This month I’ve been asking myself why, since this year started and it seemed like every thing that could go wrong did go wrong, I turned so much to doing things to improve my household life.
(By the way, my car had to get repaired again. The ABS, the other big Prius thing that tends to break, went out. I hope at least now that the two big ones already failed, every other issue will be much smaller.)
I’ve been a Christina for 13 years, but even I’m not immune to the temptation Job had to question why God is allowing all this. since the year became 2025, it’s like some line of dominoes was pushed over to make one thing after another go wrong, and as soon as I deal with one problme, another one emerges. Like getting the ear infection to go finally, but it getting slightly reinfected because of allergies and also the hole in my ear not healing the way we hoped.
All of these things might seem small enough, if each of them was the only problem, but all together, when the costs amount to over $8,000, and my family’s total income is less than 100,000 even if you combined all 3 or 4 of us who make income…
Well, we’ve scraped by, but we’ve gone through a lot of emergency savings to do it. I mean, I guess they are for emergencies, but still.
For me, the funny thing is, even a single one of the crisis I’ve dealt with this year would have, 3 years ago, laid me out for weeks. Being anxious and depressed and afraid of the future.
I’ve felt as if I just don’t have the time to dwell on it. I still had to go to work. Now that I’m on vacation (sort of) for the Summer, I worried I would fall into that anxious habit again.
I’ve set myself daily talks to make sure I have something to focus on, which helps.
However, I also find that pull to fall into anxiety is less than it used to be.
Maybe I got tougher, because of all the stuff I had to go through to get it his point. Not sure.
Another thing is maybe, I learned to redirect my enegery.
I think we often try to stop being anxious in the passive way, we try to block it out the anxious thoughts, using mediation, or self affirmation…
But taking action is often the best way to fight any bad mood, especially fear.
I think that’s why reading “The Happiness Project” helped me so much two years ago. Up till then I was kind of just trying to escape anxiety the same way I always had, and it sometimes would work. Prayer, worship, and distraction are all valid ways to treat anxiety, and I can say without God, I would have never got this far.
Yet, I think God himself points us to needing to do more to fight off fear than to just wait for it to go away.
Once I started taking some small actions in regard to my happiness and control over my life, I was shocked by how different I felt.
It’s not even always about me feeling happy so much as feeling less helpless. Which for me, is the biggest source of unhappiness in my life.
I’m the kind of woman who had to feel like I can do something about my situation, in order to feel at peace about it. At least, without divine help to not need that, which, to be real, doesn’t always come, because I think God does want us to take action ourselves.
Nothing stresses me out like having no solution.
Which, come to think of it, might explain why my parents were never much help to me dealing with my fears when I grew up.
My mom’s go-to phrase when I had a problem and told her was: “I don’t know what to tell you.”
Or “I don’t know how to help.”
My dad’s go-to was to tell me how much worse he used to have it, or that he had the same problem….with no potential solution. Unless it was to just make fun of it.
Which is how he deals with every problem.
I am glad both my parents do also take practical steps to solve some issues, so though they never told me how to do this, I was able to glean some things from their examples.
However, I didn’t realize how much their attitude had affected me till the last few years. Until I started trying to take action, I never noticed how little I ever did before.
I believe I could have solved my anxiety issues as a child, even, if I ‘d know it then, and had the relationship with God I do now. You need both, but I think I would have suffered less even if it was just with the practical steps.
I can’t go into every single thing I learned, but here’s the biggest one, and this an did start with a revelation from God, appropriately enough.
Everyday life is the place I will find the most happiness.
I was lamenting my lack of accomplishment of my goals to God a couple years back, I remember this clearly because, though it was in my head, I knew the thought was not mine, it was too far from anything I’d been thinking at that time to be my own idea.
God, finally getting tired of listening to this, I imagine (I had complained to Him many times already) finally shot back with “You have a beautiful life.”
I say shot back, but it was actually a very gently made a point.
(God does not talk to me in a harsh voice, ever. I know there are people He can be firm with, but I think I never perceive it that way because I want tho so much as a kid with harsh parents, and God knows it would only push me back into that cycle to be spoken to that way.
Perhaps this sounds crazy to you if you’re not a Christian, but I’ve heard many others say that God speaks to them the way they can handle, s it’s not just me.)
And if you think that means that we’re just making it up…well, I know I can’t persuade you otherwise, but it seems odd to me that if I made it up, it would be such a new, unlike me thing to think. Make of that way you will.)
Anyway, after that sentence, a bunch of memories of the things I have that other people don’t have came into my mind.
I remember that I felt something shift after that moment. I didn’t usually get over all of my issues–and I have now, but when I get down about my life I think of that statement and I reflect on my blessings, I guess you could say. I don’t like to call it that because I think the cheesy cliche makes me people turn off their brains, but I suppose it’s what I’m doing.
One thing I sometimes think about is that for all the things I had to complain about, I’m never starving, or homeless, or lacking even in electricity, and clean water or clothing. The fact that I even have enough money to chastise myself for spending more than I should, means I’m blessed.
My car has been a problem, but I’ve had one when I needed it, even if it breaks a lot,and that has let me at least still work and do my church activities.
I have books and more movies tan I can read. I have enough free time to choose how I will spend it.
I have a cat.
I have family who loves me, even if they aren’t always the most helpful to me about things, and I have friends now.
Sure, there are things I had that gave me disadvantages. I had a father who didn’t financially plan very well and so we ended up always struggling for money and losing our house. I had a father who also abused me emotionally enough to give me a ton of issues.
All in all, like most people, my life is a mixed bag.
I don’t think God was telling me to think that everything was beautiful in my life when He said that.
But he was pointing out that in the moment I was being so negative, I was ignoring the fact that I had a bed, a house, two loving siblings, plenty of other basic needs, and a few luxuries, and other things in my life were changed for the better. And best of all, I no longer live with apron trying to tear me down constantly and threaten my safety.
And even though this year has sucked in many ways, I won’t tell you that nothing good has happened in it. The good things have been smaller and quieter, but they have been there.
And while financially, I’m still struggling to figure stuff out, at least I know that my family can help me if I end up falling short, and someone have no one but themselves.
I know people would kill to get what I have, even when I feel down about it.
My personal values are a wish to be independent, but that has not gotten granted to me at any time in my life. Maybe it never will be. It could be that God knows I’m better off knowing I need people.
Or perhaps, one day He will answer that prayer.
I’ve been reminded of the bible verse “He who is faithful with little with be faithful with much” a lot since last year. [Luke 10:16]
Perhaps I’m starting small to learn responsibility.
And I have to admit to you all, I was not very responsible with what I did have before. I didn’t have a savings account with my job before my current one. I spent more than I should. And I didn’t do a lot to take care of my house or contribute to the family.
That has changed a lot. And I feel more ready to have a house of my own because I’ve been taking care of the one I do live in now.
