What I Learned from Power Rangers

These past few months, my blogs have been steadily growing longer and longer. I think it’s time for me to write something simple yet profound. Something that I learned a lot from but had a lot of fun while learning it. Something not sophisticated but extremely deep.

I’ll write about the Power Rangers.

Specifically, the things I learned from the Power Rangers:

      1)      You Dress How You Act

Several people have argued to me that Power Rangers (at least Mighty Morphin Power Rangers) is a racist show because all their colors match the colors of their skin. First of all, this isn't even true, because in the second season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the black ranger is an Asian-American boy and the yellow ranger is an African-American girl.

So, since racism cannot be the reason why certain personalities are matched with certain colors, I would go so far as to say that certain personalities match certain colors and outfits. Red, the color of passion, tends to be the strong-willed uncorruptable leader always wears Red. The voice of reason in the group tends to be Blue. The comical-yet-devoted one tends to be Black (in later seasons, he's Green). Yellow tends to be a strong and spirited individual. Pink tends to be a bit ditzy, but also cares the most about other people. The Green/White (who's color varies most of all) one is the one who starts evil or misguided but then becomes good.

Red - Strength

Blue - Reason

Black - Devotion

Yellow - Spirited

Pink - Compassion

Green - Redemption

What's cool about this is that this remains constant throughout every-single-series of Power Rangers, even when they have boys be the Yellow Ranger and girls be Blue. At least it makes sense to me; I tend to want to dress the way that I feel. Some days, I want to look sharp because I feel sharp. On days that I don't care, you can tell because I'm wearing some crappy t-shirt with torn up jeans. But hey, this could just be me.

      2)      Sometimes it Looks Like Evil Will Win, but it Never Does

Let me run you through an average episode of Power Rangers:

      One of the Power Ranger realizes they have some problem. Bad guys decide to send a monster to fight Power Rangers. Power Rangers fight and lose because of problem mentioned before. Teammates band together and overcome the individual’s problem. Monster comes back. Monster gets its ass kicked.

Now let me run you through an average series (season) of Power Rangers:

      Big bad guy shows up after some kind of object or power that will make them seemingly unstoppable. Five average teenagers from different social circles are chosen for their strength of character to become Power Rangers. They have success after success from keeping the Big bad guy from advancing until a mysterious new bad guy shows up who keeps beating them. A new ranger who has some kind of complex past joins the team and makes the team even more powerful. The push the Big bad guy into a corner and then the Big bad guy gets the power he (or she) was always seeking. The Power Rangers have to exhaust all their power but are able to defeat them as a result and, often times, get new powers as a result.

It’s a basic plot and it’s meant for kids, but I find it to be true. Sometimes, it looks like evil will win, but it never does. Good people band together and overcome their shortcomings and become, when united, the most powerful force in the galaxy. It doesn’t matter if the bad guy gets a crown that makes him into a god or summons the greatest evil from Hell, they’re always defeated because, in the end, they’re always alone.

There is strength in teamwork that lets people grow in ways that isolation will never be able to achieve, and this strength comes from diversity and not a homogeneous group. Ironically, the people who win are those who are different at first but grow to love each other, as opposed to the group who is united in loving evil.

       3) When The Problem Gets Too Big, Call in the Megazord

Megazords were the coolest part of Power Rangers.

To this day, I still want to find a way to combine 5 different cars to form a giant robot. Or giant animal robots. I’m not picky.

In every episode of Power Rangers, right before the monster was completely defeated, it would grow giant and the Power Rangers would have to summon their individual robots (called Zords) and combine them into one unstoppable giant robot (called the Megazord). Then the Megazord would win the fight with some giant sword or cannon or something. It was awesome.

It taught me that there are problems too big for me though, and sometimes you need stronger and bigger tools to deal with them. I guess you could make a case that the Power Rangers never really defeat a monster; it’s all because they just have good equipment. In that way, the Power Rangers are more humble than the evil they face. But I guess it’s easy to be humble when you’re facing a giant monster.

Maybe I have to view my life that way sometimes. It’d be a lot easier for me to recognize when problems are too big for me and that I need help.

      Power Rangers was a straightforward show that showed evil as ugly and good as good. You could expect bad people to do bad things and good people to, ultimately, do what is right. The bad guys saw each other as necessary evils and the good guys loved each other, even when they did not like each other. The bad guys did what they wanted, and the good guys did what needed to be done. Bad guys ended up frustrated, the good guys ended up laughing.

  

     I could never figure out when this show stopped being fun.

Self-Addiction: A Trilogy (Part 3)

So my big problem is that I can only see the world through my own perspective, which becomes a huge problem because, like an addict, I cannot stop it. I seem to have no choice in this matter. The best thing I can do with this is to learn to value other people’s perspectives simply because they are perspectives and wonder that there is more than one way to look at something. I am one of many people, and I should treat my “self” through that perspective.

I’ve been putting this off. Like I said at the beginning of this trilogy, I’ve had these thoughts for quite some time, and, as a result, I’ve been able to articulate them for quite some time. My hesitancy and reluctance has nothing to do with my thoughts being terribly complex. I’ve been reluctant to write this third and final part because, of the trilogy, it is 1) the one I cannot talk about without bringing up Jesus and 2) the one that is most hypocritical for me to say. This is me saying what I think should be the case, but I also realize that I am woefully inadequate to point this out.

It’s because I’m a self-addict, and addicts are probably the last people who can say what a healthy life is. An alcoholic may be able to say that it is a good thing to be sober, but no alcoholic can tell you what it would be like to not have a craving for alcohol. I can say that my living for my sense of self has polluted me, but I cannot do anything but guess as to what it would be like to be so focused on what is good in life that it becomes my sole focus with no sense of “me” involved.

One piece of bad advice that I’ve gotten growing up is that you have to go through something to truly understand it. More often than not, I’ve used this as a justification to do worse and worse things. Luckily, because I was raised by virtuous parents, I’ve never really been confused that the bad things I’ve done were actually bad things.

Does that make sense? Let me try this example. I am a very good liar when I need to be, and I have been able to even justify lying, but I’ve never thought lying was a morally good thing. Lying is a bad thing that has to be justified. It is something that, thankfully, I’ve never really wanted in my life, but I’ve allowed as a necessary evil. Lying is, by its nature, something I don’t want, but, by circumstance, it is something I learned to tolerate.

