doubleheader: damnation and depression.

Do you ever walk out of church, and think, "Wow, thanks for the bummer sermon, Pastor. Think I'll go look at pictures of unicorns and bunny-rabbits until I manage to restore my joy in life"?

After 45 soul-crushing minutes on the realities of hell, I was stuck in a spin cycle of demise. Actually, after about five minutes, I buckled the mental seat belt. In the first two minutes, he mentioned evangelism within the church, and I started trying to conjure a vodka tonic into my hand.

By the way, wouldn't it be great if church were held in a tropical pool with a swim-up bar?

By the back to what I was saying, that sermon was terrifying. Paired with tonight's sermon on depression, I'm concerned for my pastor. For his well-being. His state of mind, you know.

No, just kidding. Seriously, he seems fine. But what a double-header.

I wrote once that I wanted to be honest, even if doing so made me look foolish. I'm trying to figure this out, and in so doing, I'm going to be foolish at times. I'm going to make mistakes, and have to double-back, and correct my thinking. I think that's the nature of an honest hunt. And I don't want to hold back because I'm afraid that someone smarter than I am will read these words, and scoff. Even if it's someone I love, and respect, and want to think well of me. It's my journey, right? I get to own it the way it is, not the way that looks coolest. At least I'm real about it.

So... I've been shortchanging my examination of conservative Christianity out of a fear that to consider it honestly, to yield to truth where I find it, I'll be uncool, anti-intellectual, somehow less avant-garde. As though I am actually avant-garde. One Pollock poster does not a hipster make (it's been about 50 years since Pollock was avant-garde, anyway). Nevertheless, I have been empty and shallow in my reasoning. Clinging to a false sense of academic superiority, so that I don't have to make a choice. Not wanting to turn from either side, and actually believing that a choice for believing the scriptures would even cause me to have to turn from anyone.

I've said, I believe that Christ died, and rose again, and I am grateful for His atoning for my sins. Or at least, maybe those things are true, and anyway, I don't really understand what needed to be atoned for. But go Christ, right? He's still awesome.

That's a really convincing proposition, huh? Really powerful.

I've misunderstood the notion of faith. And been afraid to take on beliefs, not because I didn't agree with the evidence (I haven't been fair to the evidence), but because I didn't want to take them on. Didn't want to deal with them.

I thought I didn't care what people think, and that the beliefs of my more liberal Christian friends don't affecting me. But I do, and they do. I realize now that I've been acting as though my mind is somehow inferior to theirs. Like I haven't earned the right to come to conclusions different from theirs. Like somehow, my own processes would be faulty.

I don't think that's true. I don't want to act as though it is. It's bizarre, because usually, I sit in church reminding myself that I don't have to agree with this pastor. I tilt my chin up in defiance, and think, "I get to disagree! I'm smart enough to disagree!" Perhaps, now, it's time to do the same towards the others. I get to disagree. I get to trust my mind. And if that leads back in any way to what these people are saying, that's okay.

I sense a collision. I don't know if this is actually okay.