And in that, I do find joy.
Everyday life seems boring or people who always want to move onto the next big thing. I know because, I’m one of those people. I always dreamed big.
I didn’t do a lot to get ready for those dreams though. I always thought I didn’t have enough money and I didn’t have the money to go out and try things. My parents kind of kept me from being able to do that.
Even when I wanted to do outside things, like sports, or drama,or writing workshops, they with the financial support because either we couldn’t afford it, or, it was too much of a hassle, or I didn’t do enough to earn the support.
I think they really could have found a way to support me, if they’d looked into it, but…
Well, blaming them is probably no good.
However, that helped me feel like I could never pursue anything I wanted to do without enough money.
There are ways that’s true, but it’s also true that people have made so many free resources now, more than has ever be available to anyone throughout history, that we don’t realize the gold mine we’re sitting on top of, in the current century I can learn almost any skill online for free, within reason.
Instead of noticing this, I just felt bad about not having money for so long.
And instead of doing anything to change my household for the better, I just complained about it being arranged in a way I didn’t like.
I also felt useless, because all my skills seemed to be purely academic and I had nothing else to fall back on, so when that didn’t yield the reason I wanted, I got depressed.
Now I know that I do have some other skills, even if they ‘re not huge money makers, it’s good to know I could probably have options, if I need them.
My point is, everyday happiness is something we shouldn’t take for granted
Sometimes the old saying are old because they are true and people find them to be true.
People complain about everything now, and always have, but now they can spread it much farther. If I complain to my family, I only bring down the moods of 5 people, but if I post it online, I could bring down the moods of 5 million people, if I had enough of a following.
T’hat not healthy to do to others. Or ourselves.
I feel like these truths are obvious, but as usual, humans are weak to the temptation to do that.
So I can’t give you a formula that will help you fix it if you have that problem, being formulaic doesn’t work.
My best advice is to find something that makes you happier, and try to do that instead of indulging in complaints and negativity, even challenge yourself for one week, or three days, to stay off the thing that brings you down and for someone else. If you don’t see a change immediately, then, try something else, because who wants to stay unhappy?
And we all have problems to focus on, I know that. And unlike me, maybe yours are not something you can ignore (at least for a short period of time).
I think there are still ways to make it better, but I don’t want to be flippant about that situation.
My point is that, for most of us, we have it better than we think. Those of us who really have it bad, we should support and help them to get to a better place. I’m thankful for all the people who helps me, the help wasn’t always perfect, but it was there.
Even my parents, will all our problems, have helped me many times. Even parent who add to your issues can sometimes be part of the solution.
So life is a mixed bag in every sense.
I hope some of this was helpful, I’m trying to make it a bit shorter and more to the point, one of my new resolutions is to try to improve my time management, and blogging shorter and more focused posts would help me with that.
Every year this time, my Church does this thing they call “Dream Sunday” which happens to be today.
I take the chance around this time to reevaluate my goals in life and ask what I still want to do.
I tend to make two lists. One for the year, and one for my lifetime.
I’ve had getting married and having kids on the lifetime one for years and years–God are you there?
(Just kidding. I know everything has to happen in its time. It just gets hard to wait.)
For other life times goals, becoming a paid professional writer has been on the list since I was a teenager. (Hey, help me with that one and like this post guys.)
But because I know that it takes time to acheive some things, I also make short term dreams.
I don’t like to use the word “goals” or “resolutions” when I do this. Not because there’s anything wrong with those words, per sec, but because I know myself too well. If I treat it like it’s a demand, I won’t want to do it.
A dream is something I can try to do, but if life doesn’t work out that way, I can always find a new dream, just like Tangled told us. (That’s not my favorite Disney movie, but it is probably on my top 10.)
I’m not too disappointed when I don’t meet those goals. And I’ve also learned what dreams are reasonable over the years. When I asking myself a number, like “get 200 followers” then it won’t happen. I can’t control other people.
But if it’s a goal like “get a new car”, or “read 30 books”, something that either isn’t a set number to it one that I can be flexible with, and that I can control, I can usually do it. Even go above and beyond it.
As I mentioned in a different post, I just got the new car. I can’t even remember if I put that on the list last year, or if I just decided I needed it now.
I do know though, that owning a blue Toyota has been on one of my lists, though if it was the dream one or the bucket one, I can’t say, for a long time.
What? I just like what I like guys.
And that’s basically happened. I mean, it’s kinda blue-green, but hey that’s my favorite shade of blue. Light turquoise to aquamarine. I’m a beach girl.
I also just got my wisdom teeth out, yesterday, and while I wouldn’t call that a dream, I’ve had jaw problems for a couple years and I’ve hoped doing this will help a bit, so in a way it’s a dream. Also I was able to get it done quickly and around my work schedule, that was a blessing.
Also, it was way easier than I expected. I barely had any reaction to the anesthesia, and I’m able to chew already the next day (soft foods of course, but still). I apparently am lucky, my mom and sister said they could barely open their mouth for days.
Also I had a best case scenario pretty much, so while I wasn’t jazzed about getting surgery for the first time, I was blessed that it wasn’t a bad experience. (Is it weird if I prefer it to a regular dentist appointment? I hate drills.)
I hope if you have to get yours out, that encourages you.
Anyway, not everything was planned, but they were things I wanted.
And things that were planned, like finishing more stories, and getting a better job, I got and then some. Like last year, I put a better job on the list, and I got a much better and longer one than I expected.
It might not be everyone’s dream job, but it was perfect for me, at this stage of my life. Helped pay for the car, after all.
(Btw, I sold my old car to my sister, though I got it for free, and people are judging me for it. She wanted it that way. I offered to give it to her and she didn’t like the idea of accepting it that way, so I said I’d just sell it to her instead. She wanted to feel more independent, and I 100% respect that.)
Just because I got it for free doesn’t mean I really wanted it that way. I just could never have afforded it when it was given to me, I plan to pay for my own cars going forward if I possibly can. I’m not above getting help, though. I’d do the same for anyone else, I figure, so it’s no big deal to accept it. And I mean that, my family shares bills a lot.
I’ve been able to go out with friends a lot this year. And I think making more friends was one of the things on my list, too. (I haven’t found it yet, but that sounds like something I’d put on it.)
Also, I’ve planned my first get away trip without my mom’s help.
I may actually file for taxes finally, another dream, weird as it sounds, but it means I’m not impoverished anymore.
Now, does all this mean my life is perfect? No.
It’s been a good year.
But I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging. I share all this because I see it as God’s goodness.
But to level with you all who might feel like your life sucks compared to mine (and mine’s not that glamorous, so if yours is worse, I’m sure you’ve got it rough), maybe I can encourage you a bit.
This is a recent thing for me.
