Why I like blogging

It’s easy to not return to something once you’ve stopped. We are often creatures of inertia. As a kid I always delayed getting in a bath or pool as long as possible, but then once I was in I never wanted to get out when the water turned cool or it was time to go home. After my exams, getting back to blogging was something that I wanted to do but kept putting off as I didn’t know what to write about. When you start and strike that initial spark of creativity, however, it makes turning that spark into a flare significantly easier.

Blogging appeals to me for a few reasons. Firstly, it encourages opening whatever corner of your mind creativity comes from and keeping those floodgates open rather than letting them shut and having to find and wrench it open again the next time you want to do some creative enterprise. Secondly, it gives you the feeling of creating something, and as it’s accessible by whoever might take interest in it it’d be much like publishing a short story (except without the validation that would come from knowing that someone believes in that story). Thirdly, I like writing and writing about things that you’ve observed is easier on your self-esteem than writing fiction as you don’t finish a post and look back at it and wonder if it has any worth at all, even if it’s not yet ready to be posted. And finally, it makes me think about things. I was vaguely aware of the things that I wrote about in my post on the end of the world before I wrote them. I knew that I wanted to get the chance to experience marriage and working and having kids before going to heaven. I knew that I’ve always been afraid that my faith isn’t genuine enough. But writing things down helps you to organize your thoughts and recognise things. I’d never linked my need for others to share my opinion with my dislike of hearing people talking about potential end of the world scenarios and my slight fear that they will actually occur. I don’t expect to reach self-actualisation. But blogging helps you to understand more about yourself and your reasons for things and I love that, especially at a time when I’m questioning so much about the strength of my faith and need to identify the problems that I have and find ways to solve them.

'The End of the World' (written late November/early December)

Apocalypses fascinate people. What kind of apocalypse will it be? What will happen afterwards? They create a great playground for writers to explore not only humans bravely facing impossible odds but also the events that occur afterwards. Are we still in existence? How do we cope? I enjoy novels and shows about small groups of people overthrowing tyrannical governments and overcoming overwhelming odds as much as the next teenager. And I believe that the world as we know it is going to end one day and that it will usher in a new world. Even though I’ve been questioning my faith over the last few years, I’ve internalised basic Christian beliefs to the point that I would still set my moral compass by the Ten Commandments, even if I don’t always follow it, and would still believe that the world is one day going to end, etc, even if I suddenly decided to walk away from Christianity. I’ve struggled with why God has let the world go on for so long doing things that He disagrees with and what the purpose of us living separately to Him is, unless it’s just to give us time to decide whether we want to live with Him before bringing everyone back and judging us. But, regardless of how I am mentally with things, part of me will never let me stray too far from Christianity. It is a part of me and even when I have doubts, something in me holds me to the rock. Or the Rock holds me there.

The idea of the eschaton has always kind of scared me. It probably didn’t help that Left Behind was my favourite book series when I was twelve, when I first prayed with the uncertainty of whether I was really a Christian or had just been doing what was set out for me and the worry that I was only making the decision to pray for salvation out of the fear of the consequences of not doing so, the stick behind the proverbial donkey. While the fears of not being ‘truly’ saved lingered on and off over the years, my main issue with the Second Coming was the idea of lost opportunities. I guess part of me has always said that it will come eventually, and that’s great, but I want the chance to get married and work and live my life here before things happen and the playing field changes in unknowable ways. I knew that heaven was a sure thing and would happen at some point and be forever and be perfect, but I wanted a chance in this imperfect world first. That viewpoint was held whenever I was comfortable in my faith. When I wasn’t, I’d view it with worry that it was going to come in my time of doubt and that I wouldn’t be ready for it (conversely and rather strangely, after reading Left Behind a small part of me wanted to be like Bruce Barnes as it would mean I’d have the opportunity to minister to people, especially as I’d never been completely sure about whether my father went to church because my mother did or due to his own belief in Christ). But the point is that – and this is an admission that I’d never make to my family – one of the reasons that I hate hearing reports about dates for the end of the world is that part of me fears that that theory is true and that I won’t be ready and that I will hurriedly do more spiritually out of a fear of the apocalypse rather than out of love of God. This is, I believe, why superheroes are making a comeback. People have fears about technological developments or global relations or zombies and escape in stories of society facing circumstances that it cannot overcome and being saved by a person who obtained powers from spiders or however Superman got them (he’s like an alien, right?) or through technology. We worry that our own society is going to need a superhero, so we rally around imaginary superheroes. The thing is that we have been given a superhero, Jesus, but we ignore him. Now, my problem is that part of me accepts this but the other part struggles with sin and with whether I’ve been forgiven or have sought forgiveness and turned back too many times and whether the Bible is even true. It’s like I sought explanations from my brother (I still need to read his Extension History on the historiography of Jesus Christ, actually; online note to self), but the more he assured me that there was actual proof the less faith I had, until I’ve ended up in this weird place where I accept that it’s all true but am distanced and feel disconnected from God. Did I, while seeking intellectual reassurance, lose my emotional one? Am I like Victor Frankenstein, seeking scientific discovery (or in my case what apologetics have stated) and sacrificing emotional connection and values for it?

