Lessons from 2021

For me, 2021 is a year that has brought me a lot of insight. It's hard for me to keep a post like this short, so I won't. I want this post to focus on the wisdom I learned that I am thankful to have acquired. Some of these are new realizations and others are lessons I've been working on for a few years that have recently become more clear for me.  Though many of them relate to my career as an elementary educator, they have applications in my personal life as well. 

~Acceptance~

I'm starting with acceptance because nearly everything else I've learned this year relates directly to it. It has been my most important mantra. My year began with me feeling quite unable to find peace with certain realities of the dating world. I learned that I needed to accept these things that I don't like because they are out of my control. I can influence many outcomes, but I can't control them. And as I got to learning how to accept disappointing realities and still be happy, it led me to ultimately confront a burden I've carried for a long time: my anger. I've been angry for a long time and I never really understood what to do about it. I found that anger is fundamentally a product of unmet expectations. 

If I go to the arcade and start pushing buttons on a game without paying, I won't be mad that it doesn't work because I know it doesn't work without money. But if I pay it and it doesn't work, then I'm mad. I paid the money with the expectation that it would result in the game working. If I try to start a car I know is broken and it doesn't start, I'm not mad. But if I'm trying to get to work, thinking my car would start, and am depending on that vehicle for transportation in a timely fashion and it doesn't start, then I'm mad. I walk into a classroom and kids are talking while I set up. Not angry. I do my "attention-getter'' a few times and ask the class for silence and the talking continues uninterrupted. Now I'm feeling upset. Why? Control. Expectations. I don't have any way to make the outcome the way I'd like it to be. But if I go into that classroom knowing that that's just where that group of kids is developmentally and that they need something from me that the other better-behaved classes don't... if I treat it as a puzzle to be solved, my ability to feel anger about the situation diminishes.

So learning about acceptance has taught me a lot about anger, which I would consider its opposite. And learning to have more mature expectations helps me with acceptance and ultimately has eliminated a great deal of anger from my life. So, I start with acceptance, my mantra and theme for this year, because it is intrinsic to the most important lessons I learned. 

~Ask for what you want~

I'm in my sixth year as a music teacher, which has been enough time for me to really know what I want. For example, some teachers try to help me with behavior management during my lessons and some don't. This year, I realized that I prefer not to have help with it. I found a way that works and I like it best my way. If anyone crosses that boundary in a way I don't like, I always just assume that they don't know that I have that boundary and were just trying to help my lesson go smoothly, and then I let them know what I want to change. I've been nervous about asking for a change every time and, every time so far, I have been glad I brought it up. I go into this understanding that I may ask and still not get what I want, but it will still be worth it for all of the times I do get what I want. 

~Don't assume intent~

I don't know if it's cultural or biological or both, but for a species of creature that definitely does not have the power of telepathy, we sure do come to a lot of conclusions about what other people are thinking. It wouldn't be such a bad thing if 1) we weren't so wrong all the time and 2) we didn't base such important decisions on such unreliable data. I see this happen a lot. It happened a lot to me when I was a kid and I see it happening to kids now: "You're being disrespectful!" From an adult's perspective, I might not like that behavior and that it may be in direct opposition to my wishes, but suggesting to a child that their behavior is malicious is extremely toxic. It really seeps into one's self-perception. We forget that children are rather disabled compared to adults when it comes to cognitive skills and are new both to our rather intricate set of rules and to their own rapidly-evolving bodies and minds, yet we often expect them to have the same familiarity and fluency with our complex social norms as we do, including the ability to follow directions. We can't comprehend what might really be going on in their heads. How does one defend themself against such a baseless accusation of "disrespect"? I, the adult, may not be able to prove myself right, but they can't prove me wrong either, so they lose by default because the adult's boss. And we go about perpetuate this narrative that little Johnny was being disrespectful, when maybe, he's having a hard day, doesn't know how to handle it, and doesn't have the skills to communicate his needs. 

We do this with adults too. We see other people who are doing things we don't like and we assume that they are being intentionally disruptive. A business has a policy that disrupts your plans. A server makes a mistake. People of certain religious or political leanings defend ideas that make the opposite of sense to us or engage in behaviors that we find unforgivably counterproductive to the health of our society. So we often boil it down to a quantitative depravity of moral integrity. Or we assume that the coworker who does something in a way we don't like did it that way with the intention of reducing our happiness. We assume that the "others" care less about doing the right thing than we do. Understanding how vulnerable human behavior is to the powerful currents of our surroundings does not mean that we should excuse all behavior we find harmful or that rules are meaningless, but it does give us some important tools for addressing and preventing social injury, not only with more compassion, but with greater efficacy. It helps to understand that most people, like me, are just trying not to screw up. I'm free to think that bad things are done by bad people. It is easier and simpler to see it that way, after all, but then I'd be missing out on the truth and on real solutions I might not have known were available to me. For that reason, my strategy is to 1) refrain from judgement of other people's emotional states or intentions and 2) ask questions that invite a reasonable answer. 

~Just because what you got isn't what you wanted, it doesn't mean you won't love what you got~

I introduced this phrase and philosophy into my teaching toolbox this year because I loathe "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit." I think that that phrase needs to be eliminated from all teachers' vocabularies because it doesn't really offer a helpful solution to the intense emotions a child may be feeling at the time of disappointment. It ignores the fact that disappointment is overwhelming, confusing, distracting, and a total buzz-kill. This all winds us back again to expectations and not getting your preferred outcome. We can look at this on small scales like giving various boomwhackers to 7-8 year olds and comforting the ones that didn't get their preferred color, or looking at other outcomes like the fact that I'm a divorced 34-year-old as opposed to the married bliss I pictured on my wedding day. I didn't get what I chose, but I do love what I got. 

~Every child is their current age for their first and last time~

Every child is at their current stage of life for the first time ever and they don't know what comes next. After they've had the opportunity to learn how to be their age, they stop being that age and become a new older age where their existing knowledge is obsolete. Learning how to exist in society is a demanding process and I think it's easy for adults to be oblivious of the burden every child carries. For that reason, I discourage belittling comments like, "You've known this rule since 1st grade! Why can't you follow it now?" The truth is that it is not reasonable to expect what first graders do well to come out of fifth graders because first graders and fifth graders are very different creatures with different abilities and responsibilities. Being a fifth grader is complicated in ways that being a first grader isn't, which is why fifth grade (and middle school) behavior is the way it so frequently is. That's not something to be mad about, even though it is hard to deal with. This is simply what being in that state of life involves. Fifth graders are no more experienced at being fifth graders than first graders are at being first graders. That's just the way the world is. That's the way the river flows at that bend. It's not the water's fault. 

