Author: toseealife

Why I don’t regret being homeschooled (thank you Mom and Dad).

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So as you may know from reading my other blog posts, I was homeschooled.

Being both white and homeschooled, and living on the West side of America, I’ve definitely never really fit in with modern prgoressive culture.

And the biggest way I always noticed that was (shockingly) in Education.

Not having the picture perfect background wasn’t harmful to my education

Usually people say that white kids have different family dynamics than other ethnicity, and my friends who are not white have expressed surprise at my personality and dynamic, I think because they expect my family to be the classic two-parent, non dysfunctional, well off household, just based on how they perceive my sisters and I as classy, polite people.

But the truth is that was mostly our mom, and partially ourselves too, our family is at least 50% white trash on one side, with just as many broken households, drug problems, and jail time as any other stereotyped group.

And by contract I know black and latino families who are much more well off and functional than us, and with better behaved kids than my cousins have.

So I’ve learned not to make so many assumptions based on the popular narrative.

My mixed experience in Public education

But I did not fit in at my secular college, being homeschooled and not given to assuming things about people based on their color or background.

(Shocking really, how much people just assume you’ll judge by color, when they say that’s racist.)

I did not get along too well with my professor who pushed this agenda the most.

Some people claim there is no agenda, that the schools should be educating their students about how racist America is and all its bad history.

I remember one of the singular moments I decided that was insanity was in my World History class where the teacher confidently told us that the Spanish Conquistadors were disrespectful to the Aztecs for criticizing them offering human sacrifices.

The “criticism” was pretty light, in my opinion, Cortex didn’t shoot them or start yelling at them and dragging people out of the temple, he just asked why they didn’t find it abhorrent, and the leader got very offended by the question (some things never change).

My professor said it was arrogant and disrespectful to their religion.

I put my hand up and said “Are you saying they should have been okay with human sacrifice?”

And for contex, they were sacrificing slaves…you know, the people these types always say were the most mistreated in America? But we never got to that point of sacrifing them to our pagan gods, at least. I mean, we had some line. (Not much of one for some people), but the thing is, it was totally accepted in the Inca and Aztec Cultures).

I’m not saying we didn’t have our sins, but I fail to see how Cortex questioning it made him the bad guy here. In fact, he seems to respect the lives of these slaves more than their own neighbors did (they were usually captured slaves from when the Aztec colonized smaller tribes…and yeah, that was thing that happened before the Europeans ever got here.)

The hilarious thing to me that all this was in our textbook, and the Professor could have fact checked her own class assignments to know she was wrong, but she just didn’t care.

She didn’t like me too much because I kept questioning her assumptions or “edited” version of history. And another student told me to “educate myself.”

I wanted to say: “I did, that’s why I know this.”

I wasn’t taking the class because I didn’t know history, I was taking it because my stupid college requires it and you can’t just take a test to prove you don’t need the class, unfortunately, so I had no choice. But I could have aced most of it without needing the lessons, for all the professor really covered in detail.

At that point I decided it was stupid to rely on them to teach me history and I avoided taking any more history classes except the required ones.

I also took a Philosophy class, where the Professor told us there was no such thing as definite truth.

I asked her if she was sure that was true.

She looked at me for a second and then said. “No, anything is possible.”

I lost all respect for her ability to teach me philosophy (the pursuit of truth), but I did have fun proving her wrong at the end of the semester after she expressed doubt that I could write an objective paper about whether or not people should teach Intelligent Design theory. ( I got an A, she admitted she learned something from it, she wasn’t a bad person, just clueless about her subject matter).

This and many other experiences convinced me that my parents were right about the modern education systems, 100%.

Funny, my family member all said that we wouldn’t be properly educated being homeschooled, and my grandma said that right up till I went to college and made the honor roll my first semester, and then stayed on it. She hasn’t said it since, but she’s never apologized to my Mom for her lack of support.

My aunt gets defensive about it if we talk about the problems with public schooling, since her kids are public school, but to me the crowning irony was that I tutored both her kids while they were doing online schooling during COVID, and I got her son way more into reading and her daughter to at least finish her work, where they couldn’t do it.

She even admitted it.

But no apology, no acknowledgment that we were right about school.

I’m not blaming parents per sec for putting their kid into public school if they have no choice, but my aunt could have homeschooled them if she wanted, she just didn’t consider it a viable option, which is too bad, because both of them woudl ahve done pretty well with it, I think. Especially her son, he’s probably smarter than I am, but his talents are wasted in Public school. Thankfully their school isn’t a bad one as far as that goes, but it’s just not even close to being able to provide the same nuturing as homeschooling.

I’ve learned through some other study that the modern education system was designed by businessmen to teach people only the basic knowledge they needed to work in factories or minimum wage or slightly above average jobs. (Look into Rockefeller and who funded the modern public school system.)

And now thanks to safety issues and the culture war, it’s gotten way worse.

Being raised homeschooled and then going ot college, I began to understand it.

The coursework was way too easy for the most part, it was shocking to me how little the professor expected of grown adults, and how irresponsible they were about studying.

But after years there,I began to stop studying as much also. Because I was smart enough to pass the class with minimal effort, I didn’t want to put in more effort. Because I wouldn’t be graded on how thoroughly I understood the subject, or be able to present more information than I was allowed to (gotta have no more than 5 points, or 5-7 pages per project, right), I had no motivation to keep digging deeper once I met the quota for the class.

Thankfully, I had the homeschool study mindset ingrained in me and I still looked further into some subjects when I was actually interested in them, but the ones I didn’t care about, I didn’t learn to care about more because of college.

I also learn to have very little faith in most of my professors to know what they were talking about. Aside from my History and Philosophy professor, my Astronomy professor admitted that the theory of how the moon was formed he was teaching was against scientific laws that we already know work and would have to just not work, magically, for the theory to make sense, he said he didn’t know the answer but there probably was one.

I was not impressed.

Granted, not everyone has to know the answer to everything, but you’re teaching a class on it and you’re teaching this in the class like it’s fact, when it’s not… So isn’t that lying?

To be fair, I have had the same experience in Sunday School when I had a teacher teach something that was unbiblical and I pointed it out. She didn’t like that (and I understand why now that I’ve taught, why it was annoying–but I’ve never had that happen to me in my Sunday School class because I don’t teach stuff that’s not in the Bible or at least not allowed for by the Bible).

Basically, teachers love me or hate me depending on what kind of student they prefer. I’ve had some who liked that I questioned stuff and dug deeper, but, I feel like they were more rare the higher up I got in classes.

And when I was in the Sign Language course, it was awful. So little focus on teaching the language, and so much on cramming the agenda down your throat.

(I don’t have a problem with people who are deaf, but I do have a problem with being asked to feel sorry for them and put myself down just because they’re involved in something. I wouldn’t ask anyone else to do this for me, no matter what disadvantages I had in life, and I find it disgusting that we encourage it in otherwise capable people who don’t really need to ask for pity when they could just function as part of society if they wanted to.)

To sum it up, public education of any kind often has done more to stifle my love of learning than it has to foster it, and that was mostly as an adult who’d been in the habit of learning for years before that. If it did that to me, what would it do to a child who never even got a chance to develop that enthusiasm before going to Public or Private school.

How did I learn to love learning?

My mom didn’t make us start learning seriously till we were 6-7, so unlike preschool and Kindergarten, we weren’t forced to start doing lessons really young, which is probalby partly why we didn’t hate it.

(Personally I believe before 6-7, the average child doesn’t have the attention span necessary to really start learning, and punishing them for not focusing is just teaching them to hate school).

My mom also started light, we didn’t learn officially about history or English or anything like that, we started just learning to read and do basic math. She eventually moved us up to high math, but she never forced us to read anything. She read to us a lot, and so did my dad sometimes, and explained stuff to us just in conversation so we didn’t think of it as learning. Mostly we were allowed to play and use our imaginations after doing a little bit of schoolwork.

For Geography, my mom didn’t officially teach us that till we were older, and then she used things like the Top Secret and Which Way USA kids magazines. I also read Ranger Rick, which taught me about life science in animals.

Eventually we officially studied anatomy and biology, but we were older and she didn’t really make us do it till we were willing to, usually (at least for me).

Me and my first sister both started reading chapter books at 7-8, I picked it up a little faster (and I still read faster than her now). But my second sister only really started to like reading at 12-13. She was very slow at it before then and sometimes wrote numbers and letters backwards.

Most people now would say to take her to a specialist, but we never did. She grew out of the problem and now can read much at a much higher level than most older adults. The trick was we just didn’t rush her to develop faster than she was ready to.

And that’s the problem, the education system is all about getting you through it as fast as possible, streamlining it, and not everyone’s brain develops at the same rate. Then you end up with all these “learning disabilities.” [I know that some of them are legitimate issues that can’t be cured, but, I believe the majority of them are caused by rushing kids before they are ready.]

My Mom’s approach was mostly inspired by this book that Homeschool leaders Oliver Demille put out called “A Thomas Jefferson Education.” They modeled their homeschool style after how the Founding Fathers, (and most gret men in the last centuries), learned and studied and got through college.

They have 7 Principles for learning that were applied, and I’m going to put them here, but also link to their page that describes it in their own words:

https://tjed.org/7-keys/#:~:text

 1. Classics, not Textbooks (or Fluff)

They have a list of recommended Classics also, but it’s not only old books. A Classic can be any book that has a profound quality to it that has stood the test of time at least enough to have people be impacted by it. Like “Ella Enchanted” could be a Classic, though it’s in the last few decades, because it was a trend setter of modern fiction and has a deep and thought provoking message, with no vulgarity.

But parents decide mostly what counts.

Also movies can be classics. The TJEd thing is very open to interpretation, which is why it works for so many people.

2. Mentors, not Professors (or Pals)

The idea here basically is to teach in a more personal way, not just doing lectures. Having a relationship with the students where you can give more one on one advice…and having worked as a tutor, I now see that most people would benefit greatly from more of this in their teaching style. Lectures should be only the start off point for learning, with mentoring and self study building off of it. (Some programs even in mainstream school realize this, I had a mentor assigned to me during my last few Sign Language classes–but unfortunately they don’t really allow for the language barrier making it difficult or the fact that my first mentor had a definite bias against me and tried to tell me to reconsider my field several times. So having a parent pick the right mentors is a must.)

3. Inspire, not Require (or Neglect)

They say this is the most important principle, and I agree.

The main thing was that my parents did not require us to read history books, or social studies books. I Read PYSCH books for fun as a pre-teen, and teen, and still as an adult. I read historical fiction and non-fiction stories about peoples’ lives for fun. I read about social issues from reading and learned about them in Church also. I watched videos about science for fun.

Because they let me find the things that worked for me, and we used YouTube and movies, and audiobooks and songs, and computer games even, to learn harder subjects.

My parents mostly just talked to us about the subjects they thought were important and then let us explore on our own. My mom took us to the library and let us go browse for whatever we liked. We all developed our unique reading taste through trail and error. I got into the Magic Tree House books, and learned a bunch. We loved the Magic School Bus too. A lot of stuff we watched was educational, but still fun.

The stories and interactive aspects of it inspired us and made us want to learn, instead of us feeling required to learn before we had any interest in it.

The key thing is that kids must feel their parents are invested in their learning. We felt like that with our mom.

4. Structure Time, not Content (or Ignore)

“There are 4 phases of learning: Core Phase, roughly ages 0-8; Love of Learning Phase, roughly 8-12; Scholar Phase, roughly 12-16; and Depth Phase, roughly 16-22.” According to Demille.

this was helpful to my family, because we did go through these phases while learning. I’m still kind of in Depth Phase, though I’m more of exiting it into full adulthood.

Because of these phases, My mom didn’t worry too much about my sisters not always wanting to learn some stuff right away. The cool thing is that once you like learning, even if you don’t like one subject at first, usually your love of learning eventually spreads to it. For me, it worked with every subject but Math, and that’s mostly because I’m not good at doing it in my head enough to enjoy it. But I did like it up till pre-Algebra. [Don’t use Saxon though. That will kill any child’s love of math, we made that mistake.]

Pretty much every subject we picked up either by osmosis because we read books that covered it (like History we picked up from Historical Fiction), or we did study projects. But at the Scholar phase, we mostly took con of our own learning, and that happened for us in our late teens usually.

5. Quality, not Conformity (or Contempt)

Basically this step means you don’t grade, you just critique constructively until the student does a good enough job to feel proud of their work. And for you to feel proud of it.

And of course if you don’t know the standard, there are people you can hire even for brief stints who can help.

6. Simplicity, not Complexity (or Chaos)

Again, their words might be clearer than mind:

“The more complex the curriculum, the more reliant the student becomes on experts, and the more likely the student is to get caught up in the Requirement/Conformity trap.

This leads to effective follower training, but is more a socialization technique than an educational method.

Education means the ability to think, independently and creatively, and the skill of applying one’s knowledge in dealing with people and situations in the real world.” [Demille]

When we studied, we read books written by people who experienced it or had a passion for it and did their research, not by people who just studied it to get a degree.

And you know what? That made it a lot more fun. People who love a subject do way better research than people who just need to earn points.

7. YOU, not Them (or Nobody)

At bottom, this method is about teaching your child (or yourself) in the ways that’s best for them.

Doing this makes you smarter too. My mom said she learned way more about stuff and became a better reader after she taught us how to read and do other subjects. She became better educated through homeschooling. We’d go on trips to museums, watch historical exhibits, see people reenact, observe old skills like weaving, woodworking, dying, glass blowing.