The other, more prominent and more easily communicated, reason that I hate the theorizing about when the world will end is that I believe that it is impossible for us to know. The Bible says that God alone knows the exact time. Mayans living in ancient times had no idea. People near the end of a millennium are just guessing. Christians trying to use whatever formula to work out a particular date have no chance. The latter annoys me as it also just results in a string of potential ends-of-the-world that just make people laugh over the claims, have less belief in its eventual occurrence, and have even more derision for Christianity.

I’m also a person who seeks assurance from others’ opinions. I hate to admit it when I firmly believe that what other people think about you doesn't matter as much as what God and you think about you, but it matters to me. Which is, I believe, why my mind often blanks when I'm talking to someone I barely know and refuses to give me words to say. (It's often not even wanting to say something but being too shy, although that happens too; it's just that around strangers/friendly acquaitances I have nothing to say, but then when I'm with my family or close friends I'm suddenly a torrent of words.) Even though I know that it doesn’t matter that other people choose different pairings in Fire Emblem or that it doesn’t matter that I didn’t build up enough support between the characters to get the ending I wanted, I need to replay the game (in Hector’s mode, so it may not really count as replaying) so that Lyn and Hector wind up married and Eliwood and Ninian end up together and, while I appreciate the ability for people to make their own desired pairing, as long as it is between certain characters, work, I don’t like knowing that other people are equally convinced that Hector ended up with Florina or that other rider or alone. I don’t like my brother feeling that he’s won an argument or that he is right when Mum and I both disagree with him, because he’s wrong but he thinks otherwise. While I’m fine believing something that other people don’t believe, I feel like the Aurons whose reality was endangered by other people’s disbelief.

So I am 99.9% sure that the world will not end the day I get my HSC results, and that belief is not even affected by the annoyance that I would feel if I’ve finally completely finished high school and gotten my final results only to have it all rendered irrelevant. In fact, even that 0.1% believes that it won’t. It’s just that that 0.1%, or probably a greater percentage actually, contains my uncertainties and my fears and is telling me there are people out there that believe that it will end that day and nothing I could say would change their minds; what if it does? What will happen afterwards, and will I be ready for it?

Unashamed Excitement for The Host

I've just got to say: I am so excited for The Host. I was nervous about how it will be executed but, while it focusing too much on particular elements or altering things that shouldn't have been altered or whatnot are still a possibility, after watching the trailer and an interview with the main cast members, concerns about how they're going to do the Mel-Wanda thing have disappeared. It's promising. Unless they've just turned it into a love story and removed the other parts - which, from what was said in the aforementioned interview, seems unlikely - I think it's going to be a great movie. Though that may be partially because strong music in a trailer can impart a feeling of being ready for war. Which is strange for someone who is anti-war. But at least I can take my brother, who is interested in the alien and what-is-humanity elements of the book, with me with the hope that he'll enjoy it too.