Every child is at their current stage of life for the very last time. There's no do-overs. This is where we as educators need to recognize the sanctity of every day, hour, and second a child gives to us of their lives. They give us pieces of their childhood and we have the ability to either respect those pieces of their lives they give to us or to defile them. Every day, they are the only version of themself that they have been prepared to be. The respect they deserve is without merit. If we wait until adulthood to show kids respect, then kids who don't live to adulthood live their whole lives without being respected. We should not let the destination spoil the journey. A journey is all it will ever be, so if we don't teach them how to enjoy the journey now, they may go their whole lives never learning how to be happy. 

This same principle applies past childhood as well. Everyone is the oldest they've ever been and will never be so young again. Accept where life's river has moved them today, regardless of how much you like their orientation with the world, because neither you, they, nor I control the currents that carry us from day to day. Even if it isn't their last day on earth, it is both their first and final run through that day and they deserve your support, at least, in not making it a bad one. 

~Monsters don't create themselves~

This is actually an older mantra for me that I picked up a few years ago. I find that it is applicable in every aspect of human interaction when someone behaves in a way we don't like. Whether it's related to the "monster" I may have thought one of my exes to be, a student acting out, behavior of adults at work, behavior of adults I hear about of the news, etc... it has helped me immensely to recognize that none of us is our own mother. We are not self-created. We are the product of events that have been in motion for eons. Humans are a very unusual kind of ape. Of course our behavior tends to be absurd! We are absurd creatures. We all have our unpleasantries, but we didn't choose them. Our behavior is so frequently interrupted by our environment that it is absurd, when you really stop to think about it, to think that any aspects of any person could truly be their own design. That is where acceptance comes back in again. We have to let people off the hook for being born because the river was already in motion before they opened their eyes. You can't blame a salmon for being a salmon, or a fire ant for being an invasive species in North America. That doesn't mean that we don't distance ourselves from people who violate the sanctity of our own time in this world - boundaries are super important - but I hope that it makes it harder to harbor resentment against people for being a product of the recipe that made them. 

~Avoid anger by changing your expectations~ 

Sometimes we expect outcomes that aren't as reasonable as they seem to be. And so I've watched adults become furious with children because the adult's expectation and the child's reality clash. But is it the child's fault? No. Children generally don't get to have a lot of control. The river may have swept that individual to a place where certain kinds of compliance are not consistently attainable. Children have things happen to them at home that we don't know about. They may have medical or psychiatric conditions that we don't understand or know about, maybe that haven't been diagnosed yet. There may be communication barriers. But it's unreasonable for us to expect kids to fit any archetype we might envision of how a kid is *supposed* to be and then be offended when their conduct is not harmonious with our own fantasies. 

To take this to an example outside of the educational field to one of my real struggles, I suffered for most of my time following my divorce with the fear of abandonment by future partners. It doesn't help when I see the things about myself that I don't like, such as messiness, or things that I do like about myself that I believe to be incompatible with healthy relationships, like how noisy I am as a roommate due to my frequent music practice. Abandonment became this inevitability in my mind and I couldn't accept it. It made me feel helpless because dependable partnership is something I expected out of life, and for that reason, I've been very bitter. I wanted my pessimistic conclusion to be false, but the truth is that, like everything else in life, love is temporary and there is no choice but to accept it. I don't have to see that as a negative, though. Without change, there is no life. Life is nothing but constant change. It is a fundamental truth that people change. I cannot be held responsible to forever remain the kind of person who is compatible with my partner, nor should she. And though I might not like the fact that marriage and love are not the sacred institutions I once believed and expected them to be, I call back to the mantra, "Just because what you got isn't what you wanted, it doesn't mean you won't love what you got." Maybe love isn't what I wanted it to be, but maybe, if I stop being so scared, I will find it to be an even more beautiful experience than I ever imagined - not in spite of, but BECAUSE of those very qualities that I once found distasteful. This is not to say that I'm not still fearful about dating. I'm just not there yet. But now, with that sense of helplessness and the accompanying anger pacified for the first time in many years, there's not much left holding that fear in place. That makes me feel hopeful. 

~Do not bring hostility into an un-hostile situation~

I don't think it's appropriate to use with children or adults. It is dangerous to teach children to use hostility to control other people's behavior. That's not a behavior we want them repeating at school, at home, in the streets, or anywhere else. Some of them will become cops and will be carrying guns and we will have taught them to use hostility to assert control. It's a dark path. Everybody is going through each day for the first time, so be patient, and for the last time, so try not to ruin it. I have certainly made that mistake with kids in the past. I've done that with peers, colleagues, service people, and maybe most problematically, with people on the internet. What I've come to realize is that I don't see much point to it. I've never found myself glad that I chose to be hostile with someone. I never come out looking like the good guy because of it. It doesn't mean that moments of disempowerment aren't fully justifiable reasons to feel angry - anger is a very important emotion with important roles in our lives - but we must be careful not to allow our discomfort to be contagious as it stands in the way of peaceful resolution. 

~The concept of "authority" is not a useful strategy to use for child behavior management~

Don't get me wrong, I also feel this way in regards to adults. So let's start with the basic premise that "authority" is a made-up concept. Authority doesn't exist anywhere but our own imaginations and the real thing that makes people play along with the "authority" game is the real muscle: power... or control. One of the hardest lessons I had to learn as a teacher is how little power I really have to force people to play along with my "authority" game. There's a lot of *them* and only one *me*. But authority without control is delusion. A man may call himself King of the world as he shouts instructions to passers by, but as long as nobody heeds his instructions, his "authority" is pure madness. Only on the day that people stop ignoring him and start taking him seriously does he gain any demonstrable kind of authority. In the same way is a teacher lost in delusion, yelling at a class of kids, "I'm in charge. Do as I say! Respect my authority. " Well, the kids are probably thinking, "You clearly have no power or else you would have used it already. I don't like you and I don't trust you. So, why should I do as you say?" "Authority," in my opinion, is a degrading way to try to control other people because it excludes others from their right to also feel a sense of control or autonomy.  Teachers need to feel a sense of control, yes, but the students need that too. Whenever someone doesn't have that, things start falling apart. It is crucial to establishing an emotionally stable climate that we ensure that students don't feel powerless or they will become angry and/or anxious. So if I set up a situation where students must surrender their sense of autonomy in order for my lesson to move forward, I'm standing on thin ice and am likely to have a really bad time. 

