Today is Thanksgiving and we all know what that means! Turkey! Juuuuust kidding.

The irony is that I can’t eat turkey and most foods, so the food side of this holiday is rather meaningless to me. But, although that’s what this holiday is known for, it’s not what it’s about. Turkeys and banquets could have been non-existent and there would still be a Thanksgiving holiday. Don’t take this holiday for granted!

The ritual of hanging out with family that I don’t normally see is refreshing (although stressful for me). I find that that is something I’m thankful for. Although I am thankful every second of my life for the things below, Thanksgiving is the one time a year where I openly try to list all of it. I still miss plenty of things.

I have a rather long list of things I can go through, so I suppose I’ll start listing them:

First off, I am utterly grateful to have a truly loving and saving Father, the rescuer of the unworthy.
I am thankful that I get to spend time with my family, and that my family has been good to me.
I am thankful that I have had the opportunities to go on charity events, do volunteer work, go on mission trips, and be able to talk about God with my friends.
I am thankful that I have the opportunity to go to college and learn, and in my independent studies, learn the nature of God and his rule.
I am thankful that God has changed me away from my sinful past. Along the same line of thinking, I am thankful that God has graced me with the Liberty that He has imparted unto me.
I am thankful I am given the opportunity, in the future, to have an impact and reach, and to have been given the tools to help those in need in the future.
I am thankful that God granted me the affinity for code and coding, and that He has given me the opportunity to learn more about it.
I am thankful for all of my friends who have been there for me and who have helped me through my struggles.
I am thankful that God has given us the ability to love and form relationships of many kinds.

And on the more peripheral side:
I am thankful for the creativity that God has given us, and the creative expression of music, art, literature, and any of our own interaction.
I am thankful for all the items/possessions I have and that they are constructive and help me on with my outreach and knowledge

Most importantly I am thankful for the Saving Grace of our Father and that He has given the opportunity to make changes in the lives of those who are close to me.

Today will be a long day, and I will be away from my computer for a good portion of the day, my friends. Hopefully, I’ll see you all soon enough.

While talking to someone about Calvinism and theology, a good question came into my mind (put into second-person):

Would you be a Christian if God never promised an afterlife?

Happy Thanksgiving Week to all!

I've consistently been mentally distraught over the course of the last three months, possibly because I’ve been doing too much without any bit of reasonable relaxation. Now that Thanksgiving Break has arrived, I’ve begun some retro-intro-spection.

On the [redacted] “debate” (it’s not a debate, trust me, it’s vile and offensive):
There’s not much to be said here. I can’t say that there’s anything more than someone falling for the oldest trick in Satan’s book: thinking that God is something other than what He is. I’ve studied for seven years, gone to multiple camps, done a handful of mission trips with intense studying, and got rebuked publicly by someone who argues for non-Christian beliefs that the person tried to compromise with God. Either God is of the Bible, or He isn’t. If he isn’t, it’s not Christian in the slightest. Compromise and God don’t go together. Contradiction and God don’t go together as well. (On another note, I’ve never had to use apologetics against “Christians” before.) They’re looking for hope in something temporary and ungodly, and I hope they all find the real God. I’d love to help them, but they’ve already shown how violently they don’t want me to. (Consequently, I think, they don’t want God to help them either.)

On sin:
This has a lot to do on the above, but I’ve noticed a particular lack of discernment amongst us Christians. That discernment we need is the ability to make good judgments (good decisions, basically). I’ve spent the last two years studying “meta-theology” and apologetics.

Theology: What the Bible says, its truths, and the nature of God.
Meta-theology: What it all means together, what it means when applied to normal life. (Infuses a lot with systematic theology, I’ve been told before.) (Keep in mind this is the term I’ve made up, so I have a name to attach to my methods of investigation.)

Regardless, I witness sinning all the time, since it’s a basic part of life, and is praised in some circles. I’ve also been reading The Screwtape Letters too, which helps me understand the losing spiritual battle behind sin too. I know, from my own experience, how the smallest thing we deem permissible or okay can lead to a downfall. It is, after all, the flaws in the details that really end up destroying things. One well-known fictional space-station-doom-machine serves a fine example, when mixed with the letter “x” and the word “proton.” (Indeed, it is something you never expect [or something you never expect to expect] that ends up getting us.)

The worst kind of sin is when it’s something we love. My most far-reaching… thing… (no idea what to call it) of my entire life so far has been my comment on sin being attractive. It has gotten the most attention, reached the widest audience I’ve experienced, and that’s it. When put short, it said “The most effective lure into sin is something we love.” And love can indeed, pose a threat. When that adoration and love of something or someone pulls you into sin, the line between love and action blurs. Love ends up becoming what you do for that person, rather than what you feel (in reference to emotion, not attraction) for that person. There’s a clear-set line for morality, and being tempted to cross it is already enough. Let it be gluttony, idolatry, sexual immorality, or the most common combination of them all, it’s still bad.

If something causes you to sin, it’s better to remove your ability to sin instead of endorsing it. (Matthew 5:30, be reasonable about that quote.)