For many years, I’ve had a lot of these wishes, and honestly, I couldn’t even work towards them for the longest time, I was just hanging on barely to what I already had, not expanding.
I’ve not had a lot of friends for most of my life, and it’s been weird to make more.
And it felt like I had one issue after another the last few years. I had health issues, though they seemed small, but not to me.
I had job problems constantly.
I got frustrated a lot and I had a lot of anxiety.
And I still sometimes do. I know that none of this stuff I have now will last forever. Friends come and go, so do jobs, vehicles, and health can be changing too.
Money will rise and fall for me, and so will success.
Now that’s no reason to assume I’ll end up worse off. God takes us from glory to glory.
And I don’t mean that in a cheesy way. I’ve seen it play out.
While things have been both bad and good for me, I have noticed a different aspect of life with God in each season. Sometimes it’s his kindness, sometimes it’s just the strength to keep going. The voice in my head that says it’ll get better.
And no, it doesn’t happen overnight.
Christians love to share our testimonies of God’s goodness, because it makes Him sound better to outsiders, and we don’t want to seem like we’re doing badly, when we’re supposed to represent how much better life is with God.
But the wisest of us realize that if life is better with God, it logically must mean that even the bad parts of it are made better by God.
Jesus warned us we’ll never get out of suffering in this life. No matter how good we have it, there will be trouble. Not because God wants us to suffer, but because the world is not a safe place. Suffering is inevitable. Jesus suffered a lot.
And we think that means only the Cross, but no, Jesus was tired, hungry, hurt by his friends and family, mocked, accused, and that was before he even was killed. He slept outside a lot.
Often, we don’t have the mental picture of just how difficult it must have been for him, as a man, though He was God.
So, no, no one gets out of suffering. He wasn’t floating around in a nimbus, people, not feeling the burn of walking everywhere. That’s not how it happened.
But Christian artists have always portrayed Jesus as somewhat above suffering. Not I think, out of a lack of understanding perhaps, always.
But because they recognize that our inner self, that is what makes suffering seem impossible or bearable to us.
Jesus was strong on the inside, so He rose above his circumstances. He was not raised by rich parents, in a well known district. He came from Nazareth, the bad town of the ancient world. Everyone thought it was awful.
He has his high moments, to be sure. His entrance to Jerusalem, he was worshiped, given gold, frankincense, and myrrh by the wise men.
The point I’m making here is that Jesus wasn’t always sad or always suffering, but he certainly wasn’t always doing well either.
His life, like ours, had its ups and downs.
So when Christians say that God will make your life better, we don’t mean your problems will go away. We mean that God will get in your problems and make it better for you.
And I would say that’s the truth, in my experience.
I had depression and anxiety, they didn’t just go away because of my faith (they have gone away mostly now, though). But while I had them, I felt God with me. Not always in a distinct feeling of peace, but at least, I felt like I was not alone.
I think that’s the worst part, really being alone. Ever notice that no matter what experience we suffer, the loneliness part is always the worst. Even if it’s painful in other ways, somehow what horrifies us is that we’re alone.
Humans do not like to be alone.
It’s funny too, I’ll see people online saying they like to be alone–in a public comment section, where they’re commenting on other peoples thoughts and getting likes and comments back.
I’m thinking “you don’t like to be alone, you’re asking for sympathy from strangers, and giving your opinions on their lives, because that’s just a less risky way to have companionship. You get to have it on your terms, that’s all. You’re not truly trying to be alone.”
Let’s say no one who’s on the internet is ever trying to really be alone.
Maybe if you go off the grid and live in a log cabin without a phone, then you’re really trying to be alone–and you’re not reading this post then.
I do notice though, that people who say they want to be alone, have small dreams.
Like it or not, we need other people to make our dreams happen. I know mine never would have happened without people–and some of them literally require other people participating to make happen at all. I can’t marry and have kids with myself, can I?
So, no, I don’t leave other people out of my dreams.
And I submit everything to God.
The word says if you commit your ways to the Lord, He will give you the desires of your heart.
This doesn’t mean, I think, that we get every single thing we want. I think that there are desires that God gives us, in our lives, that He will make happen, if we don’t go against His will.
Often something would only be good for us if it was through God. Otherwise, it would end badly.
Not just because God won’t bless it if it’s not through Him, but often the ways we try to get things without God are very selfish. We lie, we steal, we cheat. We try to get ahead.
I don’t really want to be rich, now.
I’ve wondered if it would be nice, but honestly, I think if I didn’t have to work, I’d feel pretty useless. I would like to be well off enough to work only at what I like doing, instead of what I hate to do, but, that’s not a requirement, it’s just what I prefer.
But if I got a billion dollars or something and never need to work again, I’d feel empty.
Sure, a lot of money would help me…
But honestly, right now, there’s not that many problems I have that I really need to fix with money. There’s a few, and long term, yes, I’ll need more.
But I can say for what I need right, now, I have enough. And I’ve noticed that’s always the case. God has never given me an overwhelming amount of wealth, but He’s always given me as much as I need for my current expenses. And that’s been true even as my expenses increased.
Sometimes I want to get ahead, and I get frustrated that I can’t, but I know I have no real reason to complain.
It’s the same with my dreams. They didn’t all happen when I wanted. And they still haven’t all happened.
But enough of them have happened for me to know that God is good.
And I’ll get the other things, if I need them.
Though I don’t think that God only does things when we need them. I do think some stuff is just for the fun of it. Just because we want them, too. But that’s more depending on if it will hurt us or not. You can’t be more generous than God, but He knows what we need to be happy.
That’s the thing too, I think that’s maybe why I haven’t gotten further ahead. Working for all this makes me feel more satisfied with my life.
Would I really be happier if it was easier for me?
I don’t know. I kind of doubt it, somehow.
I do hope that one day I can live below my means and still have enough, but, I’m trying not to worry about it anymore.
See, goals and money problems were what plagued my dad constantly while I was growing up. The funny thing was, we were never starving or homeless. I’d say we really weren’t that bad off. But he obsessed over every money problem anyway.
And all his other goals, he’d forget about them and just worry about business.
And, we never had that many other goals. We’d talk about it, but eventually it always came back to business. He didn’t stick to any other goal.
My dad is good at business, so it’s not like it’s not his gift, but I thought it should have made him happier than it did.
That’s why I have other goals, ones I don’t have to pay for.
And some things I will have to pay for. Both.
Because success isn’t just in money, but money is usually part of success. Put that on a plaque.
So yeah, you know, I’m happy.
Lastly, let me say, I do still sometimes have the fear that all this will go away just as fast as it came.
And it’s true there are no guarantees in life.
But I realize that this was kind of hurting my ability to enjoy it.
I’m not perfectly good at blocking out worry yet. I think it would be hard for someone like me, who’s been like that most of her life, to unlearn it in 1 or 2 years, but, I am better than I was.