And we’re not a rich family. We didn’t do all this stuff all the time. We got our books from the library more than we paid for them. We went on discounted trips or went only once in a while. We used free resources when we could.

My Dad also taught us economics by having us take part in his own small business, and we raised chickens and kittens and a dog and learned about the care of animals. We had our own backyard garden and read up on agriculture.

I now know that Potato had plant parts and carrots get flowers (weird looking ones too.) and so do onions. I didn’t know that before.

And we were not rich. We were renting the home we had the garden in, but they said it was okay (the last renter just left it a dump anyway, so we couldn’t make it worse. At least we weeded it so we could have the garden. And our chickens ate the pests. We also trapped gophers who stole our plants so we made the neighborhood more pest free.)

We aren’t even the most extreme homeschoolers. I knew kids, Mormons usually, who could whittle, cook, and do farm work and have small businesses before we did. And they had huge families who had a lot of expenses. But they made it work. Probably because they had a community of support.

Which is one thing no one ever credits homeschoolers for, but you often make better friends in a homeschool community because people care about depth and arts more than they do about cliques and trends; and those interests tend to last, while fads fade every few months.

Also the rate of teen pregnancy and drug use is in the abysmally low percentage in homeschooling co-ops since your parents are usually watching you at all times, or your older or younger siblings, so…not much chance of getting into any trouble there.

(A little too much so, maybe. One mom didn’t like that I picked her daughter up in a princess carry for a joke, though I didn’t touch her in any weird place and I was doing something I did with my sister all the time. I didn’t do it again after that but I thought it was odd that she made such a big deal out of something so small.

Was just as well though, I realized afterward that my back wasn’t strong enough for those stunts.)

Conclusion:

There were some challenges to being homeschooled.

We never fit in with Public schoolers. We had only a few friends, and after we moved, none of them lasted for very long. They were good friends, but the distance just made it too much for them.

There were subjects that got somewhat passed over. We didn’t do a lot of exercise because my mom didn’t really care about that. We didn’t do a lot of Geography either. (But then public school barely does that now.)

I studied language of my own accord, but my sisters never really got into it but they did art. One did dance.

So yeah, I don’t regret being homeschooled.

And if all that sounded like an amazing experience to you, then you might want to consider it. Heck, even if you’re not an adult and are still in college or highschool, homeschool yourself.

Really, it’s so painfully easy to do most school assignments, it’s shocking to me that kids don’t just do them quickly and then study more on their own, like I would, but, then, schools make them hate learning.

FAQs:

But what about transicps for college?

What we did was take our Highschool equivalency test, and then I’ve gone to community college for several years to get a GPA.

Then you can transfer to a lot of universities from a community college and already have several credits and a good academic record. They really just care about your most recent records, usually.

It’s true that the government does not support homeschool. You can’t take tests usually and prove you’re ready for a higher level and you don’t usually get grants or scholarships for homeschooling specifically. Though there are a few more right leaning colleges that might be able to help you like Hillsdale, and Monticello (where they use TJEd.)

I wouldn’t worry too much about your kids being successful. As long as they make social connections with people, even if they’re older or younger than them, and learn about the real world bit by bit, they’ll be able to figure it out.

It took me a while to learn how to talk to people who weren’t homeschooled in a natural way, but you can learn social skills also, and if you have a love of learning attitude, then you’ll put effort into it, like I did and not just wait for the skills to hit you in the head one day.

That said, homeschooling benefits far outweigh the cons, and especially nowadays, public school is dangerous.

So I’m not sorry my parents made a different choice, and if I have kids, and have the means and ability to home educate them, I will be doing it.

You will make sacrifices. But, the way I see it, either you can sacrifice your comfort zone, cushy lifestyle, and the approval of your friends and family–or you can sacrifice your kids to a system that demoralizes them, exposes them to danger, and makes them hate leaning.

Your choice. [If you have the means to have a choice, obviously not if you simply can’t afford it. But most of the things I mentioned you can do even as a single or lower class working parent, just with some tweaks. Check out websites about free or discounted learning activities in your area.]

Sorry if that got a little dark, but the school system is in terrible shape now and the time for being lenient about it is kind of fading, I think.

[Any more questions you have or resources you’d like me to recommend for different school subjects, please leave a comment. I know a lot of great tools for educating both yourself and your kids in a fun way.]

Until next time, stay honest: Natasha.

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Why Do Christians Over spiritualize everything?

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

You ever talk to a Christian who thinks everything has to have some spiritual tagline?

Like a coffee shop has to be called “Holy Grounds” or “He brews” (My churches’ coffee shop is just called Cafe Vida as a nod to the Churches’ name, but, that actually sounds like a normal cafe name. Guess we dodged that bullet.)

Or Christian gum? Or Christian versions of literally everything? if you go to a Christian bookstore, you’d be surprised how many eye-rolling puns and rebranding you’ll find. (Heck, it’s like going into Hot Topic but without the punk goth style.)

I’ve grown up around this stuff and some of it always seemed a little odd. Other stuff, it seemed cheesy but harmless.

And honestly, I don’t think cheesy rebranding is really that big a problem. People make fun of Christians for it, but, in a culture where anime fans buy plushies and body pillows based on fictional characters, and write fan fics shipping themselves with real and imaginary people, and there’s a brand store for pretty much every group out there (including Satanists) I think we could all just acknowledge that it’s not a Christian thing to be cheesy, it’s a human thing.

We like to have our little groups and to make our merch for them.

Nothing really wrong with that.

However, I’ve noticed that the attitude of everything needing to be Christian can also translated into “everything needs to be spiritual.” Everything needs to be rebranded into a certain interpretation.

I’m guessing you clicked don this post for one of three reasons.

  1. You’re a Christian who is already set to be offended by anything I say to criticize Christians–or you may secrets agree with me about it and don’t have an outlet at your church.
  2. You’re a non-Christian who wants to read about how nuts Christians are (very popular now I know)
  3. You actually follow me and read it because I haven’t posted in a month or so. (In which case, thank you so much for your support.)

I’m probably going to annoy you if you’re group 1, I don’t know about the other two.

Now to be clear, I’m not hating on my fellow believers. By and large they are the nicest people I meet, no matter where I go. Sure, there’s some bad apples, but, if I took the bulk of non-believer I met, and the bulk of believers, the believers would win out as to who has been the most kind, helpful, supportive, and positive influence in my life.

However, my critique is more than Christians only help with some things, but often have this weird blind spot that I think is not biblical and not wise, especially in this day and age where people’ have forgotten all common sense approach to anything in life.

In fact that’s what I think we’re missing as a whole: Common sense.

Or, wisdom, if you prefer the Bible word (see what I did there?).

Some people also call it discernment, but that often gets mistaken as just being about spirtual warfare. In relay, discernment needs to be a skill evyeron uses, even if you’re not a believer.

What made me start thinking about this right now (thought not for the first time) was a conversation I had with a friend at the Bible study group last night.

This guy had shared several months ago about a problem with losing his enthusiasm for doing spiritual things. He still has his faith and still love the Lord, but doesn’t feel the same drive to pray, fast, or worship. He was worried that his closeness with God was being damaged.

Honestly, I could relate to it, as I’ve had the same feeling for a couple years now. However, in working through it in my life, I’d come to see some things about it.

My immediate reaction was to say I thought it was probably just the normal dying down of enthusiasm. This guy has been a Christian less than 4 years, and I would have expected it to happen a lot sooner. We all eventually lose the first passion and have to replace it with something deeper.

However, I was the only one who had this perspective.

They meant well, but every other person in the group jumped either to “some unknown sin” (Think of Job’s comforters in that story) or to “spiritual attack” and that we needed to pray it away and stuff.

Well, I knew that wasn’t going to work. And I wished I had a chance to talk to him more about it because I felt sure I knew the real problem. But then, I wondered if I was just being arrogant and thinking I knew best, as I usually do.

Months go by and I don’t hear any more about it, but then yesterday, he brings it up again and asks if we can talk about it (well I offered too since he was asking for prayer, but he was eager).

So me, and my sister sat down and heard the story.

I can’t lay it all out, but suffice it to say a lot of lifestyle changes, new responsibilities, and probably just the natural passage of time’s effects on our emotions seemed like the root cause. There was no sin, no religious trauma (this guy didn’t grow up in church really so it’s not an aversion to spiritual things based on past experiences) and no one in his life was really making it harder. It’s just that life changes, and our passion and energy change with it.

And since the issue had not changed, despite the prayer and other “Spiritual” advice, my sister and I figured we were right. It wasn’t sin or warfare.

After we got done talking, the guy said what we said did seem to help a little. And we asked what was helpful and he said that while he’d talked to our pastor and other believers about it, no one had really given him the practical angle like we did.

Our suggestions were mostly lifestyle based.

We didn’t say to pray the problem away, to fast, or to worship.

My personal thought was he probably over did it as a new Christian, and that was why he was burned out on it. But I didn’t say it that way, I just suggested trying other things to connect with God that weren’t so spiritual, and that it was fine to use things like exercise, (my sister suggested using art, movies, and stories to find meaning that God might have for you).

I also suggested (as I always do) to read a book. The Screwtape Letters talks a lot a

bout spiritual burnout and how to deal with it. And it’s an easy read, while a lot of theology books aren’t (I love them but, they’re very dry usually.)

Whether bro will take our advice or not, he seemed relieved that we didn’t make the whole thing into even more of a spiritual crisis.

The real problem here is often that we start to feel guilt and shame for not wanting to do these things.

Personally, I’ve found it much easier to pray when I’m exercising, whether it’s just walking (what many people do), or dancing, or literally lifting weights and doing pushups. It’s easier to worship that way too.

Sometimes activating my body helps me and my soul and mind. And that’s not a new idea. Paul wrote that bodily exercise is good, but spiritual exercise is better. (1 Timothy 4:8)

C. S. Lewis addressed the loss of early enthusiasm in the Christian walk many times in his writings, like The Screwtape Letters:

“Let him assume that the first ardours of his conversion might have been expected to last, and ought to have lasted, forever, and that his present dryness is an equally permanent condition.” [Chapter 9]

He also states that we forget that we are mind, soul, and body. That if we treat our body unwisely, it will make our spiritual lives harder. We’re all united.

Also why doing the right things will make our bodies healthier. There’s scientific research to back this up, but anyone who paid attention really would notice the same thing in the people around them. My family members who lived the most sinful, undisciplined lives ended up with a myriad of health issues, while the ones who did not have even for the most part, the healthiest.

Now it’s not always true, some chronic disease are just genetics or not our choice, but, it’s true more times than it isn’t, in my opinion (And health experts agrees).

That said, do you know how many times I’ve heard any Christian go to that when someone tells them a problem.

It’s weird to me actually, how divorced we are from our everyday lives when we go to church.

I’ve heard plenty of believes give life advice that was practical when they were having our outside of church–some of them still rely solely on spiritual stuff, but many will suggest lifestyle changes outside church–but insides church, they will only say prayer, fasting, worship, whatever.

It’s like we’re ashamed to be normal human beings with normal problems.

This attitude is not remotely biblical. I’m not even sure how it got so widespread. and it’s not even just America.

I used to go to an African church (I mean they mostly were Africans who went to it, it wasn’t in Africa), and they were actually more this way. Anything could ever be cussed just by health issues, it was always the devil. Nothing could ever be irresponsibility on your part, it was la the devil attacking you.

Maybe here and there one person might suggest it was something else, but, they never really got much attention.

It was so weird for me. I mean, I wasn’t sure whether to agree or not.

But going to many different churches in my life, and listened to different problems people have, I’ve thought most of the time “You know that to could easily be resolved if you’d just mature, or make a change to your life that would be smart. You don’t need prayer, you need discipline!”

I’m not by any means saying we shouldn’t pray about everything (Philippians 4:6). But there’s another aspect of this the Bible covers, particularly in the book of James. Which makes it clear that we are not to only pray for people’s blessings. We are also supposed to bless them ourselves, if we have the means to do so’

14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds?…15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” [James 2]

And there are chapters and chapters of how Christians are supposed to live, how we are supposed to grow in self control and kindness and modesty (not the clothing kind).

So it’s not as if God doesn’t make it clear that we need to address our mind and our bodies as well as our soul.

I don’t know why this has gone out of the Church’s Sunday Sermons, Bible Studies, and general ideology so much. At most, we give lip service to it. But people often get very offended if you dare to advise them on any practical matters.

(Though some of us would be really glad for it.)

Despite being raised in a Christian home, where my parents both turn to the spiritual aspect more than anything else when they address issues, I’ve always rushed more to any practical explanation first.

Actually, that’s probably why. For years I’ve watched my father deal with lifestyle and behavioral issues, and he always went for prayer on them…and nothing happened.

I don’t think it’s that prayer isn’t a real help for many people. I think it’s that prayer must be followed by our actions. Unless it’s a situation that we can’t do anything about. But, if we’re honest, 80% of our problems are ones we could easily do something about, and people often use prayer as an excuse to do nothing.

They act as if God will take care of it. God will magically change your personality and life habits for you.

Yeah, well, even if God could do this, why would He?

Don’t you think God might find it demeaning to be asked to fix problems for you that you could fix yourself? Many parents and even professionals find it annoying to be asked to fix stuff for people that they could fix on their own.

And like your mom when she cleans your room, if God fixes your easy problem, He may do it by eliminating some things you don’t necessarily want gone, because it gets to that point where it’s too frustrating to deal with it anymore. (I mean that sounds like what happened to the Israelites when they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.)

