then sometimes getting them on their feet for a good day "with the guys" or "with the gals" is just what they need. However, sometimes you should also simply allow them to feel their pain. Sometimes, you should allow yourself to feel their pain with them, rather than say that "you know what they're going through." Go through it with them, and hurt with them. Paul says in Romans 12:15, "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep" (ESV). Notice that it doesn't say cheer them up. It doesn't say to tell them that we know how they feel. It commands that that we feel it with them, whatever it is that they are feeling. (And while I'm not going to focus on the rejoicing aspect in this post, it is equally important to also rejoice with your happy friends; it is, after all, the other half of that verse).
Remember that their pain is legitimate, and in fact, they deserve to feel it before you try to cheer them up. Trying to cheer someone up prematurely says that whatever is causing them pain "wasn't that big of a deal." Maybe you really believe that, depending on the situation but allow them to decide that for themselves before belittling what they had deemed important enough to hurt over in their life. As for telling them you know how they feel, aside from being another simple effort to simply cheer them up and thus saying the same thing, it doesn't really work to cheer anyone up. Just because you know that they are hurting isn't going to make them hurt less, and that's likely what they are thinking, even if they won't say it.
But to "weep with those who weep" can do a lot for another person. It reassures them that they are right to feel what they feel, and that their pain is valid, because in today's culture it can seem like what is expected of us is to simply shrug of any wound. It also eases the stress of thinking that they are simply a burden to everyone around them by showing them that you are okay with the fact that they are hurting, and in fact, you want to hurt with them because whatever it was, it was worth it.
That statement is actually the most valuable thing that they will be able to face with another person hurting with them. Again, society today seems to tell everyone that if you're hurting from something, then it wasn't worth it anyway, and I have such a vehement distaste for this statement that I won't even try wording it. But many of us will try to believe it, and fail, and hurt even more because of it. Obviously, we can't properly grieve if we don't allow ourselves to, but that's another thing we forget in our pain. What is good for us at that moment is the pain. It's allowing ourselves to face that we lost something important in our life, something that meant something to us. It frees us to be ourselves and to care, because lets face it, the only way we will avoid all pain is to avoid caring about anything. Bringing us back on topic, weeping with those who weep helps them to realize this and to sort through all of it with a shoulder to lean on. Facing down the throat of the monster called "pain" can sometimes seem very daunting alone, depending on what the pain is.
Now, in near contradiction to everything I just said, there will be those few rare times where we should allow the person hurting to lie to themselves. Popular belief today follows that we should face the pain head-on, when it's not telling us that we shouldn't be feeling it, and as everything I said before this paragraph indicates, for the most part I agree with that. But there will be times when someone is going through pain that is so tremendous that they simply aren't ready to face it, even with someone else, and we should be patient with them. Go ahead and allow themselves to lie to themselves that whatever it was wasn't worth it, because whatever it was was so much worth it that they really can't bear to look at what they lost yet. But still hurt with them. Give them plenty of hugs, when and where appropriate.
Wrapping all of this up in a nice, neat little package is quite simple this time. "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep." Allow someone to hurt, and encourage them to by hurting with them.
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