The most sustainable kind of relationship I have had with my classes have been when we exist harmoniously with the obvious truth that I have very little to zero control in the classroom outside of my powers of charisma and persuasion. This is a particularly salient lesson one learns after doing lots of online lessons with fifth graders, who are most excellent at destroying any illusions I may have of authority or control, especially knowing that I can do nothing about it if they turn off their cameras or just leave. But the lesson has served me well in the physical classroom as well. Though I, the teacher, really can't stop you as the student from doing whatever you were thinking of doing and though my power is only granted by your compliance, I want you to see me as a wise mind to follow for positive outcomes who will make your cooperation worth your while! As a teacher, make being around you into a pleasant experience for both teacher and students, make cooperation rewarding, address dissonant behavior pleasantly and with respect, clarity, and compassion, and be a careful listener; then there will be no need for *authority* because *credibility* goes a lot farther. Kids want a good childhood and I think it's one of the best things I can learn to bring them. It's very hard to develop such a teaching style, but I really think it's worth it. 

~Do not focus on children's future at the expense of their present~

The childhood a person has really impacts the rest of their life.  That is one extremely important reason to take quality of life seriously in schools, especially regarding discipline policies. Yes, we want them to grow up to be well-adjusted adults, but we also want them to have good childhoods. If we can somehow teach kids how to be happy and harmonious with society as kids, they have a better chance of growing into adults who know how to live happily and harmoniously with others. 

~Nobody is entitled to anyone else's attention~

This was a really hard lesson for me and it involved me seeing myself from a very unflattering angle, recognizing behavior and thought patterns in nearly every area of my life where suffering was created by my ignorance of this truth. Again, this is completely inseparable from the concepts of acceptance, expectation, anger, and control. It has implications in our relationships with family, friends, colleagues, students, neighbors, strangers, and even animals. 

I think that a large source of relationship dysfunction comes from this mistaken belief that we are owed attention. We damage our romantic relationships by insisting on a certain amount of or type of attention from our partners and being rather unpleasant about it when those expectations are not met to our liking (which goes back to the rule about not introducing hostility to un-hostile situations). In many other ways, we may strain relationships with family members who don't give us the kind or amount of attention we think they ought to give us... if their heads were screwed on straight. One of the most famous struggles for teachers is students not paying attention. Sometimes, even in our relationship with our furry friends, we hold them longer than they want to be held. 

This is not to say that you or I don't deserve a certain amount of positive attention. We do. It is needed for basic survival. We are communal creatures. But nobody owes their attention to anybody else. We each exist in this world for a short amount of time. That time is finite and precious. Every person who chooses to give your existence a feature in their short window of brain activity is giving you a gift that they can never get back. 

The reason why this is important is that the perspective helps us have more reasonable expectations of others. Wanting someone's attention is a big ask. Teachers, our students don't have to pay attention to us. Yes, there are major incentives both for teachers and students that the students pay attention. Though attendance is mandatory by law, the students don't actually owe us attention and they cannot be coerced into conforming to our expectations. They did not write the laws that force them to attend school, so they owe us nothing.

One may want more of a person's attention and you can certainly try to earn it - there are countless ways to do that - but at the end of the day, if that family member, friend, student, or stranger only offers you a smaller amount of their attention than you were hoping for, receive what they gave you with gratitude. I say to do that not merely because receiving it with gratitude increases the likelihood of getting more, but because there is greater enjoyment from what is received, understanding both what it costs them and how lucky I am to receive any of it at all. You learn to make much with little. Nobody exists for anyone else's pleasure. And none of us even agreed to existing in the first place. Whether we view existence as a gift or as a curse, we didn't earn it either way and it is a responsibility each of us carries for ourselves and ourselves only. I learned to respect that burden every conscious creature carries so that I would understand that whatever attention isn't given to me wasn't meant for me. 

Conclusion

If you got to the bottom of this, thank you for giving me the gift of your attention. I hope that it was worth your time and that it improves your quality of life is some way. I've learned a lot this year and I want to keep that going. What are some profound life lessons life has taught you this year? How does that change your approach to 2022 compared to how you approached 2021? Do you agree with everything I said or do you recommend a different perspective on something I wrote? I would love to hear from you in the comments. Happy New Year!!! 🥳🥳🥳 Stay safe and don't drive intoxicated! 

Ken Ham at BVG

So... I did a thing! Well, my dad and brother and I did a thing. We saw Ken Ham speak at Big Valley Grace tonight. It's been around 5 years since we've set foot on these grounds and it evoked a lot of emotion for us. It was awesome coming back to our old stomping grounds and seeing some people we hadn't seen in a long time (but still retain contact with on Facebook). We had a lovely ride from our parking spot to the building on a really cool shuttle. The music was excellently played and emotionally intoxicating. But it was weird for us also, not so much in the ways the church has changed but maybe more in the ways it was familiar and unchanged. Familiar architecture. Familiar ideas. I spent so much time on this campus! The building feels like home.

The message Mr. Ham gave really wasn't very rich in apologetic arguments like we were hoping. He started by explaining the dramatic and consistent decrease in church membership through the generations of the last 100-ish years and made his case as to WHY he believes apologetics is an important endeavor. He also noted statistics in the steadily decreasing condemnation of homosexuality. He blames the increase of atheism on the failure of the church. He gave a lot of citations from the book of Genesis and emphasized that chapters 1-11 are foundational to all of the 'truths' of God's Word. Ham is VERY fundamentalist and that much was clear (not that it wasn't obvious to us long before). He spent a considerable amount of time lamenting the increasingly widespread LGBTQ+ acceptance, which was a consistent theme in his message while justifying that he's not being "hateful." He argued that "two of each kind" on the ark does not mean "two of each species" but explained how it would have been two dogs or two cats, for example, which were then the ancestors of all known species of canines and felines, while, in the same breath, insisting that the speciation following the flood is NOT evolution. He says all animals before the fall were vegetarian and that the fossil record showing evidence of disease and carnivorous diet came AFTER sin was introduced to the world. Many of his arguments rested on reductions of complex issues into simple dichotomies. The lobby had tables piled high with books, disks, and curriculum for sale with Ken Ham's name on them.