I guess the big question now is why do we do this? And how harmful is it?

I’ve spent some time describing why we need to take action in the here and now, but is thre really any reason not to say that’s also spiritual.

Well, according to James, it is spiritual. True religion is serving the people who won’t be able to pay you back for it. Often, who won’t thank you for it.

C. S. Lewis said that kind of true Christian would be someone who seems to always have a lot of time, and never talks about their problems extensively or their achievements.

I’m not there yet, certainly. But Lewis tried to practice what he preached. He tried not to think of his influence on people, as one of his friends documented. (An introduction to the the Weight of Glory tells the story.)

That said, Lewis was always wary of spiritual pride. The temptation to think that being more “in the know” about spiritual things makes you better than non-believers, or even new believers.

And we do that a lot in the modern church (I suspect it’s always been the biggest problem in any church, really).

We don’t think of it as pride.

But when we tell someone who’s opening up about a struggle that they should just pray more, or do this or that spiritual thing, but we don’t offer any other help to them, that’s pride.

It’s like saying “If you did all these spiritual things I did, you wouldn’t have problems.”

Chonda Pierce, a famous Christian comedian, told how in her struggles with depression, that was what got on her nerves the most when people told her. No one just wanted to listen to her vent and be supportive. Judgment free.

Most of us probably mean well (I’ve done it myself once or twice), thinking that’s just what we’re supposed to say–and then there are some who are just mean and dismissive because they truly don’t care.

Either way, it doesn’t help, but people generally forgive the first kind more easily.

The thing is, this or that said in prayer doesn’t always really matter. Shocking I know. But God knows our hearts. He knows what we mean, the Bible says that too. Saying magic words doesn’t make anything different.

There are things you can learn to pray for better, sure, but I never thought formulas were a good idea. Too much like the way pagans worship their false gods. Repetition. Jesus warned about that.

And he warned that over complicating things is also the work of futile religion.

The best thing to do is pray simply and honestly about what you need, thank God, and ask forgiveness. in some measure all of us should be praying those three things on a regular basis. Whether you do it daily in that order, or you do it was the need arises.

The bible also never says how long to pray, or how many days a week you should. Though it does support doing it every day, it sounds like in some place, but God never commands it in the New Testament in so many words. Jesus says “our daily bread” as the closest thing to it.

I’m not saying you should pray every day, but I’m saying that people make up all these standards. Pray for an hour, pray for half an hour, pray 5 times a day…and it’s all unnecessary.

Pray when you can, when you should, and when God leads you. Figure out the rest to fit your life, that’s what I tell people.

Reality is, especially if you’re a parent, you can’t devote hours every day to prayer. Telling people that’s the answer is ridiculous.

Telling people that more worship will fix every issue they’re having is also ridiculous.

Yes, it may help. Worship does help us relax, it does help a lot of things, but, that doesn’t mean you should be doing what you can on your end.

An old saying is “Heaven helps those who help themselves.” It’s not the bible, but the Bible does say to work and to live wisely. which is pretty much the same thing. That phrase has fallen out of popularity in our entitled, spoiled generations.

Honestly, people who work hard to make what they want happen often don’t demand as much from God anyway, and are more grateful for the hlep He does give. But they often need less to begin with because they do work for themselves.

And why should we earn part of our own success? There are things only God can give you, it’s true, but you have to remember the parable of the talents. Everyone has so much and they need to do so much with what God gives them, or it goes to waste.

And all this asking God to give you more, instead of figuring out how to use what you have better, is not a good lifestyle.

And this applies to mental health issues as well. People ask for prayer for anxiety and depression all the time…if you dare to suggest that they probably should exercise more, cut down on sugar, sotp reading angsty teen novels or watching depressing movies, and stop hanging around people who only company ob t life–well then you’re part of the problem. You dared to expect something from them.

Look, I don’t know how else to say it, if something is enough of a problem for you to ask for prayer from other people about it (since most of us don’t like sharing our problems anyway) then it’s nos you need to be willing to take action to fix.

And who’s to say God does not answer prayer by simply telling you what to do to make it better? Many of my prayers have been answered that way. And many people I know have shard similar stories.

Like when Naaman asked a prophet what to do to be cured of leprosy, and he was told to bathe in the Jordan River 7 times. He refused at first, thinking it was too silly and unnecessary, and his servants asked him “if he had asked you to do a hard thing, would you have done it?”

And so, realized that it was simple to do it, he did, and he was cured.

Simple things can be the hardest, because we can do them ourselves, we just don’t want to.

And we’re afraid to tell each other that, because peopel get the most offended when you say they need to change.

But, that’s life. Most things in life only change when you yourselves change. Tough crap if you don’t like it.

One more thing…

Perhaps a lot of this sounded only like basic common sense after all, and nothing really unusual.

But what if I said I don’t even think the attending church weekly, and participating in ministry is really most of what Christianity is about.

That might shock you.

Ministry is important, but, again, most of the ministry done through church is just more church. More 6 week lesson series, studies and prayer meetings.

Which is fine, but, rarely changes anyting in your life big time.

Helping the person you sit next to in school, on the bus, at work, that’s much closer to real Christianity.

But those are the poele who often annoy us the most, aren’t they?

Or being kind to your own family, that’s not the popular topic now, is it?

But that’s what the Bible, and really, most faiths that have nay merit at all, describe as real righteousness. Personal and private life things being in order before public or professional ones.

Yes, the public ones are important, but never as much as private, though it’s counter-intuitive to most of us to think of it that way.

But a thought to keep in mind is that Jesus Himself did not often attend church, though He did go to temple when he was in town and could. Before they drove Him out.

Jesus spent the majority of his time traveling, eating, drinking, and teaching his followers. He settled disputes, provided food, and did many miracles in private, not public. He taught often about how to live with your neighbor and your brother, not with your public.

Why? Because that’s what He was really about fixing.

And how to live with God. How to honor Him truly. How to show Him your love.

Jesus didn’t have 4 worship songs, a prayer time at the end of service, and offering.

All that was a part of his life, but in a different way. He wove it into his full life, he never separated the two like we are.

And compartmentalizing it into just chruch stuff is part of our problem. We should see following God as holistic.

You can follow God while you’re working out at the gym, reading a book, babysitting, taking kids to school, doing a desk job, doing a physical labor job, teaching, sleeping, showering, whatever.

Do everything as to the Lord, the Bible says. [Colossians 3:23]

And if any area of your life is out of balance, the best way to serve the Lord is to bring it into balance, whether you need a physical, mindful, emotional, or spiritual solution. Often it’s more than one thing.

Adn yes, there’s time to use prayer and fight on another plane, but, it should usually be only one step, not the only step period.

Food for thought, and I think I’ll end there.

TLDR: We do this because we’re afraid to admit we have non-spiritual problems because it makes us sound more ordinary and we think a good Christian should be spiritual.

But, we’re all human and it’s part of life to have normal problems too, which sometimes need normal solutions as much as spiritual ones.

Thanks for reading, and until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

The Chosen’s Problem with The Bible

/ toseealife / Leave a comment

I’ve written about the Chosen before (see The Chosen). I started out liking the show but after season 3 I had problems with it, and now, I’ve had to watch season 4 as part of a Church thing (not because I wanted to).

And I think I now have a better idea of what I think about it than before, and I am more sure that season 3 was not just a fluke. Season 4 was already on shaky ground, but after the death of Raymah, and subsequent alterations they made to match that, it has completely derailed from scripture.

Even where the Word says that Jesus lost none of His followers. [See John 16 and 17:6-12 especially vs. 12.]

I think the Chosen has a real problem with certain parts of the Bible, and the Faith of Christianity and I’m going to detail why in 10 points.

So let’s do this thing:

1. Sometimes it’s more risky to show miracles then it is to show tragedy.

    Actually, it’s always more risky.

    It’s a strange truth about human beings, we find it easier to accept bad things happen, then good things.

    The easiest way to prove this is to ask yourself how your expectations are effected by a positive or negative outcome of any situation.

    When something ends badly, and the same situation repeats itself again, is your first thought to expect it to go wrong? Or do you clear the board and have no expectations?

    And conversely, even if it goes well, do you still think it will go badly the third time? Or, at least, are you just as worried about it?

    How many good experiences does it take to cancel out a negative one?

    And how many negative experiences does it take to ruin something for you?

    The problem is that many people treat God like this.

    When I looked at the controversy around Season 4’s killing off of Raymah, (who was not a biblical character to begin with, so I guess they thought they could get away with it) the most common defense fans made of the decision was that it was a good risk to take in storytelling, and that it was good to depict that God does not always answer prayers.

    Which is a rather presumptuous statement. How do we know that God does not always answer prayers? The answer may simply be one we did not understand.

    It is true that we don’t always get what we want.

    Therefore, according to the writers, it’s okay to change the Word of God, as long as it makes a point that is not found in scripture, but is a common teaching of the modern church.

    The Chosen writers claim they are not changing the Word of God, that they are simply depicting the story.

    What I find interesting about this claim is that it’s like they think as long as they are not writing the words into the physical Bible, they are not changing the Word of God.

    Did they forget that the stories of Jesus were originally passed down through oral tradition, just like every other religion’s stories. The Gospels were not written for a few decades after Jesus died. (Probably they were written because many of the first Disciples had died and so there were less people who could tell eye witness accounts of it, and the writers of the Gospels realized they needed a record of it.)

    But for the first 20-4o years, all we knew about Jesus was by word of mouth. And that was enough.

    So it was crucial that they told it accurately.

    And the writers of the Chosen also seem to ignore that most of Jesus’ teachings were in story form: Parables, and that changing the words Jesus used would change the parable’s meaning.

    Not to mention how often both Jesus, and other prophets used visual teaching aids to make their point. Temples, rocks, trees, dust, etc.

    So yeah, the Bible has always been passed down through oral and visual means, not just the written word, and if you change it in spoken or visual depiction, which a TV show would be, you are still changing the word of God.

    Words are spoken before they are written aren’t they? If you change what God said in what you speak, performance or otherwise, you are changing his Word. Like a false prophet would not give accurate prophecies.

    This is not to say nothing the chosen has done has ever not been good. They do show some things as they happened, and that is going to have power, no matter how mutilated the rest of the show is…

    But that does not excuse it.

    The thing is, even if the imitation has some power, the unfiltered word of God always has more power than a paraphrase. The real thing is always better. And this is true of all things.

    You’ve seen copies of great art, or remakes of movies, even when they are good, do they ever hit you quite the same way the first one did? No…there’s a freshness in originality that moves us more than imitating it does, no matter how well we do it.

    Knock off brands are never as good as name brand food, or clothing, or medicine, or anything.

    Iconic things are iconic for a reason.

    2. The Pride of Assuming we can make God’s point better than He can.

    The disturbing thing about people’s justifying changing the Word of God because it’s more ‘realistic” is that it’s very arrogant to assume we just know what God thinks about things.

    Tragedy is real, I’m not the type to ignore that.

    But the whole story of the Bible is about how God will overcome all evil in the world, including the evil of loss.

    So it was important that Jesus overcome all evilest he was faced with, in His time on Earth.

    The only time Jesus ever failed was when it depended on people’s free will to accept him. Which healing and resurrection do not. That is a different matter.

    But when it came stopping to the things that plague our world, Jesus never failed to do that. You won’t find one story incident of Jesus saying no to someone who asked for healing, or failing to resurrect anyone he wanted to.

    In fact, it’s kind of surprising that Jesus never once said no…almost like it wasn’t about worthiness.

    (BTW, Jesus raised at least 3 people from the dead. The Chosen and most other depictions of the Gospels leave out the widow’s son for some reason.)

    What I find odious about what the the writers of the Chosen are doing is that they are using the Word of God, which God meant for His own purpose when He had it recorded and told tho the world, to instead teach a message of their own.

    It really wouldn’t matter in the least if they are right or not about they way God sees loss. I think it’s not really as simple as they made it out to be.

    People like to act as if there is only one reason anyone ever dies, but the Bible actually teaches clearly that there are many reasons someone can die. Sometimes it’s sin, sometimes it’s just their time, sometimes it’s evil on someone’s part, and sometimes it’s so that God can do a miracle (which is the most rare, but happens.)

    Or some may give up their life willingly as an act of sacrifice.

    God seems to see death as a complex issue, and since, to us, it certainly is complicated to experience loss, I’m glad the Bible does not give a generic answer to the problem. That would be kind of silly. And show it was not a true faith.

    That said, the Chosen has no business trying to simplify it either into something so packaged and vague that you can’t ever say for sure if it’s legitimate or not.

    The reason for not raising Raymah from the dead given is that “it’s not her time.”

    But, God no where in the entire Bible, not just the Gospel, says that it’s not someone’s time to be resurrected. That reason never comes up, there’s not that many cases of resurrection in the Bible, but none of them contain that.

    God also, to my knowledge (and I did look it up to be sure), never even says that there is a set time for people to be raised to life, aside from the final ressurrection, which is of a different kind.

    So they are making this up as way to explain to people why they do not get what they want.

    Because, you know, so many of us ask for resurrections on a regular basis…

    Yeah, I’ve never asked for that.

    Making the lesson about resurrection is suck a presumption because it’s a mystery even in the Bible why and how God does it.

    Now the message bout not all prayer being answered (at least right away) could be addressed, but it should have been around something that the Bible addresses itself, not something that we have no authority to speak on. Because, we really don’t. We don’t know the rules. We shouldn’t presume to know God’s reasons for things when He does not outright give them to us.