See, I’ve heard the cliche that you won’t fix it by worrying, but I only recently started to realize just how logical that is.
I guess I lacked maturity before to really embrace it. And this is not an age thing, so many older women than I are obsessed with worries and fears.
So I say if I’ve changed, it must be a God thing.
So, to get back on topic, not every dream may happen. And some things that I have now, I may not have later.
Hoesn thoguh…so what?
I mean there are always other things you can do. The world is full of stuff, why get hung up on losing or having one thing, or one person.
True people are not replaceable, but you can always let new ones in.
I mean if I quit because of bad experiences, I’d have quit years before I made any real friends.
That’s the thing, why do we give up? Why do we settle for our life the way it is. Nearly every problem gets better with enough time, energy, and innovation to try to fix it.
I mean you can make money at home in so many ways now, you can’t have really tried everything if you’re broke.
Maybe there’s so many things we can do, that we can’t settle on one.
I really do suggest making a dream list then. Things you always wanted to do, or things that just sound fun to you.
Try to do them. At least one of them. In the next year.
I should get started on mine.
Happy New Year to you all, and stay honest–Natasha.
As you may know, I’ve used part of this blog to post about my recovery process after living with an abusive father for most of my life.
While I may not have as many horror stories as some people (and I acknowledge that everyone is different) it was definitely enough to poison my happiness and my self confidence for many years.
I still live with some side effects of that, but, by and large, my life has vastly improved in the lats 6 years.
I was dealing with depression and anxiety for a while because of what happened (and because I had reoccurring issues with that growing up), but I’ve gotten much better, and I’ve never needed meds. (Some people might, but I felt it wasn’t for me.)
So I thought I’d blog about some of the changes I’ve made.
Keys to Happiness
A lot of people say happiness is fleeting. That it’s just an emotion.
What I’ve come to see from both my own life, and observing other people’s, as well as reading about it, is that it would be more accurate to say happiness is a continual process, not a point of arrival.
I remember during the period of my recovery where I could barely eat because of anxiety (something my mom and sister also went trhough, and I’ve since learned is a symptom of people who’ve been narcissistically abused) some things like songs and messages would help me get trhough the dark points.
One that caught my attention was “Theseus” by the OH Hellos (one of my favorite bands still).
“At the edges of my fingers, never quite closing around it, that peace like a river always going, never getting.
Seems like maybe it’s not all that much a place, as it is a way, and ways don’t ever seem to want to stay too still, too long.”
[Theseus– The Oh Hellos]
I realized after hearing this song that the Bible describes Peace and love and joy as the paths of righteousness, and it always describes goodness as a “way” you walk.
Many major religions or even small ones, describe peace as a state you arrive at at the end of a journey But the Christian religion suggests that peace and joy are things you “practice.” You do them. You build up spiritual muscles to them. Paul even calls it “spiritual exercise” in his letter to Timothy.
I had a paradigm shift gradually after this point. I heard other people teach on the same subject around that time, I’ve always noticed that when I’m learning about a new concept, God throws other sermons and books and people into my path who echo it.
Happiness, and joy, if you prefer the deeper word, are both things you walk in. You make daily, weekly, monthly choices that make you more likely to feel happy.
1. Food
For me, nutrition was a big part of that. It was hard, but I ahd to choose to eat even when I felt sick or had low appetitet or was stressed out.
I never used to do that, and then I’d feel worse because I have a very fsat metabolism and skping evne one meal is enoght to amke me lightheaded and nasuoous. But when i eat regualra, I tend to feel much better.
I was put on a path of findi out how my body works, after suffering for several months with symspt like gaggin and acid reflux because it got so out of hand.
And over time, I learned to eat as a discipline even when I didn’t feel like it, and avoid the symptoms (for the most part) that not eating was giving me.
The weird part was I realized I had had those symptoms my entire life, since childhood, but had always avoided eating as a way to handle them.
I learned things I could do, like use anti-acids, or tea, or protein, to offset the symptoms when they started so I didn’t get to the point where I felt like throwing up.
And I’ve had problems like that since I was a kid.
I also learned to drink things with electrolytes instead of just water or to eat stuff with high sugar when I most felt like I was dropping, because it replenishes faster. And I suddenly stopped feeling sick all the time with allergies and sinus issues like I always did before. I never realized that dehydration was one of the main reasons I felt sick.
And that led me to find out that cold compresses, heating pads, and using aloe vera to help with inflammation, and using nasal spray and eye drops to help with it in hard to reach areas, could also alleviate a lot of the discomfort I felt when I had allergy attacks (which I do frequently).
My health issues have not disappeared now, and some things I did need to seek more help for, like getting a chiropractor for my spine misalignment (which also caused nausea and poor digestion)–but the point is, the entire process began because of what I experienced form trauma leading me to learn different ways of doing things.
I’m not saying that all health problems can be fixed this way, but almost all of them can be made less difficult to deal with by making lifestyle changes. And some can be cured, it depends on the problem. If I had known as a kid what I know now, I’d have missed out on a lot less activities because I felt sick or weak and didn’t want to do them. I might not have done as poorly at jobs that I felt sluggish at because I didn’t eat, never realizing that that was the reason I felt so sick.
And I wouldn’t have felt as depressed, because I realized that low blood sugar was a huge cause of it.
It’s a cycle. You’re stressed so you don’t eat, but then not eating makes you more stressed. But I had to break that cycle step by step. It was never a thing I arrived at. I’m still learning about what works for me 6 years later, but, I am a lot better now than I was then.
And that was just one physical aspect of it. But as C. S. Lewis pointed out in the ScrewtapeLetters, our body affects our spirits. If we treat our body poorly, we tend to treat our spirit poorly. If our body is weak, our spirit will be weak to fight off dark thoughts.
Probably 90% of depressed kids now are not getting proper nutrition, and not enough sunlight, which also has vitamins you need for your body.
We medicate them, but that just puts more chemicals into your body that are not even really good for it, because they suppress emotions, they don’t balance them, and often they don’t work very well. Even if you feel less sad, you feel less period.
Again for some people, it might work, but a lot of people don’t find it helpful, and often are not told what would most help them is different food habits and different lifestyle habits.
2. Exercising more
True confession: I really only started this one recently.
I did notice that some dancing and walking made me feel better even years ago when I started this journey, but, to be honest, I didn’t make it a regular thing enough to reap the benefits.
I’m not the best at exercising on a schedule now, with work and other things going on, but I still try to frequently work out and walk and get in the sunlight, most importantly.
Even an 20-30 minute walk can make you feel a lot better and get you some needed Vitamin D.
But even more if you sweat, sweat is a good stress reliever.
I started my exercise program for myself during my break from school/work because I realized that when I had things to accomplish, I felt less down and had more energy. I also set myself chores every week so I would feel like I was doing something worthwhile. But I’d say out of the two, exercise helped improve my mood the most and my energy.