Expect the unexpected: exam-style

‘Expect the unexpected.’ Well, we’re not going to just walk around expecting a giant piano to fall on our heads or other extremely unlikely events to occur, but this is decent advice for exams; or at least ‘be prepared for the unexpected’ is. I was hit with some unexpected situations in high school exams. In our year nine English midcourse, the teacher setting the Romeo and Juliet section used an online quiz, which a friend and I had both used to revise leading up to the exam. In my French Continuers speaking HSC, we spent a few minutes discussing driving – which I hadn’t expected. My initial shock was no doubt evident.

 

In general, questions for the French Continuers speaking exam were rather strange. One person in my class was asked about the difference between France and Switzerland, and then asked about the difference between French people and Swiss people when he said that he hadn’t spent enough time in Switzerland (a day a year prior) to really know. Another guy, who was also studying Japanese, was asked the difference between France and Japan. One of the questions that we all did as practice, though I don’t believe that any of us were asked, was “What makes a good friend?” (One weird variation of it that we were asked was “Are you a good friend?”, which was really awkward and I just wanted to answer it with “Je ne sais pas, vous devez demander cette question à mes amis”.) (I don’t know, you should ask this question to my friends).

 

There was no way for me to know that I was going to spend a fifth of my exam talking about driving, or for Tom to know that mentioning that he’d visited Switzerland would open him up to questions on that front, or for our other classmates to know to expect the other questions they were asked. But I, and while I can’t speak for them probably they too, could have been better prepared by expecting a question that I might not be ready for, by having told myself to keep calm and pause to think rather than to start immediately and then to stumble a little over the sentence. So I guess the point of this, for you and for me as a new uni student, is to prepare like crazy (while sleeping well leading up to it, of course; I value sleep over extra last minute refreshing) but to go into tests expecting to face a question that will floor you and to have to work through it so that on the tests where you do face that question, you can quickly accept it and work on dealing with it rather than spending a minute despairing internally while trying to find a way to get through it. So expect the expected, because a lot of the time what’s expected is what will occur (we know that submerging ourselves in burning water won’t make us feel cool and pleasantly refreshed, after all), but be prepared for the occasional curveball.

Self-defence

I think it’s a good thing to be prepared for not necessarily the worst but at least a dangerous situation. I went to France as a school trip a year ago and we planned on Dad teaching my friend and me basic self-defence before we left in case anything happened. That didn’t eventuate, but I have started using the punching bag regularly over the last few days (partially because it's fun and, out of my holiday exercise regime, the easiest thing to commit to doing - seriously, we bought a Wii and Zumba ages ago and I only feel comfortable using it if I'm alone or if only my brother is home, because he tried it out once and knows how awkward it would be to do with others - and partially because if I'm ever assaulted I want to be able to punch without breaking my thumb) and my brother has retaught me the correct way to punch. People don’t all need to know different moves and have practice sparring etc if that doesn’t interest them, but I think it’s important to at least know how to punch, places to aim and other basic knowledge in case something does happen. For example, if you’re being put in a headlock you should drop your chin to your chest so that the person can’t get their arm to your neck and strangle you. The armpit area is really sensitive and pinching there is extremely effective, while not long lasting. You need to be aware of the positioning of your thumb, and whether you’re going to roll your wrist, when punching to make sure that nothing gets broken. Things like that, little tricks that won’t necessarily win you a fight or immediately get you away from a bad situation but might give you the opportunity to distract the assailant for a few seconds or get out of their grip or at least delay you being strangled, could be the thing that allows you to last until you can get help or that minimises your injuries.

CityFest: A Wonderful, Truth-Bringing Day

Mum and I went to CityFest. We ran into my cousin there, talked to a school friend and another school friend's mum briefly, and saw a netball friend and her family in the distance, and Dad met us there in the night time in time to hear the end of Luis Palau's session and the following bands. It was an amazing day. We arrived about midday so we had lunch at the foreshore before wandering around the stalls, watching some extreme bike riding, getting a photo with a guy dressed up as a stormtrooper, eating ice cream while watching people on one of the rides and going to the lighthouse (that we'd thought was Fort Scratchley's - oops!).

