And The Winner Is…

Well, I’ve finally decided who I’m going to vote for in the primary.  It was a very hard decision but I’m going to vote for Ron Paul.  Not because I agree with all of what he stands for or because I necessarily  think he would be the best president.  I also am well aware that he will not win the nomination.  Why then, you might ask, would I vote for him?  Because of the message he is sending to the rest of the American party.  Before, libertarians were largely ignored by the vast majority of the republicans but if Paul can get enough votes, instead of being considered fringe nut jobs, we will become a very real force which must be considered and acknowledged.  If by a miracle he does win the nomination, I will of course be happy, but when he doesn’t, I will support the republican nominee because the most important thing is the defeat of Obama. 
Feel free to comment and thanks for reading.

Who to vote for…

I know I said I might move these to weekly posts, but I’m going to have to come off slowly.  I’m so used to doing these every night, not doing one would just feel wrong.  Anyway, here we go.
The primaries are a week away and I have no idea who I’m going to vote for.  I didn’t watch the debate tonight, but I have it recorded and will watch it tomorrow and that will probably help me narrow it down.  The problem with the debates, though, is someone can be a fantastic debator and be really quick on their feet and you end up forgetting that just about their whole career has been filled with blunders, positions, and statements that you are whole heartedly opposed to. (looking at you Gingrich) Debates can also hurt those who may have the better ideas, but have a hard time expressing them or have a certain off putting look about them, both of which could drive people away.  (looking at you Paul and Santorum while citing Nixon) In the end, I think my vote will be cast to the person who I think has the best chance of defeating Obama.  Honestly, I have no idea who that person is but hopefully the debate will tell.  One thing I have decided is that the vice presidential nominee will play a huge part in the upcoming election.  If Romney wins, he’s going to have to pick a hard core conservative running mate to pull the conservatives to his cause.  (perhaps Christie or Rubio?) Gingrich will have to find a way to rally those who could be offended by him, either because of his harsh demeanor or his… how to put it gently… past marital and extramarital relationships?  Santorum will need someone charismatic and Paul will need someone, well, stable and truly conservative.  With the right V.P. choice, I think any of them can beat Obama.  The only issue I see, and it scares me to death, is if Obama drops Biden as V.P.  and replaces him with Hilary.  That would pull the independents and blue dog democrats to his side, two groups which the republicans desperately need to win.  As to whether she would go for it or not, well that’s a different story.  She may want to distance herself from Obama to protect her own 2016 aspirations.  Let me know what you think and thank you for reading.

Blogging

I’ve said before how much this blog means to me.  It is a fantastic outlet for anything that’s going on in my head and is a great reminder to myself that I can do things, even if I’m not feeling particularly motivated.  Recently though, I’ve been thinking a lot about it.  I feel like only about one in five are posts that I’m really proud of and the rest are just crap I force myself to write so I can go to bed at night.  Therefore, and this is open to discussion, I’m thinking about making it a weekly blog.  That would allow me to (hopefully) think of a topic at the beginning of the week and think through it clearly and work on it as the week goes on.  Who knows, I may even get the chance to edit them.  Of course if I see that I”m still waiting until the last minute and pumping out crap, I’ll go back to daily blogging and if I get really inspired, I may do more than one a week.  Please let me know what you guys think.

Thanks for reading.

Jesus the Man

I’m a rather unconventional Christian.  I know that Jesus was God, but I embrace his humanity more than his divinity.  That may be heresy, but it helps my relationship with God.  Tonight my pastor was talking about baptism and eventually got to the topic of sin.  First, let me say he reads these so it’s not like I’m going behind his back or subverting his authority as my spiritual leader, councillor, and guide.  Anyway, he said that Jesus saw every sin that each and every one of us would commit even after we become Christians.  My thought is “but he was just a man, how can he see the future”.  I know that he was also fully God and that’s going to be the typical, knee-jerk response, but I tend to see that phrase a little differently.  I see that as he was entirely divine, made entirely flesh.  After all, he said (if I remember correctly) that he can do nothing without the father.  This could, of course be taken to mean that he and the father are one, so if he does it, the father does it too, or that it shows the mutual authority and submission of the trinity, but what if is really means that he couldn’t do anything without God the Father in the same way we can’t do anything without him?  My theory of a limited Jesus would also explain when he says that only the Father knows when Jesus will return.  It would be because he can’t see the future either.  He could have known that we would sin the same way parents know that eventually their kids will disobey them somehow and some way.  As for what his “abilities” are in his new, improved body, I don’t know, but before he came back from the dead, I tend to think of him as just as human as you or me… only he was God too.
I’ve done no research on the topic, though I plan on making it the focus of my Biblical studies so there may be some verses that contradict everything that I’ve said, and I’m cool with that.  I just like to think and thought I’d share.  Let me know what you think and pull me back from the ledge of false doctrine.  And as always, thank you so much for reading.

What to do?

This is sort of weird, but have you ever wanted to do several different so badly that you end up doing none of them?  Yesterday, I was in a strange mood where I wanted to immerse myself in fantasy.  I wanted to write my fantasy book, read a new fantasy book I got, and play a fantasy video game.  I paced a little while, wrote maybe 50 words, read maybe two pages, and then just started watching tv. It’s not the first time I’ve been pulled too many directions at once and just ended up laying down and pouting like a toddler, but yesterday was the strongest I’ve felt it.  I think school may have been the cause of it.  I’m at that point in the semester where I’m really excited to get started and do well, but I have no assignments because it’s so early.  Hopefully my eagerness will stick around for when I really need it.
Thanks for reading and feel free to comment.

Who is God?