Also I felt more like doing chores after I worked out, strange to say. Because it got the blood and endorphins glowing, which makes you feel more productive. Go figure. And you wonder how house wives and farmers wives used to get so much done in one week. It was because they had to do it every day so they were really fit and that made them more motivated (also because they actually expected their children to help them, but that’s a subject for another time). Also they took Sunday completely off, while most of us cram it with just as many activities as week days because it’s our free time.
That leads to my next point.
3. Taking Earned breaks
I would never tell people that work, work, work is the only cure to being depressed or anxious.
It helps a lot. Tests on rats have shown that a cushy lifestyle makes you more depressed and more anxious and more aggressive, not less so. All that energy you’d normally use to survive has to go somewhere. We’re no different. (The rich people who are the most happy have hobbies that are very active, and always have, it’s a fantasy of TV shows that rich people don’t do anything all day except get waited on.)
There’s nothing wrong with resting and relaxing. I can find it hard to really relax, especially when I have the most high anxiety.
Sometimes doing stuff is the best way to keep your mind off it.
But then you can swing back, like I do sometimes, and try to do toomuch, creating more things to be anxious about.
I sometimes rush into stuff as a way to feel more important or productive in life. I have to be reminded over and over again that your value is not determined by what you di for people and for the Lord, but by what you are and how you love (more on that later).
I need rest too. But I found it easier to rest when I actually worked first. Just lazing around on the couch all day doesn’t feel like rest because you never worked. Or taking Saturday or Sunday off doesn’t feel like rest, if you didn’t work all week.
But if you’re active, then rest is sweeter.
I’ve told my family since I Started my 35 hour a week job (more than I ever worked before in my life, though less than some people), that I realized I need to either take Saturday or Sunday to do pretty much nothing, and it depends on which week was which. Even if that means skipping Church, because that can be a stressful thing to get ready for and drive to, and it’s still exhausting for me. Especially if I’m serving in a ministry that day.
So sometimes I skip it, and rest. And I choose to stay home if I’m not feeling too good instead of powering through it, unless I have no choice.
And if Saturday is free, then I can go on Sunday, but at least one day needs to be a stay at home, don’t do anything difficult, day. Not that I do absolutely nothing, but I do light stuff that won’t physically or mentally strain me.
And the bible lays this out too. Work 6 days, rest on the 7th. I’ve found it doesn’t really matter which day it is, as long as I have one day per week. And it seems like one is enough. Two is nice, when I can, but one at least helps me have the mental fortitude to go back to work. When I don’t do that, the looming work week just feels so overwhelming, I dread it.
I enjoy work, when it’s challenging and I have things to contribute, but I also enjoy rest. They need to be in balance. I’m not the first to point this out, or the last, I’m just telling you that it really works.
And I’m only 26. I’m still at the age where you can push yourself too far and get away with it, but, I really find I can’t do that, even now. Maybe I’ll be better off for it when I’m older.
4. Doing things for other people and just keeping a kind attitude towards them
Gretchen Rubin, author of the “Happiness Project” (which inspired some of the changes I made to my life that I’m writing about, but also I found some of them before I read it a year and half ago, and she just confirmed I was on the right track) wrote that one of her life mottos is:
“There is only love.”
Meaning, I think, that at the end of the day, you really have nothing else to bring satisfaction except what you love, and choose to invest in. Especially if they are people.
And love isn’t always about doing things, though that is a big part of it.
But Corrie Ten Boom wrote how when her mother, who was a very loving person, could no longer do things for people after having a stroke, she still showed her love for them. Corrie wrote that “love is bigger than the walls that shut it in.”
Love is something we do with our souls, not just our bodies, though we should use them if we can.
Maybe you’ve seen this in a small smile a stranger might give you that still has kindness and good will in it. Or just a gesture that would seem meaningless usually but it’s done to help someone else out. Or the lack of a gesture, which sometimes says more.
A lot of us have no clue where to start with small acts of kindness, or we just don’t priortize it.
Also we have different definitions of kindness.
C. S. Lewis wrote that men think that unselfishness is not making people need to do things for you, and that women think that unselfishness is doing things to help other people.
And the difference of that is often what causes fights.
I think he’s right about men and women but I think there’s more overlap. I know ladies who never ask for help and think that makes them unselfish, but they also never offer to help you. And I know men who offer to help you a lot but then can end up making it more difficult for you by accident. And we need to do some things ourselves to feel competent and capable.
Some men think they need to stay out of the way of men, but do things for women. Which yes, by and large, I agree with. But there are nuances. Same with how women treat men.
And a lot of us never really try to figure this out.
The idea of “do no harm” is a popular way to define unselfishness now. But I don’t think it’s complete.
The bible definitely teaches that doing good is a key part of love, and even that it’s the more important part. Not doing anything is okay at times, but, only at times.
But in general, the more people who help, the easier something will be.
And often learning to accept help is a big struggle of ours. I’ve had to learn to do this too. I do not like asking for help. I actually noticed that it was making things more stiff between me and my co-worker though, that I never shared difficulties or questions about what we were doing with them.
I think people act helpless too often when they really aren’t, so I try to avoid acting that way (never let them see you sweat and all) but it can be a turn off. In this day and age people think that teamwork and being open about struggle is more important that just being able to do something alone. That was more Gen X and before’s mindset.
I find that usually I really can solve the problem myself, but asking for help makes people feel more connected with my contributions, and helps them to see I am doing things, so I’ve started to do it more. I still don’t like it, but, I’ll do it for the sake of morale.
And that’s a big part of love, I think. You don’t always like it but you make allowances for what other people need and like.
Not everything is about you.
The more I’ve put effort into doing things that I think will make others happy, the better I feel about myself and my life.
I’ve always wanted to have an impact on the world.
And while I don’t always feel that I contribute something really big, I try not to live small.
My current job is just coordinating tests for the Special Ed kids at a highschool. Basically, I sit in a room, waiting for them to come in, and hand out the tests and then collect them afterward.
I go over rules about it with them, answer questions about it if I can, or contact the teachers if I can’t. I also have to watch for cheating (an ongoing problem) and for kids getting distracted. Basically the person that kids don’t like the most, usually, on staff because they are only there to make sure they don’t do anything bad.
I love kids and hate the public school system so the job was ironic for me in many ways, but it was what I could get and it had a much better salary than my previous job, so I took it as a blessing. And it gives me a lot of time to write (I’m sitting in my “office” classroom right now writing this post, and checking every so often on the kids).
But I resolved that I would do my best to make my job work for me.
I made sure to start learning the kid’s names right off, it took a few weeks but I got most of them down. So I could actually treat them like people and not just people I had to watch.
I made it a point to say “have a good day” every time they left, and “Hello” and “Good morning” when they came in.