I left the church feeling sad. It was kind of hard on all three of us in different ways. We love the people and the community, but it was clear that there was no place there for people who think like us. Though there were friendly faces and joyful reunions with people that we love dearly, they were a contrast to an environment that, to us, felt hostile - partially because of what we've learned since we left and partially because of the face that community showed us when we dared to question their core beliefs. It feels so much safer when you don't know too much. The "us vs. them" mentality, the homophobia, the condemnation of not only atheists but even other Christians who have different understandings of the world... those things saturated the language of the music and messages. We were blind to it when we were under the spell. It was so enticing to want to unsee everything we learned that made us now feel alienated where we used to feel "home." There was no way that the church had seemed to grow intellectually since we left. I still long for community, but I want one that celebrates exploration of ideas, growth in understanding, and a willingness to challenge traditional attitudes. This could never be "home" for us like it once was because I think the world is so much more amazing when we stop trying to protect beliefs that are dear to us.

"We are honored to host Ken Ham, CEO and founder of Answers in Genesis and founder of the highly acclaimed Creation Museum! Ken is a biblical apologist, originally from Australia, who is passionate about the relevance and authority of God's Word. He gives numerous faith-building talks to tens of thousands of children and adults each year, along with authoring many books. He is one of the most in-demand Christian conference speakers and talk show guests. In 2016, he opened the Ark Encounter, which drew over two million visitors and media in its first two years. As millions of people have experienced the life-sized Ark, the truth of God's Word has been explained and shown through the exhibits. Ken's emphasis is how the book of Genesis is relevant to every Christian and how compromise on God's Word opens dangerous doors regarding how the church and the culture view biblical authority."

Notice how he depicts the secular worldview as being made of sand while the Christian worldview is made of stone - per the house's foundation parable.

Graph depicting natural selection is a degradation of quality and weeding out of information. Strange because the process labeled as "natural selection" shows an example of artificial selection. He acknowledges slight evolution but refuses to call it by its name.

Ah... yea... racism is NOT a part of "the secular worldview," but but I see your earnest effort to make it look like you're on higher moral ground. Notice again the use of sand and stone imagery.

My review of Francis Collins's "The Language of God"

I finally got around to reading this "The Language of God" and I have to say that it was one of the most unexpectedly memorable books I've read. I became interested in this book after seeing a couple different authors mention it in their own books and I found a copy at my local used bookstore. Francis Collins is a human physician/geneticist, led the human genome project, and one of the world's leading scientists in the search to treat genetic diseases. He is also a devout Christian.

This book's primary objective is to convince readers that faith and science are totally compatible. He addresses both skeptics and believers alike. He implores believers not to be afraid of science and makes a MOUNTAIN of excellent arguments why a believer's faith may be strengthened and matured, but not threatened by the overwhelming scientific consensus on various issues including but not limited to evolution and cosmology. He also addresses skeptics with his defense as to why belief in a God like the Judeo-Christian God he worships is the most logical worldview. I think he does a better job speaking to believers than he does to skeptics.

Unquestionably, this man is brilliant. I learned a lot reading this book. But his arguments in defense of Christian apologetics were devastatingly ordinary. I read this book primarily out of curiosity about what a world renowned scientist's theistic Christian faith would look like. Very little of what I read in this book was new to me, but I have never read a book with this combination of scientific and religious worldviews. He delivers scathing rebuttals to young earth creationism, "intelligent design," "God of the gaps" thinking, and biblical literalism - possibly better than any that I've ever read (and I've read some good ones). His rebuttals to atheism and agnosticism sadly only address very narrow definitions of very broad descriptive terms.

His Apologetic Arguments

He proposes a worldview he calls "BioLogos" which is essentially that God designed the universe and the laws in which it operates and set the big bang in motion without needing to intervene because his design was perfect from the beginning. He designed the universe to be hospitable to life and allowed planets such as our own to independently produce their own life, knowing in advance what would evolve. Unlike a deistic God, who would have created us and then left, Collins believes that God remains present in our world and throughout the universe. As for mankind, Collins suggests that at a certain point in our evolution, God endowed us with our souls or "humanity" and that, before that moment, we were just advance apes.

Toward the end of the book, he claims that this belief does not rely on "God of the gaps" thinking - that it will "not go out of style or be disproved by future scientific discoveries." Earlier in the chapter, he says,

"BioLogos doesn't try to wedge God into gaps in our understanding of the natural world; it proposes God as the answer to questions science was never intended for address, such as, 'How did the universe get here?' 'What is the meaning of life?' 'What happens to us after we die?' Unlike Intelligent Design, BioLogos is not intended as a scientific theory. Its truth can only be tested by the spiritual logic of the heart, the mind, and the soul."

Besides the fact that "spiritual logic" has never been shown to produce consistently reliable results, his worldview STILL relies on "God of the gaps" thinking. "How did the universe get here?" That's a totally scientific question. There are right and wrong answers and empiricism is necessary. "What is the meaning of life?" Philosophical question that should rely heavily on scientific data. "What happens to us after we die?" Also a scientific question about which answers should not be embraced without empirical backing.

In the last chapter, he refers to a parable about a man who went deep-sea fishing with a net with holes 3 inches wide and concluded that there were no fish smaller than 3 inches. "If we are using the scientific net to catch our particular version of truth, we should not be surprised that it does not catch the evidence of spirit." That is a lazy argument and this is why: If there is indeed supernatural activity happening around us in this world and it has ANY impact on our natural lives, it would leave natural evidence. Think like waves left by a ship. You don't have to see the ship to be able to deduce by its waves that it just passed.

He spends a considerable time discussing an objective and universal "moral law" but merely expects the reader to agree with his assumption that it is self-evident and real. He frequently cites worn out C.S. Lewis arguments. He insists that God is a monotheistic God, desires a personal relationship with us and is benevolent, but gives no defense for why he believes those things besides emotional anecdotes from his life.

Conclusion

In this, I found a surprising mix of extremely well-defended arguments with profoundly poorly-defended arguments. I think he spent more than 50% of the book making sense. The appendix of this book addressed concerns of bioethics and deepened my understanding of cloning and stem cell research. But the parts where he wasn't making sense had me pulling my hair out and scribbling comments in the margins. To me, reading this book was an overwhelming testimony to the fact that exceedingly intelligent people (and arguably Francis Collins could be in the genius territory) are still susceptible to really dumb ideas. I have no doubt that Collins is smarter than I and he is undoubtedly also a kindhearted individual, but his credibility did not make his apologetics more believable. If anything, it made it shocking that so much critical thinking could be shut off in only certain areas of his intellectual life. Nevertheless, I respect the shit out of this guy. I'm really glad he wrote this book and I'm really glad I read it. I absolutely recommend it. Whether you are a devout Christian, a fully-horned atheist such as myself, or somewhere else, it's a book that keeps you on your toes and you're likely to learn a lot.

