In depth

Are We Starving?

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So, I don’t really think I’ve brought up the controversy if homosexuality yet.

I am going to refrain from giving my opinion on it at the moment. My reason is that after hearing something related to the issue on one of the YouTube channels I watch, my mind got going in a different direction than just the right-wrong question.

As important as that is, there is a forgotten man, so to speak, when the issue is discussed.

The mindset of accepting the gay or lesbian lifestyle has formed a cage around people who don’t accept it. I don’t mean that they get called haters, I mean the cage no one talks about. The issue is simply a kind of stigma that is growing among people against showing any kind of affection to your friends of the same sex, without it being read as sexual.

I don’t know about you, but I am noticing an increasing emotional starvation among the people of our culture. It seems to center around the fact that no one shows any affection for us.

This is the thing, a pat on the shoulder, a kiss on the cheek, holding hands; those all used to be something friends could do. Not guy friends generally, but girls could. Men used to greet each other with a hand shake or a slap on the back. Some still do. In our generation, guys have (wisely) taken to inventing their own hugs and handshakes that are clearly defined as being strictly bro-things. Girls actually could take a cue from that idea.

It may seem weird that I am bringing it up, but it’s high time someone did. Human beings need physical touch. They need to hear words of affection. And they need to hear it from everyone, everyone they are close to. No matter what age, gender, or relation. And we are meant to exchange embraces with all the people we care about. I know plenty of people wouldn’t argue with me on this, and would even think it was obvious, but people my age and younger are starting to wonder.

If I am completely blunt, they are starting to wonder if the fact that they like getting hugged by people of the same sex, does that make them homosexual? They are wondering if they are gay because they like even the most innocent of touches. Even the word touch has some very ugly connotations attached to it now, you probably thought of some of them when I used it, or you didn’t. Good for you.

No one is telling kids that it is normal to want physical contact with people. It is just a way of feeling that they see you, if that makes sense. It is easy to feel ignored when someone glances at you and that’s it, they won’t give you a hug or any acknowledgement. But if they had their eyes closed and still gave you a hug, you wouldn’t feel ignored at all. Think about it, touch is powerful. A person can look at you, and hear you, but not really be seeing you or listening to you, and you can feel invisible or unimportant. But a simple hug or a pat on the shoulder, and you feel noticed. Some people who don’t like to be touched don’t like it because they feel too seen. Some people dislike PDA for the same reason.

I won’t deny there’s always some respect due when you’re using touch as a way to show affection, but there’s respect do no matter what way you show it. The point is I see this taboo touch thing as a direct attack on love.

That may sound nuts, but hear me out. Friendship is a difficult thing to maintain, and it is hard to have a deep, meaningful friendship nowadays because people have forgotten how to do it. There is an uncertain balance among millennials and Generation y-ers over how important friendship is.

Most kids, it must be admitted, will dump friendship over romance. There’s a counter movement that protests that any friendship between girls is more important than any boy. And it usually is between girls, because if the guys say that, they are labeled gay. Ouch.

This is not fair to the guys mostly, but not to the girls either. For one thing, you cannot tell a girl that a guy may never be more important than her girl friendships. That is just not true. When she is married, her husband is going to be more important. And if it is a case of doing the right thing, or if the guy is just the better friend of the two, it is not fair to give the girl friend such preference.

That is another post right there, but what I am saying is, well intentioned as it may be, glorifying friendship is not the answer. I have heard many sides of the question, and my solution is more complicated than just having friends and not being afraid to hug and stuff.

We are getting separated from each other more and more as every mode of affection is getting frowned on with suspicion, or cheered on as progressive. I have realized that everyone is meant to love every person they come in contact with, not through words and  physical touch of course, but in the way they treat them. It has never been a reality to have everyone earth love each other since Adam and Eve fell, but that should be the mindset of everyone who wants to do right by their fellow human beings.

And it turns out, love is different in different situations, but it is the motive and not the actions that decided what kind of love it is.

Squeezing every expression of love more and more into the sexual category is not just stupid, it’s flat-out wrong. It is disrespectful and flippant, and I am heartily sick of it.

I really hope the tide starts to turn in this, we need it to.

Until next post–Natasha.

