One of Those Lists

I've been absent for a while. My feelings have been too private to share with the internet...even my own little corner that remains, I think, happily unvisited. I've a list, though; one of those lists that people make at the end of the year, a reflection on what has been and what is to come. Mine is a list of things I learned in 2012.

I have never hurt more than I did this year.

I have never grown more than I did this year.

I hardly recognize myself anymore. I hope...I hope that that's a good thing.

I learned that there are consequences to erring from the will of God, and that I am bound to hurt if I do so. His boundaries are for my protection, and no temporary joy is worth the lasting pain of injuring myself and, more importantly, my Savior.

More than ever, I understand now that there is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.

Whatever keeps me from my LORD, whether it's jealousy, rage, or simply listening to Christian music instead of spending time in prayer, is sin and should be treated as such.

There is unfathomable beauty in the name of YHWH. As a Christian, I should acknowledge this more than I do. I understand that Christ was Emmanuel, thus bringing God among us, and that Pentecost allowed God to be within us. We thus have a closeness to Him. Yet, the Jewish reverence for the name of God is something that followers of Jesus would do well to remember.

Arm Yourselves

Each day, I must put on the full armor of God. Each day, I must face the reality that Satan and his forces are after me in an intense way. I used to shrug off the possibility that Satan was indeed present in the world and that, if he was, he even messed with people like me. I mean, it's like a poorly-made horror film involving some old "secret Catholic dogma" that proves to be the only way to save some possessed teenage girl.

Except...it's not just a bad movie. It's the truth. The Bible warns us, over and over, that in spite of Christ's victory over death and over Satan, Satan will not simply let us go. In fact, he is constantly after us. He jabs at us, and then he hits us when we're down.

And, as I've lately realized, he isn't the big bully on the block. He's the little sneaky kid that pretends to be your friend and then spends all of his time whispering in your ear about your faults and weaknesses. He is the Deceiver. He is a liar, and a thief of joy. He will never stop, not until the final battle. I've been reading John Eldredge's Waking the Dead, and one chapter, aptly titled "Arm Yourselves," begins with a quote from Leif Enger that could not describe the situation more perfectly:

"We and the world, my children, will always be at war.
Retreat is impossible.
Arm yourselves."

I don't believe in coincidences, and, therefore, I don't believe that it was coincidental that I picked up this book as I finished Prince Caspian. We are at war. Always. We must arm ourselves.

Lately, as I've battled with severe bouts of anxiety and depression, I have realized the full extent to which this is true. I feel that Satan is constantly knocking me around, and, as my pastor said last weekend, I'm simply throwing one last punch at him as I go down. I know that Jesus envelops me, surrounds me, lives within me, and loves me as a pure child of God, yet my battle with the Enemy continues. Each day, it continues. Each minute, it continues.

Each second, I am fighting.

I am very tired. I am trying to remember that I don't have to fight this by myself, that Jesus is fighting on my behalf. That Michael, the Archangel, is defending me in battle. That the whole of the heavenly host is at constant war in praise of the Creator that was and is and is to come.

There's something glorious about knowing that I am fighting for my freedom, my peace, and my life. I do not enjoy it; don't get me wrong. It is terrifying and exhausting, and most days, I have trouble getting out of bed. But I know how this story ends. "I love to tell the story" because it is incredible, and beautiful.

"So tell me," sing BarlowGirl, "what is our ending? Will it be beautiful? So beautiful?"

Yes, it will. Until then, arm yourselves.

Another Love Story That Ends Badly

"Cause I"m so scared of being alone

that I forgot what house I live in;

that it's not my job to wait by the phone

for [him] to call." [Caedmon's Call, "Table for Two"]

And it isn't my job. In fact, the only real job I've ever had was that of a "priest and a prince[ss]" in the kingdom of God.

It's funny - in a way that isn't actually funny at all - how we can fall into sin when we think we're still seeking God. And how he commands certain things of us not only so that we glorify Him in our obedience but so that we're protected from heartbreak.

I never thought that I would be the girl with the love story that ended badly. I always thought - and my family did, too - that, considering my lack of a dating history, my first real relationship would also be my last. That it would be my husband. That it would be my happily ever after.

But it wasn't. I hoped that it would end that way. I had little fantasies that maybe...someday...that's how we would be. That somehow, the religious difference would go away, that in two years, when our respective commitments were done, we would end up in the same place. That we would get married. He spoke of it as though it were a possibility someday.

I later found out that he never really saw a viable future for us. I found out that I was giving him things that I shouldn't have. I found out that I was giving away pieces of my heart that I still haven't recovered. I found out that I was hiding my feelings about certain things from him so that he would love me more.

Our relationship was born out of hurt, really. "Born to uncertainty, destined for pain," I suppose. If not in the same fashion as the characters we played onstage, certainly in a similar vein.

Maybe that's how their story really ends. Forced apart, kept from returning to one another, they wait. They hurt. At least, she does. Perhaps, in his anger, his hurt goes away quickly. They regret. She considers all that she gave him only to get brokenness in return. She thinks of the other women he has loved in the past and will certainly love in the future. She wonders whether her tears will ever dry.

"A word or two, and then
a lifetime of not knowing where or how or why or when.
You'll think of me; or speak of me;
and wonder what befell that someone you once loved so long ago so well."

"Simply, to Thy cross I cling," or The Girl Comes Around

I've been filling my life with everything except for Jesus. It's gotten so horrendous that now, when I try to pray, I think about the things distracting me. So bad that I'm too embarrassed to write such a silly distraction here, in my tiny corner of the internet that only I inhabit, typing up posts that only I (I think) read. It seems like, at least in terms of many things right now, I feel like there's only one person I can talk to. And that one person isn't Jesus. I've been trying, but it still feels like a disconnect.

I can't let it keep happening. I am in desperate need of my Savior. I am nothing without him.

What more is there to say?

Interfaithing: Love and Marriage

Ever since high school, the interfaith movement has meant a lot to me. I was raised in a rural community (well, several) that was (were) primarily white, middle class, and Christian. The summer before I began high school, after moving to a suburb of St. Louis, I took a P.E. class so that I would be able to take choir - an elective for which I didn't have room in my rigorous schedule - in the fall. The first day, I met Nipun. We happened to be sitting at the same table at our class meeting spot, and we started talking. Eventually, we talked about Harry Potter - an obsession of ours, if you will - and the rest, I guess, is history. Nipun is Indian. She was born and raised in a white suburban community, one of only a few South Asian students and the only Hindu at our predominantly-white, almost exclusively-Christian, conservative, "average American" suburban high school.

I would like to say that I just enjoyed making a friend so quickly, but that's not the whole story. I didn't just enjoy being around Nipun, I was fascinated by her. I wanted to know about the religious reasons that she didn't eat meat, and how her family immigrated, and where she worshiped, and whether she spoke Hindi at home, and a million other things. So I asked, and we talked. And I told my family. Even though most of the conversations we had over the course of that summer revolved around our similarities and common interests, I was in love with everything that was different about us.

