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Proudly Unpopular–Part 4

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Even though the last part was more general, I still wanted to talk about why my faith is so unpopular, so you know what you’re in for.

You see, I think a lot of Christians have this idea that if we were just nicer people, more non-believers would be interested in our message. And to be fair, a lot of unbelievers do say that.

I won’t argue that Christians often don’t know how to live out the faith. Maybe to some that means it doesn’t work, but I’ve never felt that way.

When I was growing up in church, I always sensed this difference between myself and the other believers. I would think to myself that they had something I didn’t. I never knew what it was exactly. Some describe it as happiness, but I wouldn’t call it that. It’s not that I didn’t believe, I did, but I lacked something. Some meaning that my parents saw, and other adults saw, and I didn’t. After I became a Christian full on, I realized what it was.

Before I reveal it, I want to say something more. I’ve since noticed the same difference between other people I know, and between different families I know. You may have noticed that you feel different around different people. Some make you feel secure, some make you nervous, some make you focused, others distract you.

The reason I don’t think Christians themselves are an excuse to stay away from Christianity is that despite the difference I mentioned, I never found Christians to be any nicer, more friendly, or more inclusive than non Christians. They acted the same most of the time, except they prayed and talked about the Bible, and listened to a different kind of music. So what made the difference?

The faith itself. Maybe this won’t make sense if you haven’t seen it, but faith really is a part of your personality. It should be the most important part. And though I believed, I lacked the genuine, fulfilled faith that I saw in other people. Until I began to have it myself.

Until I did, I hated anything in Christianity that was outside my comfort zone of what I could trust. I had nothing to make me more ready for the harder parts of it.

And that is why people hate Christianity. It is not that Christians are jerks, religions of more violence and cruelty than Christianity are not knocked as often or as bitterly as it; it is because Christianity is scary. C. S. Lewis wrote that until he became a Christian, he was sometimes terrified that Christianity might be true. After he became one, he had sickening doubts that it might be false. The problem is, Christianity, if you understand it at all, is not something you can be half in and half out. You are either all in, or all out. The Bible gives no middle ground. I don’t say this to convince anyone it’s true. My point is that those who are concerned about being nicer about it to toher people have missed the point.

It is not a nice religion.

Now, I can already hear the protests from those of you who are Christians, telling me that we need to be loving. Oh yes, we do. We need much more of that, there never can be too much of love in the world. That is not what I mean. I mean that there is no easy way to become a Christian.

We’ve put way too much focus on nursing people into it. People come to church and leave unchanged, not because we aren’t loving, not because we aren’t teaching the Word of God, not even because we are making God too soft; no, no , no, you can’t exaggerate the kindness of God, as Amanda Cook said. People leave because they don’t share the faith. And they don’t see it in us because we haven’t been honest about it.

You see, real faith is fiery. It makes timid people bold, and foolish people wise. this actually is true of any genuine faith in a good thing, but especially in God.

Christianity is not meant to be popular. It shouldn’t be. Not because I don’t wish it was, but because the only way it ever becomes popular is by people neglecting certain parts of it. (Study Martin Luther, you’ll see what I mean.) It is a waste of our time to try to make it more appealing by selling it on the world’s terms. We just need to live it. And I don’t mean by loving others, though that’s a big part, but by loving God more than others.

People, until I loved God more than others, or myself, I couldn’t really believe on Him and trust Him. Whatever your experience with God has been, until it’s to that point, it isn’t actually faith yet. If you aren’t ready for that, that’s okay. I had to get there. I’m not making an altar call. I just want to set the record straight.

I really want my love for God to be the most important thing to me. I don’t care if it make me unpopular, because when you really get to know Him, you don’t care anymore. The Bible really won’t make sense to someone until they realize that it’s about God and the People who loved Him, not about rules.

 

Okay, this did get preachy, but I warned you; if you read his far, you wanted to hear it. So, thank you, and until next post–Natasha.

Proudly Unpopular–Part 3

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Still continuing the discussion of unpopularity. I used to find being popular and appealing thing, even if I never thought it was something to revere. Now I think it would be exhausting to be popular. I’d rather have a few friends who really care about me and get me, than a bunch who I only hang out with for fun.