But I would be quick to point out that this ability to see the nature of lying as something black and white (emphasis on nature) is not a virtue of mine, but other people’s virtues imparted to me. There are probably plenty of areas of my life where I am blind to the truth of things because I am only a man and have a finite perspective (a man who also tends to prefer his perspective to others).

So, when I say this next thing, please understand that I do not think that what I am going to say is because of any virtue that I claim to have.

Because I have never had a problem with viewing lying as evil, I think that puts me in a different place than the person who views (or viewed) lying as a great good. Because I have never had a problem with alcohol addiction, I think that puts me in a different place than the alcoholic. My lifestyle, because it was given to me by people greater than me, is something that not only discourages these vices, but it encourages the virtues associated with them. I have a freedom to love and pursue honesty easily because I have no craving to lie. I have a freedom to love and pursue sobriety because the drunkenness that leads to addiction is not something I crave.

Of course, if I look at the Bible, I find that what I think is honest and sober is really just a pale, if not completely flawed, perspective of Truth and Purity, because these virtues are out of reach of any man. All have sinned in all these areas.

But my point with saying all of it is to say that because all people have different struggles, some people who have not struggled with one thing have a unique perspective from the person who struggles with it. To put it bluntly, they have the perspective of a struggleless person (be it from strength or luck). An honest man comes at lying differently than a liar. A pure man comes at drinking different than an addict.

Christian truth (or what I understand of it) is that no man is truly honest, and no man is truly pure. We all have fallen in all areas, but, for the sake of this discussion, I think I can say that some struggle more strongly in some areas than others. Maybe no man is honest, but some people struggle less with lying. Maybe no man is pure, but some people struggle less with addiction.

So, the ironic thing is that all I can do is tell you my opinion about the matter, but that’s the very thing I do NOT want to be doing right now. It’s like a liar trying to talk about all the beauties of honesty, or a drunk trying to talk about the wonders of being sober. If you are a liar, how can you know that what you’re saying is not just another self-deception or a subconscious attempt to deceive someone else? If you’re drunk, how can your drunken slurs and intoxicated logic ever provide anyone with a clear image of why sobriety is good? At best, I can probably convince you that self-addiction is bad because of my inability to escape it, but I can only take guesses as to what true selflessness looks like, because I am an outsider trying to look into a club that I shut myself out of.

Once an addict, always an addict.

Let me be truly honest and blunt for one moment. All I have within me to offer you is my opinion, and when I am alone and trapped with nothing but my self, it is a very lonely place to be. I doubt that I am the only person trapped inside with his self, but I do not have the authority to claim that you are suffering from the same thing as me. I can only see me, and, because of that, I have no right to say that what I see is truth. I can only say it is true for me, but what I desperately long to say to you and to see clearly is something that is true for everything.

Jesus claims to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and I believe Him.

In those brief moments that I have been able to not be self centered or self oriented, I have tried to cling to other selves that are not mine, only to find that, in doing so, I’ve either grasped to something just as self oriented as I am or I have begun to weigh down the other person by having grasped them to begin with. Either I steamroll them with my personality, or I am too clingy and try their patience (rightly so. Clinginess is bad). The problem is that neither situation does anything to clear me of my self centeredness, it just shifts it to something else. I am an addict who can be sober but never stop being an addict. I cannot be a pure man, only a sober addict. I cannot be pure BECAUSE I have to focus so hard on being sober. Sobriety is all I can focus on because, when I don’t, I fall back into addiction.

Constant vigilance is the price of safety, but, ironically, when you are safe, you want to relax, yet if you relax, you lose the safety.

I cannot be good, I can only be a self centered person not being bad. My energy goes so much into not being bad that I cannot simply be good, but to be good means that goodness must come simply.

I believe in Jesus because He is simply Good. Goodness, Purity, Truth, Beauty, and Life are His natures, not something He learned to do. It means nothing to me for Jesus to just be a good man, because a good man is just a man who copies what is good. It means everything for Him to be God and to be Good,  because I need Goodness to be a real thing, not just a concept. I need it to exist outside of my own head or outside of anyone’s head because it will just be a product of the self otherwise. And I’m tired with living with only my self. I’m tired of living with only selves. I want to see what it means to be selfless, and this needs to come from outside of me.

Because as I said, once an addict, always an addict. The only way I know that people can legitimately stop being addicts is by becoming sober people, and the only way a person can become legitimately sober (as if they were never addicts to begin with) is by listening someone to was never an addict. Only non-addicts will have the clarity to know the difference. Anyone who has lied might be self-deceived. Anyone who has been an addict, in a weird way, may be addicted to sobriety. Think of someone who goes to AA and yells and curses at people who don’t, who have to ignore their wife and families to keep going. For me, it is how a self centered man can listen to others out of his self centeredness. He can even adopt other people’s perspectives out of his self centeredness and not realize that he is still self centered.

When I mentioned the difference between living through the flesh and living through the Spirit in the first part of the trilogy, I was talking about something similar to this. I’ve learned how I can be in a place where it is more likely for people to love me, but I cannot make anyone love me, at least I cannot do it and it be real love. But I keep trying. I think I am doing the right thing, but the problem is that it is the “I” doing the thinking, and my self is biased. My flesh is me. It is this thing that filters the world around me, but the Spirit comes from outside of me. It is something that is not the self and is not concerned with the self. The flesh leads to death, the Spirit leads to life, and Jesus is the Life. It fits; I need to be pointed to something outside of me, and Jesus is outside of me, because in me is my self, my flesh, and my deadness.

I think this is where that other verse comes in handy from Romans, the one I said I would explain later. Here it is again:

"Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved." 10:9 – 10

A while ago, I wrote a blog called “10 Finger Prayer” where I talk about the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ (confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord), have mercy on me, a miserable sinner (believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead).” In it, I mentioned that, typically, we focus on the fact that we are sinners and ignore the first part, the part that says Jesus is Lord. Jesus being Lord is something to rejoice over.