By our sophomore year, Nipun was one of my closest friends. Among others in our cohort were two Jewish twins, a Mexican-American, and a Filipino-American. We were school-loving, parent-pleasing, Harry Potter-obsessed girls who loved to laugh, and - most importantly - we cared deeply about one another. I have been infinitely blessed by the people God has given me to walk with. High school would have been absolutely miserable without my friends; they made it worth the emotional heartache, overwork, and constant anxiety. I love them, and, no matter where our paths take us, I will love them forever.

I suppose I digress (although digressions often convey more about what we're really trying to say than we think). Our junior year of high school, my friends began a club about interfaith understanding and learning. It was a hard sell to the principal - it smacked of collaboration between church and state (ours was a public school) even though another school club was allowed to hold teacher-led Bible studies on campus. Anyway, it happened. It was short-lived, but it meant a lot to them. It meant a lot to me, too, although I didn't really understand its importance at the time. But more on my interfaith journey later. For now, I was to narrow the focus to something I've been thinking a lot about over the last month. This issue, like all others regarding interfaith questions, begs where, short of universalism, one must let go of multi-faith ideas and cling to the Word of God.

I ask this not only in terms of what is acceptable to consider as truth across boundaries of faith but when considering how we relate to one another. Specifically, at the moment, my thoughts linger on the question of interfaith marriage. I know that re-considering my beliefs on the topic is, by itself, treading dangerous ground. I was raised to believe that marriage is a bond made holy by God. Romantic love is only an extension of Christ's love for us (and ours for Christ). One must not marry selfishly; the aim must be to further the Kingdom of God. Because of this belief, I was always taught that marrying a non-Christian is wrong. The commonly-cited verse in defense of this is 2 Corinthians 6:14:

"Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?"

Those who believe that interfaith marriage is possible turn to 2 Corinthians 7:14:

"For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband..."

Both verses have context issues. The verse from 2 Corinthians is not explicitly about marriage. The latter comes in the middle of Paul's directions concerning existing married couples in which one person is not a believer.

Considering these things is, of course, a very preliminary step in thinking about interfaith marriage as a whole. The usual questions still exist: in which faith would children be raised, how would you tithe, etc. More importantly, can marriage exist in the God's perfect, intended form between one person who believes that Jesus Christ is the salvation of the world and one who does not?

Joy Comes in the Mo(u)rning

     I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up

          and have not let my foes rejoice over me.

    O Lord my God, I cried to you for help,

          and you have healed me.

    O Lord, you have brought up my soul from Sheol;

          you restored me to life from among those who go down to the pit.

    Sing praises to the Lord, O you his saints,

          and give thanks to his holy name.

    For his anger is but for a moment,

          and his favor is for a lifetime.

    Weeping may tarry for the night,

          but joy comes with the morning. (Psalm 30:1-5)

Life is joy, and pain. It is happiness, and sorrow. Many wise people have observed that the magnitude of our sorrow both comes from and reflects our joy. Those things that make us happiest are the hardest to lose. It seems like common sense, and yet I find myself forgetting. I find myself hiding from my sorrow and lamenting my pain, as though angst were unnatural or unhealthy. Yet, it isn't either of those things. God created sorrow. Without it, there would be no joy. We would all be walking around in a constant state of numbness; of course, we wouldn't realize this because we would only know one emotion. We wouldn't be joyful even if we were full of joy. Thus, sorrow. It serves so many purposes. It is natural, and, in the right doses and for the right reasons, it is healthy. In the intense sorrow I have felt over the past two weeks, I have come to realize that it is even more: it is good. It is yet another reason to praise God.

Let us say, then, that joy comes in the mourning. Or perhaps it doesn't. But it should. We should find a kind of joy in our angst. I don't mean in a sadistic way; I'm not referring to Voltaire's pleasure in having no pleasure. We should rejoice in our humanity, in our being what God made us to be. We should also rejoice in the fact that we feel sorrow because God made us in His image. Our ability to feel sorrow is a reflection of God's own tendency to feel sorrow. In fact, it is because of God's sorrow and pain that we have eternity. 

Working to be thankful for our pain, to rejoice in it, is a difficult task. But we are commanded to do it. "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" (Phil. 4:4). Paul felt that this command needed to be repeated. He drove the point home by writing, near the end of his letter to the Philippians, "...for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need." (4:11b-12).

Love, Leonard Cohen famously wrote, is "a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah." This Hallelujah - this praise in the midst of and because of our sorrow - is so important. I've been wasting the days away, telling myself that time heals everything and that I simply have to wait until I feel better. That isn't right. Trying to hasten away our pain only cheapens the joy that we once had and will have. I don't want to cheapen it. The sharper the angst, the greater the joy was or will be. In my case, my happiness was unbounded. I knew that it would end abruptly. I made the decision to pursue a path that would end in hurt. It was worth it, though; it was worth every tear. So, then, let those tears be cried with purpose. Let me not try to chase my pain away. Let me think on it, and be thankful for it, and remember this season in my life as one that Christ carried me through. And, of course, let me remember that, no matter what I feel now, "joy comes in the morning."

In the Final Analysis

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

Jesus presents us with what seems to be a paradox, as so many of his commands so often do. We are to love humans with everything that we have. We are to place them above ourselves. We are to serve. This is expected of us as followers of Christ. And yet, we are not to focus on things of this world. We are to constantly be looking toward Eternity. Because, "in the final analysis, it is between you and God."

I find myself struggling with this: where are our earthly cares supposed to end and our heavenly cares begin? Should there be a distinction? What exactly does it mean to be in the world but not of it?

I don't really have any answers to this right now. In fact, I'm sort of at a loss. So I'll keep praying about it, and keep reading, and keep searching.

The Greatest of These

I never tire of reading Paul's words to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13) on love. I realize that, within the Christian tradition, we recite them over and over.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing.

 Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away...Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

In spite of what feels like the extreme overuse of this passage, it will always be one of my favorite scriptures. Until this past month, I never had the opportunity of reading them in a romantic sense before. When taken romantically, the passage is beautiful but difficult. Love makes us whole, and yet we cannot be whole without God. It is Christ's love for us and our love for Christ that gives us the ability to truly love another. And God charges us with a heavy responsibility in terms of giving earthly love, both romantic and not. First, we cannot hope to understand all that love is without allowing ourselves to be loved by our Savior and returning that love. Second, our earthly love must strive to be as pure as Christ's love for us. It must be patient and kind, even though humans, without Christ, are by nature impatient and unkind. God does not allow for jealousy or pride; in fact, true love cannot coexist with either of these. Love means being a servant to the one you love, always putting him or her above yourself - just as we must put God first. Love "rejoices with the truth," which means that it must be brutally, beautifully honest. Our love for God is honest, as he sees into our hearts. His love for us is honest, as he has revealed his heart to us. Earthly love must be just as open.