But being widely liked is nice. I’m one of those fortunate people who is liked by most who meet her, but I don’t know if that means much, other than I polite and well brought up by my parents.

To be widely liked you just have to meet certain expectations, and not fulfill other ones. If people expect someone my age to be obsessed with their image, always on some electronic, never interested in learning or real conversation, then when I don’t fulfill those expectations, they are pleasantly surprised, usually. Or they assume I’m just under fed on technology and they need to give me access to it. (? I don’t get that.)

This principle of popularity, or at least approval, doesn’t just apply to my life of course. It applies to everything. People have expectations about ideas, faiths, clothing, food, music, everything they care about. and if you just tap into those expectations, you can sellalmost anything.

If someone expects the worst of a lawyer for instance, all you have to do to convince them lawyers are dishonest is to point out one example, or point out something that looks dishonest to them if/because they don’t know the actual law, and boom! Their expectations are confirmed.

Now stay with me, this is part of unpopularity too.

The ideas that guide our culture our its most popular ideas. They aren’t popular because they are good, per sec, but because people have expectations they want fulfilled, and the trendsetters of our culture understand that and play to it.

Take movies. The adult ones are now, for the most part, sex obsessed; violence packed; and full of other ugly or profane things that seem to sell nowadays. Why do they sell? We just expect that from movies now. It doesn’t shock us anymore, and we continue to buy into it, so it shocks us less and less, until our culture has deemed it totally acceptable to allow those things.

To prove my point further, did you know words like “damn” and “hell” used to be never even used as interjections in polite company, around children, and certainly not in books, unless used by a character you were supposed to despise. Men perhaps used them when they were together and working, it was called “rough language.” Why, “heck” used to be as bad as “hell” is now. What happened? I haven’t researched it, but I’ll bet you a lot changed when movies started allowing those words in more and more often, and younger people started watching them, and eventually it stopped being shocking. in my own life, I never heard bad words (that I recognized as such) until I was older than 12. Then for some reason, people stopped censoring themselves around me. I still don’t use curse words, but it got a lot harder the more it seemed like no one else cared about it except me and my mother and siblings.

Multiply that times thousands of people and you get a culture shift. I don’t think words are really the issue, and honestly, neither is violence. Not in of themselves. The problems that the idea of what violence is, and what curse words represent, got to be more and more acceptable.

You know what’s acceptable now? Living a life of bitterness and hatred, and being haunted by a troubled past. That’s what movies and shows are promoting now. Always from the cool, but aloof good guys, whom you really like, but they are always unhappy. And what usually starts to fix them? Sex. Or they go off the deep end and start killing people.

Why do we like this now? Could it be because we started letting things like cursing someone for driving too slowly; or cursing someone in front of our kids; and releasing all our negativity on people who really didn’t deserve it, become okay? Could it also be that we kept saying the violence on TV was either not real (if you’re the type who feels better if it’s fake;) or like real life (if you’re the type who feels smart when you’re doing something that’s realistic;) and so eventually the violence that actually happens just  seems life  apart of life.

I’m as guilty of feeling this way as anyone. But I don’t like it. I don’t want to embrace it. It’s funny, the people I know who are apt to excuse the garbage on TV as being fake, tend to think I take things too seriously; but the people who talk about it being realistic, think I’m sheltered. Maybe some of you other bloggers can relate. (One reason we all like blogging is that we can express our real opinion without someone we know assuming they already know it, right?)

So, my way of seeing things is definitely unpopular. Even more so because the majority of the culture would side more with the idea that the stuff we condone as “harmless“ is really harmless. It’s not like we’re part of the problem, right? We just go and see the new movies because we’re curious. We don’t have to buy them all. (Heavy sarcasm.)

You get what you expect. But here’s the thing, I actually suspect that a lot of us are frustrated with the low standards. We go along with it, but deep down we wish we had better options. maybe we do and we just don’t utilize them because it’s easier to go along with everyone’s else’s standards. So you see what I mean? Ideas are either popular or unpopular. The question I’m posing is will we choose to be proudly  unpopular.