I need something outside of my self that is the Good, and I believe Jesus is that. For so long, I’d thought that me being a Christian meant that I was trying to adopt Jesus’ views as my own, and that this would be the way to being selfless and being good, but I was wrong. To adopt Jesus’ perspectives would mean making them my own, and then following what I now believe. It is practicing self centeredness again, because I am still just following my own perspective, but am just shifting it to something else. But these verses are not about adopting Jesus’ perspective, it is about submitting to it. It is about receiving it.

Accepting it.

I tried to make it my own, but I needed to let it stay outside of myself. It cannot be mine, because I am, after all, an addict and should not be trusted with it. I would ruin it. In order for me not to ruin it, I need to become a follower and servant, instead of being a cheap imitation.

To me, He is the pure man teaching me what it would be like to live completely without my addiction. He is my Lord. And I believe that He is raised beyond this dead thing that I call my flesh; I believe He is better than me. And even though I often find myself struggling with my addiction, I know that the only way I can get out of this is by trusting not some other self, because that just leads me to my self, but what is Good.

That’s the difference between being self centered and good. A person who is focused on the self needs to appease the self by constantly looking for something to fulfill it, but goodness constantly satisfies goodness. What is good does not need to ask “what do I want” because it already has it. Constantly, I have to think about what I want, because I am missing something. I am an addict, and I am missing what it means to not be an addict. That needs to be given to me. Until then, I need to keep figuring out what I want. Everyone is trying to figure out what they want. I’m very sick of constantly wanting things.

As an addict, I cannot imagine what it would mean to not want something. To not want more. What’s weird is me wanting things gets in the way of me ever enjoying them. Because I always want my self, I can never really just sit and enjoy my self. Imagine if you always had a craving for donuts; you crave them so much that you crave them even if you’re eating them. That’s what my addiction for self is like. I want to not be an addict. I want to not want.

Heaven is supposed to be the place where we “want no more”. Imagine that.

Self-Addiction: A Trilogy (Part 2)

To reiterate: the problem that I have been running into is that I cannot really look at the world through any lens that isn’t mine. My “self” is something that I naturally submit to; it is what I follow when I approach things uncritically, and what I am fighting against when I try to live objectively. This problem is more of something that hurts me, first and foremost, but it also hurts other people.

I said I would, in this blog, talk about how this self-addiction causes problems in someone’s life and how to overcome them. First, I wanted to spend some time narrowing down what I mean by self-addiction.

When I first started to think about this, I was struck by how what I was saying could easily be a kind of social communism which, if you were to take a bit further, could turn into advocating a hive-mind. As I understand communism, it is supporting the needs of the community over the needs of the self.  Science fiction has shown me that a hive-mind is when you destroy the self for the community; all people become one mind.

Then I thought of what I considered to be the opposite of communism: Ayn Rand and self-worship. I’ve only ever read Anthem once (when I was a senior in high school), so I don’t pretend to know a lot about her philosophy. However, I’ve played a lot of Bioshock, which is based on her philosophy. From what I can understand, the highest good for Ayn Rand (at least the highest good in Bioshock) is whatever I want or desire.

I’m against both of these philosophies because both of them are right only some of the time. On one level, Ayn Rand is right because the problem with destroying the self and becoming a hive-mind is that individuals become liable to be abused. People try and serve the community, but someone always ends up at the bottom. On the other hand, I’m definitely not advocating self-worship because then you end up with the Bioshock city of Rapture, a Utopia gone completely wrong over unrestricted selves.  Ironically, self-worship also ends with someone being trampled over.

So here are two things that I believe hold true: 1) Other people are important 2) I am important.

The next thought that I had was that what would be best to do is to balance between my “self” and others’ “selves”, but this didn’t work.  The main reason that I think this kind of balance is the wrong answer is because it falls into one of the holes that I mentioned in part 1: it still focuses on the self.

Suppose your spouse wants you to spend 60% of your time with her, your boss thinks you need to spend 60% of your time at work, your kids need you to shuttle them around 60% of the time, and you personally want to spend about 60% of your time doing whatever it is you want to do. So, mathematically speaking, you can make 1 out of 4 people happy, or you could be fair and give everyone 25% of your time, making no 

one happy. I don’t think I’m exaggerating either. Selves contradict.

Don’t forget this example. I find it to be important.

Nietzsche’s solution was for us to just make the world the way that you want it to be. It’s impossible to be fair, but fairness does not really exist. Fairness is a construct that people came up with.  So…redefine fairness. I can make fairness mean whatever I want it to. This kind of makes sense because I can come up with many reasons to justify putting my spouse, kids, job, or self first. I could just choose one and stick to it.

Like before, I’m against both of these because they’re both somewhat right. Balancing selves is not what needs to happen because, ultimately, nothing really gets accomplished, yet Nietzsche is right on some level because at least you get something accomplished. However, I hate Nietzsche; he’s an asshole. I think Nietzsche is saying that whatever you do is “good” (of course Nietzsche himself is above such abstract constructs as good and evil). You get positive movement with his view because any movement is positive. From Nietzsche’s standpoint, I could decide to just pick up a gun, shoot all the people, and then shoot myself, and that would be fine because I decided. Obviously, that doesn’t work either, because there is something to be said for objectivity and happiness.

So here are another two things that I find true: 3) Doing something that actually improves things is important 4) Feelings are important.

A kind of balance is, I believe, the right answer, but it won’t be a balance that can be come up with by thinking from a “self” perspective. Because, like I said, if you look at it from that perspective, you have to end with someone being unhappy. Someone always loses.

I got into an argument with my friend because he likes to win. All the time. We both love competition because we both love testing our skills, seeing our hard work rewarded, and learning to be better. As a result, I think you can be happy to lose if you tried your best, because then you can learn to be better and, heck, you at least got to play. I also think that if outside circumstances cause you to lose, you don’t need to be upset with that. My example to him was that if you’re playing in the Super bowl and your quarterback gets sick the day of the game and that causes you to lose, you don’t need to be upset. He says that it’s human to be upset with that; we’re naturally upset when circumstances beyond our control ruin all our hard work. And I agree with that.

However, if losing the Super bowl was GENUINELY unavoidable because of something completely outside of your control, it seems like you have two options: 1) Be upset at having lost, then get over it because it was outside of your control 2) Be pissed off forever because you cannot change the thing that was outside of your control. 

