I wonder what Jesus thinks about while he waits for me to let Him in.

I am – I don’t even know. I had an epiphany that solves my WordPress title (“seeking whispers”). The last epiphany that struck me so much was years and years ago when I realised that my body is an integral part of me and that I had always considered myself “Me” and “My Body” but never as one whole. This is so exciting!

So, I grew up Christian. For the past two years I have casually been questioning the truth of Christianity, and more seriously over the past two months I declared myself an atheist, etc to have a more impartial view, and I was honestly getting ready to rid myself of a crazy illogic. A staunchly rational philosophy professor encouraged me in this. From every outside angle, Christianity is ridiculous. The “moral good” it produces started hospitals, yes, but also starts lots of wars. Oppression from imposing Christianity on conquered and colonized people, Bible hate-thumping, rejection of gay people and so many other pains littered the history and presence of the Church, and I wanted no more of it. The Bible didn’t even make sense to me, especially the person of Jesus, who you think you’d kinda have to agree with to join His Church at all.

So last week I fell in love with Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, and he had a claim that started to erode my intellectual defenses: that Christianity is not a contradictory faith, but a paradox. When the eternal meets the time-bound, it cannot make sense. I can’t explain more of what he wrote, but his perspective answered concerns I never voiced and refreshed me.

Then, all the Breaking Bad references reminded me of one verse:

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. (Revelation 3:20)

I saw this a day or two ago, and had my revelation a little later.

My relationship with God: “seeking whispers.” I knew our relations were muffled. I can’t find him inside the house, but I hear him calling for me sometimes. I thought He was unreachable, or that I was lost, or never invited to His family.

My Sunday school teacher told me nine years ago that Jesus was knocking on the door of my heart, and all I had to do to be saved was accept Him. As it turns out, I was alerted to His presence there, but I forgot to let Him in.

For nine years, I would say, “I’m coming!” and “Please come in. Make yourself at home in my heart and in my life. Can I get you anything?” and neglect to open the door. I would look around, and think He had already left me.

I ask God over the phone, “Who is this at my door? Who wants to come in? I don’t know them. I only want You in here. Protect me!” And God answers, “That is me.” I say, “Whenever life gets rough, my house sounds like it’s going to fall apart.” And He says, “That’s me knocking. I want to hold you when you’re scared and sad.” But I never recognized Him. We have been together for a decade, but I have never seen His face and never knew what He looks like. How embarrassing, that I say “I love you” and “I don’t know you” to Him in one breath! Like a gentleman, He will never force his way in. I really respect that about Him, but I kinda hate the responsibility that courtesy puts on me to be an active contributor to our relationship.

I wonder what Jesus thinks about while he waits for me to let Him in. What does Jesus think, hearing my promises through the wood, hearing me call for Him, yell at Him for abandoning me, or questioning His existence because I can’t find Him inside, when he is standing on my porch (after 9 years!), patient and full of love, probably holding a bouquet of roses behind his back for me, smiling so happily when He thinks of when He will see me, sometimes frustrated that I leave Him outside when I need Him with me, still eager to finally get to know me in person.

With enduring patience, He waits still and may come in soon! I know I know deep down how to let Him in, but it isn’t conscious yet. I’m scared and I need to get over that. I hope that comes with time, but I may need guidance. And once I do let Him in, I have to remember to keep letting Him back in after I kick Him out or He leaves for whatever reason.

I’m so excited! I kinda found God.

Dream. Feminist.

Make an image out of this (from a dream I had):

a pretty woman is at a baseball game, and she gets harassed so she flees down to the basement/back/dark concrete to escape from them and cry, and gets mugged with a gun in her face. Images: they laugh she’s shocked / she’s crying on the ground and tearstained eyes look up at a gun. Like, there’s no escape from men.

Short dream dialogue, on cheating.

“I’m so glad I didn’t leave you and tell him that I needed him back, because Sarah’s teacher put me in charge of the PTA meetings, and all the other women did was discuss their sex lives. It’s like a high school drama. We have it so good. I love you, babe. *kiss* Cause I admit, I’ve had some problems with him in the past. Nothing you would see (not Sarah), and nothing in this house. But we did have issues.” ~he’s upset (betrayed), she’s relegated to sleeping in the basement for a year, and okay with that because she’s happy.

My last entry in my journal before this:

“don’t cheat (in a relationship). if you do, a good man has the right to destroy you. it’s not worth it.”

How do I know if I’m straight?

If I were a disembodied mind guessing what I am, I would say that I am male and that I like men a little and girls a lot. But it doesn’t bug me much to be a mostly straight female.