Perhaps, though, earthly, non-godly love can be all of these things on its own. Maybe. It might be possible. What Paul says next, however, is the limit of non-godly love: it "bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends." True love - and by "true love," I mean love that flows outward from the church because Christ first loved us - cannot fail. In no circumstances can it break, or wilt, or wither. It bears all. It bears all because, if it is true love, it is eternal, like us. Our salvation - Christ's gift of eternal life - makes us eternal beings. All godly things will last forever. If love is grounded in Christ, then it, too, will be never-ending.

And of all that will last eternally, Paul tells us, the greatest is love. God's love makes possible all things, from our very being to our eternal life. Yes, the greatest is love.

Then let us not use the word casually. Our language - our culture - has made it trite. We have allowed it to become so. Let us be cognizant of our use of this sacred word. It is the greatest of the eternal gifts God has granted us. We should treat it as nothing less.

Forgive Them Anyway

"People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway."


A couple weeks ago, I posted Mother Teresa's adapted "do it anyway" mantra. The sentence above is the first part of it. Those words are some of the most difficult words I have ever read. The all-time most difficult are their inspiration:


"Then Peter came up and said to him, 'Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?' Jesus said to him, 'I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven times.'"


Matthew 18: 21-22. It is followed by the parable of the servant who would not forgive his fellow's debt although he was forgiven his own debt by his master. It ends as such:


"'Then the master summoned him and said to him, 'You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger, his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.'" (Matthew 18: 32-35)


My greatest fault is my unwillingness - or perhaps I should call it inability, at least without God - to forgive others. Grudges are - literally - sacrilege to God, and yet we hold them. I hold them. I'm not sure why forgiveness is so difficult for me. I can sooner love my neighbor, or refuse to lie, or keep myself from swearing, but forgiveness is my crutch.


Peter very well may have been pleased with himself that he thought to forgive someone seven times. That's a great deal of forgiveness, considering how difficult it can be to forgive someone once. Jesus, of course, turned Peter's self-satisfaction on its head (as He was wont to do): not seven times, but seventy times seven times. In other words, infinitely, because that's how much God forgives us. Infinitely. Every second, every nanosecond, every one-millionth of a nano-second, because we are always sinning. And we aren't just sinning, we're sinning against the perfect, almighty God. We are not entitled to forgiveness. We don't deserve it, and we never have. And yet, we receive it. We ask for it. We are given it willingly by the Father. 


In the parable, the master delivers the servant unto the jailers until he can pay his debt. The thing about debtor's prison was that you couldn't earn money because you couldn't work because you were in prison, so you could not possibly pay your debt. Thus, the servant would forever be imprisoned and separated from the master. This is Hell - eternal separation from God. It's terrifying. The parable sounds awful. We are bound to be unforgiving of others; how can we hope to escape prison? Well, here's the other thing about debtor's prison: you could get out if someone else - generally a family member, but sometimes a friend - paid your debts for you. 


Isn't that precisely what Jesus did? He saw all of humanity imprisoned in sin and death and completely unable to escape. So He paid our way out. He gave his life so that our chains would be broken. 


Of course, this doesn't mean that we can go around refusing to forgive others just because we have God's grace. In fact, it's the Holy Spirit within our new selves that urges us to forgive. Christians know that grudges are bad. Even if someone has wronged you terribly and you want to say, "But you don't know what they did," you know that you should forgive them. The idea may be completely unpalatable, but we aren't given a choice. God is in us, and His Spirit speaks to us. Even when we don't want to hear. Even when we want to make excuses. Seventy times seven times, He says. People are unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. It doesn't matter.


Forgive them anyway. 

Exonerating Cressida

The past two months of my life have been dominated by Troilus and Cressida. I'm a theatre kid; I have been since high school. This year, I'll have assistant directed one show, directed two, and played a lead role in what is perhaps Shakespeare's least-loved play, Troilus and Cressida. Saturday night was the final performance. For the first time in all of my years of theatre, I completely invested myself in the role. I decided several weeks ago that I wasn't going to play Cressida. I was going to become her. I'm not a method actor; I usually just hop on stage and do my thing. This time, though, it was different. This time, I cared - perhaps too much. This time, I gave everything.

Cressida never existed. She was invented 900 years ago to be the very epitome of falsehood. For almost a millennium, she has been a "whore." She has been used variously to glorify courtly romantic feelings in men, to warn against the flightiness and inconstancy of women, and to spur the men around her into action. She is never given a greater purpose. She is "false Cressid."

Except, that's not the whole story. Cressida is a young Trojan woman whose father, Calchas, has abandoned her and fled for Greece. In Shakespeare's version of the story, she is practically given away by her uncle, who thinks her a fine prize for Troilus, the youngest Prince of Troy. She is wooed, bedded, and then given away to the Greeks in exchange for a Trojan prisoner. Not one person tries to stop it from happening. Usually, she is portrayed as being false to Troilus from the very start of her imprisonment by becoming the lover of Diomedes, the Grecian warrior. Troilus sees her with Diomedes, declares her falsehood to the heavens, and uses his anger to fuel his rage in battle. So, you see, she is just a literary pawn. As I got to know her, though, I realized how much more is going on in her story and, eerily enough, how alike we are.

In my show, Troilus is played by a guy that I've spoken about in previous posts. A guy for whom, in spite of my best efforts, I developed feelings. A guy that told me, after our last performance, that he feels the same way about me. A guy that I cannot be with for myriad reasons. A guy that broke my heart in two. My will to play Cressida as a victim with no agency whatsoever stemmed from that heartbreak. I refused to let her be the whore of the story, because I loved her too much. It wasn't fair to her to be used, and it wasn't fair to me to be scorned.

So, after two months of emotional turmoil, I'm done with the play and, therefore, am finished trying to exonerate Cressida. People who came to the show could have chosen to see her as the whore, but I know that I did my part to make her something else.

There are two sides to every story, friends. We throw around labels like candy. Sometimes they're meaningless, but sometimes they stick. Sometimes, they stick for 900 years. Let us choose our words carefully, always cognizant of how important language is. And let us be willing to listen to the whole story and to encounter those involved the way God wants us to: as infinitely-loved, ever-forgiven children of the Creator.

Unabashed Craziness

I've got a lot of posts percolating in my mind right now, including one half-finished draft, but I wanted to post something in the meantime. One of my best friends from high school is extremely active in the interfaith community at her university, and she wrote a blog post about Holy Week. She's Hindu, but she knows how to engage with the Bible in a very meaningful way. She included in her blog post the following quotation famously adapted by Mother Teresa:

"People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.

If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway."

Jesus is the "anyway." Each of the "anyways" could be replaced with "because of Jesus." That's what Christianity is about: doing what God commands in spite of the sheer craziness of it. Giving abundantly, sacrificially, and faithfully. Loving with total abandon. Jumping to give people a second, or third, or one hundredth chance. Sounding completely crazy to the world. Allowing the Holy Spirit to inhabit you fully until every part of you is about God. Jesus asks us for nothing less than complete insanity, from the world's perspective. I will begin to ask myself if I'm on the edge of the cliff being talked into finding safer footing by Satan, or if I'm really and truly taking the dive into the reckless bliss that is Jesus. We must make the decision to jump every single day, every hour, every minute. Does the Creator of the Universe deserve anything less?