What’s important about football? Is it the game, or winning the game? If it’s the game, then being good and winning becomes important because it’s dedication and loyalty to the game. If winning is important, things like good sportsmanship, kindness to the other team, rules, and improvement are all secondary to the win. If you care about the game, you’ll always try to get better. If you care about winning and believe you’re the best, you’ll never get any better.

Arguably, it can be said part of being the best is constantly getting better so no one will ever beat you. Suppose you were unbeatable in football. Not because you CANNOT get any better as a player; you just have some kind of luck that secures wins. You always win, no matter what. If all you care about is winning, you will not spend any time getting better unless you care about the game. That’s why you can have successful assholes, because success and attitude do not have to match.

5) “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Here are the other points that I’ve made:

1) Other people are important.
2) I am important.
3) Doing something that actually improves things is important.
4) People’s feelings are also important.

Now I’m going to do a really cool play on words to show how these seemingly contradictory points can all work together without developing a kind of freak balance.

My personhood (humanness) is important; my “self” is not as important.

I’m totally giddy about this.

This is what I’ve noticed: there is something inside me that puts my desires in front of others, in more and more insidious ways. This thing that is inside me that simply states “Hey, don’t forget what you want/think” is what I am calling my “self”.  It’s the part of me that is simply saying to put my own wants, thoughts, dreams, imaginations, and desires first (all of which are very human things). And it’s something that I’ve caught more and more.

I was visiting with an old friend of mine and we were talking about the things that were going on in her life. She told me about the difficulties that one of her friends is facing and my mind began grasping for the times in my life where I faced a similar difficulty. When I responded to her, I said something like “Yeah, when I was dealing with blah, I remember feeling like blah because blah blah blah.” I was a bit surprised with my response (not because of the blahs). When I told her what I thought , I don’t think I made a bad observation (I rarely do). But the observation I made was centered on my self. The way I….offered insight was by looking at it through my perspective (which isn’t even really wrong because sometimes multiple perspectives come in handy). However, in this instance, my response was very sel oriented; I took her friend’s problem and then focused on it through my own self (or, you could even say I took her friend’s problem and made it into my own).

There is a communication technique that has you reiterate what you just heard the other person say, and I’ve always thought it was a stupid technique. “I’m having a bad day.” “What I hear you saying is that you’re having a bad day.” Redundant. I feel like I’m treating the other person like a child whenever I do it, and I feel like the other person is treating me like a child if they do it to me. I’d much rather a person understand me just from what I’m saying. And yet….

I like to think that I’m a decent writer and that I kick ass when it comes to public speaking (I should be, I like to soapbox a lot). However, these skills do not transfer when it comes to my ability to hold a conversation.  Part of the problem is that I make many assumptions based on little information. The positive side of this is I can sometimes know what someone is trying to say when they’re struggling to find the words for it. The terrible side is that I’m very bad at listening to someone uncritically; I form opinions without asking very many questions.

My BFF is helping me get over this. He constantly reminds me that the only way to really understand someone else is by stepping out of our own head and listening to other people. I like playing mental and emotional games with people; it’s like conversational foreplay to me. Words and thoughts are fun and I enjoy experimenting with them. However, since I already have a difficult time in conversations, making them a game where I’m trying to figure the other person out with as little information as possible is definitely not helpful. Yet I don’t think I’m the only person who does this.  Watch as I rephrase it:

I find that I only listen to people long enough to understand them in my own head. I come to a point where 

they make sense to me, and then I stop listening.  My goal was to “win” and I’ve won at that point.

And that is what I was trying to do with my old friend. The problem was not what I said or even the fact that I wanted insight, as both are good things. The problem was that my desire to be helpful and insightful was more important to me than ACTUALLY being helpful and insightful. I wanted to be helpful my way; I didn’t even bother ask if my way was the right way. When it comes down to it, who is the person who has the most to lose in that situation? Probably me. Even if my advice works, I never understood my friend; I only saw her as the friend I thought she was. I was left with the image of my friend but not my friend. The problem with wanting to be the person with all the answers is that you become alone with your answers.

For what good is it if you inherit the whole world, yet you’re alone when you get it?

My BFF and I came to this conclusion that the best teachers and leaders are the people who were first the best students and followers. Think about it. What people are you most likely to listen to or follow? The people who you think understand you, what is going on, and knows what needs to be done. The people who understand you are the ones who listen to you. Good teachers are, in a way, students to their students; they need to understand what their students are going through to benefit them instead of thinking that “Because I am their teacher, I know what is best.” The best parents are those who listen to their children instead of saying “I know that you need this.” The best lovers are those who listen to their beloved instead of saying “You were never like this before.”

As the old proverb goes, be quick to listen and slow to speak.

That silly and redundant communication technique I mentioned before is far more helpful than I imagined. Anyone who can “understand” me without bothering to get to know me does not really know me, and when I strive to do that with other people, I don’t know them either. In these instances, my self is what is getting in the way. I pursue the way I want to be understood, but that’s not the way people actually understand each other. The way to understand someone is to think what they think. Because if you’re having a bad day, I think it’s more important to understand what you think is bad instead of assuming that your bad means the same as mine. There are definitely different types of bad days.

And here is why I think all this is important to personhood/humanity verses the self. Humans can have bad days. Humans can have likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams, imaginations, thoughts, reasons, and perspectives. Each of these things is great in-and-of themselves, but they all become huge problems when they isolate us. When my dreams are more important than yours, I ignore your dreams. When I treat your dreams as more important than mine, my dreams become ignored. What’s true in both situations is that people need to dream, and preventing anyone, myself or someone else, from dreaming isolates them. It kills humanity in favor of the self.  

I think that 60% problem I mentioned earlier is better approached from this perspective: listen and understand why others need your time and why you need to take care of yourself, and then deal with it. What’s fascinating to me is how what I want and what I need fall rarely fall in line. I never have time to do everything I want to do or everything everyone else wants me to do, but I almost always have time to do what needs to be done. Even though I can easily figure out on my own what I want and what other people want, I can only figure out what people need by listening to them and understanding the world by adopting their perspective. I have to be able to move outside of my self to find out my own needs in relation to the needs of others and the world around me so that harmony can be reached.

