Depravity

Shootings, suicide, murder, eating disorders, cancer, plane crashes, drugs, terrorism, natural disasters, fornication, adultery, human trafficking, recession, bankruptcy, war. We read this on the cover of a magazine, at the local newsstand; we see it on the television and the computer screen. Everywhere we look we are assaulted by one simple fact: the world we live in is broken, is stuck in utter depravity.

And that’s exactly what Satan wants us to see. Discouraging, isn’t it?

A few months ago I had the displeasure of being called an idealistic, ignorant b****. Ouch. Said name caller stood there for ten minutes and ranted, raved, and questioned me on how I could believe in God when this world is so messed up, when so many bad things happen.

I stood there for what must have been a full minute with my mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water. In that minute my thinker-box decided to climb out of my head and flee down the street, screaming. I had no clue what to say, until something occurred to me:

Love, joy, friendship, heroism, selflessness, sacrifice, integrity, patriotism, charity, forgiveness, courtesy, kindness, Godliness. The things hidden on the back pages of those magazines and newspapers, the stories told at 3 a.m. on the news stations, the articles stowed away at the very bottom of websites. These are some of the many reasons that I can believe in God.

I can believe in God because in such a sinful, depraved world, good still exists. People are still willing to be kind to one another, to put other’s interests and lives above their own.

Satan wants us to see all the awful things that go on in this world; he wants us to become discouraged, to question if God really cares. But if you look past the veil Satan has put in front of our eyes then you can see the good that still exists. You can see God working through others to help the world, even though we constantly rebel against Him. If you just take a minute to look, then you can see everything that God has blessed us with.

Yes the world is full of sin and ugliness, but it’s also full of joy and life, of the promise for a better tomorrow, the promise of salvation. It all depends on how you look at things. I chose to see God where I look, not what Satan wants me to see.

Scrawlings in a Jar: Stress Management

To: The World
From: Connie

Is it weird that I am writing about this particular subject during Spring Break? Not in the least. Because a play is a play, and anyone who knows anything about them knows that there comes a time in every production that requires a bit of special attention. It is the week before the play's opening night: Hell Week.

Or, as we've affectionately called it: Tech Week. Because we have little children in our play who don't need to be learning profanities. That is the director's job at this stage of the production.

HOW TO EFFECTIVELY MANAGE STRESS DURING HELL TECH WEEK:

1. Breathe - Remember, especially if this is your first day of tech week, that you should never hold your breath for an extended period of time. The pent up frustration will go to your head, and you will do one of two things: A.) Pass out, or B.) Blow up. Like...literally...you'll explode.
2. Count to 10 - Take 10 seconds of your time to just calm down. You must always remain calm during tech week.
3. Eat - Remember to pack yourself something so you don't become anorexic, lose 36 pounds in half an hour, and die.
4. Never Lose Your Temper - Because tech week can be managed, and there is nothing to lose your temper about, cry in frustration about, or roll your eyes about. If you follow these simple steps, you'll be well on your way to the last and most important step of all...
5. Give Up - Because Tech Week is easy enough to glide through when you're acting, and extremely difficult to handle when your directing all the actors, ensuring the lights work, proofing costumes, acquiring last-minute props, fixing up make-up and sets, and checking that the backstage hands are not  tripping over hundreds of small people who insist on getting in the way. 

You will not remain calm, so forget counting to 10 (seriously? Who ever even does that anyways?). You will not have time to eat, but you won't notice so much because of how many other things are on your plate. You will Will WILL lose your temper. Even with the best crew, cast, venue, costumes, sets, and helpers that you can possibly find: there WILL be some reason for you to become frustrated and cry, get angry/upset, and roll your eyes...possibly all three at the same time. The important thing to remember is that it's ok for this to happen. If anything, the only thing you need to worry about is not having a mental breakdown in front of your actors. I've seen directors do that. It didn't help us act better.

The one thing on this list that holds true is the breathing. Because you seriously will pass out and/or explode if you don't. Of course...that holds for pretty much every occasion. 

Adventures in Modern Culture

This week's edition: Weightloss.

Well, it’s that time of year again. The time of year when sports start up and I realize it’s time to shed the pudgy weight I’ve packed on over the winter months. Yay! *sarcasm*

So I do what any sensible member of our culture does, I sit down at my computer and log on to my favourite search engine to spend several hours researching the easiest way to lose weight.

First things first, I need to figure out what diet I’m going to use. But wait, I really hate the word diet, it implies that I can’t eat the food that I like. I don’t want to give up chocolate and cupcakes and pasta and bread, and everything else I like! So let’s call this a lifestyle change, yeah that’ll work.

So it's off to Google where I type ‘diet’ into the box at the top of the page and in approximately 0.8 seconds I have more diets than I could ever attempt in a lifetime at my fingertips. Great, now I have to choose one. There’s the low carb diet, the high fiber, the low fat, the high protein, the bread diet, the cabbage soup diet, the eat-all-you-want diet, the eat-nothing-you-want diet, there’s the only fruit diet, the only vegetable, the- will you make up your mind already!!!! Seriously, I’m now lost in a sea of confusion. Which one works? Which one will give me good results? Which one is totally ridiculous? Which one doesn’t involve vegetables of the leafy green variety?  Which one lets me eat as much chocolate as I want?

Ok, dieting was a bust, let’s try exercising. So off to the gym I go to buy myself a membership. Yay, I feel so much better about myself with this flashy membership card hanging off my keychain that tells the world ‘I workout.’ Now that I have the card, and a new set of snazzy workout clothes, I should probably try to actually exercise.