It’s a tough call, there’s lot of pressure to just go with the flow of the culture. Go see the next Star Wars Movie, check out that new show, rely on your phone apps to amuse you and do everything for you from photography to studying. It’s not like everything has to be quality right?

Wrong. At least I think so. Well, this is too long already, so adios. I think I’ll be doing one more installment in this series, so catch me next time–Natasha.

Proudly Unpopular–Part 1

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So,  a little fun fact about the past century: Though popularity has existed as long as civilization, the adjective Popular really became itself in the last hundred years or so. I think we’ve all seen the movies of the last couple of decades that focused on the pros and cons of being popular or achieving popularity.

There’s nothing wrong with those movies per sec, but I’m beginning to think they’re  a little outdated. Although I’m sure popularity is still a big motivator for people,  what we’re hearing about now, and being held up to, is Self Expression.

Frank B. Gilbreth once lamented that because kids wanted to be popular so much, they didn’t care about being smart or kind, or anything else. (Cheaper By the Dozen.)

Well, we should be glad that our culture has embraced new values, right?

You all knew that was a trick question. So I’ll say upfront that I don’t at all wish for a return to the obsession with popularity. That always stuck me as shallow, and a lot of movies still clichely make the popular people not at all relatable, or even like real people. (What surprises me is really that only us younger generations seem to think that’s a bad representation of them.) But I wonder, have we really lost our obsession with popularity?

The thing about embracing it, was, that it was honest. One freely admitted that they considered the approval of others the most important factor of life. And whether that was applauded or disdained, we were all on the same page. Now, however, popular ideas, opinions, and styles are no longer seen as what they are.

Let me elucidate. What I mean is, a popular idea is one held by a large portion of your society, maybe the majority, or one of the majorities. It is not usually a political idea, because those are more official, it’s more the background for political ideas. Popular thinking is nearly always framed as being a new way. (Though it used to be the old way was more popular, but that’s another story.)

Okay, so here’s my main point. We, as a people, have not actually ceased to conform to popular ideas. We just call it something else.

If you only casually observed our culture, you might think that our newer generations think more for themselves than the previous ones did. After all, we’re always talking about what our personal beliefs are; making up our own minds; following our own heart, or path, or road. (Pocahontas or Moana anyone?) But I dare to say this is all parrot talk.

There are no new ideas, just new names for them. And we are not making our own way, we’re simply choosing which of the old ways to go. Unless you’ve taken a cue from  historical figures like Buddha or Mohammad, you haven’t actually founded your own personal religion. (I’m not disrespecting them or endorsing them, I’m just making a point.)

But that’s what we’re pushing for isn’t it? Everyone needs their own way. And every way is equal, every way is good and bad at the same time. Only it’s really good, or we wouldn’t be advocating it.

There could be a million religions out there, and only one of them would ever be the right one. That’s not because I’m a Christian, but because I think it’s simple logic, there is a Great Truth out there that every religion is searching for and claiming to identify with, one of them must be the closest to it, if they’re all different.

I think we’ve largely forgotten that the purpose of faith is to get closer and closer to the truth. And then to hold on to it.

Self Expression if good, as far as it goes. We need an interesting world. But let’s never forget that the reason we express ourselves is not to benefit ourselves.

We were each given a gift to that will make the world a better place. And it will point other people to the good and beautiful things in Life. If we aren’t doing that then we are misusing our gifts, and if it destroys us, that is why. Yes, Self Expression is good for you also. But only if you’re sharing it. Because otherwise, who will you express it to, and why?

I think that’s a lot to think about, (and this isn’t even a really long post for me,) so I’m going to end it here. Thanks for reading and until next time–Natasha.

A day in the life

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I spent yesterday at Disneyland.

Wahoo! Right?

Well, not so much. I didn’t exactly have a bad time, but I didn’t have a great time either. The reason I’m bringing it up is that I’m adding it to my list. I have an imaginary list of things I’ve done this year that were new and also scary or just hard. here’s a few:

  1. I went to another country.
  2.  I taught in Sunday School more than as just a one-time thing.
  3. I wrote a challenging saga about something I like, but found difficult to get onto paper.
  4.  I went to Disneyland with an almost total stranger.