#NewYearNewBeard

#NewYearNewBeard

If given the choice, I doubt any of us would choose for our stories to be beautiful. We might think we want beautiful, but we'd never choose the pain that makes it. The pain I experienced in 2018 is pain I would wish on no one, but I can't say that it all turned out badly.

Beginning the year with a crisis

The year 2018 began with me in financial peril and in the final stages of marital decay. Before the first page of the calendar could be flipped, despite my desperate attempts, my marriage ended and it plunged me into crippling depression, as if the debilitating anxiety I already had wasn't enough. I felt the walls closing in. I'm sure that many of you know that extreme psychological trauma can cause physical sickness, which is what happened to me. I became almost too weak to work and every day was a struggle. I was losing weight, but for the wrong reasons. My symptoms only increased in severity as time passed, so my doctors prescribed a treatment plan that required I take a month off of work. I was reluctant to abandon my post, but I understood the urgency of my situation, so we proceeded with the plan.

New musical ventures

First rehearsal with trombone
in the beginning of June 2018

First performance with trombone

During that time, I set a goal for myself to play trombone in MoBand (a community band that meets and performs for six weeks every summer). I had bought this really nice horn for dirt cheap at a pawn shop and, at the time, only had the basic skills on it needed to teach my beginning band students. I practiced every day for the month leading up to the first MoBand rehearsal. What started out as a goal that was to be complete halfway through July turned into an obsession that is eight months old, as of today. The way I see it, if you're going to run away from your feelings, at least do it in such a way that you have something to show for it when all is said and done. 

First performance with clarinet with
Oakdale Community Band

My most recent trombone gig
just a few days before Christmas 2018

Unexpectedly, my continued participation in community bands playing trombone and clarinet filled two emotional voids I had struggled with since I left the church: my needs for community and for regular musical involvement. I cannot overstate the tremendous impact the connections I've made by joining my local band geek community has had on my morale. I can't imagine my life right now without the friendships that have formed over the past few months. Connected with so many past and present music educators as well as many non-teaching musicians, the last time I've ever felt so un-out-of-place was when I was a music major in college.

My first mobile day at my new job

New Job

Ready for the last school Christmas concert

In August, I started the school year at a different school district, continuing my work as an elementary music teacher. While the change of scenery had not been part of my initial plans, I'm so happy it worked out this way. I miss the perks of working for a larger district, but the program at my new placement is a better fit for my style/philosophy and I love it.

In hindsight, I see the wisdom of the new school district in a light I hadn't recognized before. Bringing with me everything I learned from my two incredible years at my last district while leaving behind all of my rookie blunders is rewarding and comforting. Besides the benefits of starting with a fresh slate, I am sufficiently distant from all of the little things that would have triggered flashbacks to my memories as a newlywed full of hope and as a freshly dumped newlywed, searching for a reason not to give up on everything.

Finding New Meaning

Veteran's day - first time playing 1st chair

The whole reason I set my initial goal with the trombone was so I could be a better band teacher. The reason I continued past my intended destination is because I didn't want to stop. It provided a diversion from my self-destructive thoughts while equipping me with skills that are both crucial to my professional development and which are enjoyable and useful for a wide variety of other reasons and purposes. 

Tuba Christmas - second gig playing baritone

But it helped me realize something about my role as a music teacher. The world is a harsh place, even when blessed with the privilege into which I was born. My students undoubtedly have hardships ahead of them that will stretch them to their absolute limit. By teaching them music, I am not only teaching them how to do something that will hopefully be fun for them; I am equipping them with tools that can help them keep their boat afloat when the waves crash over them. Perhaps, instead of addressing life's struggles using drugs, alcohol, violence, or some other self-destructive behavior, they'll choose a more constructive coping mechanism such as music. It could mean the difference between prosperity and ruin or even life and death. It can turn tragedy into beauty.

Now, I don't think music is the only possible saving grace, but it's a big one for a lot of people. For others, it might be drawing, painting, sculpture, writing, dance, acting, animation, graphic design, photography, videography, science, mathematics, engineering, cooking, etc... the list could go on for pages and pages. But music is my specialty, it has saved my life numerous times, and I sure love to teach it.

Things I'm Proud Of

Taking a Sousaphone (tuba) for a spin at the High School

I dealt with some serious shit. I'm amazed that I've handled the setbacks I've been facing so well. I'm really proud of the improvements I've made as a musician, especially with the trombone. I'm proud of myself for connecting with people and making new friends. I'm pleased that I have become less fearful about exposing my religious beliefs. I'm glad to have discovered such a gifting at the save-hunt-pounce technique of bargain shopping for instruments. I'm so very happy that this school year has been going so well at my new district. I'm glad to be discovering my true self outside of religion and romance.

2019 Goals

I really want to continue on the journey I've been on for the past few months. I want to keep playing in bands and getting better at playing wind instruments. I want to expand my network of musicians and make more friends. I want to be a great music teacher and inspire my students to succeed. I want to read more books and acquire some more instruments (french horn and tuba are my primary goals at the moment, but let me know what you've got for sale  ). I'd like to get more comfortable speaking Spanish and to learn a bit of Mandarin Chinese as well. Really, I just want to keep doing things that make me proud to be me. Maybe I'll stumble upon some other pleasant surprises this year! My commitment for 2019 is total badassery and I'll settle for nothing less.

Facing the Unfaceable

If you were one of the few people who read my blog back when I regularly updated it, you probably remember that my writing predominantly focused on articulating and defending my Christian faith. The last time I published anything in this blog was almost 3.5 years ago. After my last published post, I stopped deciding to finish and publish the things that I was writing. The problem wasn't that I had run out of ideas to write about, it's that I found that I could no longer wrap my thoughts up neatly anymore and I always felt that there were far too many loose ends hanging from the topics I was trying to discuss. I had ideas that I wanted to express, but I could no longer feel that I could adequately defend those ideas with the kind of satisfaction that I had before. I had begun this quest for truth that eventually reached a velocity where, by the time I was finishing an essay, I either wasn't sure that I agreed anymore with the point I was trying to make or I didn't feel I was able to defend the point with an adequate amount of intellectual integrity. I was a music minister at a wonderful little church plant in Oakland, CA and I had just begun my venture into preaching, but then I stopped. I still did music, but I told my lead pastor that I didn't feel I was in a good place to be writing and delivering sermons. When I began this intellectual shift, I wasn't sure where exactly I would end up, but I had no idea that it would bring me to the beliefs I hold today.