This isn’t going to be as deep and theological as you might think.  We all relate to God differently.  The God that I worship and the God you worship look totally different from one another, while still being the same God.  More specifically, our relationship that we have with God is always going to be specific to us.  For a long time, I saw God as sort of my jedi master and I was his padawan.  Then I entered this new chapter in my and God’s relationship and I didn’t really know what to call it.  If pressed I suppose I would have compared it to a divorced couple who still love each other.  But that, I think, was my own stubbornness rather than a true next step in our relationship.  Now, though, I think I’m starting to enter the true next phase in our relationship, that of a great creator and his creation.  I don’t think this will be the last “relationship” that God and I have, but I look forward to seeing what new insights into who he is that this stage of relationship will bring.
Thanks for reading.  Let me know what sort of relationship you have with God as of now and what sorts you’ve had in the past.

Christian Artists

Please know that I mean no offense with this post.  I too am a Christian artist, at least I like to think of myself as one.
I just finished the book “Noah Primeval”.  It was very good, but it suffers from the same problem that much of Christian art suffers from, it was sub-par in its execution.  There’s no one thing that I can say was lacking or was there in too great a quantity, but there was just something about it that told you it was written by a Christian.  This mysterious “problem” can also be found in Christian music and movies.  With very few exceptions, any modern day art by Christians is never as good as its secular counterpart.  It may be that the good Christian art is sucked up and distributed by mainstream publishers, leaving only the sub-par works to be distributed by the Christian publishers.  Whatever the reason, I hope that this trend is reversed.  I would love to support more Christian artists, but they first have to compete with the other artist in their artistic medium.
Thanks for reading and feel free to comment.

Angels and Emotions

The topic that I wrote down on my list of possible blog topics was can angels love?  We really don’t see them expressing any love, at least to my knowledge, anywhere in the bible.  In fact, there is little indication that angels have any emotions at all, except for one place.  It’s the emotion of jealously found in the Lucifer story. Because if this, I would have to say that if angels can experience one emotion, they can experience them all.  This of course raises some interesting questions about inter-angelic relationships.  Can angels love each other?  Can they dislike each other?  I have no idea but I plan on looking into it more in the near future.
Thanks for reading and feel free to comment.

Psychics

I apologize if I’ve done this topic before, but I don’t think I have.  I want to talk about psychics… sort of.  The Bible gives no indications that psychics are all simply frauds.  In fact, it seems to indicate the opposite.  So where does this, or any “power” come from?  The typical “Christian” response is that this power is gained from making deals and communing with demons.  While I’m sure this could be the true in some cases, I find it highly unlikely that every psychic out there is slitting a goat’s throat to the demon Azazel for psychic abilities.  Some could say that it’s, and we’re assuming it is real to at least a certain degree,  God granting these people their “powers” without them asking it from him or letting them know it’s his doing.  But I think this is rather ridiculous as well, since it not only brings no glory to him, but takes away from his glory.  Well now, I’m about to get heretical.  I’m not saying that I believe this to any degree, but could some people just have gifts?  I think we as Christians (God, please don’t strike me dead for saying this) tend to give God a little too much credit sometimes.  In many Christian circles, everything is by and because of him.  Every earthquake, hurricane, sickness, miraculous healing, and win for our favorite sports team is because of his divine intervention, or at least that’s what some would have us to believe.  And maybe they’re right, but for me to understand the big things, I equate them to smaller things, find the truth there, and then see if that truth still works in the larger picture.  In this instance, I took the topic of supernatural abilities and equated it with creativity.  There are many, especially Christian, authors who claim that everything they write is from, inspired, and directed by God.  I’m sure this is the case in some circumstances, but I believe that God has also given us the ability to create ourselves.  So then when I take this truth found in the simpler case, that there is sometimes divine intervention but we do have the power of creativity within us, and apply it to psychic abilities, we get the inferred truth that sometimes God will intervene, but the gift is often found within ourselves.  I realize that creativity and psychic abilities seem to be two very different things, but after reading Milton, Tolkien, Lewis, Cook, Melville, Rowling, and many, many others, I think creativity may be the more impressive gift.

Thanks for reading and I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject.

Who Am I? (the post)

I just want to let you know that this is the second time I’m writing this post because I closed the WordPress app on my phone and it didn’t save my progress, which was almost complete.

In my psychology of aging class, the class that both stories I told happened in, my teacher asked that we, if we wanted her to learn our names, turn in a piece of paper with our name, interests, and a fictional character who we are most like.  The first two were easy (I wonder why), but I had to really think about the last one.  I can think of a bunch of fictional characters who I would like to be, but there are almost none that I think are like me.  Eventually I settled on John Locke, from the show Lost.  That has no meaning to those of you who haven;t seen the show, and those of you who have are thinking “yeah right”.  Well, let me first put you all in the same boat.  John Locke is one of the people who crash landed on the island and he is the quintessential bad ass.  He is a hunter, tracker, and leader.  Now that you’re all thinking “yeah right”, let me explain how I am like John Locke.  I’m like John Locke because that’s not who John Locke is.  To really get who John Locke is, you have to look at him before he landed on the island.  He was depressed because he felt that he was called to something greater but was unable to fulfill what he saw as his destiny, and I really see this in myself.  I feel called to do great things.  If I believed in destiny, I would say that I feel that I was destined to do great things, but I cannot see myself ever accomplishing anything that I would consider truly great.  There are some other points and comparisons I could make but I don’t want to give too much plot away because if you haven’t seen it, I think it may be the greatest show ever made (and mom and dad, it’s on netflix so I’m going to make you watch it soon).

Thank you all fro reading and feel free to comment.  Let me know if you can think of a fictional character that I am similar to, or who you think you’re similar to.