After all, it takes two to tango. 

Self-Addiction: A Trilogy (Part 1)

Ever since a few Saturdays ago, I've had the theological debate of "salvation by works" and "salvation by faith" stuck in my mind.

Since I know that about 50% of people who I absolutely know put some time down into reading my musings, I hope I do not alienate you because I said something overtly Christian because I think this applies to more than just an understanding of religion (and by religion, I mean of how man connects with God). On a more diverse spectrum, this debate has a lot to do with love, selfishness, trust, and addiction (or at least a kind of addiction).

So, upfront, here's my goal: I'll first talk about how I think this debate plays out in someone's life and talk about the problem it's solving, then I'll apply the problem and solution in a broad sense to just living a life without looking at religion, and I'll finally talk about how it applies in a view with God.

However, as I was writing this, I realized that I had written about...6 pages worth single-spaced in Microsoft word and I wasn't even done. Since I know that no one wants to read that much (because I know I rarely would put that much time into reading a blog), I've decided to give these different points their own blog.

I mostly did this because my friend told me to turn it into a trilogy, so I did. It also happens to make life easier for you, the reader.

I'm going to start by simplifying the phrase of "salvation by works" by calling it "trying to earn love" and "salvation by faith" by calling it "learning to receive love." I don't claim to be a theological expert on these things, so I cannot say with certainty that this is an authoritative way to view this matter, but it's what I see as a decent understanding of the two. At least whenever I argue with people, the debate ultimately comes down to if people can earn salvation (God's love) or if all they have to do is receive it.

Here's one reason why I do this: whenever I try to say something like "Our actions are important", I get met with statements like "It's impossible to do the things God tells us to do!" or "It's our intentions that matter" or "Salvation (Love) is a gift!". Love, grace, and salvation, on one hand, is understood to be something gift-like. However, when I do the opposite and try to argue that "we cannot do anything and need to rely entirely on God (things outside of ourselves)", I get met with statements like "You have a responsibility to behave well" or "Stop being lazy and making excuses." The other-hand of this debate is that love, grace, and salvation needs things to become better.

I see it work this way in relationships (any relationship really. Friendship, parents, children, romance): you have relationships where people try too hard to make something work when it was destined to fail to begin with, and you have perfect partnerships be ruined because one (or both) people fail to put in the work that needs to be done. 

This is the question that comes to my mind: is love hard work or is love finding a soul-mate?

Is love about what you do or how you feel?

I used to be tempted to say that a good, mature relationship  involves both hard work and a natural chemistry; it seemed to be just a matter of balancing the two views. With people, I am both relying on love being something given to me yet also something that I need to work to maintain. With God, it meant that He would give me grace freely, yet it was up to me to be in a place to receive it and then it became my responsibility to use it well. 

I received love, and now all I had to do was maintain it. I received grace, then I could do good works.

All I needed to do was fall head-over-heels in love and then work to secure my happily ever after.

"But Tito, what happened a few weeks ago that changed your mind?" Well, thank you, me, for asking that rhetorical question. It sets this up perfectly.

Three weeks ago, I wanted to go to sleep early because the high school group that I help out at wanted to do a trip to an amusement park that is 5 hours away from where we live. The plan was that we drive down at 4 AM, get there at 10 and have an awesome day, then leave at 5 PM and get back around 11 PMish. The reason that I wanted to get a good night of sleep was because I was expected to help drive and it is next-to-impossible for me to sleep in a car. I figured if I slept well, I could help out more and help the other guys who were driving (who I knew were going to bed around midnight). It seemed like a win-win situation.

8 PM: I get in bed. I find out I cannot sleep.

9 PM: I realize that I've tossed and turned for a while and check my phone for the time. I realize it's been an hour and I start doing the usual things that would get me to sleep: lying still, playing some Gameboy, reading theology, counting sheep, cuddling with a pillow (the life of a single guy).

10 PM: My traditional methods are not working, so I do the next best thing: I pray to God that He helps me sleep.

11 PM: Now I'm just pissed off. 

This might sound odd to everyone reading this, but bare with me. I legitimately was upset that none of this was working. I went to bed at a reasonable hour because I thought it was the right thing to do; it made logical sense. I ate a good meal before all of this, I tired my body out by going rock climbing and did everything I thought would help me sleep. I was doing this because I wanted to keep safe and keep everyone else safe too. It was, to my mind, the right thing to do. So why could I not sleep? Why was God not giving me peace? Why did it seem like God would rather me to fall asleep at the wheel and kill everyone in the car?

I think most people reading this will say I was thinking stupid things, and they kind of were. But I'm glad I didn't think I was being stupid at the time, and I'm glad still don't think that things I thought then were particularly wrong. I'm glad that I was able to honestly be pissed off at God because I felt He was fine with letting me die.

I should point out that I didn't think it was a good idea to be doing this day trip from the start. It was pushing me outside of my comfort zone because all I could see was the danger it was easily putting us all in.

Here's one fact about love that I've learned from this (in case you think I forgot about what I was saying before all this): Love pushes me out of my comfort zone. It has to. The only people I know who think that they're doing a great job at loving their wife or children tend to be very abusive towards them. Yes, love is comforting, but it is comforting in that it wants us to live honestly and to genuinely like our likable traits. It is NOT comforting in that it will not let us live in a lie, no matter how comfortable the lie may make us. So when I find that I'm being pushed out of my comfort zone, I don't think it's a bad thing. I also don't pretend that it is easy.

To pretend something is not hard when it is is called "suppression".

So I told God I was pissed off. I thought He was making no sense, so I picked up my Bible figuring it would be the fair thing to do (after all, it's best to hear out the people you're accusing). I opened to Romans chapters 7 - 10, the sections that talk about the difference between salvation through works and salvation through faith. These verses in particular stood out to me:

"For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God." 8:6 - 8.

"Because, if you confess with your moth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved." 10:9 - 10.