Legacy

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Ever wonder what your impact will be on the world? When you’re gone what will be different because of you? There’s a name for what you leave behind you; it’s called Legacy.

Good old Girl Meets World has an episode devoted to this that I recommend checking out if you can. I don’t want to spend too much time explaining it but I might use the show itself as an example here.

Girl Meets World made its share of mistakes, but it was always clear that their intention was good. You could tell they really wanted to make you think, and they wanted to help you.

It’s a connection that the creator of a movie, show, or book makes with their audience. It’s a way that we know they care, and if we watch or read it, they in turn know we care. Some of us are moved to tears just by realizing that someone out there wants to do right by us, others of us less emotional people just give it respect.

We actually feel betrayed when a show like this gets cancelled, and a book series suddenly takes a different turn and stops being about promoting the good things we liked it for.

Then, bitter or disappointed or just sad, we talk about what that thing meant to us. Other people think we’re nutty for caring so much. We try to explain.

This is why: Someone cared. Someone tried. Someone actually succeeded.

It didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to be good.

I felt understood, or I felt respected. Like the writers actually cared what they were introducing to my mind.

There are those of us who like dirty movies, or horror, but let’s be honest, even if we do, do we truly like the people who put that stuff out there. We let them screw us, figuratively speaking, but do we give them an ounce of respect for it? We may not regard out own minds, but do we really appreciate that they don’t regard us either?

In my limited experience, the people who like horror and sexually charged material are also the ones with low self respect. You expose yourself to garbage when you feel like garbage, it’s just true. (Not that you have to, but that’s why.)

The people who loved Girl Meets World loved it because it respected them. They respected themselves enough to accept it. The kids who got helped by it’s messages about bullying, being yourself, choosing rightly, they all got helped because they had it in them to be helped.

Half the time, the show just reminded us of what we already knew.

But that was okay, goodness knows we need that.

Girl Meets World wanted to make people’s lives better, makes their relationships better, and thereby make the world better. Hence the title Girl (you, boy can be substituted as we all know) Meets (relationships) World (it says itself.)

At the end of both Girl Meets World and its predecessor Boy Meets World, Riley and Cory both realize the meaning of meeting the world. and while I still hope for something more, because of my faith, I won’t deny it’s a good message. Meet the world. Know you aren’t alone in it. Then change it.

That’s a legacy worth leaving. That’s what legacy is. Who you are, who you meet, what you impact. That’s what you leave behind you. Material legacy just represents the unseen legacy.

Those are my thoughts, and this is also my thank you to this show and to every book and movie I’ve ever liked and learned from. Until next time–Natasha.

I feel all right like I could take on the world. Light up the stars I got some pages to turn. I’m singing o-o-oh, o-o-oh. I’ve got a  ticket to the top of the sky. I’m coming up I’m on the ride of my life. O-o-oh, o-o-oh. Take on the world. Take on the world. Take on the world.

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Reach higher.

Don’t go to sleep.

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I found out some stuff this week about Disney. I’m aware not everyone who reads this may watch Disney stuff often, but I’m one of the millions of kids who grew up watching almost only Disney, (and VeggieTales.) Now Disney has changed a lot over the years. But one thing I could always count on was that the movies would at least make a pretense of having a good message. More often than not, they delivered. Even the ones I used to dislike I now like, except for Beauty and the Beast, I never have and probably never will like that movie. And guess what? They are remaking it.

That’s not all, there’s some controversy over what one of the directors said about the movie. I refuse to detail it because it’s better if you don’t know, and if you do, you already can guess what I’m referring to.

Over the years I’ve come to expect certain jokes and insinuations to be in adult movies, sometimes I can laugh at them, most of the time I roll my eyes, but you go into it knowing that’s a possibility. There are always times when the movie ends up being completely different form what you saw in the commercial, but most of the time you know what you’re getting. Fine. I didn’t watch PG-13 movies that often till I was 17 at least. I still don’t watch R-rated stuff that often and then only if it’s R-rated for a legitimate reason.

I have this thing about ratings. I think it’s ridiculous to say adults should be exposed to inappropriate content more than children, without it hurting them at all. That’s what most people think of ratings, and most kids see PG-13 material before they are 13 because, heck, they can handle it.

