Invalid

Holy crap...

2005-11-10T23:28:00.000-08:00

When did Pat Robertson become grade A batshit-psycho? He seemed like your ususal TBN type, but then he calls for the assassination of a foreign leader and now comes just short of wishing a natural disaster on a town that voted out intelligent design? Jaysis...

...for the sake of giving this post substance, I believe, as a post-modern empiricist, that it doesn't really matter. Evolution, creationism, intelligent design, I really don't see how believing one or the other is going to help me sleep at night. So I chalk it up to being ineffable and go to bed.

...I swear, I'll eventually write a meaningful post...

Oh my...

2005-10-24T22:54:00.000-07:00

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

Emergent/Postmodern

75%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

71%

Modern Liberal

54%

Classical Liberal

50%

Neo orthodox

50%

Reformed Evangelical

39%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

32%

Fundamentalist

18%

Roman Catholic

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com
...it's that dirty word! Though I had a feeling I'd end up postmodern.

About the title

2005-10-19T15:56:00.000-07:00

...I find myself speaking to a void. Oddly, this is a feeling I'm familiar with.

...no, I don't know how I make this shit up. But anyway...

Umm....I can't say for sure whether my experiences are valid. At the age of 21, I've yet to make an effort to support myself financially; what pittance I've made in my part-time jobs has been little more than disposable income. In short, I'm thoroughly spoiled: my car and my trips to Europe and Japan can attest to that.

I often feel that I don't deserve what I've been given; often I feel guilty about how fortunate I've been. The weight of this guilt has made me morose by nature. Oddly, the preposterousness of such guilt makes me feel like an idiot; I am aware that I should try and make the best of it, but I can't really seem to, for some reason. It creates a feedback loop.

But, most significantly, because I haven't struggled, I can't help but feel that my existence hasn't been properly validated. And so my opinions and my experiences, all of me, merely seem...invalid.

Right...so what am I doing here?

2005-10-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

...wasting time, really. Since I've been drawing attention to myself, I figured I should at least give something to see. Though I suppose one could just go here...

...but then, there ought to be some benefit to having an independent blogger...so I'll write about what I wouldn't in my usual space. About stuff like...church.

Seems appropriate, since those are the circles I've been poking around. Ummm...what is there to say? I haven't gone to church willingly in years now; I'd say I stopped going about a year and a half ago. I was just sick of "church sitting" (a phrase I've become familar with). I often fell asleep during the sermons. I wasn't really lacking sleep, I just couldn't stay awake. And I absolutely hated worship. Nothing worse than literally reading Power point slides that tell you precisely how to connect with God.

My father often guiltripped me into going; he's very heavily into his faith in God. Kinda bugs me; he's the type that has health troubles 'cuz of his weight and asks me to pray for him; God forbid he actually try to eat healthy or walk any of the four dogs we keep. Don't get me wrong; I love my father. But, at the same time, well..

...anyway, the guiltrip is really what killed it for me; that my father would alternate between disappointment and frustration each week wasn't helping. I didn't want my sole reason to be at church to be to please my father. I wanted to feel something, to feel compelled to want to worship God or...something. Maybe I just wanted to stay in bed one more day a week. Either way, I was merely aware of His existence; I did my best to follow the golden rule and left things at that.

One weekend in May, I met Steve Chastain in Canyon Lake, to congratulate a friend of my brother's on his acquisition of a new house. He had just started a site called Stupid Church People. While this mutual friend of Steve and my brother may or may not have appreciated the site, I found it fascinating. It gave form to my misgivings about church, as I recalled days long past when I would go to youth group three nights a week searching for purpose and observing the bureacracy. Maybe I'm still just lazy, and I've just found an excuse for it; regardless, I find that the sorts of things the fore-mentioned circle discuss more often than not tend to resonate with me for some reason.

...I'm still quite young, and hence prone to being impetuous, but I still can't help but agree with these, the disillusioned .... er... renegades.... er...

...what do we call these people?

This isn't real...

2005-10-10T13:23:00.000-07:00

...yeah...so I made this to post somewhere; if you're really that interested, go here...