On sexuality and relationships:
Yeah, still myself. Nothing new here, although I’m slowly starting to consider myself unavailable for relations at all. It would be a miracle should the option for a relationship be opened up to me. So, overall, I’m not going to worry about it, because it’s no good. Ïtra verdunst, still no good for me. The concept of relationships makes me uneasy, and if you want to know why, ask me in a private manner. If I end up staying single my whole life, so be it. If I do find some person unlucky enough to be with me my whole life, because they love me enough to put up with it, then maybe I have found the right person. It would, without doubt, be requited back, within reason.

On philosophy and theology:
I’m thinking about dropping this as a whole (which means an end to my private discussions and journal postings). After the first topic up there, I’ve considered that actually discussing the magical thing called Truth, I will probably get publicly crucified on an inverted cross, caught on fire, then tossed in a ditch. Then spat on and tossed in a black hole, because there’s no motivator like hatred (and it's wonderfully powerful against someone who doesn’t fight back; superiority is a wonderful feeling).

On writing:
Yeah, got big plans for Winter.

On music:
So much more music! Most of it’s not metal! Surprisingly.

On symbolism and fursona:
Anyone who knows me knows I made another change to Curo Amar Salus (symbolism present). I’m considering putting a red inverted cross somewhere on his body, because I love the symbolism there.

That’s all. Thoughts, anyone?

140 Characters don't cut it. Simply too short.

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I had started up a new Twitter account a while ago, this one unassociated with my old job (and therefore less followers but a lot more Christ). So all of my theological thoughts come out as aphorisms that I juice out and put the leftover online. Kinda sad, but it's enough to keep it going.

So, instead of being a theology or philosophy post, it's a life update post. There's likely to be another life update at the end of this semester when I find out if I'm going to stay at college for the following semester.

Still running through those C.S. Lewis books. I looked at a bunch from Ravi Zacharias yesterday when I got a couple of CDs including Living Sacrifice's "Ghost Thief." Such a great CD, that one.

Anyhow, monster trucks, music, and hockey. Pretty awesome Thanksgiving break so far, although I'm far happier being home with my family.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with The Screwtape Letters, it is a fictional compilation of letters from one devil to his "nephew," where God is the "Enemy." They are very diabolical indeed, but one of C.S. Lewis' masterpieces. They offer invaluable insight into the failings of mankind and how devils are most likely to get the best of us to make us fall further away from God. The writer, Screwtape, is a higher up devil of some kind, and his nephew, Wormwood, is a Junior Tempter. They show us the ways on how we fail and how the works of devils speed the failing. Alongside that, a believable image of demons interacting with each other is portrayed throughout.

It's a terrifying concept to behold, but a very important one, for if there is any realistic representation of devils, it is the one Lewis has so clearly shown us.

This is the twenty-third Screwtape Letter, copied letter for letter.

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23

My Dear Wormwood,

Through this girl and her disgusting family the patient is now getting to know more Christians every day, and very intelligent Christians too. For a long time it will be quite impossible to remove spirituality from his life. Very well, then; we must corrupt it. No doubt you have often practised transforming yourself into an angel of light as a parade-ground exercise. Now is the time to do it in the face of the Enemy. The World and the Flesh have failed us; a third Power remains. And success of this third kind is the most glorious of all. A spoiled saint, a Pharisee, an inquisitor, or a magician, makes better sport in Hell than a mere common tyrant to debauchee.

Looking around your patient's new friends, I find that the best point of attack would be the borderline between theology and politics. Several of his new friends are very much alive to the social implications of their religion. That, in itself, is a bad thing; but good can be made out of it.

You will find that a good many Christian-political writers think that Christianity began going wrong, and departing from the doctrine of its Founder, at a very early stage. Now, this idea must be used by us to encourage once again the conception of a "historical Jesus" to be found by clearing away later "accretions and perversions" and then to be contrasted with the whole Christian tradition. In the last generation we promoted the construction of such a "historical Jesus" on liberal and humanitarian lines; we are now putting forward a new "historical Jesus" on Marxian, catastrophic, and revolutionary lines. The advantages of these constructions, which we intend to change every thirty years or so, are manifold. In the first place they all tend to direct men's devotion to something which does not exist, for each "historical Jesus" is unhistorical. The documents say what they say and cannot be added to; each new "historical Jesus" therefore has to be got out of them by suppression at one point and exaggeration at another, and by that sort of guessing (brilliant is the adjective we teach humans to apply to it) on which no one would risk ten shillings in ordinary life, but which is enough to produce a crop of new Napoleons, new Shakespeares, and new Swifts in every publisher's autumn list. In the second place, all such constructions place the importance of their "historical Jesus" in some peculiar theory He is supposed to have promulgated. He has to be a "great man: in the modern sense of the word––one standing at the terminus of some centrifugal and unbalanced line of thought––a crank vending a panacea. We thus distract men's minds from Who He is, and what He did. We first make Him solely a teacher, and then conceal the very substantial agreement between His teachings and those of all other great moral teachers. For humans must not be allowed to notice that all great moralists are sent by the Enemy, not to inform men, but to remind them, to restate the primeval moral platitudes against out continue concealment of them. We make the Sophists: He raises up a Socrates to answer them. Our third aim is, by these constructions, to destroy the devotional life. For the real presence of the Enemy, otherwise experienced by men in prayer and sacrament, we substitute a merely probably, remote, shadowy, and uncouth figure, one who spoke a strange language and died a long time ago. Such an object cannot in fact be worshipped. Instead of the Creator adored by its creature, you soon have merely a leader acclaimed by a partisan, and finally a distinguished character approved by a judicious historian. And fourthly, besides being unhistorical in the Jesus it depicts, religion of this kind is false to history in another sense. No nation, and few individuals, are really brought into the Enemy's camp by the historical study of the biography of Jesus, simply as biography. Indeed, materials for a full biography have been withheld from men. The earliest converts were converted by a single historical fact (the Resurrection) and a single theological doctrine (the Redemption) operating on a sense of sin which they already had––and sin, not against some new fancy-dress law produced as a novelty by a "great man," but against the old, platitudinous, universal moral law which they had been taught by their nurses and mothers. The "Gospels" come later, and were written, not to make Christians, but to edify Christians already made.