Ratings are actually supposed to be a tool that you could use to decide what to expose yourself to, it’s not your age that matters, it was your tolerance level. That’s how many people use them anyway.

Personally, violence and sensual scenes ae two things I can’t handle well, I will have the images stuck in my mind for days, maybe months. I put up with them if the movie is worth it, and avert my eyes when necessary.

So, why am I telling you all this? So you can think I’m sheltered? Actually, my parents don’t make this choice for me, I do it myself. My siblings and I have standards that we help each other enforce, and we’ve gotten mad at our dad for not warning us of content he knows we don’t like. I used to think it would be cool to watch age rated stuff, and then I realized that my standards weren’t magically going to change because I grew older, they only increased. This is thanks to my mom’s carefulness in what she allowed us to see, though she wasn’t always there, and what you see at other people’s houses is not something your parents can always control. And mine are not the slightly scary type who drill anyone we visit with about what we can watch.

So, there are things I have seen that I regret to this day, and that is why I keep my standards high. I know things like stupid jokes, stupid characters, and stupid plot lines, are inevitable; but you have to keep looking.

To bring this back to Disney, I have to thank Disney for a lot of things. Frozen, for example.  (I might do a post someday about why that’s my favorite movie despite it being a kids’ movie. Would anyone read that?) Disney has never succumbed to the corruption of standards and morals that, it must be admitted, a lot of production studios for other kids’ movies have. (Have you seen some of the things they are advertising–straight up?) But I have been concerned that they can’t hold up much longer, and now I’m really concerned.

Look, I get that not every screenwriter is a God–fearing person. I get that I cant’ expect Christian Values out of every movie made by Disney. I get it, I live in world that hates God being in their business. But, does that really justify shoving spoonfuls of propaganda down unsuspecting children’s throats?

Let’s try to be objective. For along time Disney had stayed neutral, they have never tried to appeal to the Right or the Left, to the Atheist or the Theist, they have held the middle ground. And in so doing, they managed to please most of us, which is not usually what happens. Now, throwing a controversial thing into their movie, even if the kids miss it, is that really the best idea?

From even a business perspective, it makes no sense to me. I’ll grant you, the demographic the controversy appeals to (and there always is one) will likely support this movie. but that will be outweighed by the amount of people who will avoid it because of the content. The scarier prospect is if it’s not.

And if they get away with this where does it stop? You may laugh at me for being paranoid, as I’m sure many people I know would, but am I really? isn’t this how every decline starts? One person gets away with one thing, then another person gets away with another thing, and then everyone thinks it’s okay.

I am asking us all to consider, what is the real gain in letting such things happen without a fight? What do we lose in the long run. Think about it, we sacrifice our morals, we expose our children’s minds to ideas they aren’t mature enough to resist, we spend our money; all on colored lights, loud speakers, and an hour or two of entertainment. Entertainment!

Long sigh. I may not be able to stop the writers from being allowed to do this, but I hope I can encourage a few people not to put up with it. I want people to look around and realize it’s a new day, we don’t have to accept this crud anymore. We can change it. I want to put some good material in this world, the kind that parents will feel good about and kids will love. The more of us who aspire to that, the less power these people have. Just don’t ignore it. Don’t go to sleep.

Until next post–Natasha.

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Classic

Get Wise

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SO, my next writing project is about Wisdom. My virtue speech went well by the way, it was even kind of fun, and I got a fairly good response on this blog. Since that worked out so well, I thought I’d try to post about Wisdom.

The reason I don’t mind using an assignment as blogging inspiration is that I’d like to talk about Wisdom anyway on this blog.

I could give you some dictionary definitions, but defining wisdom is not as simple as just looking it  up. I realized a long time ago that to even recognize wisdom you need to have a tiny bit of it.

And the best way I know of tot est your wisdom is to read the Bible. I’m serious, the more stuff in there that you can understand, the wiser you are.

Lest I risk alienating everyone who doesn’t read the Bible with that statement,let me explain it a little more. I am not saying only Bible–readers are wise, and that it is the only way to become wise. I’m still talking about what wisdom is.