When You're in Love

When you fall in love with Jesus, all you want is to keep falling. You don't want to slow down. You long for it, thirst for it, need it. His love is always present, never-failing, perfect, and pure. There are no butterflies in your stomach; just a light in your heart. When you're in love - really in love - nothing else matters. When you're in love, you can truly cry out, "My soul magnifies the Lord!" (Luke 1:46).

Except sometimes, you're not in love. You love Jesus, deep down, no matter what, but you're not in love with Him. You care, but you're not seeing stars. You thank Him and praise Him, but your words are motivated by guilt or obligation rather than love.

I bounce back between these two poles so often that it drives me crazy. All I want is to be so completely in love with Jesus that I could be perfectly joyful and content with doing nothing but running around and shouting his name to the heavens. I want to be so in love that every single action I take is motivated by His love for me and mine for Him. I want to be so overpowered by His love that I cannot speak, think, or act without doing so in love. Yet, I don't. I fall out of love, like a fickle teenager with a crush. As often as I find myself in this state and wish that I were crazy in love, I also have moments where I don't want that love. It's too much. It's too overwhelming, and I'm too imperfect. And I want the world. The very thing that I am told not to want is my greatest desire, and the Almighty God somehow just gets leftovers.

It happens all the time, but lately, both extremes have been amplified. Yesterday, I felt so in love with God. All I wanted to do was spend time with Him, sing to Him, speak to Him, be in complete awe of Him. But then my love for the world took over. I went to rehearsal and, as per usual these past few weeks, saw the guy I've developed feelings for, and all thoughts of God left my mind. I began wondering whether my makeup was alright, or thinking (with guilty paranoia) that said guy might actually be into my best friend, or berating myself for being unable to win his affection. Only hours later did I realize that I'd left Jesus at the door of the building when I went inside to rehearse.

I've been so wrapped up in the (recently learned) knowledge that the guy I like doesn't feel the same way about me that I've been forgetting about Jesus. Jesus, the Creator, Lover of My Soul, who loves me unconditionally in a way that I cannot begin to describe. Jesus, who loves every single person who was, is, and shall be, knowing full well that such people most likely will not love Him in return. Jesus, who is so in love with me that He let the Father pour out all of His wrath against humanity into His own weak human body. Jesus, who died for me. Jesus, who allowed himself to be abandoned by God for me. This is the Love that Will Not Let Me Go. The farther I run, the farther He follows, beckoning me back into His arms.

I know that I will continue to struggle with this every minute of every day for the rest of my life. He knows it, too, and accepts my repentance for my failings. His love is no less.

And that is why I am able to wake up and not simply face the day, but delight in it.

Tired

Some days, I just get tired of it all. I get tired of my inconstancy in the face of God's never-changing, never-ending love and forgiveness. I get tired of the world. I get tired of the dirty jokes that my friends toss around like candy. I get tired of hateful evangelism. Tired of fighting Satan all the time. My exhaustion does not confine itself to the spiritual or the mental. My heart feels weary, but so does my body. All I really want is to lie in bed and pray that God will help me to throw off all of the negative things I'm feeling.

I want to delight in God's creation; usually, I do. I walk outside in the morning and smile because it's sunny, because Jesus is risen, because I am alive. Yet, sometimes, it's not that easy. On days like today, when it's beautiful outside and my mood remains dour, I am merely exhausted.

The only thing to be done, I guess, is to try to smile. I have to work to move beyond myself and to love everyone around me. It sounds easy. But sometimes, it's not. That is the challenge. When I can quit pitying myself and start moving toward other people, then I am living in the world (although weary of it) but not of it. That is the beauty of Jesus. That's how the light gets in.

No More Tears?

Every time in my life I've cried over a boy, I've sworn that I would never do so again. But I always do. Pain always seems to come with having feelings for someone. It's utterly ridiculous, because I know that real, godly love isn't like that. Relationships are supposed to build up the people in them, not make them suffer. Relationships do not harm; they heal.

I can't help but thinking that, if it is God's will for me to marry someday, I'll have wasted time on so many crushes that I won't have enough heart left to give my husband. I realize that this isn't true, that most women (and men) have tons of crushes before getting married and still end up in healthy relationships. The paranoid side of me (which is rather strong), thinks that I'm somehow breaking my own heart a little more all the time. My hope lies in God's ability to mend hearts. He gave me the feelings that I have, so I know that he's going to protect me from them when they get out of hand.

I mentioned in my last post that having feelings for someone makes me weird. It also makes me unsure of myself. I'm comfortable with my personality and my body most of the time. It was a long road, and there are always things that I can improve, but I've made it to a place where I'm truly happy with myself. When I get a crush on someone, though, all I can think about is whether I'm laughing too much or coming across as too geeky, or whether my hips are too wide and my tummy isn't tiny enough. It's terrible. I get to be so self-conscious that my insecurity makes me more miserable than my aching heart does. I always recall a line from The Crucible, a play that's very dear to me:

"I counted myself so plain, so poorly made, no honest love could come to me. Suspicion kissed you when I did; I never knew how I should say my love."

I've always identified with Elizabeth Proctor. I struggled with self-image issues from the time I started going through puberty at age 10 until halfway through college. I'm pretty new to this whole "loving yourself" thing. Thus, whenever those old feelings of insecurity start creeping back, I get scared. And then I feel awful because I've lost control of even the feelings that I thought I had tied down years ago.

I have to believe that, if I am to marry, when I meet my future husband, I'll be able to have butterflies in my tummy without wondering if my tummy is too big. I won't feel ridiculous about the things that I'm interested in or what I laugh at, because he'll be the kind of person that sees me as a child of God rather than a flawed and sometimes-awkward girl. And my heart won't have to ache, because God will have sent someone who's actually going to be around for the long haul.

Unequally Yoked

I've had a lot of crushes in my time. Not all of them have been "major," as it were, but they've all had certain things in common: the ol' butterflies in the stomach, daydreams, increased social awkwardness...and pain.

My first and only boyfriend came into my life when I was 11. I know, I know. I was just a kid. Let me start by saying that I was a very mature 11-year-old who had been through quite a bit in her time. By the time I was 11, I was having panic attacks about reaching age 40 and not having gotten anywhere in life. When I was 13, I was manning a garage sale and had a woman ask if "my husband" and I were having the sale because we were moving or if we just wanted to get rid of a few things. I blinked at her and, not wanting to embarrass her, replied, "Yes, we're moving." Right. I would go on a month later to begin eighth grade. But I digress. I met Wyatt at Pokemon League (laugh all you want - it was super fun), which met every Saturday and Sunday at Toys 'R Us. After being friends with him for a year, I was crushing on him so badly it was ridiculous. You know, crying at night because he didn't love me, etc., etc.