I think most people are familiar with the second one, so I'll put off explaining why I think it's important til later. The first one plays into the debate though. I said earlier that this was a debate between salvation through works and salvation through faith. A debate between having to earn love and a debate that love is a gift. Most Christians know and agree that salvation is through faith alone, as most people would agree that love must be a gift because you cannot force someone to love you, at least not in any meaningful sense. The problem is that it seems like you can be in a more....favorable or conducive place to be loved.

I cannot force a woman to fall in love with me, but I can work out, read, learn to play an instrument, pay attention to fashion, find out what's interesting to her, and work on my sense of humor. By doing all this, I make it....more likely that she will fall in love with me. It seems like, though I cannot make her love me, I can make myself a lovable person.

I think the Christian version of this would say something like "I can make myself a savable person." If I read my Bible, go to church, attend a Bible study, meet with my pastor, set aside time for prayer, and listen to nothing but worship music, I make it....more likely that God will talk to me. It seems like, though I cannot force God to talk to me, I can make myself a godly person.

That's the debate, at least from my perspective. We cannot earn love, but why does it seem like I can do things to make me more lovable?

When I read those first verses, my thought was simple enough: don't live by the flesh, live by the Spirit. OK, I'm doing that (obviously I am. I'm praying, duh), so why can't I sleep? I have that perfect balance between having received grace and am now doing good works. Grace showed me that I should be asleep, and my good work was going to sleep and practicing all the good sleeping techniques that I knew. But it wasn't working: my mind was set on "death". Literally. I thought I was going to die the next day. And if my mind was set on this kind of death, logically, I must have been thinking by the flesh.

Since I was, evidently, living by the flesh, it followed that I was trying to save myself. My "balance" was me trying to earn love. 

Having grown up in the church, I've always believed in God and, so, whenever I heard someone saying that works come after faith, I felt pretty set. I've believed in God since I was three, so I know all the good stuff I should be doing. I've been able to do the good works, and, logically, it followed that I must have faith. It's like saying "I'm a decent person, so someone better love me."

Is anyone as vexed with this as I am? I try hard to do good thing yet it cannot give me faith. I can do things that SHOULD make me lovable but people can still not love me. Hell, I actually KNOW I'm doing the right things (one of the benefits of having studied ethics is you know that giant list of right things to do), but they never seem to work. I don't lie (much), steal, and I don't get violent. I even hate internet pirating! I tend to pursue my friends well after they've stopped trying to pursue me and, unlike a lot of them, I feel heartbroken when our friendship is over. But I have friendships end and I'm a morally good person.

So what the hell was wrong? How could I be both living in the flesh but also doing "good" things? How can I be doing what makes sense to be right but not have God not answer my prayers?

Good people do not do bad things. Bad people do bad things. It occurred to me that I needed to call a spade a spade.

Why was God not letting me sleep? Because I'm not supposed to be sleeping. How can I be living in the flesh but also doing good things? Because the things I'm doing aren't actually good.

I mentioned that this blog would include addiction of a sort. This is what I think my problem is: I'm addicted to myself. Not like a narcissist who only thinks good things of himself; I'm far too realistic to ever give myself that kind of love. No, I mean that, try as I might, I am the problem. 

The problem is the I. The problem is that it all comes down to what I should be doing or what I can do, when the obvious answer is that I'm doing nothing right.

An alcoholic has a moment of clarity when they say "My life is screwed up because of alcohol. I do not have the power to change it. I need help." My moment of clarity went something like this: 

"My life is screwed up because I cannot stop thinking about myself. I cannot force myself to stop thinking about myself, because then I'm trying to come up with my own solution. No self-made answer can help me because then I will always be congratulating me, and that's the problem. I'm far too willing to trust only me, and I only care about other people if they make sense to me. I need outside help, because any self-made or self-attained solution only perpetuates the problem."

I didn't trust my friends. I had to get sleep to drive, because if I didn't, I couldn't drive. If I couldn't drive, they would kill me for sure. That's what I was actually saying when I was thinking that I needed to get sleep. I need to be prepared, because the only person I can trust is me. I need to figure out what's wrong in my friendship, because my friend sure as hell can't figure it out. I need to figure out how to make my wife feel better, because she sure as hell won't. I need to figure out what God wants me to do, because He needs me to figure it out for myself.

I. Me. Myself. This falls on me because I am so great that I'm the only one who can do it. Or maybe I'm the only one who can do it because I'm the only one trying to.

When did I become so all knowing that I knew what other people are thinking and planning?

Truly great relationships begin with thoughts like "You're so great." How simple. How lovely. A brief moment where a person can completely step outside themselves and just enjoy the other person. A kind of empathy and compassion that rejoices in their beauties as well as suffering with their pains. 

A moment where I'm not thinking about me. 

(Note: This one was still pretty long. I promise the rest will be shorter. Setting up the problem is a pretty big task.).

Why Lag is Hell

Fun fact: the human mind is predisposed to notice patterns. We look for order in completely random samples. We naturally look for similarities, differences, and ways to put things in categories.

I find this to be fascinating (hence me calling it a "fun fact").

Think about it: we’re biased to having biases. We’re predisposed to having predispositions. We stereotypically stereotype. We look for logic logically.

Recently, I was playing a game of League of Legends when I started to have insidious lag. The worst terror of lag is that you never know how it will change your gameplay, and, in this particular instance, it caused my champion to start disappearing-and-reappearing all around Summoner's Rift, with no rhyme or reason. Literally. I'd click to go to botlane and I guess this translated to Kayle that I really wanted to go top and burn my Flash in the process. 

Of course, this didn't stop with just where my character was going. Enemies would appear from thin air and my champion would, all of a sudden, have half health. I would start running away, but then appear on the other side of the map, and then reappear in front of the enemies again. It was 30 minutes of hell (I have no idea why that game lasted 30 minutes).

Reflecting on this caused me to think of two things: 1) I was only able to know that this was a problem because I’ve played the game long enough to know that League of Legends is not supposed to behave like this, and 2) When people are learning to play video games for the first time, they often feel the same way. Heck, when people are learning things for the first time, be it math, video games, fashion, nuclear physics, or philosophy, they have the same initial thought: this has no rhyme or reason. 