Proverbs is famously known for being the book about godly wisdom, but a lot o proverbs have been retold, or hit upon, by other sources. Aesop’s Fables for one often has stories that line up with Proverbs exactly. In Proverbs we are told to desire wisdom above rubies, above gold and silver, to get it and understanding above all else. The word Proverb actually just means a wise, pithy saying that is usually just common sense. You probably knew that already. Of all the biblical books, Proverbs is the least spiritual and most practical. I don’t know why more non-Christians don’t study it.

Most of the sayings in this book are attributed to Solomon or his mother, Bathsheba. Solomon apparently wrote the book for his son.

I promise I’m giving you this background for a reason.

Solomon is known also as the wisest man on earth before Jesus. He was not born that way, but when he was still a child (by Hebrew standards) he became king, and God visited him, telling him He would give him one request and whatever he asked, he could have it. How many stories and movies have been centered around this idea? The Midas Touch, for one. I am sure there are others, the Fisherman and the genie; any Arabian night story almost has some point where the hero gets a wish. Well, digressing. Solomon must have thought about it, and he says (to condense it) “Now, O LORD my God, You have made Your servant king…but I am a little child; I do not know how to go out or come in…Therefore give to Your servant an understanding heart to judge you people, that I may discern between good and evil.” (1 Kings 3:7-9.)

Sometimes in the bible, God has one of those jaw-drop moments, or so it seems from His reaction. Of course, He knew what Solomon would say, but God has this ability, kind of like a mom’s to know what to expect and yet still be surprised. he was so pleased with Solomon’s request that he promised him wealth, honor (respect and fame), and long life, on top of wisdom. Later Solomon wrote that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of  wisdom. (Proverbs 9:10.)

very few people like that answer. Why should we have to fear God to be wise?

Well, in my own experience, before we fear God, we always fear something else, whether it’s failure; rejection; people; pain; or loss. Sometimes we fear ourselves. Human beings have to fear something, fear is a natural emotion, but like all emotions, it needs to be directed at the right thing, in the right amount. The fear of the Lord is the healthy kind of fear. Until we fear Him, we will not cease to fear anything else. You have to be more afraid to be out of God’s will than to be out of your own controlled area before you can really do anything for God.

That said, wisdom is born out of knowledge of life, and the principles therein, and those come from understanding. The other thing Proverbs is always telling you to seek, usually right along with wisdom. It is because to be wise, you must first understand things as they really are.

This is why the Christian believes true wisdom is from God alone, because he can show you things as they truly are, and no one else can do that.

The word understanding that Solomon used in the above verses is synonymous with Hearing, a hearing heart is a wise heart.

This is important. In Shakespeare’s great play “the merchant of Venice” the heroine, Portia, utters a candid speech about being good. “If to do were as easy as to know what it were good to do, chapels had been churches and poor men’s cottages, princes’ palaces…I can easier teach twenty what it were good to be done than be one of the twenty to follow mine own instruction!”

Portia makes an excellent point, it is easier to know the wise choice than it is to make it. The wise choice is always the best one, morally, practically, and in the long run, emotionally. But we all know people very seldom make the best choice. It is not hard to find wisdom, Proverbs 2 talks about her crying out in the street, for anyone to get. But they are not interested.

In the end, getting wisdom is not hard, wanting it is. Fools are the people too set in their own ways and own opinions to seek counsel and to learn by it, according to proverbs. getting wisdom requires wanting to hear it, and many prefer rather to talk about their feelings and their problems till the cows come home rather than spend five minutes listening to good advice. A prime example is Lydia from “Pride and Prejudice.” Who, in the author’s words, seldom listens to anyone for more than half a minute, and never attends her sister Mary at all.

The conclusion I come to after this is what I originally thought: asking for wisdom already demonstates that you have it. The beginnings of it.  That is why Solomon exhorts us to seek it, because if we do, we have already started to find it. Wisdom is tuly it’s own fuel, it builds upon itself.

Those are my thoughts for now, until next time–Natasha.

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Poor men’s cottages princes’ palaces.

Rules don’t apply–part 2

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Picking up where I left off:

I was just talking about rules and love and “The hiding place.” You know, just a typical organized post from Natasha. 🙂

All joking aside, I’ve thought a lot about Mercy lately. I was just talking to my sister about another show we used to watch that loved to break its characters.

