My Heart Cries

I am sad. My heart cries when people pursue relationships out of something other than love. The pain, the drama, the selfishness. They grow and swell and devour people. And it pains my heart to watch. I don't know why. Perhaps because I'm in love myself. Perhaps because I can see what happens when people are in it for only themselves. Perhaps my eyes are just opened to the pain around me and the humbleness to recognize it inside myself.

I was watching the fashion channel today. I know I know, but it is plastered everywhere at the mall I was at, and it too saddens my heart. People's perception of beauty is so warped. I saw one lady with a "dress" that looked like it had a big rectangular piece of cardboard taped to her back. Well, it was frilly. After I laughed at the complete ridiculousness of it, it made me sad to know that these girls, these women, are just pieces of flesh to be shown and strutted about. I felt sorry for them. Their whole job is just to look good. In the words of Derick Zoolander, "Have you ever wondered if there was more to life, other than being really, really, ridiculously good looking?" Most people have actually, I think. But the root is the same. The need for fulfillment, for the absence of pain, for a place where things seem to be alright runs very deep in our hearts. And people do anything to fill that need, with the notable exception of giving themselves away for someone else.

To kill or not to kill?

It is the chief philosophical question that superheros face. Do they kill their arch enemies when they have defeated them? Usually,the answer is quite simple and the bad guys are knocked unconscious or tied up really good and handed over to the police. There are a few heroes though that cross that line and just take them out. Although, to be fair, it would be hard, as a comic book author, to continually create new and powerful enough villains to keep the story interesting if you were always killing them in the end. All of that aside, the real question comes down to, are you really becoming the villain if you kill the villain?

While in some cases this is most definitely true; you don't want to go around wasting people who stole some ladies purse, the punishment should fit the crime. But when the crimes are monstrously evil, are you really "stooping to their level" by killing them? I think not. There is a point where evil must be destroyed, not just put away out of sight.

Perhaps this quandary is revealing of our lack of a moral foundation. When the hero himself (or herself, whatever) cannot judge why his actions are good independent of the villain's actions, then he has ultimately lost. There is no way he can truly win. He will always question if he did the right thing. Struggling with guilt and self absorption, he will always wonder if he can truly be a judge of another person. When we only define good individually, this is inevitable.

This blog will begin at the end of an ongoing 10 year thought stream so it will make little sense of how I have gotten to this point at first but if you don't start somewhere, you'll never get anywhere. I have been thinking lately about the Christian bubble. I'm referring to that stereotypical lifestyle that is marked by social ineptitude, general arrogance, and a lack of understanding of how anybody in the world can live any different.

I actually hate the Bubble. I really do.

There is something to be said for promoting a lifestyle that encourages living in a godly way, whatever that might mean, but usually what happens is a separation that leads to isolation. Jesus calls us to be separate from the world, and rightly so. When someone is intrinsically changed in their very soul, outward changes are sure to follow and this will make them different. At the same time, Jesus has chosen to use the church as his main vehicle for telling people about him and these changed people will be different. And I mean in the "oh he's a little 'different' " kind.

These people will naturally form a community of other like-minded creatures and are then faced with a choice: do we actively pursue people to join or not? If not, then the group stagnates and dies. If yes, then they eventually come to another defining moment as people who are different come and there is conflict. Does this group remain unified as diversity enters, or does is splinter into small, individual "unified" groups? How to do this is one of the great philosophical questions of history and will be saved for later posts.

I think the Bubble tends to fall into the first group as people are perfectly content to live life completely separate from all those worldly people. Now, this isn't really bad, unless one forgets that you yourself are a worldly person. You can't escape.

So how do we actually live out loving people who are different? People who make us uncomfortable, who use different substances, who look different?