    Do you think I’m being a snob? But God says in His word: “My ways are Higher than your ways, and my thoughts are higher than your thoughts.” [Isaiah 55:9]

    I’m showing the respect to God that I think He deserves.

    And I don’t set up my own wisdom to be the authority on God’s ways. I only know that by His own Word, which He gave us to judge by, this does not line up.

    And that should really have won the argument right there. That anyone can even still supports this is telling about how little anyone in our cultural respects the Bible anymore.

    There are a few people who agree with me, but, they seem to be in the minority, even out of the Christian audience.

    3. Our own lack of faith is being used to justify this writing decision.

    Because we find it hard to believe in miracles we don’t see everyday, that makes it okay to say Jesus would not have always done them…because that sounds too good to be true.

    Newsflash: Jesus is supposed to sound too good to be true. That’s how we know He was God in the flesh. If he wants limited the way a man is limited, we’d know he was just a prophet, which is what the Muslims believe.

    But we believe He was God, so you cannot limit Him like a man.

    Case in point: When Jesus cast a demon out of a boy his disciples couldn’t cast out, He was able to do it easily, He had more authority that His disciples who He said would need to have prayed more, and fasted, in some versions, to do it.

    Almost like Jesus, the one who gave them authority, inherently has more authority than them. Who is greater? The one who bestows authority? Or the one it’s bestowed on?

    Heck, even Disney’s Aladdin got this right. “The [genie] gave you your power, he can take it away.”

    4. The Chosen plays it safe.

    While it has no problem putting in things that out right contradict scripture, the Chosen also is omitting everything in the Gospel that would actually be difficult for the moderm audience.

    As I said, it’s astonishingly easy for people to accept tragedy. As evidenced by how many people accepted Raymah’s death, and who are showing disgust with those of us who think it was wrong to write it in.

    But strangely, the topics Jesus taught on that would really be a problem for our modern culture, they have been omitted from the entire show.

    I kept expecting them to start including more stories and sermons, but they haven’t.

    Like Jesus’ teaching on marriage, it would not be popular now, so they omitted it.

    They omitted His teaching on any and all political issues, which He didn’t cover a lot, but did a few times.

    They omitted His teaching on hell entirely, which does not surprise me. Most people do when they cover the Gospels.

    The omitted His teaching on many other things, his parables of the talents, the poor stewards, the last days, the servants, the straight and narrow way to life…anything that might make anyone uncomfortable.

    By contrast, teachings about forgiveness and acceptance of differences never really bother that many people. There are some who think it’s too lenient, but in our culture, for the most part, it’s approved of to preach acceptance and forgiveness.

    And those are important, and undoubtedly the best parts of the Chosen, when they do focus on it. But they waste so much time on things that never happened, and they don’t cover many things that did.

    Jesus did so, so much more than what they’ve shown.

    And you may say: “Well they don’t have the budget to show all of those things.”

    I’m aware they don’t. No one could…but it would take less budget to pay for people to just sit and talk, which most of the preaching would be, or to show parables, when they are very simple stories, than it would to pay for all these action scenes that were never real.

    And to me, it’s disrespectful, it’s like saying Jesus didn’t do enough things worth talking about for them to cover, they have to add all this stuff He never did, to make it more interesting…because the Gospel was not interesting enough already.

    And yes, it may not interest everyone…but if people are watching the show to learn about Jesus…then they need to learn about Jesus.

    But the story is supposed to be about his followers!

    The show says it’s about the lives of the people He called…but what were they learning?

    Peter said Jesus had the words of life?

    If we’re going to show the disciple’s lives, it’s imperative that we show what they were really hearing and experiencing, not making up stuff that never happened to them.

    (FYI, they were never stoned either. The attempt was made on Jesus, alone, but, He escaped, and none of the disciples were injured at any point. That was all a flat out lie.)

    And I don’t object to then the how just covers them having fun with each other, or having asides that do world building. There’s nothing wrong with that, but you can stay within the realm of possibility based on the Gospels, without committing heresy and blasphemy by portraying Jesus incorrectly.

    And it is, whatever they say, incorrect. If you cut out all the hard things Jesus taught, like about divorce, and hell, and judgment…then you cut out part of Jesus…and that cuts out some of the power of His message and life.

    And without the full power of it, what are we basing our lives on?

    5. What this twisting of the story is really doing:

    I hope that all this is not intentional on the writers’ part…

    But unfortunately, I kind of think it is.

    I don’t see how it couldn’t be. They are studying the Bible to write this show, they know what they are doing is not biblical. They know it’s changing the events of the Bible to suit a more ‘dramatic narrative.”

    But they are also changing it so that it matches more their image of God.

    Someone who is patient.

    Someone who confronts people who are judgmental, the pharisees, but only for the reasons we are okay with. Like objecting to healing.

    Never for the reason that we don’t like, like think they know God better than Jesus did…

    Wow…something that might actually make us question the writing of the show.

    I mean, clearly, the writers of the Chosen just understand Jesus better than us. They’re doing all this research…you know, with non-Christian scholars (look it up), to really understand what the founder of our faith was all about.

    And they clearly leave out half of what He taught (if not more) because they just understand what we need to see about Jesus, more than we do.

    And heck, they know most people no longer read the Bible or care what it says, so they’ll get away with it.

    And that’s not exploiting the ignorance of the population, and the gullibility of new Christians who don’t know better yet, in order to make money…Since they run this thing on donations.

    And of course, us all subscribing to it on our streaming platforms….

    I mean, there’s no ulterior motive here at all.

    (I notice they also left out Jesus’ teaching about money for the most part….though they do represent greed as a bad thing…I think. But more sympathetically than other sins.)

    6. What this show represents is False Gospel.

    And people being okay with it because they think it’s a better story show two things:

    a. We have fallen very far off track in the Western church and our love of scripture. We don’t love it anymore, we’re embarrassed by it. Because all of it does not fit pop culture. So, changing it is for the best in our eyes.

    b. People do not really understand the beauty and wisdom of the Gospels.

    I’m a simple woman in one way only: If I say I believe the Bible, I mean I believe all of it. Even the parts I don’t like, the parts that confuse me, and the parts that seem hard.

    Because, I accept that I am not all knowing. That God has always seemed difficult to understand to all poeple, in all times…but that is not unusual in life.

    All the most real and beautiful things in life are hard to understand.

    Love is.

    Great art is.

    Wisdom that really works for life is.

    Life itself, with all its complex functions, is hard to understand.

    So is the biological life we experience, and the natural world, they are hard to understand.

    Even the things that are unpleasant have a purpose, and thousands of years ago we did know what many of them were, but we do now.

    Why should God be any different? How could He be? He made the other things.

    So yes, I don’t understand it all…but I don’t need to.

    I accept God’s real because I have seen Him work in my life and the lives other, and I know He is real and true. so I can accept what I don’t know.

    Not being able to do this, either on in a show,or in real life, seems to show a lack of faith to me.

    Also a lack of sincerity.

    If it it’s so hard to believe that Jesus was as powerful as He was, but that in our lives, we don’t get everything that we want…well…

    Tough.

    7: A response to these issues

    See, our loss does not make it okay to scoff at someone else’s blessing. No more in the modern day than it did 2000+ years ago.

    Just as Peter asked if John would die for his faith, as Jesus warned Peter he would, and Jesus said ” What is that to you? You follow me.”

    See, John did not die for his faith, he was the only one who did not.

    Peter picked the right one, I guess.

    John was exiled,but, he died of old age.

    Would it really have made Peter feel better if he knew John would die also?

    Is someone else sharing our suffering necessary for us to bear it?

    I think not. I think that’s selfish.

    And Jesus told Peter He wouldn’t answer that.

    And that the same for us, I think.

    No, we do not all get the same miracles… We all get our own. However many we get.

    And more than we like realize, since we’re not privy to all things that could be trying to harm us in our lives.

    But, that does not mean we should presume to know why.

    Jesus didn’t explain Himself.

    I think that it did not need to be explained.

    God knows the allotment of suffering we all will get.

    Yeah, it’s disproportionate…but, what in life is ever in equal amounts to all people’?

    Never in nature, only humans ever try to give everyone the same amount, and how often does that backfire as we realize that not everyone can have the same amount.

    Two people can eat two different amounts of the same food.

    Some people can’t even eat some foods.

    We’re not all ready for the same thing. We’re not able to do the same things.

    People who lose people in their lives now and feel the need to project that into the Gospel to feel validated…well, they are playing a dangerous game.

    Both the writers, and often the fans.

    I can’t stress this enough: THE GOSPEL IS NOT A VEHICLE FOR YOUR PERSONAL PROBLEMS AND YOUR ATTEMPTS TO RECONCILE THEM WITH YOUR CONCEPT OF GOD.

    You learn from the Gospel, you do not use it to promote your own solutions to things that are not officially in the faith. Not as if they are doctrine, anyway.

    Do we really need something so pathetic as needing to think Jesus let people die who were following him, in order to feel better about our suffering?

    As if we’re the same as those people?

    We’re not in the same time and place they were.

    Some times just have more protection then others.

    (Though, in my life, I’ve heard probably hundreds of stories by now of people being held, and even of being resurrected a few times and either I assume every single person was lying, even ones I know personally to be honest people, or, I assume that God still–shock–does miracles.)

    I don’t see this as an issue.

    And I don’t think they needed to waste our time with lies, just to push some half baked doctrine.

    There are some passage in the Bible about prayers not being answered right away, but they are for more than one reason.

    It can be lack of persistence. It can be the prayer is delayed by evil forces in the world (see Daniel). Or it can be God says no…but that’s rarely the reason given (to David and Paul are two of the only examples I can think of, for different reasons). Usually, it’s just not the right time.

    8. Is everything in the show bad?

    I don’t want to go that far. I might make the error of sinning in the opposite way if I do.

    Being too judgmental and eager to quench any good the show may do, is not a good attitude to have.

    But I must point out some things.

    I rarely hear this taught on (only by John Bevere, actually), but not all good things are necessarily God.

    At least, they may seem good, but that doesn’t mean they are good.

    See, often poeple can start with a good message, or good deed, but do it only to do a worse evil.

    Like how a child predator will use affirmation and rewards to lure a child in…but then do unspeakable;e things to them.

    And if you think that’s painting it too strong, the word says that Jesus compared twisting His word and causing people to stumble, to misleading and sinning against children, and said it would be better to be drowned with a heavy stone, then to do something like that.

    So if Jesus takes false teaching that seriously, then I think we probably should not be so flippant about how media is treating it.

    Media like the Chosen takes some good things from the Bible, and dangles it in front of the Christian audience, who are starved of it, because the World tends to mock us and tear us down in entertainment.

    So we’re desperate already.

    And then they mix in their own twist on it, just when we’re not looking, and start threading it with things that really did happen or are really Biblical, we may not even notice.

    The devil loves to use Scripture out of context, He tempted Jesus that way in the wilderness, so why not us?

    [Another thing the Chosen constantly does is take the stories of Jesus out of the context he spoke them in, rendering the meaning utterly different. Just recently they did this with the story of the final judgement of the Sheep and the Goats. They made it seem like he was teaching this to explain the idea of the coming kingdom, but He told that story as a warning to His followers, not to correct misconceptions about him. He did address those at other times, but that’s not where this teaching fits into the Bible. It had nothing to do with Mary and the oil. It took place a few days before that on the mount of Olives, and there were no pharisees present, just him and His Disciples, which Matthew 24:3 makes a point of making clear. They ruined the moment of Mary’s anointing just for more e’em impact…but I thought it took away the emotional impact to mix it up with the politics.]

    9. What is the Chosen even really about?

    I challenge you all to look very carefully at what the message of the Chosen has really become.

    Consistently, it is only a message from the most flimsy parts of Christianity (by which I mean, they are making it unbalanced), and hardly even Christianity anymore.

    It does focus on the healing and kindness of Jesus to a few people, yes, but, it ignores the main thing He taught.

    That His real purpose was to teach us how to follow God the best way, which has not been covered at all by the show.

    Not how to pray, how to worship, how to fast, none of the things Jesus said about serving God.

    Not even his speech about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength”

    None of His new teachings about being closer to the Father. Like “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.

    But Jesus’ whole ministry was to reconcile us to the father.

    His healings were part of that. Since physical and demonic ailments often are a hindrance to being close to God. (Also He was compassionate. It can be more than one thing.)

    Since all that is gone, the show is very superficial.

    It centers around what Jesus did for his disciple, and what He didn’t do…that’s it.

    It’s not about God’s glory. It’s not about Jesus’ heart for His father, or His passion for His name.

    They have no had the Temple Cleansing scene yet, I’ve heard that they will in season 5.

    The issue is that, with the way they wrote this, they are going to make it look as if Jesus did these things just to anger the Pharisees. And the temple cleansing is Him adding to that.

    But that was not why Jesus did it, at least, we’re given no hint that it was. It was Him showing zeal for Gods’ house, not to anger the Pharisees.

    They take away huge parts of Jesus’ character, and by existence, His Disciples.

    It’s not okay to ignore that they were real people.

    Jesus is not just an idea you get to use to show whatever side of Him you are comfortable with.

    He is His own person, and you should show Him in His own words and deeds.

    Who can explain God better than Himself? And who can possibly hope to undrstand Him but Him?

    So how can we think changing Jesus, in any way, is acceptable.