[Okay, this is Natasha lingo. When I say “break” or “killed” a character, I mean they either took a potentially great storyline and didn’t finish it; or they made the character do something that they would never  do and so proved they didn’t even know what their own character stood for. That ruins it for me every time.] I digress:

They broke this one character, and though they could have repaired her with some really smart writing, they didn’t. They left her broken. Eventually my sisters and I realized the show just didn’t know how to explain it’s own content.

What has puzzled me is that, though these characters aren’t even real, they can make mistakes that really bother people; and people will not forgive them. Although, sorry fans, but it didn’t actually happen. I will be the first to deny that just because it’s a show that means it didn’t matter, it does matter. I just wonder, if this can be our attitude towards a sin that is made up, what is our attitude towards a sin that actually affects us?

That does tie in to Mercy; and rules; and everything I was talking about in part one. The biggest question both in my fan fiction story and in real life was “How do you treat sin?” Many of us don’t even use the word anymore, (at least seriously.) Sin is just a Christian myth right? It’s not real. Well, often on this blog I just use the words wrong, evil, or bad to avoid confusion. But Sin is just simpler, it means all those things. And believe it nor not, whether we use the word or don’t, all of us still believe in it.

We just might call it intolerance, being a bigot, extremism; and a bunch of other fancy words that really just mean THIS-IS-BAD.

You can say Right and Wrong don’t exist and I can debate that; but right now I’m pointing out that we all deal with Sin. Other people do things to us that are bad, because they hurt, or they make us afraid, or they just make us angry because it’s so not fair.

And that’s where deciding what we live by really comes into play. In my fan fiction world of judging people by their backgrounds, the few people who finally say “This is stupid” get treated like the criminals. You rocked the boat, you questioned the system, how dare you!

But the reason I wrote my version at all was because the original story refused to pick sides. It never said what was actually true, though it hinted. It was leaning one way, then abruptly it started to lean the other way. It turned into a story more about defining right and wrong yourself than actually seeking truth. The sad thing is that the creators of this story never realized it was popular because it said something different to people than the standard “be yourself” message that most of us are sick of.

Look; things have come to a pretty pass if I need the world to tell me what the Bible already has told me many times; but I do worry about other people. Ideally, I want Christianity to spread, I can’t help it. But if not I at least want Goodness to spread. Thomas Jefferson said that if doctrine is good it will produce good men, if not, then it won’t. He is right. Jesus said the same thing, in a different way. But no one needs to say it, it’s just common sense. Good begets good, evil begets evil. Duh.

The greatest good of all is love. As my character said in her speech, love is what gives us a reason to do anything. It saddens me when people are looking around and wondering why they do anything; because they realize there’s no love in what they are doing.

But, what if the antagonist had a point, Love is sappy. What will it really fix?

Now this brings me to Mercy. (Didn’t think I could tie all this together? Well, I wasn’t sure either, but I knew it was connected.)

In the end, you can decide that the rules really are wrong. Like judging people by their background, that’s just stupid. You can even decide to rebel against those rules.(#TheRebelution.) But, just rebelling isn’t enough. A lot of hate goes around because people are fed up with the way things are, but that hate is turned on other people.

I am a full fledged conservative, but I don’t hate liberals. I am a radical Christian, but I don’t hate atheists. I am a Trump supporter, but I do not hate Hillary Clinton. I am surrounded by imperfect people, but I do not hate them.

To me, hate is the last thing a Christian should be doling out. WE get plenty of opportunities, but we are told to love, even when it makes no sense. I hate evil, but  do not hate people. People are not the problem. Evil is the problem.

I am also not perfect, don’t take me as the best example of what it means to be Christian. All I am saying is it is about love. Love is what makes Christianity right; not vice versa. That’s something even Christians do not understand a lot of the time.

If love was easy to understand and to do, more people would do it. That’s the plain truth. I still fail at love, but I’m hooked. Once you start pursuing it, you really can’t stop.

In the end, love is what tells us what is right. When we become focused on what’s best for everyone, we will make better choices. That is what ties into rules, politics, and faith. There, told you they were connected.