The "historical Jesus," then, however dangerous he may seem to be to us at some particular point, is always to be encouraged. About the general connection between Christianity and politics, our position is more delicate. Certainly we do not want men to allow their Christianity to flow over into their political life, for the establishment of anything like a really just society would be a major disaster. On the other hand we do want, and want very much, to make men treat Christianity as a means; preferably, of course, as a means to their own advancement, but, failing that, as a means to anything - even to social justice. The thing to do is to get a man at first to value social justice as a thing which the Enemy demands, and then work him on to the stage at which he values Christianity because it may produce social justice. For the Enemy will not be used as a convenience. Men or nations who think they can revive the Faith in order to make a good society might just as well think they can use the stairs of Heaven as a short cut to the nearest chemist's shop. Fortunately, it is quite easy to coax humans round this little corner. Only today I have found a passage in a Christian writer where he recommends his own version of Christianity on the ground that "only such a faith can outlast the death of old cultures and the birth of new civilisations." You see the little rift? "Believe this, not because it is true, but for some other reason." That's the game.

Your affectionate uncle

Screwtape

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Source:
Lewis, C.S. The Screwtape Letters & Screwtape Proposes A Toast. New York: Time Incorporated, 1963. 80-83. Print.

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It's a bit heavy to take it at first, but, The Screwtape Letters have served as a massive helper for my own understanding of human beings.

Experience and Truth

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I find that it would have been smarter to write these little posts in a linear and orderly fashion, but it appears that I don’t plan things when regarding philosophy and hence my posts become disjointed and bounce between topics. This post takes a step back and moves into the realm of human interpretation of knowledge and the perspective. This is incomplete as it is a piece of philosophy that is still being worked through. That’s what these are all about, after all, exploration of knowledge. Please say something if I do miss a thing.

There is one perspective each human has and it is called experience. This perspective gives us our perceptive interpretation of reality which we copy into our minds, where things become more complex. This experiential perspective, however, is limited to what we can experience, and thus our minds are limited to recalling and constructing off of what we’ve experienced. We can’t create more than what we can make with the building blocks of reality we’ve exposed. This collection of perceptive info is sorted through with our minds and this sorting out we call understanding. This process of understanding uses reason and comparison to create relationships. It is these objects –perception, understanding, and relationships– that we call knowledge.

This knowledge, however, is not infallible. From knowledge it is possible to make false knowledge: misunderstandings, incorrect relationships, and delusions. These bits of false knowledge are found to be contradictions with what the truth is.

True means something along the lines of “in accordance to reality.” In the case of knowledge, untruth becomes whatever is not in accordance with reality. It becomes contradiction, which means that something is wholly wrong. Contradiction cannot stand against reality (consequently truth is reality).

The question has been raised before and it will likely be raised again: How do we know that the stimuli we are experiencing are true? The answer is quite interesting and has broad implications. If we observe reality for a long time, we begin to pick up patterns. Repetitions, constants, trends, much more. These things will likely always be there and are likely consistent. If they are, then they are likely the truth and knowledge can be gained through observation. Regardless, what is acknowledgeable once is often enough to satisfy our knowledge, until circumstance deems otherwise.

It is possible to have incorrect information, in which the brain has misinterpreted something or something entirely unusual happens and is something unexpected. This, however, does not dismiss the concept of truth, since if no human reasoning is true then no knowledge can be gained, and thus the whole human experience is dismissed as entirely random interpretation. Even the most basic actions require an understanding of some other thing, and if that is assumed to be possible without there being a truth, then it is experience as a whole being turned down as utter nonsense. Such would be the way of living with no knowledge, and is quite impossible.

The place of truth enters next on whether it applies to everything or not. If human reasoning cannot be trusted (held against some rule, often truth itself), then there is no concept of knowledge or truth between humans or within a human. Knowledge is derived directly from experience. For the most direct statement, it would be said that truth is reality and that is what we experience until our reasoning skills take over.