I bought extra things like pencil sharpeners, earplugs, and highlighters that I did get provided by the school (they give me some things, but not everything I wanted) so that I could have whatever they needed with me.
Some of them said the room was so bland it was stressing them out (and I had to agree, it was very boring). So I bought a bunch of posters that had nature scenes on them (some that looked like windows so the room looked bigger), and one with a phoenix on it that says “Grades Will rise from the Ashes” under it. (I made that part myself, my family said it was a good idea, and the kids did like it, so I guess they were right.)
I hung up some fake leaves on the back peg board and put fake flowers on my desk/table to brighten it up.
I also memorize the classes the kids are in for the most part so I could get them the tests faster.
I often make jokes or some wry comment to make it seem more like I’m human and not just some scary person. But I am firm when I need to be. When they don’t give me trouble, I don’t give them trouble, that’s my motto.
I’ve made the kids laugh with some of my jokes, so I guess it works out.
Yes, I have problems sometimes with them, but that’s teenagers, and people in general. Communication and attitudes are not always constantly good, but overall, we get along fine and they say they’re pretty comfortable coming to the room and testing here and that I make it more bearable, though they don’t enjoy the testing part much.
But I, at least, am not part of the bad experience, and that was my goal. I can’t make school less boring or annoying maybe, but I can not be part of the soul sucking experience of it. (And hey it’s not a bad school…I just know it’s stressful no matter how good your school is.)
I also try to be nice to my co-workers, and compliment them, and joke, and be cooperative as much as I can be.
This was all basic stuff, stuff anyone should do…and yet, a lot of people don’t do it.
And it helps me, not just them. By treating the kids and adults like people, I feel less bored and less lonely sitting here all day than I would otherwise. We may not be friends, but we’re like neighbors, in a sense. Not close but not hostile, we live in the same vicinity so we get along for the greater good.
Often, school and work can feel like a warzone to people who hate their job. And I could hate my job, if I wanted to focus on the negative parts.
But I don’t. I want to love what I do.
And while I don’t have any passion for testing students or enforcing rules I often think are dumb, I do have it for makinh people’s lives more enjoyable and if I can do that even at school, then, I will.
And in that way, I am living my dream even when it’s not really my dream job. But jobs come and go, really. How you look at them is the only thing you can control about your worklife.
5. Cut back on negativity
Short and simple. I indulged in reading a lot of angsty stories and listen to dark music while I was going through the effects of trauma after my father left.
It felt kind of good, and maybe there is a place for it, but finally I realized that it was encouraging me to dwell on the more dark parts of my life too much. I would get dragged back down to the same discouragement and depression as I felt before.
Especially when I was going through the time when I felt like dying would be better than living, reading about suicidal people just made me feel more hopeless.
I know a lot of people who do this, they gorge themselves on dark media and stories and say they enjoy the angst.
But it’s not good for you.
In moderation, a dark story isn’t unhealthy maybe, but if you read only that–I swear people take pride in it.
One person online told me that they just aren’t interested in a story if the happy character in it isn’t suffering abuse.
. . .
I wanted to ask them if they’d sought counseling for that issue.
Yes, as an author , I enjoy some drama, makes the story more fun to read. And yes, I write some darker stuff, because that’s life.
But I never write a happy character specifically to torture them with abuse and sadness. I have never written anything that was primarily an angst story.
Yes, it’s fun to make a character experience emotions they don’t usually, but it has to be done right, balanced and realistic. People just write with no sense of balance about it sometimes and indulge in it because pity can feel good,in a sick way.
Sometimes it can feel good to hurt people’s feelings, if you’re the type to get comfort out of making others share your own pain. (And all of us are sometimes, aren’t we?)
[Sometimes– Skillet]
But it’s not wise.
It’s also not wise to watch only political stuff that frustrates you about either side. And I have done that too. I had to cut back, it was making me hate the world too much.
Or videos about how stupid one gender is (am I calling you out yet?). Sure, I have problems with men, and with women. But the more I watch of people just complaining about them, either side, the more I think that the real problem is that. No one wants to take accountability for their part in it.
It’s gross. It’s easy to get hooked on, but it’s still gross. And it’s bad for you too.
Soon all you see is negativity.
The irony is, in my real life, plenty of people aren’t like that, and are nice, upstanding people. So if my view of the world is influenced more by people I don’t even know, online, that by people I do know irl…ins’t that a problem?
Sure some of us only know jerks…but you are what you attract, in that case, I say. We all think that we’re not also a jerk, but…if you are surrounded by them, clearly they think you’re one of them.
The point is, don’t put negativity around you if you don’t want to feel that way (preaching to myself here),
7. Get out and try new things
Another simple one, but sometimes motivating myself to go out and do anything when I don’t have to is hard.
But making friends and inviting them to do things I haven’t before, has proven to be a lot of fun. And helped me get closer to people who I’m not used to hanging out with.
I don’t have a expect opinion on the right way to do it, but I find even putting in effort, whether or not it was a success, has changed how I view myself.
I feel like a more confident person after I try stuff a little different than what I usually do.
(I recently tried karaoke for the first time. I’m not the best singer, but it was a blast anyway. The important thing is, it was new and fun).
Learning more about yourself is a good way to feel more at peace with the world, I’ve noticed.
I don’t really believe in all that self actualization stuff, but I do believe that you should find out what you like, and be comfortable with who you are.
Conclusion:
Of course, for me, all of this comes from Above.
I prayed about what to do to help myself feel better, and I believe God directed me to try all those things.
I’m still learning.
I’ve also gained a lot of perspective on my life. I am on better terms with my father, though I doubt we’ll ever be close. I’m even on better terms with the people I got along with before, but we feel closer now. Without all the unspoken tension in our house.
All in all, my life got way better, despite how difficult those dark times were.
And I learned a lot about what makes me the most happy and satisfied.
But maybe the most important part of this is you have to see waht happened as having a purpose.
The author of “Man’s Search for Meaning”, Viktor Frankl, who survived a Nazi prison camp, wrote of doing therapy with people using meaning and purpose. It was very successful, because he found that people can bear suffering more when they think there was a reason for it.
People will make up reasons, if they don’t have one provided.
The Bible has a more nuanced approach. It teaches that not all suffering happens because we deserve it, or even because God wants it to happen to us, but that it just happens, because there is evil in the world.
But, that if we give even the senseless things that happen to us to God, He will give them meaning. He will redeem that suffering.
So even if God didn’t want everything that happened to happen, He will fix it anyway.
And I found that comforting. I can’t quite reconcile the idea of the senseless violence and cruelty in the world with God’s will enough to think that everything was meant to be that way.
But I can reconcile the idea that God will heal it, even if He will not (or cannot, maybe in a sense), prevent all of it.
We can be upset that bad stuff happens period, but, that won’t stop it from happening. And people who use the idea that “nothing we do matters” as comfort, might as well not be alive at all (and many of them soon no longer are because they take that to its natural conclusion.)