Here’s how it went down. My aunt has a foreign exchange student living with her, and she wanted him to get the chance to see Disneyland. She thought I might like to go. And after some hesitation I agreed. It wasn’t a smooth ride, because then she wasn’t sure we’d actually do it, finally it was settled that we would. And yesterday she dropped us off there. Where I live it’s been almost unusually cold this month and it was freezing at Disneyland. (Were any of my readers there I wonder?) the place was packed. I’ve been four times before I think, and I don’t remember it ever being so packed, but I never went on a holiday. The line to get in and get tickets was over an hour’s wait of standing around. Then we finally got in, and started walking around. But we went on one ride total, and the lines were so long on the others that we both didn’t feel up to it. We were exhausted by then. We ended up leaving at around 5:00pm, though we were supposed to stay later than that. On top of this, I lost one of the two things I bought. And it was the thing I got for myself.

So, a total bust right?

But that’s not to say I totally regret it. I maybe did not have a good day, but that wasn’t the only point for me. I wanted to challenge myself.

I’m the type of girl who’s terrified of being around a guy, alone, for any length of time–let alone all day. Of course there were crowds, but that only makes you feel a little safer. But I did not spend the day feeling afraid. I felt bored, tired, sad, but not afraid. If you’ve read some of my previous posts about my life, you’ll know that’s a big thing for me.

I used to ruin every fun event I went to by being  a nervous wreck the entire time. I am by nature an introvert, but I used to have it on steroids. Until I was at home and safe, I wouldn’t relax. I literally felt ill every time I was in an unfamiliar situation. People knew I was shy, but they probably never guessed exactly how much agony I was in. Talk about painful.

But that’s a thing of the past. I almost can’t remember it anymore.  As bad as yesterday was, compared to how my life used to be, it was great. I went from hiding from new things to embracing them. As much as I could.

I still get nervous, but it doesn’t rule me anymore. That’s a day in my life, doing things I once was afraid to do, and doing them because I want to or need to. I don’t always look at it that way of course, but sometimes I just have to stop and look back to where I was and be glad I’m not there anymore.

You must have those moments too, I’d love to hear about them, until next time–Natasha

Hakuna Matata

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I was thinking today about how much I used to worry about things. I worried constantly. about the weirdest stuff.

Here’s a list of some of the things:

Worrying about getting sick, even diseases that it would be very unlikely for me to get.

Worrying about a natural disaster occurring, even ones that don’t happen where I live.

Worrying about getting poisoned.

Worrying about ending up in the hospital.

Worrying about whether I was crazy or not.

Worrying about someone breaking into my house.

Worrying about villains from movies that aren’t actually real.

Worrying about criminals that are real.

I think that’s plenty, but there were more. As you can see some of my worries were irrational, and I knew they were. But one thing I’ve found out is that your mind doesn’t know the difference between a real threat and an imagined one. (At least the immature mind doesn’t. And your emotions never do.) But you know what? I’ll bet you’ve had some of those worries. Most of us do, or we have other irrational fears. If you don’t you’re very fortunate. My worrying was the result of my soul being enslaved to fear. To the point where if I wasn’t afraid of something, I was a little uncomfortable, because it was abnormal.

That was years ago, and it has taken me a long time to get free of fear. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can simply choose not to be afraid, if fear runs deep in you; the choice method only works if you are not a normally fearful person and your fear is on the surface. When fear is rooted in your personality, it has to be pulled out. That’s not to say it’s always painful. Often the answer is just to experience love. That wipes out a lot of fear. I know for a fact that until you’ve felt love, really felt it, you can not even begin to stand up to fear on your own. You might have a few victories, but you won’t really change your nature. Fear is not always something you can walk out of, sometimes you have to be pulled out of it.

Take Elsa from Frozen, she really wants to be free of fear, but eve though she sings an amazing song, and changes her image, and leaves behind her old life, the minute she has a reason, she becomes ensnared in her fear again. In fact she sings about it, with Anna:

Anna: For the first time in forever…

Elsa: Oh, I’m such a fool, I can’t be free!

Anna: You don’t have to be afraid.