There is another major danger to knowledge that must be brought into the open. In order to try to produce truths without being forced to use reality as a guide for every single thing, we use reasoning (logic); the answer created by this we’ll name Conjecture. Logic has limits, and that limit is the base of knowledge and previous Conjectures. Logic as a system of reasoning, ideologically, would be close to perfect, but perfect logic requires perfect knowledge and that is something that humans will never be in possession of. However, the guesswork of our system of logic produces the Conjecture. Conjecture, in reference to earlier terms, is almost completely comprised of understandings and relationships. Once a Conjecture is tried against perception, then it discerned to be truth or not.

From this conclusion, it is safe to say that most of our knowledge is comprised of Conjectures, which although they may have been tried to others, have yet to be tried against the holder of the Conjectures. It is possible to have a Conjecture throughout the duration of someone’s life and never have it tried to be true or false. While something is a Conjecture, it is already (basically predetermined) true or false, but the knowledge of that status has yet to be discerned to the holder of the Conjecture.

This creates a gap of knowledge to anyone who examines their life: What do I know that I know is really true or not? Or in the terms of this post: Which of my Conjectures are true? Which of those Conjectures are lies, and which of those “truths” are only true under lies or false circumstance? How do these Conjectures affect my knowledge?

There is a lot of speculation to reasoning as a whole and to what extent can the products of such be held true.

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

I dunno how often nor how long I've been saying stuff like that, but I was so happy when I saw that quote last night. I suddenly felt less like an idiot and rebel for taking God and the Bible so seriously. This quote should be convicting us into a better lifestyle with God first. After all, it is only us and our decisions that gets in the way of a Holy relationship.

(I have not edited any bit of this entire post. Don't be surprised if you see a typo. They are common with me.)
Recently, I posted on Facebook, complaining about the intellectual state in modern times, and basically it's just a complaint.

Here's the post:
Salem Pertaeus on Facebook wrote:(This is a post of some intellectual importance and is pretty small.)

I believe the greatest fault of man is the fact that the education system has a major hole and that hole has to deal with philosophy. Perhaps, it has to do more with the understanding that people claim to know things, without the understanding of what it means to know things or the nature of knowledge. If someone claims to have water, but has no understanding of water, wouldn't you suspect that he's a liar or a bit daft? Would you believe someone who says they're smart who doesn't have any understanding of the nature of knowledge? We teach people philosophies (ideas) and we never tell them anything on the nature of knowledge. Don't you think that's a bit faulty?

One of my friends, replied beneath that with a comment, and as it usually is, it was discussion fuel (although one particular comment was cringe-worthy). I shall refer to that person as Person A as to protect the identity of the individual.
Person A wrote:I believe knowledge leads to problems. Is it a good this? Sure. Yet, the more I understand about how much people know... the more I realize we're doomed. Information is a good thing, too much information is overwhelming.

However, your point is valid. Most people have knowledge, but they don't know how to use it... Though, not having a grasp on the understanding of that knowledge isn't always necessary. You example of water is perfect.

A person can have water, and yet have very limited knowledge of water, and still know they have water. It would be very hard for Helen Keller to know beyond the basics of water, only knowing what she is told. I believe that's why faith was invented, yes?

To this I had a lengthy reply, in which I attempted to analogize and make clear connections to the best of my ability. I did, after all, have a lot to comment about.

SalemPertaeus, writing a book in the comments wrote:Sweet, a discussion.

I feel like commenting on your first paragraph, as it's something I've discussed before and is very very interesting. There is a balancing tool for knowledge, and knowledge I'll refer to as intellect, and that balancing tool is wisdom. What good is knowledge without knowing how to handle it? Every time humanity has advanced technology further than we've come to understand and learn how to handle it, it ends with some sort of destruction. Either the destruction of the past or the destruction of the future. You could wrap that up anyway you can, but at the bottom level, it's summed up as humanity being the lesser of whatever it has discovered, instead of being its master. (Read C.S. Lewis' "The Abolition of Man" as it touches on this topic too well.) If man cannot handle what it knows, it lashes out, sometimes in ways we can't understand. That is why intellect must be balanced out with both sense and reality. The problem with intellect as humanity progresses, is not that it learns too much, it's that we try to give too much to just a few people and from there, the problem starts. It's why the best options for the future are often by people with specialized knowledge in certain fields, or, if across broad fields, has the capability to manage it well.

Not necessarily, for you point on Faith. Faith is represented as many things, and has only recently come to mean the acceptance of something without evidence. It would be unreasonable to assume that faith is the trust in something without knowledge or inclusion of its verity. It originally meant trust, and while that could mean believing in something without evidence or is an unrealistic view, that is not what it was for. Faith is not an invention either, as it's something that is as integral to thought as is breathing to survival. You cut off faith, the intellect will eventually die as its spirals into contradiction or disbelief. That's where nihilism comes from, mainly, and it's rather well stated to say that nihilism is faith in nothing (or "belief" in nothing, if you will).