The only real way to rise above pain is to accept it’s not always deserved, and it’s not always your fault, and it’s also not always not your fault. You have to take each thing as it comes and decide what to do.
Pain should not change who we are, only sharpen it.
This was not easy for me to practice, but, when I chose to, it was because I felt that the worst pain of all would be if the suffering made me not who I wanted to be. That idea was worse than the idea of more pain, and more suffering.
Because at the end of the day, we are what we have, always, to work with. Everything else changes, except God, I believe.
That was my rock.
Whether everyone will accept that or not, I don’t know, and it’s not really my responsibility if they do, but, for me, that was the motivation for trying to find ways to climb out of the pit.
And I did.
There’s more trouble ahead, no doubt, but I think I know better how to deal with it now.
And Gretchen Rubin said the same. She was learning how to be happy so that she could weather future difficulties more easily and more resiliently, because she built up those habits.
I agree.
I hope you found this post interesting or helpful.
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.
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.
You’re a non-Christian who wants to read about how nuts Christians are (very popular now I know)
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.
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 oraltradition, 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 knowGod 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.
I keep trying to post and then getting distracted…go figure.
But I’ve had a lot going on, trying to enter a writing contest, finishing books, working, trying to finish my school courses, and planning a vacation.
But excuses aside, I do have something a bit more unusual to post about.
Those of you who’ve read my older posts from the last four years probably recall that I had the experience of ending an abusive situation, in a very unusual way, and have been dealing with the repercussions of that, therapy, and trying to build new relationships.
I’ve said before that I don’t hate my father, but I do not know where the future will take us.
This month, I finally decided to do something I’ve been thinking about for probably nearly 3 years, and call him.
I haven’t talked to him since he tried to use a family memorial to manipulate my sympathy with, and since we talked to him when he had a mild heart attack. I’ve thought about it, but just couldn’t bring myself to yet. I didn’t feel secure in not being dragged back into that cycle.
Often people do reconcile with their family after splitting, and they mention that it happened, but very few talk about how the process went in detail, I thought maybe my impression after it might be useful to someone.
My Dad is not the kind of abusive that makes the news and shocks people, though it does surprise some people I’ve spoken to, so talking to him is not really dangerous for me to do, just awkward.
But my past with him was not all bad memories, though it was certainly very few good ones after a certain age.
I can’t explain what really went wrong on his end, or what he really thinks, I’m not sure he even knows.
But for me, I decided it wasn’t something I wanted to deal with or be responsible for anymore.
But I didn’t want to be that girl who never talks to her father either because of old resentments.
I’ve met people like that. People have said repeatedly to protect myself and that I don’t owe him anything. My family, aside from his relatives, have mostly not put pressure on me to reconnect.
So with a clear head, I knew I was making this choice for myself, but I was never against it one day.
I think at some point you have to choose what you want. Our current culture glorifies cutting people off and not giving them second chances. It glories self love–and we have a loneliness and mental health epidemic.
It’s not very biblical, but I’ve heard Christians say the same things.
The Bible does warn us that in the last days (any day after Christ’s ascension), sin will abound and love for many people will grow cold.
Sins ares so easy to see, with our media, that peopl allow it to kill love before it has time to even really mature.
I don’t regret making the choice to try to still love my dad even in the years he was making me miserable, deliberately. The fact is, loving him despite that was what gave me any power to not be ruined by his attitude. He didn’t make me into another version of himself, because I chose to forgive and stay open to love, though I was scarred and I have had ot unlearn a lot of habits.
That said, I was hesitant to call him because I knew from watching and listening to other people in m situation, that contact with the person in the cycle is the most likely thing to pull you back into it. It’s like people have their own relational gravity, that pulls you either up or down the scale of bad to good behavior.
But I’ve gotten more and more upbeat and somewhat more confident in the last couple years, and I thought it might be time to test how much I had changed.
I want to be honest with you all reading this. I won’t sugarcoat it and I won’t exaggerate how bad it was either. All I have is my honest thoughts of what happened.
Perhaps the drama queens reading this will be disappointed to know there was nothing explosive about our conversation.
He was teary at first, then we spent most of it talking about our lives, and the only really serious thing I wanted to say was that if I was going to keep in touch, I didn’t want to waste any time fighting, or arguing.
I also told him I’m not looking for apologies. I just want to talk about normal stuff and see how it goes.
I think most people who have been through this will get it, but to those who haven’t who might wonder why I don’t want to hear the words “I’m sorry”, let me explain:
My dad is a textbook narcissistic abuser. He’s emotionally manipulative in the way that messes with your head. Who knows if it’s intentional or not at this stage, I think someone as old as him might have been this way so long they can’t tell the truth anymore–I hope so. If he does it knowingly, that’s just worse.
But what this means is that periodically for me, growing up, and for my mom long before that, he would make a big confession to either her or us all as a family, of how he knew he’d been doing all these things wrong, and he would admit his flaws (usually he’d be on point about them), and say he was going to try to change.
As a Christian, he would also say God convicted him about it.
I note now, looking back, that he never said it was by the grace of God that he could change, which is a red flag for a Christian, to think our own effort will be enough.
The first time he did this where I could hear him, I thought he meant it. I soon learned that he didn’t.
Fast foward to now, he told me the same things over the phone.
He did seem older, and more tired than in the past, but then, he could do that before. Most of my big memories of him are him yelling at me, but he could be contrite too. It felt weird to be on the receiving end of it though.
I told my sisters afterward, who are used to this also, that I knew better than to buy it because if he had me under his power again, I knew it would be the same as before, or worse even. What he would do to me to make me pay for all this, I can only imagine.
But if I don’t put myself in that position with him, I probably have nothing to fear. As long as I have control of this interaction, he will probably be respectful.
But the question is, if I don’t believe it’s genuine, and I can’t trust him, what is the point of us talking at all?
I’m also well aware that his family has a history of not speaking to each other for a long time, and then crawling back and pretending to reconcile, only to fight and argue again
So I could be part of a repetitive cycle here if I’m not careful. The whole thing is a mine field.
So why bother then?
I’m still working on answering that. But I do think one part of it is, just shutting down and cutting off is the kind of thing he would do to me, and I don’t want to be the same.
At the end of it all, I don’t want to be the one they said didn’t try or didn’t give it her A-game. I believe in love and forgiveness, not spite and grudgeholding. It’s not about my dad deserving that from me, it’s about wanting to be the kind of person who goes above what is deserved.
I may never get what I want, but I don’t want that to be because I didn’t try.
I do not think just distance alone will change this relationship, I think you have to build new inroads, and redefine how you do things, if you really want change.