What am I?

(I’m 20, btw)

Fighting God’s will. Will I die?

There is a lot of resistance from the world. It’s like I’m destined for doom. Lots of things go wrong. My flight to the forbidden land may be a scam. What a relief that would be! Then I could gladly do His will and find peace.

So last year I was planning to study abroad. I applied to go to New South Wales, Australia. I prayed about it when I received my confirmation email, before I saw whether I would be accepted or rejected, and asked my Lord (as I called him then) whether or not to go. I heard an answer, from my own head, the Holy Spirit, or something malicious, I don’t know and I don’t know how to find out. I hate that unknown. I said: “Should I go?” It said: “If you go, you will have a really good time, better than if you stayed here. I will not stop you / stand in your way. (quieter now) But don’t go.” Somehow, though, my mom found out that I was accepted and I have finished the remainder of the application. I have been considering and fighting that thought/message/Word over and over. Every time I try to say, “I’ll change my plans and stay.”, my parents dissuade me. I don’t know how to trust these words, and God has revealed nothing more to me on the subject. Since then, I have even had to say that God does not exist for a week at a time to be able to have any peace with myself and my actions. I am set to fly out to Australia tonight. I am asking God: “Why? Why should I stay? Why should I not go? What will that do?” And I ask, “Will I die there?” And I meet silence. “Will my plane crash?” Silence. “Will the world be worse off?” Mournful silence. Will my choice to fly down there cause a chain of events that will be bad, or will my presence itself down there be bad? Silence. And why am I promised a good time? Will God be down there? – that is something I am scared to think about. Will I lose my faith with a big stroke against Him? Will my untrusting actions kill the life He meant for me to have? I was so scared when I was initially faced with this decision that I would go against the Will of God. I asked my friends what to do, saying I was scared of missing something. They only considered missing friends, concerts, classes, and the new freshman class. No one mentioned the only thing I was thinking about: that I would miss out on God’s will for my life. I did not feel bold or free enough to bring it up myself – it sounds so foolish! Now, it’s too late. Now, I feel locked into the choice that I made, and I don’t know how to escape it. I have prayed constantly for God to somehow prevent me from going. But He said that he would not stop me. I have recently been praying for God to change His Will and plan so that this will be good for the world. I don’t know what to do, and I am sick with regret and powerlessness to do what is right. I think that message was from God. I don’t know if I will be hurt, if other people will be hurt at home or in Australia or elsewhere, or if I will miss something that God had planned for me, or if I will prevent someone else from meeting God. What if some of my prayers will never be answered because I am not there to receive them where God wanted me? I will never be able to sit well with myself if I do wrong by God. My life already has no value to me; now it will be worthless, or less than worthless, to the world and His Kingdom. Is this mortal sin, to knowingly go against His stated will? It’s in the Acts: Paul was instructed to not go preach in Asia. It is within reason that God will tell me not to go to Australia. He should mark my path out for me. Yet the ambiguity and doubt lets me do this. If I could be absolutely sure that word came from God, I would not go. As it is, I have been dragging my feet and turning everything in at the last minute to give God every opportunity to tell me, “Yes, go,” or “No, don’t go,” or to provide me with a new opportunity. But he is silent.

In this frantic search for answers, I have discovered that I really want to go to China. I will not have the opportunity to do that in my college career, except perhaps over next summer, if I don’t have to take classes to make up for what I’m taking less of this semester. If I had to guess, I would say that God wills for me to stay home with my parents this semester, and take it off from school. I am too worn out by classes and the shards of relationships littering my campus to do well this semester if I stay, which is what motivated me to go abroad in the first place – for a break. It should still be a break, and since I don’t want to graduate late, it will give me transfer credits. And this will save me money – tuition is less than half the price there than it is here. But I would do God’s will at any price – so I say. If I would not give up my pride and talk to my friends honestly about what I’m considering, or talk to my friends, am I really working towards God’s will? Or is that something I just say, to make me feel good? His Will be done if it is easy.

“If changeableness that repents itself; partiality that elects some to be saved and others to be lost, or that answers the prayers of one and not of another; if incompetency that cannot heal the sick, or lack of love that will not; if unmercifulness, that for the sins of a few tired years punishes man eternally, – are our conceptions of Deity, we shall bring out these qualities of character in our own lives and extend their influence to others.” -Mary Baker Eddy

If in changing we do not change, if some are saved and some die for unknown reasons, if some prayers are answered and some are not, if some sick are not healed because of inability or lack of will to do so, if man will be condemned because of his sins when he was tired and worn, if these are the actions we commonly ascribe to our “just and loving” God, then we will become more like that false God, and influence others to also be unchanging / changing in cycle, unmerciful, partial, and unwilling to heal when we are able.