Tension in the Family

Many would probably say that I came from a poster-child Christian family. I was the oldest of three boys, raised by parents who are still happily married to this day. We lived with financial stability in our happy little suburbs, homeschooled, and were active members of a local non-denominational church. My dad was a public school teacher who also played piano for the church's music program and my mom was stay-at-home, homeschooling supermom who actively participated in Bible studies and volunteered at the church library. To top it all off, my brothers and I all miraculously turned out without any major rebellious streaks that might have tainted our family name. We had a really good long run of being totally scandal free in our Christian community for close to thirty years.

Of all of the scandals that could have marred this magnificent reputation we had made for ourselves, I don't think one could have picked a more sinister means to make pariahs of us all. It started with my brother who was living in Hollywood at the time. He had embarked upon an intellectual journey that led to him confessing to our parents that he was an atheist. This news was completely unexpected and rocked us to our very cores. My dad and I set out to "talk some sense into him" and "bring him back to Jesus," but we realized that the extent of his research was beyond what we were prepared to face, so we each took our own steps to gear up for deeper conversations. We both took to the books, reading the works of Christian apologists like Lee Strobel, Josh McDowell, C.S. Lewis, William Lane Craig, Norm Geisler, Ravi Zacharias, etc...; and also exploring the works of prominent seculars like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Bart Ehrman, Michael Shermer, Daniel Dennett, and others.

I was a little nervous to confess to my dad that I didn't believe anymore until I realized that he had already arrived at that destination before me and hadn't said anything yet. I hadn't figured out how to tell my mom when she asked me about it while we were celebrating Mother's Day at Red Lobster. I told her the truth, even though it wasn't what she wanted to hear, and she cried the whole way home while I drove. This shift caused a tremendous amount of tension in my family, starting out by isolating my brother and then my mom instead. Many months of difficult conversations eventually led my mom to recognize the problems with Christian teaching and overcome her fear of venturing into unknown and mysterious intellectual territory. My other brother soon joined our heathen ranks once he had enough free time to investigate the topic himself.

In the course of a few months, my whole family of five had gone from being devout Christians to...

atheists! That title bore such a haunting, sinister gravity due to the lifelong demonization of this group of "others." Now we had become the "others." Knowing how harshly we had judged others who did the same thing, we had a pretty good idea of how our Christian peers were most likely going to view us. But the judgement isn't the scariest part: it's knowing that beyond being stripped of our status in the community that we used to call home, we would be stripped of our voice to the people who had once been our family. We grew up in a place where you are taught not to even listen to atheists. It doesn't matter that we walked this path with integrity and intellectual honesty: all that matters is that atheists are wrong and should be ignored because we're all lunatics. It made me understand why my secular friends wanted nothing to do with Church. We grew up hearing the hateful rhetoric about atheists. We now saw that we would be considered "the enemy," or at least representatives or puppets of the enemy.

The unfaceable

The social repercussions of our apostasy were troubling, but not necessarily the worst of our woes. If there's one thing that losing such a strong faith can cause, it's an existential crisis. I remember writing somewhere that if it were true that God didn't exist, I would rather live with the delusion that he does. I think that mindset is true for a lot of Christians, whether or not they possess the introspection to recognize it. But I've learned that living with the worldview that the universe is indifferent to our suffering, that life is a meaningless and paradoxical product of entropy, and that life after death is a fictional concept invented by mankind, is not as dark of an existence as our Christian teachers would have us believe. That is one of many topics I aim to address later at length. Just because a truth might not be what we consider ideal doesn't mean that we're better off believing lies.

What to do with this blog?

I've thought about starting a new blog and abandoning this one entirely, letting it rot in the catacombs of forgotten and largely unseen internet history, only to be rediscovered by myself for my own amusement. But I really don't want to do that. I'm not interested in presenting myself as someone with a static worldview and, since this blog already exists with a bunch of my old writing in it, this is an opportunity to give more insight into my intellectual life before and after my deconversion. If this blog can serve any useful purpose, I'd like it to show people what it looks like to face what seems unfaceable and to have the humility to admit to being wrong. Changing your mind is not easy, especially when you've invested so much in a worldview that you now see as erroneous, but it's an important thing that more people need to learn how to do. People can and should change and be ready to change again. Ultimately, if enough people can adopt a growth mentality and be willing to adapt their beliefs when faced with evidence, I think the world will be a better place.

Little Rule About Arguing with Me

I feel the need to establish this right now. I am a very opinionated person. Most of my opinions are very moderate. I love discussion but I have a rule.

Do not start start an argument with me unless you can explain to me exactly why I'm wrong in complete detail. If you do not have a claim that you are sure can withstand rigorous scrutiny, then, in the event that I tear your argument to shreds, be willing to admit that you're wrong. If you decide that you just want to dip from a conversation about an important topic, I will hold you accountable and I will pursue you. It's not bullying: it's holding you responsible for the fact that you are intentionally perpetuating stupidity in the world. Once you say some crazy shit in response to an intelligent post, you will get what's coming and it won't be nice.

Come prepared both to teach and learn! I don't expect everyone to like what I say and I really don't always want that. What I do want is to shed some light on truth. Don't go complaining to me if you don't like what I have to say. But please do challenge me if you think that I've missed something or that I got something wrong. I don't believe in such a concept as "losing" an argument, except if you decide to just walk away once you realize that I don't back down from a fight. You can either win the argument or you can win wisdom, which you get to keep for the rest of your life. So when I pursue you and ask you to answer for what you said, I am inviting you to win. I don't mind you proving me wrong, but you need to do some proving.

I will let you be ignorant as long as you remain silent, but once you start trying to spread that ignorance, I'm gonna have some choice words for you. If you've decided to be willfully stupid, please don't put that on my wall if you don't want me to tear every part of your comment to shreds. Be ready to back up your statements if you're gonna disagree with me because I WILL CHALLENGE THEM. I will not treat you like a stupid person; I will treat you like a smart person who is capable of having a reasonable conversation. But if you respond in a continued manner of stupidity; expect, at a certain point, to be stripped of every ounce of dignity you ever possessed. You're more transparent than you know. I have no problem hurting your feelings when I know that doing so might wake you up to some information that might save you much greater suffering down the road.