It’s a two way street, I’m not saying I intend to bend over backwards to get his approval, I don’t think I’m even trying to get his approval much now. I suppose I still wish he was pleased with me, it’s only natural to wish that, but his praise doesn’t mean anything to me. He’s proven too many times that it will evaporate as soon as he gets angry about anything.
However, what does concern me is the amount of temptations that popped up in my mind in the two weeks after talking to him, three weeks now, to rehash the past. I was willing to leave it alone while I wasn’t talking, but now that I have, I think of all the things I wanted to say to him over the years, and couldn’t.
And I now know are unwise to say. Don’t cast your pearls before swine. It’s not much good giving someone wisdom that they won’t listen to, or will twist into something else.
People write about telling off abusers, and that’s cathartic–until you try it. The bible warns us that anger towards an angry or evil person just makes them worse, and that is true. I had moments of standing up for myself in the past, and my dad would seem to listen briefly, but then it would be gone a few days later and he’d double down.
So what can I say or do that has any meaning? At first, I just wanted to be able to have a civil conversation. Can I get carried away and hope to restore decades of lost relationships?
No, I’m not God.
So what is my part here? I don’t know.
I can’t lie and say this is an easy situation. When you’re dealing with someone who can’t even meet you in the middle, because they have no idea what that middle is, it’s tricky. You don’t want to carry the burden on your own shoulders, but you know that they won’t carry an equal amount. That’s not even how love really works.
I realize, writing this, that this affects my perception of my life overall. I often ask myself if what I’m doing makes any real difference, because, like with my Dad, I don’t get to see any results. I can try, and try, and never know if a thought even sticks in someone else’s mind.
And even if I’m told it did, I don’t believe it, because my dad would tell me that, and then contradict it a few days later.
As you can imagine, I have serious trust issues because of that double sided aspect of him.
So why open myself up to that again?
It’s not easy, and it’s not something I would do in large doses, but at a smaller level, is it worth it to try?
Maybe just for personal satisfaction. My dad will not be around forever. When he passes on, do I want to have a clear conscience that he had every chance I could give him to be a better dad?
Not that I need his help, now. That’s not what this is about. But someone needs a way to redeem themselves sometimes, or they will never dare to try. And I think people should get a chance to try, if they truly want it.
I can’t say if he does, but is that my call to make? As a human with limited perception?
Those are the questions that keep me from calling it quits entirely. Not that I would be open to more abuse. But in a safer zone, I would be open to some redemption or reconciliation of some nature happening.
Another reason I have is just that, in situation like this, where you have generations of cycles to break, you won’t change a thing by doing nothing. Taking myself out of it is something that protects me, but not anyone else. Trying to change it has the potential to stick with someone, maybe it won’t be my dad. But maybe it’s something someone else in the family could look at, and say “I don’t want ot keep doing this crap either. I’d rather just stop the cycle of abuse. And resentment.
I’m still learning about this. I can’t tell you all it will work out for sure. And if it doesn’t, I think I will be honest about that.
But there are things that haven’t been tried yet, that could be tried, before I just assume that it won’t work. And if those don’t work, then I know for sure.
The Bible says that love endures all things and hopes all things, and it never fails. That doesn’t mean that you will never see someone fail in learning to love. That happens.
But I believe it means, that when you make love your protection and shield and your way of life, it will never fail to change your life and make it better. You may fail to get through tos oem people who have hard hearts, but you will not become like them. And most of us fear being the bad guy even more than we fear what the bad guy can do to us. We don’t want to be poisoned by our past.
I am not perfect, but I can tell you all today, that in the last few years, I have vastly changed how I approach people, how I love them, and I’ve learned to let a lot of things go that used to irritate me for a long time. I tripped over a lot of things at first, but I kept pressing towards love, and gradually, I began to be more graceful with it.
I would also like to tell anyone who is thinking about making this journey a few things:
1. You will not get a lot of encouragement from the world. People will tell you you’re wasting your energy trying to be loving towards the unlovely. And if you are leaving yourself wide open for pain, that’s not okay–but if you’re just remaining soft, and not bitter or vindictive, that’s your choice. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you to get even or to cut people off who you can safely still be around, but they think you shouldn’t bother with.
2. The anger does go away. I’ve not only stopped feeling angry at my dad, and many other people, over what happened; but I’ve stopped getting angry as easily in general because of the choice to forgive and try to set a better pattern. You may feel the anger never stops, but it can. And I’m naturally a grudge holder, so trust me, if I can change that, you can.
3. The pain does get better. I’ve been through it, the depression, anxiety, fear that my life will be ruined, the aching from not being loved or treated well. And it does come back, sometimes, still. But it’s not everyday, and it’s not overpowering. I also have learned to see signs of love where I did not before, and to see people mean well, even when I don’t feel a connection with what they are saying. I’m also more okay with feeling pain now, as long as it’s clean sadness, and not bitterness. I’m okay with crying about a movie where there’s a father who’s more kind and loving than mine has ever been, and letting that make me more aware of what I want and what I seek in God, instead of resenting that I didn’t have it in earth. But that is also a choice and it took a while to feel that way.
4. You will embarrass yourself. This is a hard one for me. I hate looking like I don’t know something…but, the reality is, I don’t know naturally, that much about healthy love. I have to learn it step by step, and at times, it’s extremely awkward to be around much more open people, and to not be able to be that way with them. People with better families than I, who sometimes think I’m cold, because I have no clue how to respond to them. and sometimes, I say things that I think sound normal, only to find that my toxic family dynamic treated as normal what other people think is rude, harsh, cruel, or inappropriate. But, that also gets better. I have learned a lot. I’m still out of my depth sometimes, but I am learning bit by bit. I pray that one day I will be where I want to be, or at least a lot better than I am now.
5. It takes time. I’ve said this with the others, but it’s something I have to remind myself a lot. I wish it was a fast process, but relearning love and life, it takes years. I’ve had 4 years. I think I’ve done well in that amount of time, but it takes most people 10 or more years to really see the kind of life they want, I think. Depending on the person. I’ve also had to do a lot alone, though I’ve had help sometimes. It varies from day to day. And I’ve had to learn to be okay with not always having help, but sometimes saying I need it.
So, now that I’ve admitted all that, do I eel better?
Not really. Dwelling on this stuff is the best way to psych yourself out, which is why I don’t want to write about it too much till I’ve had more time to get self control. Controlling my mood about this stuff has taken a really long time, and it still goes up and down when I get stressed.
But I can thank God I’m in a much better frame of mind about all this than I used to be. And I snap out of it much faster when I do get in a funk. Everyone gets in a funk sometimes, but we don’t have to stay there.
So, yeah, for how it went, I’d say about as well as could be expected, and I’ll see where it goes. But that people should take caution about the kinds of temptations that will pop up when you stir up old memories, just because it starts you thinking about the past again.
So with encouragement and caution, I think I’ll wrap this post up, until next time, stay honest–Natasha.
drybonestruth 