I used to want to be a cream puff

We all have our ideas about everything, who God is, who we are, who they are, and even who we are not that are surprisingly incorrect upon closer inspection (usually).  We view things from a perspective of personal distance, meaning that we hardly find it necessary/comfortable/desiring to step out of ourselves and examine closely the tiny molecules of our characteristics.  For in such close inspection we see what we think is unimportant since it is so small, things like smirking, twitching, or yawning.  Even a slight veer of attention that reaps forgetfulness can resound significantly under the microscope.  My point is that we have only such a capacity to hold up and present to ourselves the "me" or "God" or "them" or "it", and that's not to discredit the means by which we reach such definitions.  We may read books, observe situations and people, think analytically and objectively, research and teach subjects (since teaching is a form of learning), play devil's advocate for opposing ideas, learn mathematics, science, astrology, psychology, exercise, hibernate, take medications, and earnestly seek out the truth.  We may do all or one of these things to formulate what we believe is true, but does that make it true?  Certainly not.  Logically speaking, truth is an absolute, one can not will water to be wood no matter how strongly the will to think in such a way is or becomes.  A better example, closer to home, would be that you may say the murderer is bad because they killed a man for his money, but upon closer inspection, what is bad about murder?  Is murder bad because a life is stolen?  Is murder bad because that person no longer exists in this world?  If so, then you would side on the idea that life is precious.  What you are trying to protect is this idea that life is precious.  So the murderer is bad because he defiles your idea by stealing a life that is not his.  Therefore we punish the man who breaks our rules that protect the precious life.  Consider now a mother and her child.  To her the child is more precious than life.  She has her rules as well for protecting the precious child.  Her child is dying from leukemia and requires extensive medical attention to prolong life, even if just for a few more months.  The mother has an idea that, to her, is so vehemently correct, the idea that her child is precious, more precious than her life, and subsequently (though not obviously aware of its being) even more precious than the life of the rich person she will murder in order to follow the rules that protect her precious child.  You may think now that I'm beginning to sound foolish or ludicrous.  And that is my point, I am foolish and ludicrous.  We all have our ideas and our perspectives, built up by whatever resources we get our hands on (for me those are books, people- both old and young, experienced and naive), but how much do we really know if each of us is trying to protect something that we think is precious, be that life, a child, our status, our credibility, our beauty, etc.  We then become colliding molecules raising pressure in our lives, as we clash and bounce from or to one idea to the next.  Now, there is a seemingly enlightening idea that pushes its way out of the cylinder and beyond our clashing puffed up ideas, and that is to have hope that there is something, someone that is there outside of the cylinder, seeing things from an infinite perspective where nothing clashes.  That hope is God.  Before you start dismissing God as a silly idea for weak minds, I ask you to define a weak mind.  By all definitions, I have a weak mind.  Sometimes I think strange things that don't make sense, I want things that are bad for me, I avoid things that are good for me, I get confused and unsure about very intricate issues such as ethics and philosophy, so to me, my mind on its own is weak; weak in that I need a stronger source to confirm things or teach me things that I could not do for myself.  God's word teaches me how to live, and how to see things more clearly from a perspective outside of myself.  This opens my mind up by miles.

       I want to live a life that is good and meaningful, but I can't seem to do that on my own accord because I'm pretty lazy and selfish, so perhaps I need some help....or lots of help.



       Historically speaking our ideas about right and wrong, good and bad have shifted and continue to move with abstract viscosity.  At one time we thought a king had every right to dispose of a man regardless of his reasons, because we had the idea that royalty was precious and our rules for protecting that outweighed our current idea that life is more precious than mere royalty or status. 100 years down the line we may find that life is more precious than one man's rash decision or dictatorship.  Point being, humans are fickle.

       All that to say, I recognize that what I wrote earlier could very well be flawed in more ways than one...maybe all of it is erroneous.  However, I do know that I could be wrong, and that I need God to help me see things more rightly.  

       When I was a child, I thought like a child, walked like a child, acted like a child, and said that I wanted to be a mermaid or a cream puff when I got "older".  I wanted that with every fiber in my being, thinking I was certain that, First off, it was possible, Secondly, that it was a respectable goal, and Thirdly, that I'd be happy as either.  Shall I emphasize my point even more?  haha.  If God has been around since AD 500, even if God has been around since 1892, He's still got so much more experience about things than I do.  I am still just a "child" if I view my position by God.  My desire to want to be a writer or my desire for health or even for all the hungry people in the world to be fed may not make the most sense in a view much wiser than mine.  Perhaps, PERHAPS (don't jump to conclusions when I say this, or be quick to judge what I say prefaced by a PERHAPS), but perhaps suffering in varying degrees gives some people the capacity to have what everyone in life wants at the end, a life of love and goodness and meaning.  If everyone got everything they wanted, health, wealth, and admiration or (insert current desire here), would that be enough?  Would that mean life was fulfilled?  Or do we not witness countless suicides by the very people who have what we spend so much of our lives trying to grab?  I don't know, I'm using one example, but there are so many things we avoid thinking about because it's convenient or easier for us.  We don't want to think that having very little makes us more grateful for things, or that being in tremendous pain allows us to feel tremendously loved when a friend is there to hold us, and so much more.  

       I am aware that even what I am writing could be false, and if you debated with me, I might try to defend my stance, not because I'm so sure that I'm right, but because I don't want you to make me feel inferior.  However, I'm not sure about a lot of things, and I am trying to learn how to listen without fear of inferiority, to love fearlessly, trust fearlessly, live my life fearlessly.  I used to want to be a cream puff, then I wanted to be a writer, and now I know that I don't know what I want, so I'm going to empty myself to be filled with God.

God's Word is a guideline for living, read it and see for yourself if life becomes more when you live by those guidelines.  Otherwise, keep living the way you're living if that's enough for you.

J