Well, he eventually came to like me, too, and we started "dating." We kissed a lot, which, of course, I thought was awesome and very mature of us. The problem - besides my being very young - was that I saw Wyatt more as a mission field who happened to come in cute boy form than an actual "boyfriend." You see, he wasn't a Christian. In fact, he'd never even heard the story of the birth of Christ when I met him. I'd never met anyone who hadn't been at least raised in the church. I felt like I had a duty to God and to him to convert him.

Actually, it was more self-serving than that. My grandmother reminded me at one point that I shouldn't be "unequally yoked" (2 Corinthians 6:14). But I really liked Wyatt. I figured if I got him to become a Christian then we could go on "dating" and everything would be fine. I would like to remind you at this point that I was eleven. Anyway, it ended badly. I broke things off, and, because he was an earnest and mature twelve-year-old kid, he was absolutely heartbroken. That, my friends, is pretty much the extent of my experience in the world of dating.

There is an epilogue to that story, but I'm not going to get into it here. Just know that it ended happily and hearts were mended many years later. What I do want to talk about is what my relationship with Wyatt taught me about the way I handle things now. So let's get back to the issue of "crushes." I bring this up because it's something I'm dealing with right now. There's a guy, and he's fantastic. He's a "good person," and he just might be interested in me. Not having had much experience in the world of dating, however, I really don't know. He may find me utterly repulsive. I'm not great at reading these things. But I digress.

I like him. When I first came to this realization several weeks ago, I panicked. You see, I relate perfectly well to guys if I don't have feelings for them. When I do, however, all of my social deftness decides to run away. As quickly as possible. I become either defensive and sarcastically mean or girlish and princess-y. Neither of these is part of my personality normally, so I usually end up regretting everything I say and do when I'm around guys for whom I have feelings. It's happening right now, in spite of all my attempts to suppress it. That's not the big issue, though.

The real problem here is that he isn't a Christian. I could come up with a million reasons not to get involved with a guy right now, including the fact that I'm graduating and moving in two months and that I don't know if it would even be appropriate for me to pursue a romantic relationship. Singleness has been going pretty well, particularly in how I relate to God. I don't know if He would give me the go-ahead on a relationship right now no matter what the other circumstances were. I haven't really been thinking about those other things, though. I have to keep reminding myself that no matter what I feel for him or he might feel for me, I absolutely cannot pursue a relationship with him because he doesn't love Jesus.

The modern, wordly part of me keeps saying, "It's fine! He's a good guy! And it's not like you're going to marry him! You're young! Maybe casually dating would help to cure you of your weird social awkwardness around guys you like!" This kind of rationalization presents all sorts of problems, though. First of all, I believe that dating is a precursor to marriage and that it cannot exist on its own. God has not laid down rules for "dating" in the modern sense. He laid down rules for marriage. Thus, casually dating is not appealing to me on the whole, and I'm not sure that it's even obedient to God to do it. Second, I don't feel like being "young" is a justification for any of my actions. Third, I'm an emotionally serious person. I really don't think I could date someone without giving part of my heart away. Some people can, and that's wonderful. I just can't. I get far too invested in my relationships with people to look at romance flippantly.

More than anything, though, I know that God commands us to do and not to do certain things for very specific reasons. In this particular instance, dating a non-Christian would be damaging to my relationship and my partner's relationship with God. I would be missing out on the godly part of romance, which, for Christians, should be most of it. My significant other would be getting less from me than he would expect because I would continue to give most of myself to God (ideally). If the relationship evolved into something serious, I would have to break things off for religious reasons. That could lead only to heartbreak and, most likely, a really negative attitude toward God on the guy's part. It would basically boil down to me using someone.

So, after going over all of this and understanding how much is at stake, I've realized that it just can't happen. I've been asking God to guard my heart and to help me to treat my romantic interest in a friendly, not flirtatious, manner. It seems like it should be so easy, and yet...it isn't.

Lonely Planet

I spent my first two years of college at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Getting accepted and having the opportunity to go to Georgetown was my dream. Those two years, though, were very difficult. For many reasons, I did not end up staying at Georgetown.

Washington, D.C., is a peculiar sort of place. It's huge, and yet very, very tiny. There are a great many people packed into a very small space, and most of those people see themselves as wildly different from the other inhabitants of the city. There are three reasons that one lives in D.C.: you were born and raised there, you work for a government (American or foreign), or you work for a non-profit organization. The college students in the city (and there are a lot of them) are there usually because they want to go into politics. In fact, politics shape every aspect of life in the District. I remember walking down the street and being amazed by the people I saw. The Americans - at least the Americans that weren't tourists - did everything with purpose. There were meetings to go to, rallies to attend, people to call, metro trains to catch, opinions to disseminate. There was never, I quickly realized, time for, well, life. Being in D.C. means being of D.C. Being of D.C. usually means interacting with a plethora of people, but never really knowing them or caring to know them. A political constituent is a faceless American whose vote can be won or lost depending upon the way a campaign is run. A neighbor is someone who is probably just as busy as you are and wants to get to know you about as little as you want to get to know him. The cashier at the grocery store is someone working a minimum-wage job, someone who needs, not a friend, but a political representative. This is how D.C. operates.

It is the loneliest place I have ever been.

During my two years in the nation's capitol, I longed for every smile, every handshake that I received. They were few and far between, but they had the power to change my attitude for the rest of the week. I strove to make conversation with anyone that I could. Most people found that to be very strange. I'm not a terribly social person; I love being able to relax by myself and read, play video games, write letters, or what have you. Yet, being in Washington taught me that I need people. Not just my family and friends, but people. My experience in D.C., coupled with my growing conviction that Christ calls me to love every single person with whom I come into contact, has changed the way I look at the other people walking around this lonely planet.

We are lonely. People are lonely. And it's only getting worse. We send a Facebook message when we could send an email. We send an email when we could call. We call when we could take an hour out of our weeks to have lunch with a friend. We take an hour for lunch when we should be pouring all of our time into developing relationships with people. The Christian life is not a solitary one.

I still have trouble with this, of course. Some days, I don't want to look at people, much less love them. But we're not really given that choice, are we? Jesus died for us to live, and we must - must - tell others about His amazing sacrifice.

In case you haven't figured it out by now, I love poetry. It moves me in a way that few other art forms do. Today, I came across a Walt Whitman poem called "To You." If you've not read Whitman, you really ought to try. He is certainly the most accessible poet I've ever read, and he knows how to use words in an incredible way. But here's my discovery from today:

Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why
    should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?

That's it. It's so simple, but so relevant. I must not isolate myself. I must speak. This is my challenge to myself.

