Circles In My Head

Listen to this song:

Times

I know I need you
I need to love you
I love to see you, and it's been so long.
I long to feel you
I feel this need for you
and I need to hear you.
Is that so wrong?

Now you pulled me near you
when we're close I fear you
still I'm afraid to tell you
all that I've done.
Are you done forgiving?
Or can you look pass my pretending?
Lord, I'm so tired of defending
what I've become.
What have I become?

I hear you say "My love is over,
it's underneath, it's inside, it's in between
the times you doubt me, when you can't feel
the times that you've questioned 'is this for real?'
the times you've broken, the times that you mend
the times you hate me and the times that you bend.
Well my love is over, it's underneath
it's inside, it's in between,
these times you're healing
and when your heart breaks
the times that you feel like you've fallen from grace
the times you're hurting
the times that you heal
the times you go hungry and attempted to steal
in times of confusion and chaos and pain.
I'm there in your sorrow under the weight of your shame
I'm there through your heartache
I'm there in the storm
my love I will keep you by my power alone
I dont care where you've fallen, where you have been
I'll never forsake you
My love never ends, it never ends."

Interesting. I'm not sure about what's going on with church politics and what the issues are. I just know that I struggle with a dilemma about how I should think of the church, and maybe it's similar to the idea of people trying to tell you how to think. On the one hand, I know the church is a good thing, I know it's looking to the Lord and trying to spread the word about the truth, which is what God says we should do. On the other hand, it bothers me when people in the church presume that they HAVE the truth and no one outside of these communities does. I don't know why it bothers me, maybe it shouldn't, but I just have this gut feeling that anyone who has a religion desserves to believe they're right just as much as everyone else, and that sort of confuses my perspective and makes me wonder what makes ours right at all. Maybe it's just sort of an intellectual crisis of faith that I'm in. I mean, I can handle believing in my religion and living by it - I think everyone should do that, and it won't interfere with anyone's life or cause people to be judjmental. But if I take the stance "My religion is right, and everyone should know it," then I feel like I'm being arrogant, judgmental, and condescending, and that's not what I want my religion to do to me. So when the church does things like this, which I guess they're supposed to because the purpose of a church is to believe its own teachings fully, I still cringe. So, you know, I just don't know.

So I've been working on a project for the New Church Music website. It involves going through the Liturgy of songs and categorizing each song, and adding tags that aren't in the lyrics for searching. The categories are things like qualities of the Lord and things that come from the Lord, and responses to the Lord. I think it's a pretty neat process for me. So far, it seems like more of a religious experience than reading the word or going to church. Most of the songs in the Liturgy emphasize the best qualities of the Lord. I've never paid as much attention to the words and meanings of the songs as I am now, and as I'm reading them, I'm continually impresses with how good the Lord really is. That combined with the fact the I love some of these songs so much already, almost makes my heart melt when I read them so closely like this.

And maybe it's also because this past year I've come to love music so much, especially music with strong religious messages in it (like Lifehouse). I think Lifehouse made me love religious music in general a lot more than I used to. Lifehouse's music is so personal, and it makes God seem like someone, rather than an just an entity. At least that's how I see it.

Examples:
Fool
Storm
Joshua
Anchor
What's Wrong With That

I was just thinking how frustrating it is to watch TV characters I admire making bad choices. But nowadays I can just decide not to care anymore if that happens. It's even more frustrating to watch friends I know making bad choices. It doesn't happen nearly as often, and it's usually subtle or ambiguous, but it's real. And I was just thinking today, look how much pain God must go through - he knows every bad choice everyone ever makes, and he cares tremendously about everyone. How can he just let it go when an innocent person does something terrible, and messes up their life completely? It must be torture for him, all the evil that happens, and him trying to salvage people's souls, constantly trying to help people out of their holes of darkness, all the way to the point of no return. And wishing from the bottom of his heart that every one of them should be saved. How painful must it be for him when just one person breaks off the last of his connection, and dives into hell? I can only picture God with his head in his hands, saying to himself, "I loved him so much, and I couldn't save him." And it happens again and again. I can see why my parents and other people don't want to believe in hell as an eternal destination. Of course, I know this image has God as a person who doesn't know the future, invested wholeheartedly in every decision ever made, and hoping that it will be the right decision, even if it won't be. It's a big thing to wrap your head around, but I think I'm starting to see how it hurts God to do evil things. Just like it hurts anyone who trusts you, if they know about it; regardless of whether it directly affects them.