    I don’t think they need to show ever sin thing He did, but what they do who’s should be what He did, and what He was like, not what we think He should be like.

    A if we could ever know that, apreit form Him.

    AS C. Lesis wrote, we shold pray to God “not to WAht I think Thou art, but what what Thou knowest Thyself to be.” IF w’re to be really honest about it.

    10. My conclusion about the show

    Boldly, I think no Christian should support what the Chosen is doing.

    The good they have done, I question how good it really can be.

    How can showing people a fake version of Jesus really help them?

    Yes it may get them to read their bible…

    But the thing is, that doesn’t help them, if in doing it, it has taught them to read it looking for the version of Jesus they’re seeing on the screen.

    To read it with a bias, and filter out what they don’t like.

    And if you think a show could not do that…then you don’t understand psychology. Because media does that all the time to us, and we’re lucky if we’re at least aware of it.

    Movies try to make us feel most things are the way they show them, and it’s convincing.

    Bad enough they corrupt sex, family, dreams, and art, but, you stay away from my Lord and Savior, you liars.

    People will always try to twist Jesus to suit them.

    But I must say, I’ve never seen anyone do it so openly, and gt so little flack for it from even Christians.

    Yes, skeptics often praise watering down Jesus because they don’t like Him the way He is, but I expect that. Though it annoys me.

    But those of us who are supposed to love Him, if we don’t really love Him, as He is…What are we even doing?

    Why call yourself a Christian if you don’t like Christ?

    No one seems interested in answering these questions who supports this show…

    But I still have to keep asking them. I can’t afford to let myself be hypnotized by fancy special effects and decent acting to accept things that are not true.

    And no one else should either. You have a responsibility to crack open your bible and find out if this show is right or not.

    And not to just to look for it to confirm what you’re seeing, but really, really look.

    And sorry to the writers , but any real perusal of the Gospel will show clearly that Jesus is not like what they are showing.

    At times, yes, He may be something like it…but never as cut and dried as they want. Never as non-confrontational, or non-controversial.

    It’s His teaching that still offends us to this day that gives us a real taste of what it was like to follow him.

    And they should cover it, or they should shut up about it, because Jesus does not need you to show only part of who He is to the world. The world can do that itself.

    It’s our business to show all of Jesus, as much as we can, since we are entrusted with the spirit and knowledge of Him to do this.

    And throwing that away, frankly, makes me wonder if the chosen writers ever really had it to begin with.

    But that’s not for me to say. I only wonder how much they can love God, if they would not even show God in the most simple way we have, His word is as simple as it gets, every other experience of God is harder to endure than that, so if you can’t even get that right…

    Well, I don’t know. God knows their hearts. Maybe they are sincere.

    But it looks bad.

    And even if they were, it doesn’t make right, only makes them seem more sympethic.

    That said, I urge you all to be careful about this show. Even approving of it partially is still sending a message to the world that we really, honest;y, don’t care that much about our Bible.

    And they may like that…

    That’s exatly why we shouldn’t be doing it.

    Untit next time, stay Honest–Natasha.

    On Being your Own Hero and life goals

    / toseealife / Leave a comment

    If I asked you what the answer to all your problems was, what would you say?

    Probably you wouldn’t be able to answer. But if I pressed, you might admit that a lot of those problems could be solved with either more money, more time, more friends, or more will power on your part.

    Today, I want to focus on the last one.

    Will power.

    Philosophical question: Is will power the real key to success?

    Maybe that’s not even a philosophical question, maybe it’s more of a practical one. In real life, isn’t it all about grit? Courage? Persistence?

    I’ve always been told that, from books and inspirational speakers, at least.

    Everything is our choice.

    You’ve probably heard or seen this on a plague or mug somewhere:

    “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” — Henry Ford.

    “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” –Wayne Gretzky.

    Or something like that.

    One thing I hear a lot these days is to “be your own hero.” Or “I am my own hero.”

    It’s even in the song “Roar” by Katy Pery.

    I’ve always found that weird. I remember reading in a book (not sure what book now) that an author was commenting on how when he used to ask teens who their hero was, they’d say either a real person, or one in fiction, and that they wanted to be like them.

    Now they don’t really have anyone they look up to.

    I think that varies depending on the demographic and age group you’re talking to, but isn’t it concerning that high schoolers by and large no longer seem to look up to that many people.

    Then again, many people may say that it’s better that way. That you should never meet your heroes. That people will always let you down.

    I’ve wondered what it would be like to meet my own personal heroes. The kind of people I look up to are usually reported to have been very kind to their fans, and I’d like to think ah’t even if they didn’t immediately like me, they’d still have been the same people I thought they were. Flawed, but, not bad.

    But then my heroes are always the ones who admit they are flawed and share their mistakes, so it’s hard to be as delusional about them.

    I’m not one for hero worship anyway. I’ve disagreed with my favorite Author, C. S. Lewis, openly to other people, even though I think he was brilliant, because there are some topics he just didn’t understand. But he’d be the first to agree with me on that, it doesn’t take away from my admiration of him, just reminds me to think for myself.

    I wonder if we just don’t teach this skill to our kids now. That you have to learn how to respect someone’s good points, and not imitate their bad ones. That you eat the meat, and spit out the bones. No one will ever match your ideal lifestyle, probably because for you, that lifestyle has to be personalized, so no one ever could match it. You have to take what you can from people and turn it into what works for you.

    But I feel like we’ve got this weird cycle, in the West at least, where teens and young people idolize someone, or something, until it ends up doing one thing they don’t like, and then they turn on it. Even if that thing is not ever proven, or not even clearly incorrect.

    I’ll give an example, and since I’m Christina, I guess it’s only fair to use a Christian one, since we do this too.

    I’ll use the example of Switchfoot.

    Switchfoot is a very popular Christian indi-rock band, and my personal favorite in that genre, so I was once watching a video about it on YT, and the lead singer (Jon Foreman) addressed one of their fans who was in the LGBTQ+ group, and told them they were welcome to come to a concert, as the fan had posted a video voicing doubt that they’d be welcomed there.

    The video got so much backlash, it was astounding to me. I watched the clip from Jon Foreman and nothing he said was unbiblical, he was just trying to put this girl’s mind at ease and be kind and welcoming.

    Sure if you twist his words, you could say he was endorsing her lifestyle, but he didn’t actually say that you’d have to read that into his acceptance. (I’m not even going to talk about where I personally stand on it, right now, as it’s irrelevant.)

    My point was that so many Switchfoot fans were furious, and flat out mocking this guy and tearing the band to shreds for this short video.

    I was surprised at how venomous their comments were. I would think they’d have given them the benefit of the doubt, as Switchfoot has always been a very pure band in their presenting of God and our beliefs, in my opinion at least. Which is why I would have found it hard to believe they were actually being unbiblical so openly.

    But it’s not just Christians, it’s not even primarily Christians. This turnabout happens all the time with celebrities, politicians, entertainment, products, you name it.

    Perhaps that’s part of the movement for being your own hero. If there is no other hero to be had, then you have to be your own.

    I do love a good inspirational story about a self-motivated person achieving their goals. And honestly, I am a very self motivated person myself. I rarely wait for anyone else to tell me what I’m good at, what I should do, or who I should try to be. I’m the one who tells other people my opinion, at times, unnecessarily.

    But that’s how I am, I want people to reach their potential, and to reach my own. Nothing is usually ever good enough for me to want it to stay the same forever.

    So of all people, the ‘be your own hero’ mantra should appeal to me. And, it does, usually.

    But I have come to question it in the last several years.

    At first it sounded great, but, I realized what we all realize eventually, that it doesn’t work.

    I went through my self help phase as a teenager, which is a lot sooner than most people do, but, I was ambitious. I started reading the books, watching the messages, planning out what I wanted to accomplish and change in my life.

    And…I did have some success, but other things, I didn’t.

    And all these books over simply it too. People who lead exceptional lives seem to assume it’s simple for everyone to do what they did.

    I read the book “Do Hard Things” when I was 13, and I later read the follow up book to it “Start Here” (both by Alex and Brett Harris.)

    Then, inspired by a story in the second book, I tried to start my own fundraiser to send money to a charity I liked.

    I thought people would do what they described, they would want to help me and that would make it happen. I had ideas…but, I never had a lot of support form others, and on my own, I didn’t have the means to raise the money. We raised some, but, not as much as I wanted.

    One lady did try to caution me to be more realistic, and I dismissed her at the time, saying that I had enough faith for the big amount.

    But, perhaps the Lord humbled me for that reason.

    It wasn’t pure arrogance on my part, really, though. It was that I thought that’s how it worked. That God blessed everyone’s efforts if they were for the right reasons. I didn’t want glory for myself, I wanted to do something meaningful, something that would make a big difference.

    Maybe I did want to accomplish something, in a way, to make myself feel important. But looking back, that’s more of something I think now that I’ve had time to examine myself, not what I thought at the time.

    But it doesn’t matter if my motives we’re all selfish, or only partially selfish, or not selfish at all; whatever the case, I mistakenly assumed that a first try was going to succeed just because it was for a good cause and because the books made it sound that way.

    The books didn’t share a lot of stories of failure. Probably because they didn’t think they’d be as inspiring. But the thing is, teens need to be told they will fail sometimes, even many times, before they succeed, because everyone’s path is different. And the odds are you’ll fail more often than you’ll succeed at anything that involves other people, because no one is likely to care as much as you about it. And even if you find that golden group of people who do, there is luck, or fate, or whatever you call it that has to line up, it can take years for that to happen.

    For some people it does happen fast, but, that’s rare. And usually it’s not even the most talented people that it’s true of. It can be passing fad that they happens to hit at the right moment, it can be being in the right place at the right time, or it can be they do the wrong thing by accident, but it somehow works.

    For me, it was very discouraging to realize no one else cared as much as I did, but now that I’m older and more experienced, I know that is not uncommon.

    But I had the expectation that it would be simple for me. And maybe, for someone else, it would have worked, but the books didn’t cover what to do if you’re not that special person.

    So I learned that you can’t do everything just on your own steam.

    Other changes I tried to make I could do them, when it was just me. But not always as much as I wanted.

    I’ve tried things like exercising regular for years, off and on, and it took till this last year for me to finally have the mental discipline and to know what works for me, enough to actually pull it off for months on end, so far.

    I’m learning about what works for me, and I’m finding my footing. I’m 25. I Wish I knew what when I was 16.

    But this is why it’s dangerous to tell kids to be their own hero.

    The fact is, and if you are a teen or young adult, I say this with the greatest possible respect, but the fact is: You don’t know a lot yet.

    I don’t mean that many of you are not smart, capable, and even independent.

    But what I mean is that experience is what shows you what is going to work for you, and you just can’t have that figured out as a teenager. It takes months usually to test any thing enough to know if it’s a good fit, and we only have so many months in a year, and so many years of being old enough and capable enough to test out things. Especially in the West.

    So the reality is, even for those of us lucky enough to be able to do what we want, and not what we must, as with most places in the world, it just takes time.

    And kids can be really prepared with numbers, and figures and info, but still not be ready for the real world. But no one ever is ready. You just go for it, and you get ready as you do.

    That’s the truth.

    And I’m still in that phase, honestly, but at least, now I know I am. I didn’t before.

    There’s another thing to consider:

    The culture we live in is obsessed with personal success.

    But, let’s look at some dark truths.

    Statistically, not all of us will live to be old enough to be successful.

    It takes most people till their 30s to be gaining more than they’re putting into anything, let alone a career.

    It takes most people years to have kids, if that’s their dream, and to find a romantic partner. I’m still waiting for my first boyfriend in my mid twenties. It’s not that I haven’t looked, but I’v never found the right tone.

    The Bible says we shouldn’t set our mind too much on earthly things. People have seen this as some hyper spiritual way of looking at life, that God just doesn’t want us to care about Earthly things that much.

    But that’s not what the Bible means by that. In Ecclesiastes it even says you should enjoy what you do, and your marriage, and your life, as best as you can…but knowing that it’s all vanity. It all will pass. And that you may not live as long as you want to. But who’s to say you’d have been better off if you did?

    It’s bitter wisdom, but it is still wisdom.

    It’s not that God does not want us to try to succeed, He does, but that He is warning us to spare ourselves the heartache of pining all our hopes on one thing that is only temporary even if we get it.

    What if we made a million dollars? We’ll spend it.

    What if we have kids? They’ll grow up.

    What if we get married? Both of us will die eventually, one before the other, probably.

    What if we make a great piece of art? Well one day, it will be destroyed or forgotten about.

    And this is not bad. It’s just the way time affects us. Nothing can last forever. If it did, new people would never have the chance to be successful also. Some works seem timeless, but even they will be destroyed one day, and new works will replace them.

    This is not really bleak, it’s just the way the world has to be to give a constant new chance to the people who live on it.

    And that said, whatever we do, while it may be good, is nothing to stake our whole life on.

    I’ve seen people like my father who get so depressed they feel suicidal when they can’t do well at their job. A lot of men are like that.

    Or who get so down when a relationship ends, because they put all their hopes into that.

    I’ve never wanted that to be me.

    Yes, I put a lot of myself into what I do and who I’m with, but, I know one day it will end. And while that’s not an excuse to slack off, it does mean I have to be ready to let it go, when it does.

    Job, one of the most famous sufferers in the Bible, if not the most famous, said, when he had lost everything through no fault of his own. “The Lord gave me what I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

    See, all success we have is borrowed.