"Because I Do Not Hope to Turn"

I'm not very well-acquainted with the prophets, so I've been reading Jeremiah lately. The going is slow, but that's a good thing: I am constantly re-reading passages. I have been thinking a great deal about repentance and forgiveness lately, probably because of Lent, and I'm starting to better understand what true penitence looks like. Jeremiah is, thus far, all about returning to God. At first glance, it seems that God spoke through Jeremiah in order to make Israel and Judah realize just how angry He was:


"'Therefore I bring charges against you again,' declares the Lord. 'And I will bring charges against your children's children.'" (2:9). 


God's wrath is incredible. So much so that we can never really know it. He is terrifying, and His power is fearful. His anger, too, is righteous; we have no excuse for what we've done. When I was younger, I was frightened of our angry God; that, I think, is why I always shied away from books like Jeremiah. As I've gotten to know God more intimately, though, I've realized something. His anger is not only righteous; it is spurred by concern for our well-being. At the beginning of Jeremiah, God tells how the Israelites have turned from Him and begun to make their own gods out of rocks and wood or have adopted the false gods of other peoples. He is not angry just for the sake of being angry; He is angry because His people are shooting themselves in the feet, if you will. It's as though God's saying, "Please, just let me save you. I love you. You absolutely cannot do this alone. It is killing you":


"They say to wood, ‘You are my father,’
   and to stone, ‘You gave me birth.’
They have turned their backs to me
   and not their faces;
yet when they are in trouble, they say,
   ‘Come and save us!’
Where then are the gods you made for yourselves?
   Let them come if they can save you
   when you are in trouble!
For you, Judah, have as many gods
   as you have towns." (2:27-28)


As always, God's words are very poignant. The verse that struck me the most, however, was this:


"They have forsaken me,
   the spring of living water,
and have dug their own cisterns,
   broken cisterns that cannot hold water." (2:13)


God is great with metaphors; He is always trying to make Himself understood to His people (as far as humans are capable of understanding God, that is). I read this verse and realized how many cisterns I have dug and continue to dig. I'm always looking for ways to fill myself, be it with school, hobbies, other people, or what have you. It works for a time, but then the water leaks out and I have to refill with something else. Sometimes, I try to fill it with God. But that's the problem: I'm trying to put God into this little well that I've dug for myself. A little well that fits my way of doing things, runs on my time, and doesn't impede other activities. I take some Living Water, but not too much - I don't want it to get in the way of my secular life.


God doesn't really give us that option, though. He does not offer just enough of Himself to sate our appetites for a time. He offers ALL of Himself. If we want a relationship with Him - a real, meaningful, transformative relationship - we cannot do it on our own terms. We have to abandon the broken cistern and immerse ourselves in the "spring of living water." God doesn't do lukewarm. We can't dip our toes in to test the spring out. It's all or nothing. And He allows us, unholy and sinful as we are, to wash ourselves in His spring. 


T.S. Eliot wrote a wonderful poem called "Ash Wednesday" in which he struggles with the grace of God and his own shallow desires. The complete poem is quite long, but it begins with this stanza:


"Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man's gift and that man's scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?"


He presents a very common problem that I have. I sin, and sin, and sin; and then I repent, and repent, and repent. After a while, I tire of it. My own imperfection makes me feel entirely hopeless. In other words, I "do not hope to turn again." Instead, I desire worldly things; those are easier to pursue. It's much more comfortable drinking out of my own little cistern. Yet, even as I feel these things, God calls out to me. He is always waiting for us to turn, even though he knows that we will wander away from Him again. The stream of living water never runs dry; Christ has filled it eternally. All we have to do is drink.

Remember That You Are Dust

As is my yearly ritual, I walked into a local Catholic church this morning to begin celebrating Lent. In the Catholic tradition, the palm leaves used on Palm Sunday are burnt to ash. That ash is used for Ash Wednesday of the next year. During the rite, the priest blesses the ashes and sprinkles them with holy water. The priest (or liturgist) then dips his thumb into the bowl of ashes and uses them to make a cross on the forehead of each worshiper. He may say one of two things: "Turn away from sin and be faithful to the Gospel" or "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." More often than not, I hear the former phrase. Today, however, when I stepped forward to receive my ashes in the silence of the sanctuary, the liturgist whispered the latter.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

I have heard that phrase so frequently, and yet it has, until lately, meant so little. In fact, I wasn't even sure where those words could be found in the Bible. The source, I discovered, is the story of The Fall in Genesis. Just after Adam and Eve disobeyed God, God spoke to the serpent, then to Eve, and then to his first human creation:

"By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Gen. 3:19)

Bleak; and yet necessary. Humans tend to think about death frequently, whether they consider it seriously or not, but Adam did not know what death was. He had never seen someone die. It was an abstract concept that suddenly became incredibly real. God was explaining his fate to him in terms that Adam, specifically, could understand. He had, after all, been molded from dust. God was telling him in no uncertain terms that he had been, was, and forever would be insignificant. That isn't to say that God didn't infinitely love Adam. But this, God was saying to Adam - and says to us - is what happens when humans forget themselves. When we forget who we are in the big picture: that is, creations of God meant for his joy. Our only purpose, really, is to glorify God. We may ask no questions and make no excuses. For our sins, we should have nothing to look forward to but dust. To dust we shall return.

Of course, because of Jesus, we are so much more than dust. God has breathed life into us, given our meaningless lives purpose, and promised that those who love him may return to dust physically but will be spiritually eternal. How often do we praise Him for this, though? How often are we so proud as to question the Almighty God?

Last night, I began Francis Chan's Crazy Love. The second chapter of the book, aptly entitled, "You Might Not Finish This Chapter," deals with the issue of our perceived invincibility. I realized that, while I think about death quite a lot in general terms (a character in a movie dies; I drive by a funeral home; I see an ambulance speeding toward an emergency), I rarely consider my own death in any meaningful way. Each day, I work through my to-do list - classes, rehearsal, homework, grocery shopping - and schedule in time for God. Wait. What? Schedule time for God? I wonder lately how it is that I don't spend my days praising Him and, if I can, pencil in time for the things that normally clog up my to-do list. In reality, it isn't that easy, of course. Isn't it?

It should be. We have so little time to make our lives meaningful. Every fraction of every second, we are living on borrowed time - God's time, to be exact - and yet we squander it as though we're somehow more important than He.

So, while I tend to think of life as a celebration and the Kingdom of God as a giant party, sobering reminders are important. When Roman generals returned triumphant from war, they would parade around the city in a chariot among thousands of Roman citizens. It was a huge party - they usually got a marble triumphal arch carved in their honor - a celebration that Rome was victorious. But as the war heroes rode around, they always had a slave sharing the chariot with them. Throughout the entirety of the parade, the slave would whisper into the hero's ear, "Memento mori." This is most popularly translated as, "Remember you will die." In George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, the poignant equivalent is "Valar morghulis" : "All men must die."

