Be real, not just nice / Julian McMahon is kinda hot. / "Natasha" / Everything's better with music / I think maybe you'll like this / Every super-villian needs a cat / My brief burst of glory / Who says Lego is for kids? / Every superhero needs a butler / Delirium is for me. /

:: Thursday, July 20, 2006 ::

Losing my religion

I know I've not been blogging of late, but I've been caught up in the whirlwind of school life - teaching, and not actually being taught. The many teachers who I seem to know will emphathise with this.

Well, it's reached a point where sometimes I neglect God. Funnily, I never neglect myself, because I always feel the need to unwind after a day, which I do. And there's sleep, which takes up the biggest proportion of my time. (Curse this sleep disease! Can't keep my eyes open for more than 20 hours a day!) It's not that I've forgotten Him, or rejected Him. Just that I'm not spending a whole lot of time with Him. Strange though, considering I could be with Him all the time... He's always available. =)

I think about Him a lot in class, or when I'm idling, watching my CT teach. I wonder how I could possibly do His work in my profession. I don't think I'm called to be a zealot and hand out religious tracts in class (I don't think my employers would take very kindly to that). And I also think about how my religion is not a pass to judge others, to say to myself "No, I wouldn't do that", it's not my right to place myself higher than others through my... or rather His standards. Still I wonder how I can show others about my religion.

I understand the concept of living the Christian life - but how to embody it so fully that people can see? They only see the surface of it: they know we go to church, or that we have cell, or that we say grace before meals. Then again, maybe it's not something for me to ACTIVELY find a way to show... Maybe God has a plan. I definitely need, however, to curb my berserker rage when it comes to people who express opinions that run contrary to my own knowledge. I debated with a colleague about the merits of a continuous schedule of reinforcement versus an infrequent one. I suppose what gets me is that he credits educational psychology with methods but doesn't feel that they work. Or perhaps he does: the result of our 'discussion' was he said whether or not a method works depends on the class - methods should be used to suit the class. I really shouldn't be aggrieved, considering I can't claim to be the foremost expert on psychology, but sometimes it bugs me that we go through the system and yet when we get out, we don't know the meaning of positive and negative reinforcement. (That positive and negative don't mean whether the reinforcement is GOOD or BAD.) Or that habituation is not really the process of habit-forming. Who am I to say. I don't want to, anymore, because we just talk and listen to ourselves. At least if I stop talking, I'll be listening to someone else for real, instead of just watching out for a moment to express my own view.

Went off on a tangent there, but it's pertinent to what I feel - I shouldn't categorize people in my head, or mark them indelibly with names. Being who I am, I think it's important I behave fairly to everyone whether or not I like them. Also, less self-glorification, of delighting in the sound of my own voice - more actual listening to people. Even if they're whining. =)

The title of this post ties back to a thought I've been having over the past two weeks. Given my hectic state, I've been wondering - what if I wasn't Christian? What if right at this point, I decided, "No, sorry, I can't do this anymore, it takes up too much time"?

I'd have much more free time, for sure. But how would my life change? Is this acceptable, even foreseeable? It's so easy to fall into a schedule and forget what you are. As a student, sometimes you only know of when to wake up, what classes to go to - but you forget why you're doing it. You only realise the loss when you stop doing it. What about social pressure? You feel obligated to do something because everyone you know is, because everyone would look at you differently if you stopped. I have to ask myself - am I Christian because I'm used to it? Am I Christian because other people expect me to be?

I hope not.

It's not something fully extrinsic. It's hard to test this unless I just stop attending, stop talking about it, stop thinking about it. I don't want to be chasing a dream, doing because it's my role. Because I have to.

I want it to be me. Something that is so irrevocably a part of who I am that without it, I am nothing. Something so dear to me that if I ever lost this bond, I would die inside. A relationship that I cannot just leave or take - something I must have at all cost. I want to feel it that deeply and do things because I believe in its power.

At the same time, there are always things you have to do even when you don't feel like it, even when you don't trust yourself, even when you don't believe. Frankly, it's what keeps me going sometimes, although memory can be a fickle mistress who comes and goes and leaves you in your darkest hour without your shining truths.

But I keep coming back. God willing, I will keep remembering these truths.

And now I'm back. Did you miss me? *smile*

Labels: Philosophy

:: And that's all she wrote 7:42 PM [+] ::
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