    Even if you didn’t believe in God, you have to just look at the world and see that things change all the time. Success will rise and fall for everyone in their life. A billionaire could lose everything and be a pauper, just as easily as someone could become an overnight success. Depends on the person, and the time they live in.

    We get so focused on what’s in front of us, we forget that it will not always be in front of us.

    Same goes for suffering.

    So when it comes to being our own hero, our own answer, for things, we have to realize that it’s never that easy.

    There is a lot we can do to help ourselves, but some things always depend on others and their actions.

    For me, it’s hard to accept that because people have let me down a lot…yet, without the other people helping me, I wouldn’t have gotten to where I am now. I wouldn’t have learned more about myself and I wouldn’t have learned the skills I do have.

    I resent it sometimes when people act like I need help, but, I do.

    And I no longer think I can save myself, if I ever did.

    And that’s the thing, you can’t save yourself.

    That’s a lie they keep putting out there.

    Even in that Titanic movie, they say Rose has to save herself.

    It’s true that there will be times when it is just us against the world, that you must fight for yourself, and that is part of life.

    But that’s more like a crisis moment than a regular thing. Rose didn’t even save herself, Jack saved her, as she even admits later.

    And while I’ve had to think fast and act to save myself a few times, most of the time I’m teaming up with other people.

    And for me, God has always been the thing that’s saves me the most, even when no one else is around.

    If you look up only to yourself, and treat yourself like God, which is really what this self actualization and saving yourself and being your own hero crap is about, when it’s taken to its logical extreme, then when you run out of strength, as everyone does, you’ll collapse.

    Why do so many people commit suicide who feel alone? Because you can only talk yourself out of something so many times before you start to feel like it’s just your empty opinion and you’re deluding yourself.

    But if someone else is helping you, then it’s easier to believe it.

    C. S. Lewis even observed that defending the faith for years might be a way to start having a harder time believing it.

    Why is that? Because it was his ideas he was putting against consent opposition, and we start to doubt our own footing after a while. How can we be right? And everyone else be wrong?

    But majority rule does not determine who is right. Even finding one or two other people who agree with us can be enough to encourage us to keep believing.

    But we can’t all be right. For me, I still compare everything to what my faith teaches, because there has to be some way I can filter what everyone else says and what I think myself.

    But if I was just alone with it, if I had no one and nothing to turn to, I couldn’t really believe anything. I’d have no way to test it.

    So no, I’m not my own hero, or my own muse. And I think anyone who says they buy that, is kidding themselves.

    Even if, at most, you could maintain that for a few years, the bubble bursts sooner or later.

    And it should.

    And what you find left after that point, that’s what your life really is.

    So I guess I’m warning you all reading this not to put too much stock in your own character. Even if you are your best self, your best self will never replace the need for a perfect and flawless model to base our lives on. And we do need that, as humans, because we need to know where we come up short, so we can improve.

    There is one recent modern example of this that most people will probably recognize, of the contradiction of saying you should be your imperfect self because that’s better.

    In the hit movie “Encanto”, Isabel, the middle child in the Family Madrigal, sings a song called “What else can I do?”

    In the song she says “It didn’t need to be perfect, it just needed to be, and they’d let me be!”

    The song is about her letting herself go wile with her power.

    Now, in of itself, that’s maybe not bad–though she does cause a lot of destruction and injuries by doing it, but the movie waves that off as just the result of her being able to be messy and free finally.

    [What Else Can I Do?– Encanto]

    But the film (and its reviews) missed the problem with what Isabel is doing.

    If it’s truly better to be imperfect…how do we measure that? What are we comparing our imperfection to to say it’s closer to it than our attempt at perfection?

    And the answer is usually ‘we don’t know’. There’s just this blind idea of a happier life that we think not trying to be perfect will get us.

    [Because we all know it’s the people who try the least who are always the most satisfied with their lives…right? (Not statically).]

    I am in favor of breaking the mold, but only because I think the model itself is never perfect, not because the idea of perfection is the issue.

    See, when we say we can’t be perfect and we should be, we mean other people’s ideas of perfect, and it’s true, those are never accurate.

    But if we ever saw true perfection, we’d see it was beautiful, liberating, and more satisfying than anything else. Because…that’s the definition of perfection. It has no flaws, no drawback.

    Something can not be perfectly imperfect, that’s a contradiction.

    And because we are not perfect, we always need to grow…but we need to realize we’ll never meet anyone else’s standards of perfection either.

    And so we need to allow each other to make mistakes, but never assume that means making mistakes out of a callous disregard for any kind of standard is a god thing.

    There has to be a balance to this.

    And that’s part of the idea of not trying to be your own hero. If you are your own hero, you have to never mess up. But if you do, who will save you then?

    Rather than being liberating, it’s horrifying, the pressure would be endless.

    But if you are not your own hero, then you can save yourself, sometimes, but you can also be saved by someone else. Or something else.

    And there’s nothing wrong with that. Experiencing things outside ourselves is why we’re on this earth. And to add our own flavor to it also. That’s the paradox of life, giving and receiving in a rhythm and often, doing it at the same time.

    So to wrap it up, my thought is, we all should stop saying we’re going ot be the hero of ur own story.

    You are a player, but you are not the game. You can be a hero, but you can’t be the only one. You can achieve greatness, but you can’t expect to be the pinnacle of all things.

    We should aim high, but learn we’ll never reach heaven, to use the old Babel story metaphor.

    And that’s good, because people who live that way are the most happy anyway. Because they know what they can achieve, and what they can’t.

    And I hope to live this way myself.

    Thanks for reading and please leave a like if this post resonated with you–

    Until next times, stay honest– Natasha

    In Defense of Damian Wayne

    / toseealife / Leave a comment

    Hey all.

    Today I’m back with another character analysis. What can I say? I watch a lot of movies.

    I kind of switched from an anime kick to a DC/superhero kick for the last several months. And I discovered a new branch of DC media which features Damian Wayne. (Batman’s son, in the newer comic lines, if you’re not familiar.)

    Damian is one of the most widely despised new characters in the Batman canon.

    Now, full disclosure, I’ve only seen the movies. But I’ve heard he’s actually better in the comics, so, I’m probably getting the worst of it by only viewing the movies.

    I don’t really understand the hate. Well, I do, in that I know a lot of people find certain kinds of characters obnoxious, but I have to admit, when I watched the films, I was confused.

    Damian is a brat, to be sure, but the edgy, snarky, kind of AH character is really popular now. I usually see videos saying that those types are the best part of the show or movie they’re in, so I couldn’t figure out why the fandom seemed to hate this character. (Not all of them, but 75% at least, it felt like.)

    Me? I’m weird. I thought he was adorable.

    Yes, I’ve come to see I may have a very unique taste when it comes to what characters I like. While I do like a lot of popular characters (they’re popular for a reason right?) I end up liking characters a lot of people think are obnoxious.

    Sadly this is not just how I am about fiction. I tend to like real kids in my class or life who are the same way.

    Sometimes I think I like them primarily because other people usually don’t. I’m just that obstinate.

    So trying to defend Damian Wayne as a good character is perhaps just asking for people’s scorn or scrutiny…or not, I somehow think people might not really care that much if I like the character, just so long as I don’t expect them to…

    But we’re not here not ot swap opinions, and try ot persuade each other, as fans, let’s be real, so why not give it a shot?

    That said, let’s dive in:

    1. Damian’s Effect on the other characters he’s around.

    Okay the number one reason people hate Damian isn’t even really because of Damian’s characterization itself, it’s how Batman and the other Bat-family members are whenever he’s in the story.

      I was actually talking to a friend about his character, and she admitted to hating him mostly for that reason. And I fully agree…Batman sucks in the movies Damian is in.

      But, to be honest, Batman sucks period in the new 52 movies, for the most part. With some exceptions (namely the ones where he’s not the main character.)

      My sister told me that it’s actually the agenda of comic book writers now to make Batman awful. She heard a story about an artist applying for a job working on Batman content, and being asked ‘what’s wrong with Batman? Why is he bad?” and when they said ‘nothing’ the interviewer said “that’s not what we’re looking for.”

      I can’t be sure this is a true story, but I believe the agenda nonetheless, and that is a whole other post in of itself.

      But I actually think Damian is one of the few good things in the new movies, oddly enough. He’s a very well written character. And it’s not as if it’s a character’s fault that the other characters are made worse when they’re there…

      But as I said, Batman is bad anyway, Damian just makes it more obvious by actually arguing with him…which I don’t have a problem with. Feels like it’s overdue for Batman to know what it’s like to deal with himself. I mean they make a point of how similar personality-wise Damian and Bruce really are–though, I actually think Damian has strengths that Bruce does not have, at least in this iteration.

      I also think it’s not fair to the character (and by extension, whoever came up with it) to blame them for the fact that writers can’t handle Batman. That doesn’t make Damian a bad character just because the others are brought down to a new low when they deal with him.

      And, on the flip side, I actually think Nightwing looks better when he’s contrasted with Damian. He demonstrates a level of patience and understanding with him that really shows how he’s not the same as Bruce, and is a kind person and also that his odd gremlin energy just makes him able to roll with the punches better. Damon and him bonding feels believable to me, because he treats Damian like a person.

      And when Damian is paired with the Teen Titans in later movies, he actually brings an element of critical thinking and cynicism to them that the team kind of needed to feel more balanced. If we’re honest, the flaw with the Teen Titans was always that they didn’t have a character who was extremely good at looking into people’s backgrounds and really figuring out who was suspicious. They didn’t suspect Terra after all, and they often don’t see other betrayals coming.

      Damian can be a pill about it, but he makes them have to at least think of difficult things. And he also brings out a side of Raven that I think the others don’t.

      Raven was the dark and edgy person before Damian showed up. The one who would say things no one else liked hearing. and was at times rude. She’s still kind of that way once Damian is part of the team, but he gives her the chance to also be the more compassionate and understanding person we know she is at certain times. But she’s still dark enough to be someone he can relate to. She acts as a bridge between the two sides of the team’s emotional core.

      And I think it works better, personally, if Raven is the in-between person, instead of the one who veers more towards the dark side, like in the OG Teen Titans show. (I’m not saying that show isn’t better than the movies. Just that the characters are all more on the zany or quippy side, and at times it was harder to take things seriously because of that. Robin usually was the only one other than Raven who acted like they felt the responsibility of the crime fighting thing.)

      Of course, many people don’t like Raven as much in the movies, which I understand. She is different. But I kind of appreciate the difference. She seems like a slightly older and more weathered Raven would be, without being an actual cynical person. Fits the more grim New 52 better than just the Gothic stereotype would have.

      But I’m not crapping on the Teen Titans show. I just don’t have the attachment to it that other people do, I only watched it as an adult. And so I think I can appreciate both the movies and show separately, for different reasons. The show might be better overall, but some of the ideas the movies had weren’t as awful.

      And adding Damian to the Teen Titans actually seemed like a great idea to me, since Dick Grayson aged out of it.

      Damian teaches the Titans in the movies, that sometimes there is more to some people than meets the eye. That even if someone can seem like a jerk, there may be a side to them you didn’t know about. Which is always a good lesson for anyone to learn. Even if it could have been done better.

      And honestly, the biggest problem superheroes usually have is that they get self righteous. They think they’re better than everyone else morally at all times and they can write off anyone who’s not nice to them as not worth listening to. So having a character like Damian, who is rude, but often right under it, is a good way to round them out and mature them.

      Starfire even admits that Damian was right when he said they needed to learn more about Raven.

      Which will lead into my next point nicely:

      2. Damian’s Approach to people and how it’s perceived by the audience and the other character’s.

      This is probably the second biggest reason Damian is hated. If people aren’t blaming him for how Batman and the others are written, then they just hate him for being a mouthy little brat.

      I’ve always been amazed at how un-self aware people are. I mean the way people write these comments and criticisms of Damian are just as mean and insensitive as Damian’s own remarks, if not worse, and somehow we get a pass? I mean sure, eh’s not a real person, but I personal tend to phrase my criticisms of real people the same way I do with fake ones, and I doubt most of the other fans are any different.

      So if you’re that harsh to a character, you’re probably that harsh in real life. And I’ve seen this proven many times over when I listing to how people talk about real people and how they talk about fictional ones, and it’s always the same. They’re just as mean in real life. (In fact, most people are harsher on real people than fictional ones.)

      Now I’m not blind to the fact that Damian is rude and often harsh when he doesn’t need to be.

      And sure, sometimes I wince when he says stuff like that.

      But a closer look at how he acts in the movies shows that he’s usually doing these things for the right reasons, he just has terrible manners.

      For example, in the most hated “Batman vs. Robin” movie, Damian is at odds with Batman over trusting this assassin guy who’s actually been pretty nice to him.

      But the whole conflict starts after an absolute horrifying mission (one Batman never should have brought a minor on) with a psycho who was killing kids and turning them into puppets (don’t watch that scene if you want my advice, it was disgusting.)

      Damian doesn’t kill the guy (though he certainly deserves it) since Batman said not to, but the freak attacks him and the assassin shows up and kills him and tells Damian he should deice for himself.

      Batman accuses Damian of doing it, which hurts Damian, since he has enough honor to not lie if he had done it and to do as Batman said, even when he doesn’t agree, because he respects authority, even when he doesn’t like it. (Something no doubt drilled into him by the Assassins guild he grew up in).

      This gets the conflict off on the worst possible footing.

      But the saddest part is that Damian later asks Bruce, what if the psychopath had killed him? Would Bruce still not kill the man?

