Why I'm Not Religious

To my Christian readers: this post is meant to be an introduction to a topic, not a perfect explanation of the theology involved in the many concepts presented here. A theological debate may be appropriate for later posts, but it is not for this one. Thank you for your understanding.

To my other readers: if anything at all in here confuses you, please ask me for clarification. I want to be able to talk about these kinds of things in such a way that they can be understood no matter the background of the person reading it.

If you read those two notes, or my post from two weeks ago, you're probably scratching your head right now at the title of this one.

Yes, I am a Christian.

No, I am not religious.

(And, yes, I really love messing with people's minds.)

Making Abstract Philosophy Practical

As you may know, I'm working on revising an anthology.

As you may not know, I originally wrote some of these pieces eight years ago (aka, when I was just barely a teenager). I'm discovering that I've changed a lot since I wrote them, and it's weird to find another person speaking through my words.

Which means I have a problem. Well, more like a choice:

In my first year of university, I took a philosophy class called "Knowledge and Reality" which is a shorter way of saying:

The Scariest Thing on the Internet

"The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story." Chimimanda Adichie

I'm scared out of my mind to say that I'm a Christian, or to talk about Christianity.

In one of my earlier blog posts, tried to talk about this, but I skated around the issue and explained everything very poorly. I didn't say what I was thinking because I was scared.

Mostly everywhere I go on the media and everyone I hear from that's not Christian has Christians as the enemy. As bigoted, controlling, hypocritical, stupid, foolish, backwards, crazy, hateful, pushy, uncaring, oblivious to the real world, ignorant… look at Sheldon's mom in The Big Bang Theory for the harmless version of the stereotype and US politics for the more destructive.

When I read or listen to conversations on the subject of feminism, slavery, the LGBTQ community, or various other topics, Christianity is portrayed as the oppressor, the killer of freedom, and the instigator of harm and fear. Christians are the scum of the earth, the cause of slavery, racism, and sexism; they are the close-minded and small-minded, holier-than-thou and bible thumpers. They are the WASPs and all the negativity that comes with them.

Even if the wording isn't as strong as that, repetition has this funny way of making even the weakest words take on greater meaning and significance.

My Adventures with Camp NaNoWriMo 2012

Gotta say, winning feels good :)

Last month marked my second time participating in Camp NaNoWriMo, otherwise known as the summer version of that thing where people try to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month.

(Writers in general are slightly bonkers, but even we admit that coming up with this takes a special kind of crazy).

My friend says that it takes about a week until a person's brain can disengage from their NaNo story and start thinking about normal(ish) things. I agree. My novel basically took over my brain while I was writing it and the unfolding plot was the primary cause of all but one of the emotional upsets I had the whole month.