In response to Stardate by Anne Elliot W.

This whole Stardate thing is interesting to me. I saw a documentary on some discovery channel a few years ago that said similar things - that they found evidence of bacteria on Mars. And when I first read Earths In the Universe ( What's that? ), I thought it had to be representative of something else, that it couldn't literally be true that there are people from Mars and Jupiter, what with all the scientific evidence against it, and to believe it, we would be like creationists who believe the world was created in seven days. And I don't really know much about the science of the universe (although I do find it interesting), but I realized later that my conclusion was based on two assumptions:

1. If there had been people living on another planet, there would be evidence of the ruins of civilization.

2. The human race will surpass the life of the planet earth, because we will have found a way to survive without it.

The Future:
I don't know why I made the second assumption. I guess I thought humans are intelligent. We can find ways around the natural cycle of life and death of a species. We have the intelligence and technology to live forever. But forever is longer than I previously was thinking of, when I think about it now. When it comes to the evolution of life, very little has happened in the short span of time that people have been alive, compared to the developmental periods before that. And I have given very little thought to the prospect of an entirely new race of humans evolving on this earth while we are still alive. I mean if it happened once, it could happen again in another billion years, right? Assuming the earth hasn't been paved into a giant city by then. I don't know when the sun is supposed to burn out, but that could interfere with it, I guess. But anyway, I guess people could still evolve on Mars. I mean, we started out as single-celled organisms, and that's what they have on Mars. Although I've sort of though as Mars as the overflow planet - when the Earth gets so messed up that we can't live there anymore, we'll move to Mars and get a fresh start. It's a little cold, but some insert some greenhouse gases and other things, and we could make it inhabitable. Although I somehow have it in my head that if we moved there, we would impede any evolutionary process that was happening there. I don't know why I think so. Maybe because we'd have to change the environment to make it inhabitable, and that would mess up the order of things. So that's why I thought there could never be life on Mars. But as I now look at my thought process, I realize that a lot of these assumptions don't have much reasoning behind them, so yeah. I guess people could still evolve on Mars. As for people on Jupiter: Jupiter is a young planet, and probably potentially inhabitable as well, so the same goes for Jupiter.

The Past:
Past life on Jupiter is a lot less possible, though. I don't really see how it would work. However, there could have been past life on Mars, I suppose, the ruins of civilization buried deep under eras of natural transformation. I think it would make more sense for the people to be from the past though, because Swedenborg saw them in the spiritual world, where there may not be time, but there is progression, so if the people were from the future, why would he have seen them?

In conclusion, yeah. It's confusing but I suspect the universe is a lot different than the way we assume it is. Because chemistry turned out a lot differently than we originally assumed. Who would have thought that atoms would be mostly empty space, the only thing keeping things solid being the electrical repulsion of tiny atomic nuclii? And we really don't know very much about the universe yet, so who knows what could happen? I'm no expert, but that's the impression I get.

I'm posting stories and articles that I wrote in college.
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The Water Fountain of Truth

Sometimes the water fountain in Grant Hall doesn’t seem to work. You push the button, and water doesn’t come out right away. It can be irritating when that happens, because when you’re thirsty, you just want a drink of water. I have had that experience, and I know that if you just hold the button down long enough, eventually the water will come out. One time I was in Grant Hall, and someone said, “Hey! The water fountain doesn’t work!” She pushed the button, and then pushed it again and again. Being the smart and condescending person that I am, I told her that if you just hold the button down and keep it there for long enough, the water will come out eventually. So she held the button down for a few seconds, and then pushed it again, and exclaimed, “It’s not working.” Eventually she just gave up and left. So I came up to the fountain and pushed the button, and kept my finger on it, just to prove I was right. A long time passed. Eventually water started trickling out of the spout, slowly rising into a parabola, and finally a full stream of water.

I have always been taught that I should read the Word, and that the Word is the source of Divine revelation. I have tried several times to read the Word, and every time I try, I don’t understand it, and I don’t seem get any truth out of it, so I give up. Why should I read the Word if it doesn’t do anything for me? I only recently thought about the Grant Hall water fountain incident as the same thing. You have to continually push the button, and trust that the water will come, even though it seems like it never will. It could take a lot longer than you expect. But the water will come.