Try and remember the last time you had to learn something that you had no clue how to do. Lets use math as an example. Learning how to do calculus certainly feels new, yet it’s not completely new because at least you know what numbers are and know most basic mathematical functions. Those plus signs and numbers are cute little symbols that you're familiar with. However, try and remember what it was like learning how count for the first time. You never feel more stupid than when you're trying to first learn that 2 comes after 1.

Think of old people learning to use computers for the first time, grown men learning about style and matching clothes, grown women learning how to play video games. This is often hilarious to watch….unless you’re the one teaching them. Then it’s frustrating as hell.

I’ve never had to teach an old person how to use a computer, and I don’t pretend to know much about style. I have taught people how to play video games though. 

In high school, a few female friends of mine wanted to learn to play Halo (for all you young gamers, Halo was a first-person shooter for the X-Box console.....the X-Box was what came before the X-Box 360). These girls asked me to teach them how to play Halo because that was the video game all the guys in our group were currently interested in and we'd talk about it in most (any) conversations. 

So, in my mind, I had to ask myself "What do I need to teach them?" Well, they're completely new to video games, so 1) I should teach them how to use a controller: the point of the buttons, the uses of multiple triggers and control sticks, which controller connected to which screen, etc. 2) I should explain how a first person shooter works: who to shoot and not to shoot, the different types of guns, different types of equipment, different types of enemies, etc. 

Again, try and think about this from the perspective or someone who has never played a video game before. This is a lot to learn. 

Frankly, it turned out to be a lot to teach. 

I remember the first time I played Halo. It took a few weeks for me to finally understand it and a few months for me to finally be any good, and it took this long even with years of video game experience. I had a similar learning curve for when I learned to play League of Legends.

My friends, unsurprisingly, had a hard time learning to play video games. First, it was trying to learn how to move your character in anyway that made sense (one stick controls where you look, the other where you move). Then it was how to pick up a gun. Then it was how to shoot a gun. Then what to shoot your gun at (this was very important. I was tired of them shooting me accidentally).

The reason I asked you to remember a time when you were first learning how to do something new is to show how this learning process isn't illogical; it’s how you learn how to play video games. These are the steps and you have to go through them, no matter how quickly or slowly, to know how to play it. The game has rules, and you have to discover them before you can have fun.

I'm saying all this for one main thought: learning starts at the point where the world seems chaotic and you then discover that it has order. Video games start as making no sense, then they make sense, and then you can remember how much you had to learn when you try to teach it to someone else.

When you spend so much time doing, you often forget just how little it made sense the first time you tried to do it. You forget the frustration.

Lag brings back the frustration. It single-handedly destroys all the rules you spent so much time learning and adjusting to.

I used to think that if we died and there was nothing but a void, that could be called Hell. I've come to think that there are worse things than nothingness. At least nothingness is stable. Sure, it's no fun, but it's also nothing bad. It's blank, void, neutral.

After having experienced lag during that League game, my mind was a bit "lag infected". As I drove to get lunch, I kept expecting cars to appear out of thin air in front of me, or for me to disappear and reappear at McDonalds or back at home. I was legitimately terrified that the ground would disappear below me. After all, I'd been playing League of Legends for about a year now, and I knew what to expect. In 30 minutes, that all exploded. Something that I knew was ordered was reduced to chaos. I expected things to behave the way I knew they should, and it was reduced to complete and total randomness.

No, saying it was total randomness still implies a type of order; you can at least count on it being random. It was worse than that. It only made sense long enough to really screw you up when it did something completely unexpected. It made ENOUGH sense that it you would think that it COULD be predicted, but then it shattered everything in a moment. After that, you'd reassure yourself by the few moments where your champion actually does what you direct it to do and think "Maybe the lag is over! Maybe it finally fixed itself." Inevitably, that would be when the next lag spike happens.

I've come to believe that this is hell. Hell is not nothingness; it is the opposite of order. It is chaos. It is lag.

I'd begun to think that the early images we got of Hell are probably far more accurate than we give them credit for. We laugh at the images of demons that are half man, half goat, yet what if we encountered them daily? Are they a goat? Are they a man? Are they neither? They would behave one way one day, and another way another. It would torment you; just when you think they make sense, they would change. Hell is described as a lake of fire. What is it? Is it a lake? Is it fire? Is it ice cold? Is it hot? Dante's image of Hell is so contrary to the Earth. We know planets to be fueled by fire and get colder as you move out. Inferno is fueled by ice and has fire on the outside.

Because we're predisposed to having predispositions, chaos must be the worst state to live in. We're given enough to think "This should make sense," yet it never will. I was once told that the worst thing about Hell is that it lay in sight of Heaven. I'm convinced that's true. You see enough to think that order should exist, but then things never have a pattern.

Real hell is lag without end. Ask anyone who is schizophrenic. They'll agree.

Lois Lane, the Shire, and the Importance of a Destination

Have you ever heard this before? Life is about the journey, not the destination. When I hear this quote, I think it’s wrong. Being a diligent student has taught me to check my sources though, so I used the all-powerful Google to figure out what it meant. It turns out that the person who said it first was Ralph Waldo Emerson, and he said “Life is a journey, not a destination.”

What’s the chief difference between this misquote and what Emerson said? Emerson is saying something about what life is, the misquote is saying something about what life ought to be like. If Emerson is wrong, it is because he’s made a poor observation about life. If the misquote is wrong, it is because it values the wrong things about life.

Here’s my opinion: Life is a journey, but it is about the destination. Thinking that life is about the journey is like saying “What isn’t important is where you end up, but how you get there.” I’d rather know how to get to Disneyland and have to crawl to get there than to learn how to fly and end up lost and in a Black Hole.  I’m not saying that the journey is not important, as owning an Ironman suit and flying to Disneyland would be one of the greatest experiences in my life (of course, owning an Ironman suit is, in someways, a destination for me), but it is nowhere near as important as ending up in the right place.

Knowing and following what is good is more important than how we follow it. To put it another way, the main reason why we should be concerned with how we're following what is good is by figuring out if what we are doing will actually get us there. 

Here’s an example from something that is very important and near to my heart: Clark and Lois. If any of you know what is happening in the DC universe, you know that last year the powers-that-be decided to “reset” all the running storylines and start from square one in an event called The New 52. So, Clark Kent (better known as Superman) and Lois Lane never were. But don’t worry, every superhero needs to struggle with love at some point in his (or her) career, and that doesn’t stop being true in The New 52. Superman does find love….with Wonder Woman.