On the water argument, if you have an experience of water, you could, therefore relate to it somehow by relative thought. It is the scope and scale of that experience that will prove if one has real knowledge of it. Let's say I said I have a Bugatti, and, for real, all I know that a Bugatti is, is that's a very rich car. From the get-go, someone could show me what a Bugatti is and I would have no idea what it was, and they could call me out on that, and I would be that daft fool. But, it was the error of my argument to claim that I understood what a Bugatti was (an inherent argument that descends from saying I have one). That, would be the error of my intellect evading my wisdom. I would not have understood my knowledge correctly, and from that, I would have created the lie.

Ironically, this lack of evidence and understanding of lack of evidence pervades the intellectual society. How many people claim to have evidence? The next question is more important than if evidence even exists. It is: Do they understand the evidence, how valid it is, ALL of its implications, and does it really support their claim? Most often, people don't get past the second question, since they never ask it.

I feel, that, perhaps the greatest irony of all is that we claim to have knowledge and often don't examine it. I've read, watched, heard, and have done enough on my own to know that any semblance of knowledge needs to be critiqued to see if it's any bit true. And, aside from that, it needs to be critiqued on every aspect, brutally harshly, and by multiple people. This is the only way that any intellectual progress can be made. If you test knowledge, critique it, fix it, and reinforce it, it would be the same as building a house on rock. Not testing to see if the logic makes sense would be the equivalent of building a house on sand.

This steps into theology as it's a system of logic as well. I cringe when I hear "theology is just an opinion." That's only true to a certain degree. The greatest irony to some folks is that the easiest way to analogize is it compare it to science (it is, after all, a study of the logic of God, so technically a science). In science, there are many competing theories. The theories, however, are built on top of logic and knowledge that no one debates. Let's call that logic and knowledge "Fact" for brevity. Theories are always arguing what is next that we're discovering. The Fact, however, is undisputed. If the Fact is contested after is has been established, and someone were to argue it, it would be bad. Why? Well, the Fact has become accepted as literal and truthful and to argue against a logic system that is that concrete... it's basically nonsense.

By this point in time, it is a definite fact that 2 + 2 = 4, as this is both a quality of reality and of numerical representation. It is unreasonable to try to argue against it, but it is still done, to no avail. It is, in the same regard, nonsense to argue against the scientific community over something that is accepted. This does not address the competition of theories, as that is not a discussion of Fact. There is a refining system to Fact that cleans up and defines Fact more clearly and gives us another understanding. This does not change the nature of Fact itself.

In theology it is analogous to looking at how great men like C.S. Lewis and Ravi Zacharias have changed and refined our understanding of the Biblical Fact. These men clarify, expand, and sharpen the Biblical Fact so well that they are well known for their great speeches, books, and radio broadcasts all around the world. They did not alter Christian theology to map it to their worldview, or to change it, but instead clarify it. They cross-reference their work and understandings so that it is clear, literal, and intelligent. This is the nature of good theology.

Now, on the point that theology is an opinion, if we return there, comes to something I believe I should be able to sum up shortly. Theology is as much an opinion as competing theories are in the scientific realm. There's a reason why they are competing theories: The evidence and understandings at the time are not conclusive, and if they were to finally be concluded on, it should be in agreeance* whether it is good theology or not. Good theology, therefore, can indeed be an opinion but only if it works in accordance with the Biblical Fact. If it does not stand up against the Biblical Fact, then it is bad theology. This bad theology is sometimes defined as heresy if it is pursued, but I don't believe that's really that nice or fair.

I must also make clear, that as ridiculous an argument may sound, it must be heard out and then checked. It is not intellectually wise or fair to reduce an argument to absurdity without even knowing what it is about. I must also make it clear that I do refer to an argument that takes up arms against the Fact as intellectual suicide. Although that sounds extreme, is it reasonable to be the person that claims 2+2 is equal to 5?

*"Agreeance" is a word that I use because I have frequently come across it in literature. It was commonly used in the 19th Century and not much after. Now does my "English" journal make sense?

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I will be reading the following C.S. Lewis books over the course of this month:
Miracles
The Great Divorce
The Screwtape Letters and Screwtape Proposes a Toast
A Grief Observed
And I have recently read The Abolition of Man. Along with those, I will be reading Ravi Zacharias' "Just Thinking" magazines when they are posted.

I am also listening to various seminars on theology, logic, and philosophy. I will use these to refine my arguments.

Also, if you have any objections, please comment below. I would like to start a discussion.

I should stop reading bilinear translations and old-language texts. My English gets all goofy and weird because of it.

I have a lot of consideration to do tonight. I'm very upset and injured by some words that have been pressed at me recently and I have to deal with that somehow. Only thing I can do is bury myself in music and God's word and hope I have a revelation on how to deal with this kind of thing.

Yeah, lots of pain. That's what happens when you get a surgery like mine. I don't feel the urge to turn it into a theological analogy about how Jesus is sustaining me like my bar is upholding my chest.

The last couple of days have been utterly bonkers.