What a perfect example for Christians. We celebrate Jesus, His goodness, and life eternal, and we are expected to share that celebration with others. Lest we begin to think that our victories are our own, however, God reminds us: "Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

"Some Fool Will Start the Machine Again"

I like the internet. Most people do. I've been a part of more than one debate on whether the internet is actually a good thing, and I've found that, generally, people walk a very, very fine line between technophilia and technophobia. I find myself enthusiastic when I hear about certain technologies being developed, but I still read "The Machine Stops" with a furtive glance at my computer, iPod, phone, TV, and PlayStation 3. I'm one of those crazies who believe that the Kindle is destroying the literary world.

Is appreciation of technology problematic? Probably not. But as wary as I am of the direction in which the technological age is heading, I derive great joy from the internet and video games. I had my first domain when I was 11. I started teaching myself Photoshop around the same time. Today, I continue to blog and design graphics (though strictly as a hobby). I have three email accounts, two blogs, a Facebook, a Twitter, a Tumblr, a Livejournal, and a Cosplay.com account. Fanfiction is my guilty pleasure. So what's the problem?

I wake up in the morning, get a bowl of cereal, and immediately get online. I check all of my social media sites and my email. I might watch a YouTube video. I sometimes play a Sporcle quiz. Before I know it, 30 minutes of my day are gone. I feel tired and sluggish, and dragging myself out the door is a little more difficult. I repeat the internet process many times throughout the day, often for no reason other than procrastination. I get online in the evening. Sometimes I play video games. Rarely, I sit and meditate on Jesus.

It's sickening. When did the internet become an idol? When did I start gaming when I should be reading my Bible? I honestly don't remember. At this point, I feel irrevocably set in my ways. I don't like the phrase "wasting time," but that's exactly what I do everyday. How many minutes, hours, days have I lost? And, more importantly, how do I change it? How do I make technology a tool for my life rather my life a tool for the tech world?

My answer sounds much simpler than it really is: stop. No Facebook. No Twitter. No Tumblr. No LJ. Nothing. When I think about it, I feel terrified. And then ashamed of feeling terrified about so tiny a thing. And then I feel...excited. The thought of casting off all of these hobbies that have somehow become chains - it's exhilarating.

Thus did I discern my Lenten sacrifice. Starting Ash Wednesday (six days from now), I will be giving up all social media. I've allowed myself a couple of exceptions so that I can still function as a good student. I will continue to check email several times each day. I will also allow myself ONE Facebook session in order to invite people to an event that's been in the works for some time. I'm also going to continue blogging here in an effort to chronicle my fast. Other than that, I'm quitting social media cold turkey for 40 days. The machine stops.

Jesus and Video Games, Part 3

Alright, it's time to bring everything together.

After scouring the interwebs for opinions on Christian gaming, I've found myself pleasantly surprised. The Christian gaming community is huge, and it's doing some great things.

First, I suggest checking out Jordan Ekeroth's site, Follow & Engage, which has resources for gamers that include devotions, articles, and opinion pieces. More importantly, Jordan is spearheading a movement to evangelize through video games. No, I don't mean more of this business. Let me just quote Jordan's About page:

"Video games have become one of the greatest cultural touchstones of this generation, recently surpassing Hollywood in terms of annual revenue...what I want to create is a resource to equip and inspire the church to be prepared to engage this arena of culture. If you don’t care about games, I aim to show you why you should."


At first, I was skeptical of using video games as a way to start conversations about Jesus. I wondered if Christian gamers were trying to justify playing inappropriate video games by calling them an evangelism tool. I've since changed my tune, in part because of a recent experience I had.


I was playing Dragon Age: Origins and talking about the game with a friend of mine. DA is a BioWare franchise and, as I've mentioned before, BioWare's games are fraught with sexual encounters. My friend and I were discussing the choice to romance a certain character in the game and how, as I've mentioned, your character must sleep with another character for a romance to be "complete" by BioWare standards. I told her that I was going to forego the romance trophy. She didn't understand why. I had the perfect chance to tell her how I feel about free love and how it relates to my faith, but I copped out. Instead, I told her that it was poor writing on BioWare's part for this particular character to be demanding sex and that the game was forcing a ridiculous relationship. As soon as I said it, I regretted it. While I wasn't lying, I wasn't telling her the real reason that I felt the way I did.

So much for no opportunities to tell people about Jesus through video games. I had a great opening and didn't take it.


Needless to say, I now see where the Christian gaming community is coming from, and I'm absolutely behind the movement. 


Another awesome site is Game Church. I particularly enjoy this article that mentions my favorite romantic video game pairing (and also comments on the problem with BioWare romance). And here's yet another article that mourns the death of video game romance.


The Cross and the Controller is a pretty popular site as well, but I must admit that I've not read much of their stuff. Here's why: when I had my original existential meltdown over Dragon Age II this past Christmas, I went to the internet to see what other people were saying. The first place I checked was TCATC, and I was...disappointed. Their review focuses on gameplay/sound/technical aspects. Yes, I know: that's what a review is supposed to do. But you can get that kind of review from anywhere: IGN, GameSpot, every single retailer's website, etc. I was looking for opinions about the deeper aspects of the game. The review touches on theological and moral issues presented in DA II, but it never asks the big question: should we even be playing games like this?


I'm going to leave this subject alone for now. Three blog posts is a lot. I'll be playing Final Fantasy XIII-2 over Spring Break, however, and Mass Effect 3 early in the summer (hopefully). You can expect more about Jesus and gaming then.

Jesus and Video Games, Part 2

I gave BioWare another shot at wooing me when I picked up Dragon Age II last month. Not having played the first game in the series (I've just fallen into this ridiculous habit of playing the second game first), I wasn't sure what to expect. After the first half hour of play, it was pretty clear that DA II was pretty much Mass Effect 2, only not in space. And with dragons. The game does, however, put greater emphasis on your character's interactions with other characters than Mass Effect 2 did. I've never been an RPG "purist" (those people that like to moan about Final Fantasy being too constrictive), but I did enjoy the relative freedom to control different aspects of the game. Yet, some of the most important aspects lay outside the player's control. I'll return to that more in a moment.

As I was nearing the end of the game - which is quite long, by the way - I began to feel a sort of tugging in the back of my mind. I tried to ignore it, but it was very persistent. It became worse as I continued to play. Now that I look back, it was pretty clear that my conscience - fueled by God, I believe - was trying desperately to get me to to take another look at the game I was playing. I refused. After I beat it, I did not feel triumphant. I felt guilty. While I was playing, I knew that certain elements of the game should have driven me away. To be honest, the game wasn't even a terrible amount of fun. But I finished it anyway.

So, then, what was it that sent up the initial warning signals? I'll be vague so as not to spoil anything too badly, but a whole mess of things put me on my guard. The first was the extreme violence. Remember the first Mortal Kombat? Remember punching a character and watching gallons of pixelated blood gush out of him or her? Back then, it was humorous (although not necessarily godly) because video games were not even close to looking realistic. These days, it's a lot different. Anyone who's played Uncharted 3 knows just how incredible game graphics can be. Though Dragon Age II does not compare in terms of graphics quality, it certainly isn't unrealistic. Thus, with blood gushing every which way (and even covering the characters' faces after battle, if you don't change the default settings), things can begin to get a little uncomfortable. Oftentimes, as BioWare is famous for forcing its gamers to make difficult decisions, a scene would end up unexpectedly violent. I found myself saying, "I didn't mean for this to happen," over and over.