Before I relate my favourite moment, here's some context: Mum really liked the blue CityFest shirts but they were for the volunteers. We ended up both buying a white shirt, different design, but the blue ones were really pretty. Now, at one point my cousin, Zac, joined the people in front of the stage (Mum and I were sitting ten metres back in the shade). When he'd just reached the mass of people the people on stage started throwing shirts and other things to the crowd so Mum joked about Zac catching a shirt for her (we'd mentioned her attempt to get one earlier to him). However, we both figured that he wasn't anywhere near where they were being thrown. About ten minutes later, Zac returned and pulled out a rolled-up blue shirt from behind his back, revealing that the first throw had gone right to him and, as he'd been surrounded by small kids (he's over six foot so he'd have had to be trying hard not to catch it for them to do so), he'd told them that if it was their size they could have it, but if not he would. From memory, it was an XL, so it is actually too big for Mum and she hasn't worn it, but seeing Zac with the shirt when we'd assumed that there was no chance for him to have caught one was fantastic. It was also wonderful listening to Darlene Zschech from Hillsong, Luis Palau (and finding out that Dad was there when he came to Newcastle fifteen years ago) and all of the other bands to whom I otherwise wouldn't have listened (The Salem International Choir was awesome).

Luis Palau's was, naturally, the highlight of the night. My phone was out of battery, so I ended up writing notes on Mum's phone and texting them to myself so I wouldn't forget.There were a few things in particular that he said that resonated with me.

1. Have eternal life as a retirement plan.

2. Someone who dies is, in that moment, seeing God for the first time.

3. Sinning is spitting in God's face. While salvation is not based on works, sinning after salvation is like accepting God's gift and then turning around and spitting in His face.

On the third point, I've struggled with a particular sin over the past year and a half or so. What he said struck me. I'd tried to stop this particular sin previously but had never succeeded, partially because part of me didn't want to. This is helping though. When I initially drafted this, I didn't want to jump the gun and say that it's a fantastic thing that has changed my life in case I then let it lose its effectiveness, but the truth is that it has been very effective as a way of avoiding sin. Because my mind can force me to ignore other arguments, but it's kind of hard to ignore 'You continue like that and you're spitting in God's face'. This, coupled with a questioning of the depth of my faith, which I will get to in an upcoming post regarding the apocalypse, and an attempt to look at the Bible historically and to read related texts intelligently, which I will also get to, has helped me to face this sin. It's something that I encountered, and half fell to, again this morning after a month or so - so I have to thank the Lord for having today be the day I reread the notes I'd taken.

All in all, it was an incredible day.

Relatively small town/city living/There's not "nothing to do in my town"

I love my town/city. Towncity? It's officially a city, but because I've mostly lived on the outskirts of it I've always affectionately thought of it as a town. Regardless, I’ve lived in this general vicinity for my whole life and, while I’d love the greater range of opportunities to go to things like conventions or to find like-minded groups that would come from places with more people, I can do almost everything that I want to do here. There are fields and courts for a variety of sports. There are towns brimming with history nearby. There are churches. There are good schools, though I’m not sure whether I’m really qualified to pass judgment on that as I went to school fifty minutes away from home. There’s the mall and the shopping centre, and a wide variety of shops are available about an hour away. There are lots of amenities. There are beaches, though we’re not really a beach family. But one thing that has stumped me is what I’d recommend to a visitor. One of the French questions that we prepared for was what we’d recommend a tourist see or do. I decided to interpret it as in the Hunter Valley rather than my specific city as there is nothing that I’d really have to suggest, except maybe one annual festival that comes to mind or the monthly markets or travelling to surrounding places. My town is lovely. I love it and really hope to be able to eventually find full time work in the area rather than having to move. But, while there is plenty to do in Newcastle specifically – beaches, Fort Stratchley, the lighthouse, and probably a lot of things that I don’t know about – I don’t think there’s anything special to do in my town unless some festival or something is on. But in a weirdly converse way, the fact that it has nothing ‘special’ about it just makes it all the more special. It’s a town that may not have all that much to offer tourists within its own borders, but it’s also a town that has a lot to offer me.