Don't play with it

So I've found myself in this same position sitting before the laptop several times for the year thus far. My fingers hovering indecisively over the keyboards, my thoughts swirling so fast it's almost as if they are reduced to nothingness and cease to be. The difference between then and now; the difference that ends this hiatus, is my decision to end it.

If we wait for inspiration, it may never come, thus making it an indefinite period of waiting. We must therefore start, and let inspiration come to you. I've made a point to start painting and writing again. A slow start... I've abandoned my first painting effort but I've found inspiration in my second effort... I need to get a frame to stretch my canvas though... but I'm making it work. I shall call this piece "Sunset in my veins" ... mm hmm... perfect.

And I'm going to try and get this running again... before my writing abilities depart from me...




So all of a sudden recently I've been feeling this reluctant spiritual calling. Not because I need saving... I'm not even sure why, but my spirit is unsettled and it doesn't seem to stay settled long enough to keep me content. I guess I have too many questions and too little answers for it to be settled...... anyways.....

....Today, after (admittedly) playing dodge ball with campus "group Bible studies", my friend E. and I found ourselves sitting at the table (since all the other tables were occupied and we were just too lazy to make the rounds again) with the study group.

Low and behold I felt like myself again.... for all the wrong reasons.

When it comes to religion, I've always been on a curious course of 'seeking the truth' but never fully succeeding in following through with all this seeking. In the end, I end up just living my life, and trying to live within the rules of what I think is right and wrong.

The irony is, the discussion I found myself in just reminded me of all the reasons I find myself hesitant about these kind of dealings. I found myself following along with the reading of a pre-selected scripture. The second I settled and thought to myself '...hey this is just what I was looking for, oooo a sign from 'God'..." the leader makes a comment. And that's how it ended, or began. Somehow I always seem to stumble across poor examples of religious people when I have these moments of serious pondering... Religion needs to pick better ambassadors.

So the scripture was selected. I vaguely remember where it was from... I'm not going to lie and say I read the Bible because I don't. Atleast, not often enough for it to qualify as reading. Nuntheless, I know enough because of the amount of people I have around me who are always quoting scripture readings and finding parallels to draw between it and their own lives. Anyways.. enough digression.

So back on course. The scripture selected was about having 'the word' as your rock and being like a builder, building your foundation on something solid as opposed to sand. The purpose of this scripture, however, in my interpretation based on the consequent events was merely to open the doors to criticize other people. This kind of Bible-using behaviour annoys me. This just reminds me of the slave masters who just kept finding scriptures to justify their inhumane enslavement of other people a couple hundred years back. (if I'm to pick just one example)

Soooooo.... My Bible-study-session-cum-gossip-table-with-Bible-citations was actually to open the doors to criticize a congregation sprinkled with adulterers. Apparently, the guy wants to leave or left the church because of that and felt a compulsion to share this knowledge with us and impart judgment on the situation.... Perhaps, he wanted a cookie for this? As things progressed I realized he saw the situation in black and white. The person is wrong, they need to repent or go to hell. And.... to make matters worse, he said that the few people engaged in such activities are "like yeast in bread - they will blow up into the whole church and corrupt it."

These kind of situations annoy me. I'm not saying what the people are doing is right. But,

a) who gives him the right to judge them?

b) As a Christian, he is supposed to do what Jesus would do or something of the sort right? (WWJD?) Therefore, if I recall correctly, Jesus did say he isn't here for the righteous... Since he knows better, and no one else is doing anything about the situation, and he feels so strongly about it.... why doesn't he find a tactful way to address the matter without calling names or being insultive? Try to understand the root of the problem and help the persons in question understand the error of their ways?

c) This whole yeast in bread analogy... now really? Your faith is supposed to be on a solid foundation... doesn't that say that your faith is weak, if someone else cheating on their spouse makes you feel like cheating? Because I associate with someone who does something doesn't necessarily mean I will do it too. The likelihood of my engaging in whatever activity increases... but that depends on how strong minded and confident I am within and of myself.. How strong my faith... my resolve...

d) Lastly... I've learned that there are generally layers to most problems. Granted, crazy people walk amongst us all the time. But I don't believe the majority of people are crazy, and even the crazy people have a method to their madness... How can you judge someone when you're not living their lives? You don't know what they're going through and what has led them to take the paths that they have taken right or wrong... and if you don't know the root of the problem, can you truly help?

This reminds me of a movie I'm sure I already wrote about called "Boy A". Its a paradigm example to illustrate what I'm really trying to get at...

In it, the long short, 2 boys kill a little girl at a very very young age - very gruesome murder. They're sentenced to life (I think) then the courts decide to reduce the sentence. One boy gets murdered (implied) by the parents of the girl. The other boy is released back into society under a new name and identity in his late teens.

As the movie rolls on, you see the gruesome murder BUT you also see the traumatic lives of the boys. What they did wasn't right, but.... they reacted the only way they knew how to considering the abuse they were suffering in their lives at the hands of the people that's supposed to be taking care of them. They reacted to the girl's goading which was quite condescending... The boys were of a lower class and a bit eccentric and she was insulting them.

The boy that returned back to society did feel remorse, really was making an effort to be a good person... However, the jealousy of his friend's (parole officer?) wayward son, over how much care and concern he had for the boy, led to the deliberate revelation of the boy's identity. During the course of the film, the boy also rescues a little girl in an accident... he's really trying to make amends. However, people are judgmental despite their less-than-perfect lives. They judge him based on face value of what he has done and actually don't care about rehabilitating him. He ends up killing himself in the end. It's easy to pass judgment on an isolated situation, it takes more humane compassion to care enough to figure out why and help fix the problem - before it really does permeate through the society......

....but the question is, who decides our fate? Do you have the right to judge someone because of what they've done? Is sin not sin, simply? Or... are there different levels by which sin, that is supposed to be universally unacceptable, becomes acceptable? And... where do we draw the line of the double standard?


***

I'm sleepy...


Shelli reinvented.
Shelli out.
*curtsy bow*