I had an interesting memory during doctrinal class tonight. I remembered that when I was younger - I don't know how old, probably in my early teens - I was thinking about other dimensions and universes, because I was always inclined to think of things beyond the current knowledge of the world. After all, people used to think the earth was the only world there was, and everything revolved around it. So of course there could be other universes as well - even if we never have and never in the future ever contact them in any way. But I also had the knowledge of the natural and spiritual worlds and God, and how everything exists in these three things, and there's nothing else. But then I wondered whether this universe, along with the spiritual world connected to it, and God, who oversees it, could be just one continuum, separate from many others that have no interaction between one another, and no knowledge. Whether there could be other Gods controlling other universes that have nothing to do with each other. I suggested this idea to my parents, and they said it wasn't possible, because then God wouldn't be all-powerful and all-knowing - and one of the things our religion teaches is that there is nothing outside of God. I think I believed them, and I let go of the idea. But today we were talking about the sun and stars, and the spiritual sun and the spiritual stars, and I thought of it again. I thought, yes, God teaches us that there is nothing outside of Him, but if there were and not even He knew about it, then I suppose ... well, it reduces God to someone who isn't all-powerful and all-knowing, and who can be wrong about something, so I suppose it's not good to embrace that possibility while trying to accept the ideas presented to me about God.

About the spiritual sun and stars: Interaction of Soul and Body (Interaction SB passage 4) talks about the natural and spiritual suns, and all life coming from them, and that the Lord is in the spiritual sun. But the truth is that there are many suns, and I think there must be stars in the spiritual world as well, so are they also spiritual suns just like the one spiritual sun from which all life emanates? And that led me to the idea of multiple suns in heaven, each supporting the life of its own solar system, and each with God in the center of it. So that led me to the idea of the solar systems being completely separate, with separate gods even.

Anyway, this isn't what I believe, it's just a speculation I had, and I'm sure it's an awful heresy. A lot of these speculations end in my head with "Well, it's possible, but it's probably better not to think of it like that." I wouldn't want to be the next Galileo. No, don't worry. I still believe the universe is the center of the... um, world, and there's nothing outside of those glass spheres at its extremities. You don't have to burn me at the stake.

As I was saying in response to Kendra's post, (I guess that's how a lot of these Ideas start, isn't it?) "Religion is confusing, though. I try to see both sides of an issue. Most people think their religion is true and everyone else's is wrong. So how do you put perspective on that while trying to believe your own faith completely? Some people will blatantly tell other people that their religion is false, but although that person is just expressing what they believe as the truth, it completely invalidates the other person's whole purpose of living. Food for thought - I think I'll continue this discussion in my own journal."

Well, I don't really know what to think about it, but I remember having a discussion with Brian on the topic. You're supposed to believe your religion is right. But when I'm talking to someone of a different faith, I don't want to talk to them as if I know the truth and they don't. I want to talk to them as if we believe different things, with an equal possibility that both of us could be right about what we believe. But my faith isn't as solid as some people's, so maybe it's easier for me to do that? I'm not completely sure that my religion is the right one, but some people are. Thing thing I find hard to put my head around is that there are people who are completely sure that what they believe is the truth, even though one of them believes something contrary to another. I know it's normal, but when I was younger I used to try to solve these logical puzzles in my head. I said things like, "You can't KNOW something if someone else knows something that contradicts that. If you know something, then it must be true. If you're completely sure of something, then there's not even a slight possibility that it might be wrong." And then I came to the conclusion that there was nothing I knew all the way, and that everything I thought I knew I was just MOSTLY sure of.

Are you supposed to be completely sure about your religion? Because that just puts walls up between people and they can't even acknowlege each other's ideas. And especially if your religion is wrong! If you're completely sure of your religion and it's wrong, then what good does that do you?

Well, everyone else is doing it, so I guess I'll hop on the bandwagon and write about this. It's a little premature though. I don't really have a story. I never got anywhere past historical faith. But I'll just start rambling and see what comes out, shall I?

I was raised in the New Church, and I've always believed what I was taught to some extent, and questioned it at the same time. There are some things that I've been really sure about that I've been confident enough to stand up and proclaim. None of these things have been about religion. Most of them were things I've argued with my science teachers about, like center of gravity, orbit, primary colors, 4-dimensional geometric principles, and so on. Some of these things are just very evident to me. But religion isn't very much like that at all. It makes sense to me in that I can explain how it works using words that mean little or nothing to me. I guess I've sort of ingrained the New Church vocabulary into me so thoroughly that I stopped questioning it because everyone always gives me the same answers when I do.