All I have to figure out now is which type of exercise I like. Treadmill, yeah I can run in place like the idiot I am while the muscular weightlifters laugh at my bouncing fat, no thank you. Stair stepper, if I really wanted to climb a bunch of steps I wouldn’t have taken the elevator to get here, next. Elliptical, so I step on and run in a circular motion while the 5k runner behind me gets a perfect view of my jiggling rear, yeah, not gonna happen! Cycling, well that sounds like fun, I always like riding my bike. *1 hour later* Ow, my butt, ok new exercise. Let’s try weight lifting, why is everything so heavy? Ugh, I think I pulled something. Yoga maybe, I can’t even touch my toes and you want me in what position?

Alright forget exercising, I didn’t like being judged by the marathon runners, bodybuilders, and health nuts at the gym anyway!

So, inevitably, every year I give up on trying to lose weight and just sit back on my couch to play a computer game or watch some television while I stuff my face with a box of Girl Scout cookies that I bought despite my intentions of losing weight. And this brings me to the point of my rant:

Our culture is obsessed with health, dieting, weight loss, eating disorders, food, you name it! Granted this is a real problem and there have always been people of the burly nature (look at some of the classical pieces out of the Greco-Roman cultures if you don’t believe me), but we have taken an unhealthy interest in it over the years. We are so obsessed with this stuff that we even have TV shows about it, hit TV shows. And to top it all off, Michelle Obama is trying to control what we eat. I can’t take it anymore!!!!

I’m not going to sit here and try to figure out the physchologic reasons behind this, but I do want to try and find some logic in all this chaos.

The other day I saw this billboard that really got me thinking. It read “Obesity is a disease, not a choice,” and then went on to advertise some clinic to help people overcome the ‘disease.’ While I don’t entirely agree with it, it has a point that I never thought about before: obesity, and being out of shape, is both a choice and a disease. It’s my choice to not exercise and to eat all of the sweets I want, but it’s also a disease, a disease of the flesh. My being overweight can be directly linked to my sin nature, that of indulgence and laziness, as most peoples can.

Well, now that I’ve established the ‘disease’ part, people are trying to treat the symptom of the disease (being overweight or out of shape), not the ‘disease’ itself. We try to fix the individual when we should be trying to fix our culture. I sometimes wonder if we weren’t, as a culture, so far from acknowledging God that our culture wouldn’t have a lot of the problems that we do. If we tried to have a relationship with God, as a culture, we might find that some of our disorders, self-worth issues, and overweight problem might become better.

Please don’t take this as me being high and mighty because I’ll be the first to admit that I have a lot of problems, I'm overweight, I like to over eat, I probably have a social anxiety disorder, and I can be a bear to get along with. But I do think there is a legitimate issue and solution here, maybe if our culture would learn that our bodies are the temple of God then we would learn to treat it as the sacred vessel it is (so many other examples besides being overweight can go into this).

Also, if we acknowledged that our bodies serve God (as Paul tells us is our reasonable service in Romans) than we might not put as much pressure on people to look like we wanted them to. I mean really, very few people can look like a supermodel or a movie star and many of those supermodels and movie stars only look the way they do because of professional help that is way above most of our pay grades.

Seriously, I hate seeing Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Cindy Crawford, or any other celebrity posing on a magazine cover and then seeing my peers wishing they could be like them. It’s a waste of time and effort.

And furthermore, dear culture, stop putting so much importance in physical appearance! I hate feeling like I have to wax my eyebrows, be super skinny, or where the latest fashions to be beautiful. I like wearing clothing from decades, even centuries, previous. I don’t want to wear skin tight clothing that’s too short, or too low cut. I refuse to change my ways to be presentable in your eyes when I should only have to care about being presentable in God’s eyes. But now I'm getting off topic, whoops.

To end this rather long rant (I promise not to do the cliché Disney, be yourself, ending), I really think our culture needs to back off. As the Bible says, guide a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it. Our culture needs to learn to guide us in God’s way instead of shoving a picture of some anorexic model in our faces and telling us we need to look like them and be super healthy.

P.S. Yes, I did steal the idea of a series from Connie. No, I will not make you suffer through it weekly, just when I have an idea that Arthur (the British voice in my head) tells me is brilliant and probably isn't.

Pessimism in a Box - March Issue

To: The World
From: Connie

I'm sure I'm not the only one freaking out about this, and perhaps people are getting sick of hearing other people gripe about it. But this is a pessimism issue, and this is an outstandingly gripe-worthy subject.

Midterms. Duhn, duhn, DUUUUUHN!!!

It isn't as though I'm not ready. It's more like...the idea of my thinking I'm ready only makes me think that I'm not ready. And the more I tell myself I'm not ready, the more I try to compensate by reassuring myself that I am ready...which leads to my thinking that I'm just telling myself that because I'm not really ready.

It doesn't help that this semester is the last one before the big transfer to the dreaded four-year institution.

            (TANGENT: Why is it that a part of me always wants to say "institution," when the word "school" would do just fine, and take up like a second less of my life? Just say it to yourself: "Four-year..." Now what do you want to say? Because, to me, slapping "school" on there just doesn't seem intelligent enough; and you have to be intelligent to get into these four-year institutions, ya know...)

Because, now that I see the light at the end of the tunnel, I'm starting to freak out about everything I've done wrong and/or will do wrong (especially with the gosh-darn midterms looming), that will make the four-year institutions wrinkle their noses at me and burn my application before the eyes of the dean. And, of course, he'll then laugh a maniacal laugh. Why do I want to go to this institution again...?

So now I have midterms to stress about: one of the last things between me and the four-year application process that is slowly draining the life from my very soul. Once I've got these babies done, I mail off the midterm forms and wait to hear that maniacal laugh.

Or, the bright side: they accept me, and off I go to be "institutionalized" into a much larger school with more students and fewer faculty members, a much heavier course-load, and a frightful case of homesickness.

Hurrah for bright sides in pessimism issues.