I'm not saying that I'm always going to be right. There will be many times that I'm wrong and I pray to God in Heaven that I will be corrected promptly when I say something wrong. I live by the golden rule: I won't do unto you what I would not want done to me if I was in your shoes. Be warned, if I care enough, I will choose beneficial over pleasant any day. I will carefully consider your perspective but I will not ignore my own. "Hurtful" and "hateful" are not the same thing. Consider yourself honored if I love you enough to risk you hating me in the off chance that hurting you will help you have a better life in the years to come. If you get yourself into serious trouble, I will not have it on my hands that I had the chance to warn you but passed it by because I didn't want to deal with the conflict. I am committed never to say something that is hurtful unless it is also compassionate.

Finally, being critical is not the same as being judgmental. Being judging is different than being judgmental. Being judgmental means that you make judgments on a person's value/character based on their actions. Being critical/judging means that you make judgments on the person's actions based on their actions. Just because I think you're being a total fuckface doesn't mean I forgot that Jesus loves you enough to die for you. I cannot judge character but I can judge behavior and I can tell you exactly what your behavior tells me about your character. If I truly were prejudiced enough to think that you were inescapably damned, I wouldn't have wasted my time. But if you find me making a judgmental statement to you (e.g. "I don't think you will ever quit being a stubborn, closed-minded, self-righteous asshole."), it's because I hope you will be offended and prove me wrong. Either way, I can't lose because I'll either be correct or I'll have helped you succeed in life.

All that being said, I love to converse, debate, and philosophize. I believe that exploring, challenging, and thoughtfully criticizing ideas is how we find out if they possess the integrity to be worth embracing. Let your arguments be fueled by the desire for the exposition of truth, not the preservation of belief. If your beliefs are really worth believing, they will only stand stronger the more rigorous the scrutiny becomes. If your beliefs crumble under criticism, your zealous commitment to those beliefs will be your downfall.

To correct is to love and to love is to win. To be corrected is also to win as you no longer must be fooled by the untruth you used to believe. Whether correcting or corrected, if you pay attention to sound reasoning, you can always end the day correct. But don't leave before you've gotten your chance to win.

Thank you.

I might ask you to quit Christianity Part 1 of 2: Door-to-door Evangelists

While at work, recently, my coworker and I were approached by a pair of men, one of which was holding a Gospel tract. Before we knew what was going on, one of them asked us, "Are you saved?" I didn't want to answer because I knew what was about to happen. I stood there silently for a couple seconds before I answered, "Well, I am." Based on their reaction I immediately wished I had just lied. They closed in on my coworker and started grilling him. As they held out the tract for one of us to take, I inquired, "What group are you guys with?" "Oh, no, no, no, no," the main man replied, "It's not religion that saves you, it's Jesus. We're part of a home group." 

*stunned silence* 

I held my tongue, the voice in my head screams, "You still didn't answer my fucking question. Who are you?" They stood there for about a minute, handing my silent coworker the pamphlet and rapid-firing evangelistic cliches in a very urgent tone. I wished I hadn't accidentally thrown my coworker and dear friend under the bus like that. I should have lied and said that we both were devout Christians or that neither of us were. Even better, I should have told them that my friend next to me wouldn't shut the fuck up about Jesus and that I was an atheist who was considering conversion to a Satanist cult and that I was learning magic spells. It was too late, though. Thankfully, my coworker took one tract and gracefully made his way out of the room. The propaganda bearing stranger brought me another tract, possibly thinking that I had been lying about being saved myself.

After they left, I looked at the pamphlet they had handed me. "Born again?" it read on the front. The inside fold headlined, "THE WAY OF THE CROSS LEADS HOME." Every inch of the flyer that was not occupied by the cartoon illustration was covered in text. I tried reading through the tract and became so bored and irritated, I couldn't finish it. It didn't make sense. I passed by my coworker in the hallway and said, "Hey, I was reading that tract those dudes gave us. I can't even understand it!" He laughed, knowing already the strength of distaste I have for people who evangelize like that. I'm glad he understands that I'm not one of them.

It's funny how things will tie together so perfectly. My dad and I had just been having a conversation before I left for work about how good it would be for people to leave "Christianity" and embrace Christ. I drove to work thinking, "I've got my next blog post topic! My hook is going to be a title that asks people to stop being Christians!" I had no idea all of this was going to happen, but I was glad that it did. Though I would rather that it didn't happen at all to anybody, I'm relieved that it happened on my watch.

More and more things popped into my head as I periodically scanned this small document that had been handed to me by some anonymous evangelists. It took me a while to realize that they had never identified themselves. They handed me a tract, told me to believe in Jesus, and left without providing a means for continued correspondence. The piece of paper they had handed me was not even written in modern English, but was primarily comprised of a dizzying vernacular used only in the stuffiest of church communities. It was a soupy mess of King James Version scripture fragments and some of the thickest Christianese I had ever attempted to read. The truth is that if I had not already been a believer in Jesus Christ but had been vaguely interested in the faith, this experience probably would have been one of the biggest turn-offs ever.

Hindsight's always clearer

During a drive to Oakland for a church service, last Saturday evening, the sun hit the pavement of the I580 Westbound at just the right angle that the surface of the road appeared almost perfectly white. On certain patches of road where there had recently been construction, I noticed that I was not the only driver in traffic who was having a tricky time determining which marks in the road were the current lane dividers. By the time my epiphany happened, I was now driving on a stretch of road where there were no markings to confuse with each other. The fresh pavement, which appeared white because of the angle of the sun, was separated into lanes by the faint outlines of the dashed white lines; which appeared the same color as the road, but different in texture. When I looked into the rearview mirror, I was startled by the fact that the road appeared much darker from the other direction and that the contrast between the color of the road and the broken white lines was stark and unmistakable. I couldn't help but chuckle at how perfectly that illustrates how we see life - perfectly, when in hindsight.

The list goes on and on of all the things I wished I had said to those incredibly confusing evangelists. Mainly, I kicked myself for not demanding answers. 

"Are you saved?"

There's not much I wanted to say to that. Really, it's rude to ask. If I could give a better response than I did, I would have said, "I've heard of Jesus but I don't understand why he matters. Gospel in sixty seconds. GO!" If anybody's gonna be going around and cold-selling to a bunch of random strangers, they'd better have a simple and concise explanation for their mission. I really wanted to ensure that they actually understood the Gospel if they were going to be walking around and bothering people with it. Better prepared, I would have put them on the spot.

