Saturday, May 21, 2011

Round Two...Fight!

Well, since nobody actually told me which grey/gray is better, I'm making an executive decision and saying gray is the better spelling.  Also, I figured I should make at least one more post before the world ends and invite you to my "The World Is Still Here" after party tonight.  We will be watching The Day After Tomorrow, 2012, Independence Day, and other light-hearted end-of-days movies.  Also we will be driving really fast cars which we have obtained from a recent end-of-the-world-inspired dealership robbery.  There will be door prizes and mattresses made out of $100 bills.  I can give you a ride in my new helicopter if you need it.

But in all seriousness, I don't have any doubt that we will still be here at 6:00...but if I were suddenly to disappear as we were talking, what would you do?  How would you react?  I know a lot of people view Christianity as a cult-ish thing nowadays, because everyone has been lumped together and labeled "Christian" if their religion even has the slightest reference to the Bible.  Personally, I get disgusted at seeing movies and TV shows where a character is a "Christian" because they are portrayed as some psychotic, crazy, dead-to-all-things person with no sense of normal social interaction.  I think it is unfair to label these people as a Christian because, while it's true that these people exist in the world, they exist regardless of personal beliefs.  You know those really awkward, pasty white kids who live in their basement playing D&D until they forget that their 25th birthday is next week and they still live with their parents?  That can be attributed to the same sense of 'weird' in the gaming world.

I'm a Christian.  I won't deny it, nor will I deny the fact that I haven't been the best example of Christianity in my life.  Let me explain to you what it means to be a Christian in it's most basic form.  In order to understand more in depth what Christianity really means, you will have to talk to someone who is better at explaining things than I am.  The most important part is faith.  Belief in something you don't fully understand is a difficult concept to grasp for many people.  We live in a society where things need to be tangible.  Everyone wants proof of something, and nobody trusts anyone at their word anymore unless they have faith that they are telling the truth.  The most simple analogy anyone can ever give to believing something unseen is "we can't see air, but we know it's there".  I don't understand why so many people write that off and say "that's totally different".  How is it any different?  Some will argue that if you take a super powerful microscope you will see different molecules in the air, which is true.  If you look closely enough at events and occurances in history and compare them with the Bible, you will see that they have either a) happened in the timeline of the Bible, or b) been predicted to happen in later years and have come to pass.  If you have faith enough to trust that as truth, then the rest is easier to understand.  If you believe in God, and you believe that the Bible isn't just a novel, and believe that Jesus was God in flesh on this earth, and you have the guts to admit that to yourself and to God, you are a Christian.  The next step is to follow the rather simple steps outlined in the Bible as a guide to living out your life.  You don't have to be sheltered and shut off from the world and turn in to a socially inept human.  You just have to be able to look at the world and understand what is right and wrong, and to admit to doing wrong when you do, because we all inevitably fall to temptation from time to time.

I am a Biblical Christian, which I believe everyone should be, but there are so many denominations out there now that have their own take on what the Bible actually means that what is written gets twisted and reformed beyond understanding and recognition.  I believe the Bible is the one and only source for information regarding Christianity.  My analogy for this is that God said specifically what was written in the Bible shouldn't be changed or added to, and therefore is not "canon", whereas George Lucas said that anything written in the name of Star Wars is all inclusive because he left it open to "canon".  So anything written as an addition, alteration or new revision of the Bible is false.  There are translations, of course, arguably the most accurate being King James Version.  Yeah, it can be hard to read sometimes because it's got some olde English...but you can still understand it if you are careful about reading it.  There are some New International versions that are also fairly accurate translations of the King James Version, using terms and phrases most of us understand today.

As for the idea of today being the rapture...it also says in the Bible that no man can predict the exact point of the Rapture.  Personally, I believe that there are more things to come in the world before the Rapture will happen.  Revelations is essentially a book of prophecies, and may things that have happened in our recent past have been predicted in this book.  While it can be frightening to see these come to pass, it is also more assurance in my eyes that what I believe is, in fact, not unfounded.  All the proof I need is what I have seen in the world that has been written down thousands of years prior.  Many people know that I tend to over analyze a great many things.  The truth is, I tend to look at things from many different angles before I decide on which way to go when making a decision.  So I understand why a lot of people view Christians as some religious nutjobs.  Religion should have nothing to do with being a Christian.  Being a Christian means you believe in something (specifically God, Jesus, and the Bible).  Religions are a set of rules and regulations, a twist on what the Bible really means, a belief that someone is inferior, and a preacher at the front who writes a speech based on the same message every week.  A good church is one that will help you understand questions you will have, and they are hard to come by these days.  Religion and Faith are two totally different things.  Religions are turning into indoctrinations, and that is where people believe something blindly, and where you find a lot of the crazy people who state something as truth with fighting words, and don't welcome your questions and misunderstandings.  There are a lot of them, but there are a lot more people out there like me, who actually believe, and at times have questioned that belief as well.  We are told that we will question our belief, because we are human and cannot fully comprehend the intangible.  Humans aren't perfect, so of course we will have questions from time to time.

What my point here is, we aren't all nuts.  Don't be afraid to bring up my beliefs, or anyone else's for that matter, because you will find that if you are just curious and ask someone, they will talk to you openly about it without judgement if they are a true "believer".  It's easy to weed out the crazy ones.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Second Attempt

So, Blogger is awesome and totally LOST my blog.  The URL even disappeared.  Unfortunately, I can't recreate my AWESOME first blog to such a hilarious degree in which it originally existed, and therefore must resort to posting a rather bland and uneventful second blog just to reassure the general public (who most likely in terms of following this blog consists of roughly 2 people) that I am, in fact, back in the blogging world.

Also, I still am curious about which spelling of grey or gray is your preference, and thusly the survey I established (rather weakly) in my first blog is still valid.

Also also (my version of P.P.S.), nerdfestiest is still a word, and I don't care if my thoughts and jots sound pretentious because it is still my blog.

Listen to metal!

see ya next time