      Bruce gives him an extremely vague answer about not wanting vengeance. And Damian is (reasonably) not satisfied.

      But personally, watching it? I was completely on his side.

      This crazy person was killing children…if he came after my son, you bet I’d have shot him or done whatever it took to stop him. Why? Because if it’s between a psychopath and my own child, that’s a no brainer. You don’t let someone like that live because too many defenseless people can suffer for it.

      Batman not making that distinction makes him look bad (again why people hate Damian in these films) but it’s not as if it’s new. Batman has been letting the Joker go for doing similar things for ages in the comics.

      I’m one of those people who just doesn’t get it. I know the value of life is important…but that’s why I think letting these creeps go is a mistake. If you value the lives of innocent people more, then stop letting go the ones who don’t deserve to live…it’s just…logical.

      Throughout the rest of this film, Damian continues to argue with Batman about whether he can trust the assassin, who is making a lot of good points, though ultimately is not on the right side.

      When he does fight Batman, as the title says, it’s mainly to protect the assassin guy who he’s not sure really deserves to get taken down.

      Instead of having a real conversation with Damian about why the assassin is wrong, and why he understands the frustration of the situation, Batman just tells him he’s wrong, and pretty harshly at that.

      And Damian is…10-11 in this film, it’s not clear.

      Right.

      I have no patience for people who treat their kids like garbage. Though I have been known to defend characters like Endeavor (MHA), simply because I think they do not fully realize why that they do is wrong.

      But Batman, already a hero who’s supposed to be the one who shows mercy and who knows his son has never been taught what’s right, really has no leg to stand on, expecting Damian to just agree with him and obey him when he has not earned that trust. That’s what bother Ms.

      But as far as it reflects on Damian, I actually like this trait in a child (or adult.)

      Yeah, it’s not one many poeple’ like. I was never liked for it by too many adults (or peers) growing up. But questioning authority is necessary in life, if you don’t want to be duped.

      “If you stand for nothing, you will fall for everything” as the paraphrased quote goes.

      I’m not even sure why Batman is surprised. He admits to Damian that there’s only a thin line between him and the criminals morally, and then is puzzled when Damian is not impressed by this claim to the moral high ground enough to just do whatever he says.

      I’m with Damian. If you’re so morally weak you’re barely a step above criminals, then, why should I listen to you?

      People think Damian is arrogant. But, he’s really not nearly as arrogant as he’s assumed to be.

      If you look at it form his perspective, hes’ grown up around assassins and a monster like Ras Al Ghul, and his mother (who ends up being quite a psychopath also later on) and he was never taught anything but ‘might makes right’ and that the world would be better if the strong, like the assassin’s, were in charge.

      Naturally, he would assume that Batman’s method of going around and beating crooks up to maintain order is not that far removed from Al Ghul’s philosophy. And given how Batman and Al Ghul have a complicated history, he’s not even that far off assuming that.

      And since Batman himself claims to not be that different from the bad guys, why is Damian assuming that Batman’s morally is unimpressive really such a leap? It’s not.

      He’s just taking him at his word.

      And Damain asks many times why Batman does things the way he does, and he always gets a short, and poorly explained answer.

      And when he’s asking him if he’d kill to protect or avenge Damian himself, you can tell he’s hurt by Batman not saying yes.

      Sure, wanting your parents to kill is bad, but it’s somehow worse to imagine they wouldn’t do it to save you. Or at least, wouldn’t be angry enough to. Batman is not even willing to admit to that.

      It’s a question of self worth. Damian believes Batman values the lives of criminals more than his own, in a way. Or his safety at least.

      And, if we ask Jason Todd (Red Hood), Damian might be right. Which is a very disturbing thought.

      That said, Damian still never actually wants his father to die or suffer in the film, and is horrified when he realizes the assassins were just using him to get to Batman.

      And in the end, since it’s the man who was helping him who takes them all out and helps Damian escape, Damian’s trust in him was somewhat justified.

      So thinking critically, not just taking Batman at his word, sure, it led to some bad things, but on the other hand, Damian helped bring down a pretty huge threat ot Gotham and Bruce Wayne, by not being so close minded as Bruce. Even if he fumbled it in the end, but, he’s a child. He did pretty well for someone without the understanding of depth an adult would have.

      And what’s Batman’s excuse then? He missed the obvious in the film also, even more than Damian did, and no one blames him for it at the end.

      I’m not saying that kids should disobey their parents, or that Damian was wise to do it. But Batman gave him no reason to think he really cared about him, and in the end, it’s just heartbreaking that you can understand Damian’s lack of trust and feeling secure in the Bat-home. Nightwing is a better father figure than Bruce is.

      Granted, people object to how Damian talks to Nightwing also.

      And that is the one thing I disliked about Damian, initially. Honestly, I don’t care that he sassed Batman, because Bruce really has it coming with the way he acts towards him, but Dick tries to be nice, and Damian is still pretty rude to him.

      And constantly reminding him that he is the “blood son.”

      However, after I inspected it a bit more closely, I did understand why Damian felt the away.

      The first movie with Damian (The Son of Batman), centers around a plot where Slade wants to take Damian’s place as the heir of the Assassins group. Slade being the non “blood” son to the group, and Damian having the ‘rightful’ claim.

      From Damian’s upbringing, he’s taught to value blood ties above other ties, and so it’s actually understandable that he assumes he has more value than Dick, right off the bat, because he’s the blood son.

      And sure, he’s wrong, but the funny thing is, in the majority of cultures in the world that attitude is still considered pretty normal. Dick would be a second class member of the family in most societies, and it’s only because the West is different (now) that we find the idea so abhorrent.

      But Damian is not an American, and was not raised that way, so expecting him to understand this, when again, Batman never sits him down and tells him any different, is kind of stupid.

      Come out think of it, I have to acknowledge that it’s because I actually work in childcare and have read a lot of books about kids, that I understand not to expect them to just get it. The average viewer, who may never have interacted with any child other than their siblings and classmates, and who probably has no interest in kids, is going to miss this and just assume Damian is monster because he likes being that way.

      But you can’t know what you haven’t been taught. Most of us would think no different if we weren’t told otherwise. How many kids understand the idea of ‘adoption’ at a young age? Most of them have to mature into it over time. And that’s even in America and other Western countries where it’s normalized to have non-blood related family members.

      So yeah, while he’s a jerk about it, it makes sense.

      And on the other hand, he does grow out of it. He comes to care about Nightwing and to respect him, even going so far as to awkwardly try to praise his decisions in “The Judas Contract” movie, and later in “Apokalips War” he even tried to save his life (not very successfully, but that’s not the point). And I think he also grows out of it in the comics.

      And Nightwing, who is by far the best male character in these movies, actually seems to understand that he can’t take all this personally.

      He tells Starfire in the “Teen Titans vs. Justice League” film that Damian has never had areal childhood or known how interact with kids, or anyone. And he seems to feel sorry for him.

      But maybe that’s because he can see where Damian’s urge to prove himself, and to not look weak, and to find value in things that he was told are valuable, is coming from. And understands he’d probably be no different if he was in his shoes. They do eventually reconcile and get along a lot better.

      And since I’m already on the Teen Titans, let’s look at how Damian handles them.

      Damian Wayne Vs. Blue Beetle (uploaded by Damian Wayne Stuff]

      Yeah, things get off to a rocky start.

      Not helped by the fact that Batman assigns Damian to the Titans in order to basically have someone else deal with the problem he apparently cannot seem to correct himself. (imagine that.)

      Damian is already mad about this when he joins, so he does take it out on Blue Beetle. And is rude to Starfire, and Raven.

      However, Raven is not really fooled by this and states that she thinks Damain is “sad.”

      Which seems odd, since he never acts sad, until we consider that the events of the previous movies had him leaving home because he didn’t feel he belonged, coming back only to save his ungrateful father from his crazy mother, and then sticks around for lack of anywhere else to go, and then getting chewed out for disobeying orders. Which, yeah, he did, but Batman didn’t really ‘nuture’ him at all to give him more faith in his judgement. (Frankly, considering how often Damian, or Nigthwing, has to bail Batman out in these movies, you can’t really blame him for thinking he shouldn’t follow his orders. Batman seems to get himself nearly killed a lot.)

      And the records shows Batman doesn’t trust him, so Damian’s feeling like he’s being shoved to the side probably makes sense.

      On top of that, he’s being sent to people he doesn’t know and doesn’t like and is basically alone all over again.

      So yeah, maybe he is “sad.”

      Doesn’t stop him from challenging Jaime (Beetle) to a duel just to prove he’s tough.

      And people also hate Damian for starting this, but challenging people is just kind of how the assassins raised him. He had to fight all the time, and it was how you earned respect and your place in the group. He approaches everything the same way in life. A lot like modern gangs do in the intercity. But when was he ever taught otherwise? Batman didn’t teach him, for sure.

      And after it goes disastrously wrong, and Raven steps in to heal him, Damian does regret how he acted. Especially after Raven tells him he should make things right. Which he does, sort of.

      [“Damian Tries to thank Raven for healing him, but the conversation ends badly” — uploaded by Earth’s Mightiest Heroes]

      Now this is after one day.

      Honestly, most kids with his issues wouldn’t come around that quickly. It shows that underneath the arrogance, Damian is able to see he was wrong, and has before, in the other movies.

      But his first instinct is to be defensive because people are always either trying to kill him, or they’re accusing him of something. Which happens again here.

      But once he realizes that Jaime wasn’t really so bad, and the others are okay, and that Raven is cool, he feels a little less threatened.

      Once someone does anything nice for him, he always begins to be more grateful and to warm up to them.

      Which says a lot about how hungry for love and acceptance Damian must have been.

      And once he and the Titans fight together, he realizes that they could make a decent team and decides to give the whole idea a try, finally.

      The nice thing is, unlike with Batman, he’s not constantly being overshadowed here and told he’s wrong.

      In one of the scenes that pissed people off about him, he talks to Starfire about Raven and saying that they should know more about her, and that he doesn’t think just ‘having faith’ in people is a good approach to life.

      Starfire is mad at him over invading her privacy (and that’s justified), but tells him she just thinks that Raven needed a home, just like the others.

      Damian is not convinced.

      [Damian vs. Starfire leader debate– uploaded by TheManDeeDubs.]

      But once eha ot rmeo that he ilatl jsti talked to Raven, and told her he saw Trigon (not know it was him) in her mind, and he knew osemiot was off, and Ravne flat out fiu to answer his questions (Which wahsioasn fair since she knew his secrets after their midn meld but I Can’ lbns her for not want ot tell him her dad was a demon).

      So yeah, I mean, that would raise a red flag for most people. Damidn’t stupid, he knew she was hiding something bad.

      But interestingly, he doesn’t tell Starfire what he saw. Whether it’s because he respects Raven’s privacy, or because he doesn’t trust Starfire, it’s still a notable choice.

      And his point to Starfire, while rudely put, isn’t wrong. You road should be vetting people with weird, magical powers who never tell you anything about themselves, before you just let hem hang around your group of other young and vulnerable teenagers…sorry Starfire, but that’s just common sense.

      I’m also not against taking people in, of course, but Damian’s point is a fair one. Granted, Starfire can make the choice to allow Raven in anyway, and the others can all make the choice to stay in the Titans,if not knowing doesn’t bother the others.

      But if Damian wants to know before he risks his life and health hanging around these people, then isn’t that fair? I mean he’s being forced to live here, and if he is worried about someone else who lives there, isn’t that valid? He’s been kidnapped enough times to be worried about any mystery girl what magical powers who won’t tell him why she’s there.

      Granted, he doesn’t dislike Raven, but he knows that people can come after you if you have powers. Or a past. And he wants to know what he’s getting into.

      Now put like that, it sounds reasonable.

      Damian is bad at explaining himself. However, Starfire later admits he was probably right once Raven’s past does almost get them all killed.

      See, I take less issue with Damian’s lack of communication skills because I expect no different from someone with his background. It’s not like he was ever taught how to talk to people. In his history, being strong and forceful was all that was needed. And that’s what he is.

      When he does show a softer side, he’s nervous about it.

      There’s a good scene with him and Raven, right before Trigon attacks, where after he gives a little girl a toy sword he won at the carnival, Raven tells him that he doesn’t even know this about himself, but the has a “kind and generous soul”.

      Damian just looks at her weirdly.

      [“Raven reads Damian’s Heart” — uploaded by Earth’s Mightiest Heroes]

      Of course, this is the first time anyone’s ever told him that.

      Because most people assume he’s a jerk. But when I looked at the other movies, I thought Raven was right. And Damian was always that way. Sure he didn’t know how to show it and he didn’t really have room to express while he was in the assassin’s group, but he is show to worry about this family, to want to protect them, to take pity on people when he feels safe doing so, and to regret it when he endangers them by accident.

      And in the second Teen Titan film, “The Judas Contract” there’s a scene that no one ever talks about when they complain about Damian, where he is talking to Terra.

      He’s suspicions of Terra at this point–with good reason– but instead of accusing her of things in the scene, he actually tries to sympathize with her about not fitting in, and attempts to find out what’s bothering her.

      This is unusual behavior from Damian, and shows he’s gotten more comfortable being kind, in his own weird way. Sure he’s awkward about it, but he’s not mean.

      And when he thinks Slade is attacking Terra, he tries to defend her.

      After he finds out Terra was a traitor, he even tries to warn her that it won’t work, instead of accusing her of being an awful person, because he knows how manipulative Slade is.