Elsa: No escape from the storm inside of me!…I can’t control the curse….there’s so much fear…

Anna:…we can change this winter weather, and  everything will be all right.

Elsa: I can’t!!!

See? She can’t. There are probably other examples. If you’ve ever been so frustrated with someone who keeps backing down from challenges, even though they know they shouldn’t, they are probably afraid. If you have that problem, then you’re afraid of something. It’s okay, we’ve all been afraid.

But it’s not okay to live in fear. I think everyone would agree with me on this except people on TV. Have you noticed how popular it is to give in to fear on Television? It’s considered funny. People pass it off that way because they aren’t willing to try to be great. So they make mediocrity humorous. This is not to be cruel to people in the entertainment industry, most of them do it because it’s what is expected of them.

I was miserable as a fearful person. But I did not wake up one day and decide I would be brave. In fact, when I came to the breaking point, bravery was far from my mind. When I became a Christian, I had no thought of being brave. To be honest, I mostly felt sorry for myself, because its not like it was my fault I was cowardly. But there was just a little tiny part of me that finally said “Something is more important than fear.” At the time that something was not going to hell.( It’s a long story.) Since then I’ve decided other things are worth more than safety. But even one thing is enough to get you started. God does the rest.

The choice part comes in when you get scared again and have to keep making progress. It’s never your own power, it is only letting yourself be led.

This may sound nuts to anyone who does not believe in God. But I don’t believe there is another cure for chronic fear and worry syndrome. I will say that people have helped me as well, but you always have to be willing to open up to them enough so that they can help you. Worry is like any other addictive substance, it’s hard to kick, but once you do, you don’t want to go back. Here’s to being worry free!

Natasha

What’s in a name?

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Well it’s been over a week. It’s the Holidays you know, there’s more to think about, also I have other writing projects I work on besides this blog.

This may or may not be surprising, but blogging is the way I get out my more intellectual ideas and explore real life phenomenon. My real passion in writing is fiction. I love making stuff up. Writing about my own life usually bores me after awhile. Maybe because not too many things have happened to me yet. When you spend most of your time at home, even little things become important, but it doesn’t mean they’d be interesting to anyone else.

An interesting thing that happened last week was I looked myself up on the internet. Of course I can’t be specific, but I found out that a lot of people share my name, my fuller name that is (I knew there were other Natashas already.) And some interesting people have my name. I wouldn’t necessarily trade places with them, but one happens to be a writer of sorts, what are the odds?

It got me thinking about names. Some people think certain names give you certain characteristics. This may be true. In the Bible there’s a story about a guy who’s name meant “fool” and that’s what he was. But then there’s names that mean pretty basic things, like a plant or even a kind of metal, and you can’t say a person will become like that can you?

Maybe it’s all in why you choose a name for something. Plants that are given names thrive better, if the names are good. Naming anything makes you get more fond of it, unless you give it a name to express your contempt. We’ve probably all seen, or read about, or encountered a bully who nicknames their victim something awful, and it demoralizes them. We  know that what you label someone slants your view of them.

You’d think with all our knowledge we’d learn to be careful about what we call people, but knowledge never makes anyone careful unless they are careful already, by nature. I am fortunate to have good names, and very few people have ever nicknamed me, and eve fewer have nicknamed me something bad. But it only takes one time to teach you how much it stings. The worst thing is if you start believing what they call you.

I actually like to nickname people, and usually I don’t do it with an intent to annoy them, but I used to. (To my siblings.) So I’m well aware of how easy it is to start using this power of words the wrong way. And there are many wrong  ways, this is just one of them. I don’t want to hate on anyone reading who’s done this, because I shouldn’t talk. But believe me, it is so much better if you stop. since I stopped doing it, it’s like I can breathe better in my relationships with those people.

I’ve heard that I’m just too sensitive about this type of thing, but in my experience, it’s just better to clear the air and not antagonize people. (On purpose.) The bible has plenty to say about this, and so do plenty of other sources. Like Aesop’s Fables, and plenty of less famous books. You’d be hard put to find a story in which the use of words did not lead to trouble  in sooner or later.  So I think I’ve now made my point quite distincly. I’ve said enough.

Until next post–Natasha.