Truth be told, I know very little about Wonder Woman and I am certainly not an expert on Superman, but I grew up on the cartoons, read a good deal of his comics, and watched all 10 seasons of “Smallville”. Sure, some of the comics reference a possibility of Wonder Woman and Superman being a good match for each other, but it was always understood that Lois and Clark are soul mates (and this is coming from someone who does not believe in soul mates). In fact, Wonder Woman’s beauty and strength was one of the quiet, nagging fears that Lois always had.

Another very strong comic relationship was between the lesser-known hero Elongated-man and his wife (Ralph and Sue Dibny). In Identity Crisis, when questioned about if Ralph ever thought that Wonder Woman, the standard of femininity if the DC universe, was more captivating than his wife, he said “Diana’s  beautiful – but to me, she’s second best. I love Sue. Don’t you understand? It’s not just that [Sue] believes in me. She’s my lady.” It’s not a matter of who is the best and most beautiful being paired up with each other; it’s about who is right being paired with each other.

Because like any hero, Superman’s greatest weakness was never Kryptonite and his greatest strength was never being stronger than a locomotive.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why you would pair Superman with Wonder Woman other than to just boost sales. One of Superman’s biggest struggles is relating to humanity; making the “Super” more important than the “Man.” Wonder Woman has the same struggle. It makes about as much sense to put two alcoholics together and then telling them to fight crime. Lois Lane always kept Clark grounded in his humanity; she kept him focused on the importance of submitting to justice instead of determining what justice is. She kept him a man, while Wonder Woman pushes him to become a god. 

But at least Wonder Woman is a better match for Superman in terms of a….physical relationship. Congratulations. We lowered Superman’s ability to stand for Truth, Justice, and the American way so we could explain his sex life (which, evidently, is a huge problem to a lot of people) and boost sales. 
  

It makes me sad that they changed Superman’s romance and put aside all the good that his relationship with Lois brought. But that’s the thing about loving the journey instead of the destination. If you love the journey, you care about things constantly changing instead of what the change will bring. You would rather the world be in flux than peaceful. You would rather have a man be complicated and making mistakes than for him to be good.

I recently read The Lord of the Rings and I became one of those annoying people who wants to point out the difference between the books and the movie. I just loved what J.R.R Tolkien was trying to convey in the books, and I felt really bad with how much the movies had to shorten the message for the audience. Truth be told, one of the things that stood out to me was how much of a badass Faramir was in the books compared to the movies. Faramir was a wise and confident student of Gandalf in the books, nothing like the sometimes conniving, always self-conscious person that he is in the movie. I like what another blog said about it: “Jackson’s revision of Faramir—changing him from a heroic and pure character to a conflicted, modernized man—represents something much deeper than an additional plot twist designed to generate additional suspense. A Faramir who has the purity of heart to not be tempted by the Ring—like J.R.R. Tolkien’s—is inconceivable for members of the Millennial Generation.” (http://www.civitate.org/2009/01/the-new-evangelical-scandal/)

The differences don’t stop there. In the book, Aragorn is not reluctant to take on his position as the king because of self-doubt; his sword is re-forged early in the quest in The Fellowship of the Ring out of necessity instead of finally being accepted before the final battle in The Return of the King. Aragorn never questions if he is the right person to lead the people; he accepts the role that is put on him (because what else could he have done? Let Middle Earth fall into chaos?). Instead, when he does question things, it is about the right ways to be a good king. Aragorn starts with confidence and learns to be a king, instead of starting with doubt and learning to be confident.

 

Tolkein also goes out of his way to show that the end of the war is not when the Ring is destroyed (as Jackson portrays it) but when the Shire is restored. Saruman takes over the Shire at the end of The Return of the King, and the war doesn’t end until Merry, Pippin, Sam, and Frodo kick him out. That’s because, for Tolkein, the Shire is an important place in Middle Earth; it’s the only place that is capable of producing the kind of character that it takes to hold the burden of the Ring of Power. It is a basis of strength in Middle Earth; a simple and good place to live. To save Middle Earth means more than just ending the journey, it means restoring what was lost during the journey and producing a new kind of good. If the journey didn’t end in good, then what was the point?

“But that’s just not believable,” I’m quick to be told. “If you were to make people like Faramir and Aragorn perfect and not give them a struggle, people cannot relate to it. I want to see someone who struggles like me. Focusing on the Shire is boring because it does not have any kind of struggle; it’s just a happy place with the biggest conflict being munchkins fighting an old man.” Or “I like Batman more than Superman anyways, because he’s conflicted and I can relate to it. Superman is just too perfect, I don’t see how he has to struggle.” Or “What you’ll realize when you’re older is that the world is not black and white, but it is mostly shades of gray. There is no easy answer.”

Am I the only one who is sick of hearing that? I think you need to be a very special kind of stupid to think that life is not complex and has “shades of gray”. The problem is that we’ve begun to look at the gray and say that this is what is important. Being conflicted is what life is all about. We forget that if there is a gray, there is a white and a black. I’m tired of looking at what is gray and drab; I would much rather look at what is startlingly white. On top of it, having a clear picture of what is good does gives people the strength they need to deal with the drabness we find in life.

Here's a thought: Batman has always respected and admired Superman. Aragorn spent most of his life defending the Shire. 

I want my heroes to be heroic. I know life is complex, everyone does. I need to see how I’m supposed to live. It’s like what Sam thinks when he’s in Mordor: “the night-sky was still dim and pale. There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”

 

Can we please stop focusing on the world being conflicted and instead look at what is good? Can we stop arguing about how to do the journey? Instead, can we just figure out where to go and get on with it?

“Life is but a stopping place,

A pause in what's to be,

A resting place along the road,

to sweet eternity.

We all have different journeys,

Different paths along the way,

We all were meant to learn some things,

but never meant to stay...

Our destination is a place,

Far greater than we know.

For some the journey's quicker,

For some the journey's slow.

And when the journey finally ends,

We'll claim a great reward,

And find an everlasting peace,

Together with the lord” – Author Unknown