So, nothing sappy about it. Until next time–Natasha.cropped-welcome-scan.jpg

Rules don’t apply–part 1

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I found a conversation I wrote in a story of mine yesterday that I thought would make a good blog post. It takes place between a main character and a bit of an antagonist character. It was a debate about how to solve a certain problem that had come up. The main character finally gets worked up enough to utter an impassioned speech (I edited this to make it more clear.):

“Yes, love. I’ve found that nothing else matters. Love makes it worth it to go through the other stuff…and that’s why I have to believe in Goodness too. Good things are done out of love, and  they make love grow. Freedom allows love. Evil just wants to kill it. Or twist it.”

“People can do just fine without all that sappy stuff, and what does it help? You think love will fix this mess?”

“Yes! and if it can’t, what can? Work? Work for what? Rules? What good are rule when they have no reason to exist save for control. Why do we get up every morning if not for love of something? And I don’t mean sappy stuff. I mean the real, true, loyal, kind sort of love. That’s what motivates me. Because I’ve been given it. And I stand by God because He gives it. I see no other way and no other Hope but to hope in Him. And that’s my say.”

This was a fan fiction piece, and the world it’s based off is one where Good and Evil are arbitrary things, all depending on your background only, not your personality. Which is an idea present in the real world, but this world takes it to the degree of craziness.

That’s why the character is railing against rules. I’ve been reading about Thomas Jefferson, and one thing that sticks out about his politics is how he was concerned for the common good. It’s actually in the Preamble to the constitution that it is meant to “promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity (descendants.)” The Constitution is a classic example of men trying to make rules that would benefit everyone. those rules are made out of love for their countrymen. These rules are fine.

But rules can also be made out of fear and frustration. As I’m sure you know from your own experience. Sometimes rules are just made out of stupidity. People believe something is right, but they haven’t thought it through, and they use their power to enforce the idea.

Of course that speech isn’t really about rules. It could easily be made in favor of them, if rules were on the side of love. That’s really the greater point.

you see, it puzzles people that two opposite actions can both be the right thing to do in different circumstances. I think that’s where the idea that right and wrong are arbitrary comes in for a lot of us. And it’s true if you ever day any one action is evil, someone will find a case proving otherwise.

I didn’t always understand how you can tell what the right thing to do is if this is the case. how can you ever be sure?

the answer was given to me, as it often is, through a book. “The hiding Place.” Which I’ve mentioned before on this blog. In that book Corrie and her family have an argument about whether it was right to lie about what they were doing in order to keep people safe and alive. Corrie’s sister, Nollie, argues that truth is always the best choice. That the bible makes it clear never to lie. Corrie argues that to preserve their radio she had to lie. (and later she lies while under interrogation.)The thing is, while the radio may be a small thing, no one would deny that lying to save lives was the right thing to do. In fact, it  would be weak not to.

But the strange thing is that the end result of Nollie telling the truth and Corrie hiding it was the same. Both times the person or people they had wanted to help were safe in the end. And the answer seems to be provided in this one line that their father said to calm Corrie down. “I am sure, whatever you said Corrie, was out of love.”

Huh? What does that even mean?

Well, the Bible says that to a Christian all things are permissible but not all things are helpful. It says not to use grace as a license for sin. It also says whatever is not of faith is sin. What does all this have to do with my point? I’ll tell you.

God never says lying is good. In fact, He forbids it. But even in the Bible there are examples of people lying and not being condemned for it. but it was always to protect the lives of an innocent person, or to get justice in some other way, when total honesty would not serve. God still never says it is good, but we have no record of Him punishing the person for it. Often lying still has its own consequences, and so do other sins that might be committed in the same instance. It seems to matter more why someone does something, and not what it is they do.

This is not always the case. But Corrie and Nollie both did what they did out of their respective beliefs that is was the ight thing, or more right, than the alternative. Sometimes the Right thing can be a personal choice. But only if it’s in line with the Truth.

I mean that it is in Love. I can get a little too obsessed with having “All justice” as Portia put it. (The Merchant of Venice.) But just like for Shylock, in real life having all justice means having more than you desired. If you live by Love on the other hand, you will get as much justice as you need, but you will also render mercy.

Justice is important to me, but Mercy is even more important. I’ll go more into this in the next part, but I’m stopping this here.

–Natasha.cropped-welcome-scan.jpg