Why would God send those tornadoes?

There is a national outcry against a man who massacres a crowd. We want to know “why did he do that?” and we condemn him. He has done a very evil act.

Brothers kill 3 and injure 264 at Boston Marathon. 100,000 die in Iraq war, including 4,488 American soldiers. Drone strike kills 4 in Afghanistan. Man kidnaps two teenage girls, little chance of survival. Man shoots, kills dad.

Why do we do this to each other?

Natural disasters since 1975 have killed less than half the number that Hitler killed, but it’s still a massive amount. And, as a Christian, I must believe that God is all-powerful. Theists have to ask, “why?” for natural disasters, too. Why would God allow this great evil?

Tornadoes kill 24 in Moore, Oklahoma. New MERS virus kills 22 in Middle East, threatens everyone. Tsunami kills 230,000 in 14 countries (in 2004, remember that one?).

Why, Lord? Why?

What is Christianity? Simple language.

So at the beginning of time, this all-powerful being we call God spoke everything we have into existence:  light, darkness, sky, the earth, stars, plants, fish, birds, animals, and humankind. The first people didn’t obey him, so he let them be able to die. Over time, more and more people filled the land, and he chose one man to be the father of a group of people he would pay close attention to, the Israelites, or Jews. God gave them a piece of land and said it would be theirs. But they were not happy with God, and they didn’t obey him. So God allowed them to go through a lot of hard stuff including slavery, being lost in the desert for a long time, sickness, and lots of wars.

God was mad with them. He punished them by letting other groups of people drag them away from their land three times, and then letting them go back after a while. But he always kept them together and did not let them all die.

They didn’t obey God. Even when they tried, they messed everything up. Today, they are still a group of people, and they still have their land, Israel, but they struggle with invading people, and are the center of warfare in the Middle East. They still don’t obey God.

About 2000 years ago, God’s chosen group of people were in their land, but being ruled by another group of people, the Romans. God wanted to enter the picture as a human, instead of a deity that feels far away and unrelatable. So he searched his group of people, and found a willing woman who loved him and had a good heart, and she was the mother of his son. This man grew up in a little rural village as a carpenter, and studied the history of God with his group of people. He learned to obey God, and made it his life’s goal to obey God. He became a “rabbi”, which is like a preacher, and which made him upper-class.

When he was 30 he started giving speeches about God in the local churches. The church leaders did not like these speeches because he challenged their traditional way of doing things. He pointed out what they were doing wrong and where they were not obeying God, which made them mad at him. They didn’t care about obeying God, but wanted to make the lower classes think they were perfect. This man ignored the social rules that put him in a position above women, people of other races, and less educated people. Some of these people were considered “bad people.” He cared about them, because they cared about obeying God more than looking good. They were his fans and loved his speeches. He spent more of his time with them than with the leaders.

This man also is known for doing crazy things like changing water into wine for wedding guests so the party could go on, and walking on water, and healing people, even bringing them back to life.

He knew what he was talking about, and it showed. People really liked him. Crowds followed him everywhere, so he gave his rebellious talks out in rural areas to groups of thousands of people, and in houses full of people. A lot of the crowd wanted him to become king and lead a rebellion to break their nation free from subjugation to the Roman people, but that wasn’t his plan. He kept ticking off the people in charge. so they had him tortured and killed a short 3 years after he started. The people were disappointed. Then God judged him in the afterlife, and loved him. God declared that this man had always obeyed him. He said that this man could stand as a representative of all humans who had ever lived or who would be born after him. Because this man obeyed God, then God will be happy with us if we try to obey him and his son, no matter how much we mess up.

So now, God says we can all become part of God’s family, as brothers and sisters of God’s son. He also says that when we die, we are not dead forever but God will bring us back to life when he comes back with his son for the final judgment of all people. Then, he will send away people who didn’t obey him to die forever, and keep people who did obey him, or tried to. We will then live forever in a perfect world (no tears, pain, sadness, or sickness) with him forever.

What could possess a man to attempt to massacre a crowd?

The tragedies light up our headlines. A movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newport, Connecticut. A summer youth camp in Norway. The finish line of the Boston marathon.

The first question I hear each time a new event happens is, “Why?” Why did that man (men) do that? What did he hope to gain? What would drive him to act in such a way? What motivated him? We are dumbfounded by his hatred. We can’t make sense of it, and we aren’t satisfied until we know what caused him to reach out in violence. (Then we argue over gun control laws or terrorism, and move on.)