"Religion doesn't save you; Jesus saves you."

My internal commentary raged, "No shit, dumbass. I asked what group you are associated with. Don't go assuming that I think that only a particular religion or denomination leads to salvation. I don't worship religion: I worship Jesus. You don't know me and I have given you zero evidence that I am not better-read and more thoroughly educated about scriptures than you are." I had literally told these folks that I was a follower of the one true way. They narrowed my query down to this one unspecific fact, "We're with a home group." I have a lot to say about this tidbit: 

Think about why I would ask where you came from. You assumed that I believe salvation has something to do with denomination, but it is not the only reason why I asked you. My biggest problem is that you skirted the issue without answering a legitimate question. That casts doubt in my mind of your credibility. I wouldn't have asked the question if I couldn't do something with the information contained in your answer. Telling me if you are associated with the Nazarene, Southern Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Assemblies of God, Calvary Chapel, Pentecostal, United Methodist, Episcopal, or whatever organization will help me understand a piece of who you are and what specifically you believe about the Bible. Even if you're part of a non-denominational home group, enlighten me as to whose canons most resemble yours. Who are the teachers and scholars who have most enlightened your study of scriptures - directly or indirectly? Though you are not wrong that Christ is the only means of salvation, my question was targeted to understand what your means of accountability were to keep you centered on Christ. Telling me that you believe the Bible is irrelevant to me because I've met plenty of crazies who, while saying that they believe the Bible, actually cling to beliefs that are very unbiblical.

The Pamplet

There are several issues I took with the Gospel tracts they gave us. I'm having a hard time knowing where to begin. 

1) It's not in any language that a non-Christian would understand. Even to someone who was born and raised in the church, this tract makes very little sense. Not only is this tract incredibly boring to read, but the reader is left to try and figure out what things like, "born again," "kingdom of God, "sin," and "repentance" actually mean. That means that it is neither interesting nor easy to read. 

2) In order for me to believe anything that this damn tract says, I have to already believe in the Bible. So even if an atheist or an agnostic takes the time to read and comprehend the contents of this piece of paper, it has made no connections to observable life to make it believable. The verse references are only useful to the people who already respect the Bible as an infallible source of truth. This tract could be greatly improved by removing the constant citations and expressing the word of God in plain modern English. Even footnotes would have been a less obstructive method of citing sources.

3) In this instance, scripture verses cannot be used to establish the credibility of a teaching. The supposed target audience doesn't believe in the Bible, yet. Instead, realities that the reader can already verify to be true should be used to establish the credibility of scriptures. The inerrancy of scriptures should never be an assumption when evangelizing. This is a matter of prudence. A faith that cannot be tested should not be trusted. As believers, we understand the Word of God as a foundation or a rock (imagine a giant boulder sticking out of the ground). Before we build our whole lives on the truth of scriptures, we need to examine it and test it to make sure that it is indeed as strong as it is said to be, which is why I'm still a Christian today. This makes it possible for us to believe in the power of Jesus's sacrifice with full assurance rather than with mere blind faith. In other words, this tract is great at establishing what we want you to believe, but not necessarily why you would be wise to believe it.

4) This is not an effective way to make followers of Christ. I have never met these men before they came in and started preaching about Jesus. The only reason they were standing and talking to me was because they wanted to tell me about Jesus. That's offensive. If your only reason for friendship with me is to convert me, I'm not your friend: I'm your project. Without getting to know me, you're trying to change me.

Truth be told, sharing the Gospel is a lot like farming. Farming is more than planting seeds. Imagine that the news of Jesus Christ is the seed and that people are the ground. Seeds will not take root in ground that is not cared for. This is stuff that takes time. As Christians, if we ever want to help people get to Heaven, we've got to love the hell out of 'em. The better we love people, the more likely they are to believe the message of love we speak of. And what love means is that even if a person never accepts Jesus, we have still left them better than when we found them.

5) If, after reading this tract, I decided that I did want to follow Jesus, I have no way of contacting these people. One of the biggest things passing out tracts like this misses is that we weren't just commanded to tell people about the Gospel; we were commanded to make disciples. Even after a person is converted, we believers who have been walking with God for a while have a collective responsibility to guide, train, and nurture new believers so that they will be well-equipped to make more disciples. 

"Hey, bro! Move along. I'm already taking care of it, here."

Was it weird that I felt somewhat, I don't know, territorial? Protective? Maybe I'm just annoyed that some strangers think they can waltz into my place of employment and convert my friends to Christianity in a matter of minutes with their clumsy "preaching," despite having done nothing to build the trust of their hopeful converts. How can strangers think they can do better than I after I've spent nearly two years there being the best damn friend and witness I possibly could be to people who know that I love, admire, and support them. How dare you come in thinking that you can do better sharing Jesus to them than I? Have you crawled in the retail trenches together with these employees? Have you been to their shows or attended their parties? They're my comrades and you don't know jack shit about their lives. They don't even know you, so why would they give a fuck what you have to say? Maybe it's the arrogance that may have bothered me. Or was it the ignorance?

Deeper than whatever sense of pride or misplaced air of "ownership" I may have felt about it, my heart raced because I wanted to protect people I love, as though I was defending my own family. Not only was it counterproductive and just entirely stupid to think that these dumb little pieces of paper in a foreign language and the intense barrage of high-pressure evangelism could overcome the numerous objections that reside in the minds of my friends and colleagues; it was an assault to my coworkers' intelligence. It's as though our visitors assumed that all the objections standing between my unsaved coworkers and their acceptance of Jesus were feeble enough to be diagnosed and addressed in a matter of minutes by perfect strangers distributing cheaphandouts. It's the fact that I am on a daily mission to clean up the damage that idiocy like this causes to earnest seekers; yet people still go out and intentionally say fucked up shit that makes the entire Christian community look like a bunch of hyper-spiritual, brain-dead, lemmings who lack any critical thinking capacities of their own.

And that's what brings me to part-two of this topic: Don't be that guy. Nobody wants to be "that guy." Somewhere along the line, we get it put in our heads that we're supposed to be so annoying that people will hate us so that we can be martyrs who love Jesus more than life itself. Just because Christianity has been persecuted worldwide doesn't mean we need to try and make people want us dead. If you're living in the United States of America and you think you're being persecuted for your faith, it's likely that you're being a self-righteous, closed-minded asshat who doesn't know how to act like a mature adult.

Please read on to part II: I might ask you to quit Christianity <br/> Part 2 of 2: Don't be "that guy"