Saturday:
1) ExtraLife 2013 from Saturday to Sunday.

Sunday:
1) The end of ExtraLife 2013 (That I did not make it all the way through, unfortunately. Also, Extra Life was DDOS'd 4 times and who on Earth does that to a charity event!!?!)
2) After that, I went to a French play about Jacques Brels. Their audio was messed up so I didn't hear most of the play, which was saddening.
3) Aaand after that I went on a fun trip to the local Emergency Room at nine at night. From there, I get EKG'd, blood tests, X-ray'd, examined, and my chest all felt up.

For those who don't know, I had a surgery in June on the 5th, where a surgical steel bar was placed under my sternum. My sternum has a defect where it dips into my chest cavity, and typically that doesn't present a danger except for the people whose pectus excavatums press too far in. I'm one of those people. If it goes untreated, there's a chance that I could literally just drop dead when I get older (30-40 years of age). So, this bar is in place to keep it in check.

This bar presents issues to some people who get the rather random side effects. In my case, it's the cartilage that's causing issues, and quite possibly torn muscles in my chest. This, although rather minor in risk, fixes me frequently with paralyzing pain. I'm also unable to carry heavy items. Anyhow, I've been to two different hospitals, seen three doctors, and I received bad news.

Aside from taking 800mg ibuprofen for the pain, the only thing I can do is endure through the pain attacks. Literally, all there is to do is just sit through the pain until it goes away.

Also, I watched Ender's Game and cried for the last part of the movie. That's a long time crying. I suppose that's what happens if you read the book beforehand.

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I've recently been shown some really bad examples of humanity and because of such, I have a new fear for the world that stems not humanity's depravity, but the praise of such (which is conversely just more depravity, really) (and to be clear this is a broad statement that envelops a fairly large portion of humanity). I know not what to do. I can't argue with some people, because they ignore me, label me, and stuff words in my mouth. There's not really anything I can do about it, except pray and hope to God they realize their material desires and earthly wants and find the change they need.

How do you argue with people that don't listen? How do you show someone God's Grace when they push away for their sinful lifestyle? How do you save someone who thinks they're already saved, and because they think they are saved, that they can do whatever they want?

That's not Christianity. Not one bit. You can't enter Christianity, experience God and His Grace, and then be the same person when you leave. God will transform you, and that's when you know that God's acting in your life. Things will have meaning, you will love others, and you will have all of your desires laid to waste in order to improve the world, yourself, and to ultimately come to know God's Love firsthand.

Recently, I've been labeled a handful of things and that whole situation has turned to ick. Just everything about it is ick. That person makes claims about me and there's nothing I can do to defend against it; and I'm really bothered because they're lies. How do you show someone the real you, your real intentions, and the real Grace of God when they paint their image over you and you have no say in the manner? It's not only unfair, but it's an act of condemnation. I've been condemned by a group with a name that suggests it's for everyone. Apparently not me, though. I read the Bible and don't believe in contradiction, and that means I failed the test.

It's not a game of intentions, it's not a game of Faith. It's a game of change, love, Grace, and holiness (holiness being "like Christ"). Being like Christ means understanding God, what He wants, and letting Him change us so we can be the positive change in the world that removes all concepts of the word "impossible." He saves us from the depravity, the unholy lifestyles we live. We live those lifestyles because we think we have all the answers and that because we enjoy it so much, it must be right. In the end, where will the fulfillment be? In the end, there won't be a thing that's still yours, unless it is one of the few things that God has given us.

But, how do we know what's truly good and what isn't? It should become apparent the closer you get to God's real Grace. If you're already a Christian, you should have a strong community to be a part of and you have God. You have His Authority (His Word) and that Authority is the whetstone to sharpen your blade off of. It also acts as the cure to the infection of depravity that is within you. (See: Jeremiah 17:9)

That infection... It's like an addiction. It calls to you, it pulls on you when you're low. It gives you false satisfaction and you will always want more, but never get it. It will pull you into the darkness, but makes it so comfortable that you will love every second of that darkness, and soon it will be all you know and love. You can't see the light if you don't look for it, or look away from it. It's likely that the sun is shining and all you need to do is open your eyes.

Everybody's looking for answers, and they're handed short-term and shallow fixes by their depravity. Everybody has their depravity, and everybody struggles with it (See: Psalm 58:3, Romans 3:23, Genesis 6:5, and many more). It is God's Grace that saves us, and He doesn't give it out until we really believe (Faith) and want to show it (Works).

Even then, as I've stated before, depravity can give you a false idea of God. A God that fits your earthly nature and it's a God of lies and destruction. A wolf in sheep's clothing. False theology pushed by those who speak lies and will defend it unto their death. That is depravity. It is a dangerous piece of human nature that pulls on Man's inability to assess what is wrong on its own. It's a terribly good thing that we're not alone, at all, and we're given both a measuring tool and the cure-all to fix it.

Happy Reformation Day (and on the side, Halloween)!

Today marks one of the largest and most significant changes in the Western culture of the world.