He is mad. He wants revenge. He wants to teach them a lesson. Most deeply, he wants justice.

It’s simple enough, why. It’s because he has been let down by his society, disappointed and frustrated. He does not have what he feels entitled to having, whether he was promised it as a child, or expected it as what life fairly “owes” him. He does not have the recognition, power, fame, or ease that he expected. He “knows” that his life is wrong. It is not how it should be, and he cannot make sense of it. He cannot see that he is not alone in this. He does not recognize or care that other people have disappointments just like his. Life shouldn’t be this hard, he thinks. For some reason, he cannot comprehend or accept reality, that he is not perfect and his life has problems. The life he expected or anticipated and his life are not the same. He suffers for this, deeply grieved and daily irritated, and he sees himself alone and shunted by society. This builds over time, aggravated by increasing isolation and by people minimizing his pain (intentionally or not) with careless words and by treating him like dirt (or like less than a god). He learns to blame them, and his irritation grows. He may say nothing about any of this. To whom would he confide, who could understand?

The result: make them suffer. Kill as many people as he can. Make them feel his pain. Hurt them where they are most vulnerable. This is different from a terrorist attack, which is most often politically motivated. He wants them to suffer for suffering’s sake. He wants them to die for death itself. He needs them to pay. And he has held this feeling in himself for so long that he is in no hurry now, when he has passed the tipping point from agony to a will to act. He can take the time he needs to plan. He can wait for the right moment. And when the time is right, or when another trigger comes, he acts. People ask, “why?” but it’s not too hard to understand. The need for what he sees as justice against an evil and disappointing society has grown and overwhelmed even his own desire to stay alive.

The solution: He needs people to come beside him and help him up, encourage him, love him, and make him feel like a useful, contributing member of society, or like he is human. He needs to learn to give and be appreciated. He needs something or someone that makes him feel like he belongs and he is one of them. This could be as simple as a hobby or club that gives him a glimmer of the life he thought he could never have. It could be love, or a pet, or anything that breaks through the shell he has built that makes him see the world as him, the unjustly forgotten and mistreated, versus them, who have collectively done this to him and shoulder the blame. It must include other people, though. He will not, indeed he cannot, change on his own.

Possible signs?: he is inflexible in some ways. When something new goes wrong, he does not care or he gets very mad. He lets go of all the dreams he once had or gets mad when other people are successful or praised or celebrated. He has trouble forming emotional bonds or understanding grief in other people.

The church hates free sex. I want sex. The church and I are enemies.

I am 20 years old. I have never had sex. I have never had a boyfriend. I have never even “touched myself” (sorry for TMI), and I don’t talk about sex, never ever ever. For the last big chunk of my life, I have craved sex. Why, then, am I so strictly chaste? Because that’s what good girls do. And I am a good girl.

My religion taught me from a young age that sex is bad and that I am bad for wanting it. Sex has been one of my most enjoyed thoughts and one of my deepest, tabooed and stigma-rich secrets. Since I was about 12 I have had sexual fantasies weekly if not daily. (I also have other, violent fantasies, probably from repression of these, but that’s another story.)

I do want sex. I do want a boyfriend. I want to be loved. I want my body to matter. Every day that goes by when I am alone puts another nail in the coffin of my desires. If I had not been forced to be religious when I was growing up, I really doubt that I would be like this. My best friend from elementary school got into BDSM. I’ve no doubt I would have been more like that, or at least romantically involved, without church to constantly yell at me and condemn me for having any physical desire for another person.

I can’t even touch people without my inner “good girl” critic yelling at me. My ingrained church rules effectively stunted my sexual development, and I am yet a virgin (their goal fulfilled!), but it’s a success carried out by shaming and guilt. This is partly why I hate myself now. No matter how well I hide it, I have always been attracted to sex (who hasn’t?), making me question myself and the “demons inside me” at every turn when my church leaders said over and over “sex is bad.” Then, if I want sex, I’m bad. I’m female, so it’s not even possible for me to want sex. I should stand up for my brothers in Christ who are taken over by their own desires and protect them from themselves, and that ends my involvement with sex. I am to be a brick wall until I flip a switch on my wedding night.

I can’t believe that the god who designed sex would give me these feelings and not have a safe place for me to vent, feel them, or even talk about them. My church was not a home for me growing up, and has never felt safe for me to express all of me, because of its condemnation of sexual desire, and its refusal to accept that I am both a woman made in the image of God and a body filled at times with lust and sexual desire.