For instance: if God is all powerful and all knowing, why is it that he just watches when the most terrible thing in the world happens to someone? Why doesn't he intervene? Don't try to answer that - it's just an example. People have tried to answer it, and the answer everyone gives sort of fits into the intellectual structure of what I believe. But I still can't come to terms with it. As far as I'm concerned the answer doesn't make sense to me, and the question hasn't really been answered for me.

I have a general understanding of most of the things in the Writings, but when I actually read them, it's - well, I don't know how to explain this very well. Each point has a set of points that are supposed to back it up, but the logic doesn't make sense to me. It says things like "This should follow from the fact that this happens." And usually I can see how each thing might be true, but the logical progression seems like nonsense a lot of the time. Usually I can gloss over it and accept that it's true anyway.

I get really confused when reading the Word, though. All truth is supposed to be confirmed in the Word, but it's all full of battles and contradictions and outdated laws. It's no wonder that the old Christian church got confused. Usually I don't know what I'm supposed to be getting out of it, but I read it anyway, because they say you're supposed to.

So anyway, I understand the New Church on the surface - like I can find an explanation for most things, but I've never been able to relate to the teachings on a personal level. I don't know if that's a real problem - I still say I believe in it and live by it, but I have a hard time with things like trusting the Lord and praying on my own and feeling like everything means something. Wow, I've written a lot. I guess I'll stop now.

Jason Wade, regarding his parents' divorce:

"I really disagree with a lot of things that the church does - the Christian church. Just religion in general, I see a lot of things that seem off. I saw firsthand how someone like my dad - maybe he fell, maybe he made some mistakes - but then people from the church would basically say, 'You're going to hell.' And turn their back on him. To me, God is all about love and mercy and compassion, and I don't see a lot of that today."

About Lifehouse:

“My music is spiritually based, but we don't want to labeled a ‘Christian band’ because all of the sudden people’s walls go up and they won’t listen to your music or what you have to say… I think we have a positive message of hope. We're not trying to blatantly preach, it all comes down to love.”

-Rolling Stone Magazine.

http://community.livejournal.com/new_church/

Hi, everyone. I was searching for a New Church community on livejournal and I didn't find one, so I made one myself, and I don't know how to invite people, so you guys can join on your own if you want. I didn't put much thought into it, but I can fix it if people are interested and actually do want to join. I don't know how to share or delegate administrative powers, because this is the first community I've created, but I made it because I think there should be one, not because I want to control it. So if anyone can tell me what to do with it, that'd be nice. I've discovered that livejournal communities are one of the best ways of finding information directly from people who care about things and know a lot about things by having my questions answered. So I think having a new church community available, if enough people joined, would be a good way to have it so that people can find out what they want to know about the New Church.

I wish you would come to life.
I wish you would make your way
Into my dreams and memories
Into my mind, control me.
Now you seem so far away,
The corners of the earth
Are closer.
Makes me think I'm worth
A lot to you
Just like the rest of them.
Show me all this truth you gave me.
Make it all come true.
Show me all those miracles
You did before, and if you can,
Then why can't you console me
When I'm looking for you everywhere
And crying on the floor?
Well, you can have me.

I sometimes wonder whether people with low self-esteem, as a psychological condition, are affected negatively by growing up in the New Church and being taught that nothing good can come from us, and that we are only empty vessels, and that we are born into evils of every kind. One thing that especially bothers me, and I didn't realize it until a few days ago, is that people make the asumption that everyone my age is unregenerate, and unregenerate people are evil. And people just tell me that I'm an evil person as if it were obvious, common knowledge. I don't like it, though, and I don't think it's true. It's demoralizing, and it's really the worst insult that you can give someone. Everyone has problems with them, and although we are born into evil tendencies, we aren't evil. People become evil when they start doing evil and confirming it, and justifying it. But we're supposed to see the good in people. I think most people I know are good. I see them doing good things in a sincere effort to better themselves and help the people around them. I think I am a good person because I do the same thing. I think it may be true that people in the church focus too much on the evil. We are told that we should shun evils, but then we become super-obsessed with all this evil. Kind of like germs. We can't really see it clearly, so it must be everywhere. It must be the essence of everything that makes us individuals. I don't know. I know I often fall into that sort of a pattern of thought.

Anna told me about this religion, the Baha'i faith. It sounded interesting, so I did some research. I think the main concept is the unity of all religions -- they use all the major sacred texts as Dinine revelation. And the sacred texts have internal meanings. It's based on the writings of Baha'u'llah, which are also considered Divine revelation.