The more I see other Christians, the more I see less of Christ and that's a major indicator that something is wrong. It’s not that people are falling into sin, it’s that they’re already in it and never left it. There’s so much Bible-bending (as opposed to Bible-thumping, I suppose) and much less humbling going on.

God is greater than all of us (I am no exception, in fact, so I don’t have to add more things in, just pretend I’m included as part of the people I’m talking about). “Being all you can be” is where people slip up, and this is not just a theology thing. We’re all stuck with two perceptions in this world: the perception of ourselves and the perception of outside things and others. If we hold ourselves to the concept of “all we can be” that we created for ourselves, then we may or may not be (and we definitely are) missing the plans God has for us. If I, myself, had stayed to the path I created and wanted for myself I wouldn’t be living right now, fair and simple. I would have been gone seven years ago.

Already, God has made a massive impact on my life, and this because I accepted him as my Lord. I’m under His reign and control; He’s not under mine. I learned what it meant to be human clay. I learned not to conform myself; but instead to be transformed by God, to become something greater than I was before. Nothing about this is easy and nothing about the Bible says it will be. It never had before.

To become greater in God’s eyes, we have to be lesser in our own. We have to denounce our own authority, become smaller, and only then will we learn what God has for us. We can never know everything, we can never know God’s perfect plan for us. But we do know what He’s already given us. It’s not that we need to destroy ourselves, and our personalities. We should be ourselves in this order: God first, then others next, then us last. Everything we do should glorify God if we’re to get anywhere and be anything like He wants us to be.

Life is not easy, this is something everyone knows. There’s backstabbing, giving up, failing, pride, gluttony, and a long list of things that we all have done and will do. It’s not that we mess up in life. It’s that we try, and there’s a significant difference between the two. Our attempts to do what we can and to be Holy are what are important. Nobody’s perfect. Nobody’s perfect. Am I the only who noticed that our greatest failures are when we give up?

But it’s not hopeless. It’s never hopeless, even when things are the hardest, we have God there, waiting for us. He’s there for us, always. Never give up and never fear. God is with us.

There is always hope.

Somewhere.

---

I've found that the source of all my problems recently has been caused by two things:
1) Things I love, and can't have.
-and-
2) Things I hate but get anyway.

So my solution for the first step has been to simply kill my desires with a baseball bat sized Cross (the actual outcome of such is debatable). The other I'm having issues with I'm not sure how to deal with, but they're there anyways.

Those kind of things are drama mostly, and Calculus that I can't complete because my notes aren't detailed enough and the book doesn't explain the examples, just gives points A and B.

The kind of drama that I have I don't know how to deal with. I simply lack the people-smarts to do so. I don't know how to solve these issues, or how to fix the problems I'm having with how to deal with it. I simply come up short, so I sorta gave up.

...And I've been doing that a lot, recently.

On the issue of giving up, I'm become hypocritical, as I do with most of the personal issues I have. Particularly, I tell people not to do what I end up doing anyway. That's a character flaw, and I know everyone is a hypocrite but that doesn't justify squat. No one's perfect, and no one gets exceptions in the end.

So, I need help on that, and I don't know who to go to. I don't trust that many people.

Mesri drahnk groenðs.

Yeeeeeeaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh.....

As a result of my taking my journaling habits off of FA into a physical notebook, I think I'll stop journaling on here altogether unless I feel like it and resume my blog and writing projects. And once those get going, I'll probably share what they are here.

After long debates between myself and myself, then more between a friend and I, I've decided that Goal #1 is no longer a goal at all. Instead, my other goals are just sliding forward.

So what's that mean?

I'm marrying Computer Science, focusing on my studies at MST, and I'm going to resume writing my book. I may even resume making music.

Heh, so whether that has a positive impact or negative impact has yet to be determined.

Maybe it's just a matter of time before it all catches up with me? I already know what I'm doing.

(For those who don't know, "Trinus" is the fictional word for the triune God in reference to my fiction.)

When I was younger, maybe eight years of age, I had my first experience that could be summed up as "unexplainable." For that reason, I refuse to share it, because I can't put words to it. However, that event led me to believe in God about four years later.

Maybe it was the death of my first step-father that kicked it off when I was eight. (The experience was about a week before my step-dad did pass.)

However, the feelings I had mixed in with the internal struggle with emerging sexuality led me to believe that life was simply more than what we were seeing. Nothing added up. I borrowed text books from school and read them, but nothing made sense. I talked to my science teacher through e-mails for weeks. But nothing made sense. It was a time in my life that I was stricken of any belief and was left on my own to experiment with everything.

I was bisexual at the time, and that was an awkward experience. Nothing feels weirder than learning about sex in school and then coming home with thoughts like "That was gross." Anyhow, I decided I didn't want any of it and started working on self-control. I also worked on taming desires, shutting my mouth and listening, and listening on more than just a physical level. My mom told me once, "You'll hear God if you listen." So I would sit down for hours in my room and just listen, and think.