Alright, so there's violence in a video game. People have been screaming about that for years. But that wasn't the end of my discomfort. BioWare stuck with the "romance" system of the Mass Effect series, allowing your character to sleep with all sorts of people, including prostitutes, and forcing you to choose for your character to have sex to achieve the status of "relationship" in the game. I was with some friends this past week, and we were talking about Dragon Age. One person talked about the character that he was "romancing" in the game, and his roommate shot back, "Why do they call it 'romancing'? All it means is that you're trying to f--- them." While he put it rather crudely, he was right. I felt somewhat saner after hearing that someone else shares my opinion.

Among other things, the game involves a serial killer in the main plot and does not give you the option to change the outcome of his story to something less gruesome. In fact, for all of the "freedom" that BioWare gives its gamers, the end of the game made me feel stuck. Basically, it comes down to this: you may slaughter group A, or you may slaughter group B. You can't say you won't do either (although I really believe several other options could have been presented without changing the major themes of the game). Slaughter some people, and you win! But wait, there's more! No matter whom you choose to slaughter and whom you choose to save, the same people will perish in the end. At your hand, no less.

Perhaps the part that bothered me the most was the game's major theme of demonic possession. It's not that fighting demons is a bad thing. It certainly isn't. Rather, it is the fantastic (as in, "fantasy") and unrealistic light in which demons are portrayed. Dragon Age II is a fantasy game. There are elves, dwarves, an imaginary world, and, of course, dragons. Demons co-existing in such a realm is somewhat disturbing. While the game portrays them as extremely dangerous (perhaps the most dangerous of all things), it still puts them in a fantasy world where on can assume that they, like most of the rest of the beings in the game, are make-believe. If you're a Christian, this is, of course, wishful thinking. Perhaps the most dangerous way to approach the issue of demons is assuming their non-existence because of all the lore that surrounds them. As Verbal Kint so eloquently put it, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

Jesus and Video Games, Part 1

I had a bit of a crisis of faith recently. I've been playing video games almost since I could talk, and gaming is still one of my favorite hobbies. More specifically, it's how I let go. It's simple fun (with a little frustration thrown in at times, of course). So, as I do during every break I have from school, I cranked up my Playstation 3 as soon as I got finished with finals in December. I polished off my third round of Uncharted 3 - this time on "Crushing" difficulty - and congratulated myself on once again beating the best game of the year.

Until this past year, the games in the Uncharted series were the most violent that I had played. Since I traded in my Super Nintendo for a Playstation, I've been an RPG girl. Okay, so I didn't actually trade in my SNES; that would be ludicrous. But I did become an avid fan of the Final Fantasy series. Final Fantasy is pretty much good, clean fun, hardly more violent or graphic than Super Mario World. The stories are always fantastic, emotionally-charged, and elaborate. Questions of morality and religion in relation to government are major themes in several of the games, and, despite the sometimes cringe-worthy J-RPG dialogue, the games come across as well-thought-out and elegant. That is not to say that I agree with all of the ideas put forward in the games, but they offer food for thought where most games do not.

Thus, with a Final Fantasy-focused gaming career, I've never really had to question the content that I was consuming by playing video games. Sure, you battle people; but there is no blood involved. Indeed, your foes do not even 'die'; rather, they are 'felled'. Romance is a part of the series, but sex is not. Cursing is minimal, and relationships are built on characters sharing difficult experiences rather than lust. I never realized how much I valued all of this until I began expanding my gaming horizons this past summer.

I have a great many friends who recommended Mass Effect to me, so I rented it. Actually, it was Mass Effect 2, as the first game is unavailable on my console. I first noted that the game was rated M: Mature for Blood, Drug Reference, Sexual Content, Strong Language, and Violence. Quite a list, I thought, but I shrugged it off. Ratings tend to be somewhat exaggerated. I played the game and enjoyed it, but I did find certain parts rather unsavory and disturbing. BioWare, the company that makes the series, is known for the relationship aspect of their RPGs. You earn a trophy for 'completing a romance' with a crew member, which I did. I was disappointed, though. In Mass Effect, a 'romance' means some meaningless flirting - generally involving commenting on a character's physical attractiveness - and then sex. And then you got a trophy. Yay!

Wait...what? It seemed ridiculous to me, but I went along with it. I wanted that trophy. In all honesty, I wanted to see what would happen, too. How was BioWare going to present this? Surely they wouldn't actually show two video game characters having sex? Let me satisfy your curiosity: they presented it awkwardly, and no, they didn't show the act itself. Still, after that trophy popped up on my screen, I felt more ashamed than satisfied. I went along with something that I knew to be wrong. Sure, it's only a video game. That's what I kept trying to tell myself. In the end, though, I had decided to make my character pursue a sexual relationship so that I could get a virtual trophy:

Harmless? Maybe. I didn't have sex myself, but I was party to 'writing a story', if you will, that included immoral actions. Worse, I did it because of the trophy.

Of course, that doesn't mean that I'll be jumping to have premarital sex if someone offers me something in the real world. I'm not a prostitute. Nonetheless, playing Mass Effect 2 got me thinking about just how much the things we do in the virtual world affect our lives. Is it simply a game? Or is it deliberate disobedience of God?

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things." Philippians 4:8 (ESV) basically tells us that our thoughts should be good. If God likes it, we should like it. If God doesn't, we should spurn it. Situations like the romance in Mass Effect 2 cause us to think about dishonorable, impure, ugly things. If we really believe that Paul's words are God-inspired, then pursuing things like premarital sex in video games is turning our backs on God's commands.

Interestingly, the consensus from the Christian gaming community seems to be a little different. The issue calls for more exploration.

To be continued...

The Very Tiny Tube

I did it. I broke down and made a blog. Alright, another blog. I've got a Tumblr - because everyone likes to see Disney screencaps on his or her computer in the morning - and a costume blog. I've begun a personal blog a million times in the past. Ever since I started figuring out HTML at the tender age of 11, I've been blogging. And here's the kicker: I can't stand bloggers.

I don't mean the people who post costume or prop creations, or artwork, or good professional bloggers like some of the folks over at Relevant. I'm talking about your average person - like myself - who decides that it's time to pour out their feelings, political, religious, and emotional, for the entire internet in a bid for internet fame. If someone can get a TV show from a Twitter account, why not a book deal from a blog? In fact, the only thing worse than a haughty blogger is a haughty blog-commentator.

So, I suppose going in to this I have to say that, if you've found me somehow, I didn't plan it. If you've stumbled upon this place, it was quite by accident, at least on my part. In fact, at the moment, this very tiny tube in the greater series of tubes is a rather private tube. Not that you're intruding by having a look around; just know that what I've written here was written, in the end, for me.