      It doesn’t work…but I fail to see how that makes Damian a jerk.

      He also begins to show respect for Starfire and Nightwing both in this film. And while he is still annoying in how he expresses concern for the team, he is worried about the team, and it shows in his actions.

      All this taken into consideration, I really think Damian Wayne is a good character.

      I don’t have time ot go into any more examples in detail, but we see little signs of him being caring in other films, comforting his father after Superman’s death, worries about his father’s love life (which is a weird scene, but I blame Talia for that), and in the Justice League Dark movie, he’s a pretty solid team member.

      3. Why I personally think Damian is an important character type.

      This is probably going to be the most subjective part of this, because, it’s more based on my experience than on just the movies themselves. But here goes:

      I like Damian’s character for another reason. Simply put, he reminds me of me a lot.

      When I was the same age as him, I was always getting in trouble for mouthing off to my father, for questioning authority, and for being rude and overly harsh, according to some people.

      Not everyone felt that way, but I rubbed a lot of adults the wrong way. And I didn’t always get along with my peers either.

      And a lot of it was for the same reason that Damian doesn’t. I just didn’t know how.

      I wasn’t really mean on purpose.

      I treated my father that way because, as I’ve said before on this blog, he was a jerk to me. And my mother, and my sisters. I didn’t respect him because he constantly disrespected us and devalued us and treated us like his servants. So I fought back the only way I know how.

      And since he was bigger and stronger than me, the only way I really could. I couldn’t fight with him, and if I even tried, he’d just threaten me into submission…so being defensive and snarky was the only way I could vent my frustration, and it never really worked.

      I’m not surprised it didn’t work now, but I don’t know what else I could have done back then, even so. Reason never worked on my father either, even when I tried to do the mature thing.

      And because so many adults assumed the worst bout me, I got very defensive for many years.

      I was always offending people without knowing it, according to them. And nothing I did ever seemed to change their minds, not even if I apologized.

      So I got tired of it and shut down to them emotionally. I even stopped talking, basically, because I could never think of what would be safe to say. And usually it didn’t really matter what I said.

      And because of the way I was treated, I often can’t tell when people are making fun of me, or when they’re criticizing, or just teasing in a good natured way. So I can be overly sensitive.

      I’m much better about it now, but it’s been 12-14 years…

      So when I see a character like Damian, I know how realistic it is for him to act the way he does. He hasn’t had the time to mature and experience the different types of people that I have, and he has the intelligence to know he’s being teat unfairly, like I did, but not the emotional maturity to know how to shake it off. Which really only comes with age, you have to practice it, it can’t happen overnight.

      And like Damian, I tended to latch onto people who were nice to me, because it was so rare. And I can be fiercely loyal and defensive of those people, since I can’t take it for granted.

      While I realize that I need to grow still, I know that where I started from, essentially, wasn’t that different from Damian.

      But I know also that I had a good heart back then. I was generous and willing to help people. But I sucked at expressing it. The friends I did have probably just knew that about me.

      And it’s hard to know what people want to hear, if you’ve never heard it yourself, I might add.

      Like it’s hard to know people want you to encourage them, if you’ve never been encouraged by your parents in a normal way.

      Or to know that being too brutally honest with people can be a turn off, if that’s how you’ve been spoken to your whole life, or worse.

      So, for what I was working with, I might have been doing pretty well, but other people didn’t know this about me, so I got judged a lot for it.

      I guess that’s why it bothers me to see people talk about characters the same way. Because, people talked about me that way, so I know it’s real.

      And there are real kids who are like that, they don’t mean any harm, but they have no idea how to act.

      I’m not by any means saying Damian is a perfect angel who’s just misunderstood. I know he has problems, just like real kids like him do.

      But they’re not the monster people say they are. They’re misled, and misdirected human beings, but often, they can be the best kind of people once they mature.

      I could easily believe Damian would surpass both Bruce, and Dick, even, when he matures. Because he shows the signs of becoming a more caring person, under the trauma and defensiveness, and he would do well in the right environment. Which is why in the Teen Titans, he grows more in a few months than he did with Batman for years. Because he is allowed to grow. And he’s encouraged to be kinder by them, instead of it being seen as weak.

      And probably because he’s around Dick, the only male figure in his life who doesn’t berate him all the time.

      So yeah, that’s my take on Damian Wayne. He’s a good character, who is mishandled by the writers so that fans dislike him. a better writing staff would know how to make his good points more obvious to the audience, but, as it is, there are people who get it and fend him, and I salute them.

      And for the people who give real life kids like that a chance, and understand where they’re coming from, I salute you too. I try to be that kind of person myself.

      So, until next time, stay honest– Natasha.

      [If you’re interested in reading my attempt at writing Damian’s character, or other superheroes stories, check out my fan fic on Wattpad under Natasha Queen/worldwalkerdj. https://www.wattpad.com/story/307445603-justice-league-worldcrossed]

      Back to talk about Anxiety (and change).

      / toseealife / Leave a comment

      I’m back!

      Whew, it has been a while.

      What can I say? Life happens.

      Since I last wrote on here, I’ve changed jobs, finished my interpreting course, started volunteer interpreting, and completed a few more fan fic. (Check them out on Wattpad, @worldwalkerdj. If you’re interested in my fiction. Which is probably better than my non fiction in my opinion, but I’m biased towards fiction.)

      What to talk about today…

      Maybe I should talk about Anxiety, that’s always a popular topic.

      With all the changes listed above, I’m sure some people already could imagine how anxiety inducing it could be… and you have no idea.

      Anxiety is something I’ve struggled with since I was a kid. Unlike many people, it was not triggered in my teen years, or by poor health and life habits, though, I’m sure that plays a part.

      For me, anxiety was just how my life was, after 5 or 6. Before that, I don’t remember having it, I was a pretty bold kid at 3 and 4, the earliest I can remember.

      My anxiety surfaced partially because of an overactive imagination, and partly because I think of things my father told me as a young kid. But also, as a Christian, I’ve always assumed it’s spiritual too.

      Whatever the case, it was quite crippling from age 11-13, and since then, I’ve been battling it.

      The interesting thing is that, no one ever suspects this about me.

      I know because people have told me many times that I seem confident, even courageous (more of a church word), and tough.

      I have not seen myself this way for very long, I never understood what they saw in me.

      While I was bold enough about some things, I know myself and my fears so well, that I assume they are obvious to other people.

      But perhaps that’s not the case. Honestly, I’ve found with others, I often can’t see their fear of something until they tell me, because they’ve learned to mask it, and I suppose I’ve learned the same.

      Also, like many of us, I was taught to overthink about my actions and behavior and personality, by mean spirited people who told me I was wrong for being the way I am.

      (I certainly don’t believe that I’m perfect, or that I don’t need to improve, but the way some people tear you down, you know they’re not really trying to help you, just make you feel bad.)

      I was thinking after I logged on here, that I was 16 when I started this blog, and I’m 25 now. I haven’t kept it up consistently.

      Anxiety probably had something to do with that also, I started to feel like no one would care what I have to say. After all, I have no degree (yet), and I have no big success story to tell to prove I’m credible.

      Personally, I even get annoyed with all these bloggers and YouTube influencers who act like they know what they’re talking about, but they really don’t. How am I any different than them?

      Well, I can’t prove to you all I am. But one thing I will never do here is lie about where I’m at, or how successful I am. I figure it won’t do anyone any good for me to be fake, and it won’t help me either.

      And if I do know what I’m talking about, it’s because I’ve had to walk all this out, as a regular woman, living in this century, with the same challenges as many others. I might be young still, but I’ve had plenty of difficulty for my age.

      I’m not entitled, and I’m not angry at everyone, but I have my frustrations, and issues.

      I used to write this blog with the assumption that my ideas were usually right, and that I was explaining them well. Now if I read my old posts, I’ll cringe. But it’s not really my fault, at 16, all of us are unpolished, if I was reading someone else’s writing, I’d be judging it by how good it was consider how little experience they ahd, and I Think I wasn’t too bad, then, for my age.

      But I’m too old now to use that as an excuse, even if I wanted to do mediocre work, here or anywhere else.

      I’ve learned a few things since then.

      One: I write way too long posts.

      I wish I could say I was just that self aware, but it’s really because since I started working more, I realized how time consuming it is to read something 4,000 words long. I’ve been blessed with the ability to write thousands of words daily, easily, but, then, I’ve also been blessed with the free time to attempt that, and not everyone is.

      Two: I should branch out what I write about.

      It’s honestly nice that I could actually share work stories and other stuff now. Though I still like analyzing content and may do that still.

      What does this have to do with anxiety?

      Well, see, I get worried about all this. I figured I’d never be a popular writer or blogger because I like unpopular topics. But, you know, in a lot of ways, blogging was more to help me grow as a writer than it was because I thought I’d be a popular blog.

      I figure, it doesn’t matter anymore. I should just write what I know.

      And hey, I know a lot.

      I’m the type to always feel like I’m not doing enough with my life (one of the things I’ve been anxious about).

      And hey, adding the pressure of blogging again may not even be necessary, but I’m taking a break from classes, so I should have something to do when Im’ not working on creative stories and job stuff, right?

      But, the thing is, for someone with a lot of free time, I do keep pretty busy. And I think the pressure I feel is because I was always told I was special and smart growing up, and I always wanted to do something meaningful to impact the world.

      Whether it’s being the first writer to really commit to making Christian fan fiction a thing.

      Or it’s finding a career that’s meaningful and personally, one on one.

      Whatever it is, I wanted to feel like I did something really important with my life.

      And all the cliches about small things mattering, they are true, but they aren’t always comforting.

      I can’t say I’ve figured out yet how to be satisfied with everything, but, I’m getting better at it. And as I do, my anxiety has decreased.

      I could devote a whole separate post to how my social anxiety has changed or grown or shrunk over the years, but that would take a lot longer to delve into.

      The point I’m making is, in 9 years, I’ve changed a lot, but in many ways, I have not changed at all. I still want most of the same things I did then, and I still believe the same things I did, I just have a deeper understanding now.

      And my fears have changed, they have not gone away, and some of them are the same, and some, I hope, are mostly gone.

      It’s also been 5 years since I started recovering from the abusive situation I was in with my father. My father and I have spoken more times, and we’re on fairly good terms considering.

      The reason I reopened community with him, was, other than God told me to, also that I knew I would never lose my fear of what happened, if I didn’t face it.

      The same reason, maybe, that though I have mild to moderate acrophobia (fear of heights), I somehow always want to climb a mountain, do an obstacle course in the trees (Treerunner, it’s in Michigan, check it out if you ever go that way), or otherwise rock climb in higher spots. Sure, it scares me and I hate it at first…but eventually, I feel stronger because I faced it.

      This is old advice, but in a day where we’re told to coddle ourselves and that our fear is an excuse to quit because something is too hard, old advice about it is the best advice.

      Let me tell you all, I would never have the job I have now, have finished the stories I did, or done any of the other things, if I listened to my feelings and if I told myself “it’s okay, it’s too hard right now for me.”

      It’s just the truth.

      You may feel that you’re too afraid to do something now, but, I promise, it does not get easier if you put it off. Honestly, I dreaded those things more the more I put them off.

      I also found that once you commit to doing something, you can find ways to make yourself feel better about it.

      Like when I first called my dad, I had other people with me for morals support.

      When I had to job hunt again, I finally used a website to help me make my resume better, and I watched a YouTuber for advice about how to interview. (Advice with Erin if you want to know.)

      Or how I was anxious about making new friends, but I still invited people to hang out with me and join the life group I’m in at my church, and it worked out.

      It’s still hard sometimes, and nothing is perfect…and that used to scare me. Sometimes it still does, but I’ve learned that I can press on through the disappointment, and eventually, it gets better again.

      If I quit because I didn’t feel ready, I’d never have even tried. And I wouldn’t have succeeded. I don’t win every time, but I win more when I try to then when I do nothing.

      All this is, again, old advices, but I’m telling you, it works. Probably why i’ts such old advice.

      And no, that doesn’t make it easy to follow. I’ve realized that all this has to be walked out individually.

      I had all the advice about conquering fears in my head from a young age, but you have to build up your strength. I figured that out finally. What works for me may not work for everyone as quickly or completely, but it does work.

      What does not work, is excuses. And I’ve used plenty, but they never made me feel better. Actually, they lowered my self esteem. You start to feel damaged, and like you’ll never be whole and able to live the way you want.

      But that’s the fear talking, and fear, as Dostoevsky said, “is a lie.” (The Brothers Karamazov).

      Or as the Crane Wives sang in their song:

      “No amount of waiting will make you brave, no amount of fear will keep you safe.”

      [Keep you Safe– The Crane Wives.]

      It’s all true, but it’s hard to live by.

      But that doesn’t make it okay for us not ot try.

      Things are hard…all things are hard if they’re important. At least some of the time. But they are not always hard, for all of the time.

      Some things that used to be hard for me, are not hard now.

      Like saying “I love you.” It was hard, but now it’s mostly easy.

      Or talking to boys. That’s been easy for years, but it wasn’t for a long time.

      Or driving. I’ve been afraid of it a lot of times, but I’ve always kept getting behind the wheel, and now it’s much easier.

      These are small things, but I think big things have also gotten less hard for me. Anyway, what’s a big challenge is relative to everyone.

      So yeah, I practice what I preach.

      I think that’s about all I got for now. If you’re back, thanks, I know it was a long wait.

      Or if you’re new, welcome.

      And as always, Stay honest– Natasha Queen.