So I started listening and found that God made much more sense in my personal life and in everything else. So there began my change. I'd sit down and read the Bible randomly; just open up a page and begin. I found particular happiness in Proverbs and the book of Daniel (there's irony there). I read most of it, and I sought to understand, not judge. I sat down with a youth minister of my local church and talked with him for hours. I actually started paying attention in church. I never experienced a spiritual high unless I was really meaning something and learning something new about God.

But, my forgetful nature limited me. I couldn't remember phrases and numbers well at all, so I would frequently forget Book names and numbers. It's why I can't throw out verses from the Bible. I have to sit down and just read and read over and over.

Anyhow, this lead to my "enlightenment" and my quest for all knowledge and my journey to seek the truth. After observing everything I see, I feel God all around me.

But the next step in my Faith, I guess, is having God in me. Making sure I have His voice in my ears, and His substance in my veins. I need His passion and will to do what I must to help others.

I realize as people, we all fail as a whole and on an individual level. I struggle with both concepts.

As a race, humanity is doomed, because- well, you know. Overpopulation, power control, pollution, etc. None of that is good.

As an individual, though, I realize I lack quite a bit. As part of my general decline in the last year and a half, I noticed that I have begun to lose some of my skills. Particularly, it is in writing. That, to my understanding, was never too great to begin with without a plethora of revision. My musical writing style lacks serious thought and construction, plus I have no education in music theory, which only compounds the inadequacy. My art skills never developed, so I'm stuck to stick figures and lines for facial features.

I feel that there is instead a trade off, for my skills. Instead of being generally broadly-skilled as I was when I was younger, I have been culled into focusing on one thing. So the enrichment of education has disappeared into the numbing down process of specialization. As I have become more focused on computer science and technology (along with theology), I have begun to lose my skills from lack of use.

So there comes the challenge of meeting bars set in place by others, education systems, friends... It seems I'm failing those across the board. It's an awful feeling, realizing that I failed to meet expectations, or to fulfill a job placed before me. I feel that I'll be doing that as a student too, and I don't want that to happen. That's where all my focus will be going. I've been shown repeatedly that dating people is bad, so I'll be dating computer science for the rest of my life. (Along with the fact that I'm not good-looking, as I've been told by approximate three non-family persons.)

(No, I won't create a computer girlfriend, that's disturbing).

I need a model, or a plan of some sort, to really construct a schedule so I can maintain what I have. Hopefully, I don't get burnt out or shut down while I do all this- College costs a lot. I'll owe >$40,000 just for the first year. That's a lot of debt for my degree, and just my first degree.

However, this conflict may not be that surprising to other people. But for an overanalytical "genius" it can be very destructive over time. It doesn't look like I'm losing my skills to me, really, it looks like I'm not enough. As far as I'm aware, that's true. I can apparently only set certain bars and meet those if I give all of myself to meet that bar.

I am, however, not enough to meet all those bars, as I struggle with one. Hopefully, I'll be a better student than I would ever be as a boyfriend, or a musician/composer, an artist. Depressing thoughts, maybe, but it's been my life growing up, so I'm neutral about it. It's like becoming familiar to an annoying colored paint on the wall. You hate it, but end up liking it because it soon becomes all you know.

Oh well. I just have to suck it up and endure, because apparently it will all be worth it in the end. Who knows what that would be like? I've only had one taste of my own happiness, and that ended terribly, so maybe my hopeless constructs of utopia hold up into the next world.

Tuesday, July 20th, 2013 ~ 8:44 PM (CST)

I've struggled the last two months up to today. Particularly, my struggles started maybe two days into my recovery with the first introduction to the pain I would be feeling. When that had happened, I had balled up, my muscles pulling tight, pressing on and squeezing my chest. Being so cold and shivering inside seventy degrees (F) had somehow rendered me unable to move. I was practically carried back to the hospital bed after screaming and crying through gritted teeth. I was placed under two blankets and several coats. This was... the most physically painful experience of my recovery, but not the most painful experience of my life.

That title goes to something else that actually generated more anger than any other experience in my entire life. The worst part is that it confirmed my doubts. That was a hard pill to swallow. Mixed in with hallucinations, shivers, and nightmares, this all fit together.

Had I know something like this would've happened, I would've probably never became a furry and would've kept looking.

Anyway, I'm diminishing spiritually as well as a person. I rarely ever get hungry, at most I eat once a day because my parents are watching. All around I feel as if I losing my marbles. The only thing that hasn't been affected is how I hold onto my morals. Ironically, that's all I feel I will have left besides my family and a few friends. Those seem to be the only things that stick around no matter what I do.

All I want to do now is be alone, maybe rot in my room under my blanket. Going back to how I was as a kid. Just sit around all day, play video games by myself, hate myself, cry to sleep. I actually miss those days. I didn't have the drama that I do now. But that same idea has remained above my head my entire life. "Stay alone. Live alone. It's the best for everyone." Now I wish I had stayed believing that. I would have saved myself from a lot of drama, a lot of pain, and a lot of wasted time.

So I'm sick of all the drama. Sick of all the things going wrong. Sick of all the things people have been doing. So I'm diminishing, and letting it happen.