Christian Combatants

So one of my favorite fighters won tonight in dominating fashion.

That's nothing new.

What is new for the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (or, to most, "UFC") is having the champion of a weight class defend his title, then witness to the collective live audience and millions watching Fox at the time immediately after.

The fighter is Benson Henderson, the UFC's lightweight (155 lb) champion.

When asked by Joe Rogan how he felt about winning, Benson (or "Bendo" to fans) proceeded, not to brag about his macho-ness or bash his opponent for inferiority, but to quote Philippians 4:13.

He also walked to the Octagon to the tune of a remix of "Awesome God".
Check it out

Henderson does not drink, smoke, or do drugs.

He fights for the honor of his teachers and for his mother, who struggled her way across North Korea's iron curtain and came to America not knowing any English, but determined to carve out a life for herself, and subsequently for her children.

No matter how great his success, he continues to demonstrate humility, giving credit first to God, then to his coaches.

Mentioning Henderson as a positive role model to several Christian friends brought scoffs and stern looks which may have been poorly hiding questions regarding my own faith, if I find good role models for both children and adults in the company of "those animals in the cage."

Yet the "animals" bashing their heads into one another, or cleating each other in the calves, or bashing into each other on the court, are somehow all verdant fields for the harvesting of role models, no matter how sordid their personal lives are.
As long as they say the right thing on camera, they're to be looked up to.

A horrific double standard exists between sports which are honestly combative and sports which are deceptively combative.
No one bats an eye when a fistfight breaks out in a baseball or (god forbid) hockey game, but anytime you make the fight the point and take measures to ensure both fighters' safety, you're browbeaten as a barbarian.

Thus, Christians who enter combat sports are treated by their Christian brethren as confused neophytes who have strayed from the path (at best), or apostate psychopaths (at worst).

Ben Henderson has demonstrated in word and deed that he is neither.

He is a fighter, and he is a Christian.

Post-College 1

It has been an interesting summer, to say the least.

I've learned how to play guitar, which has been awesome, though it feels weird typing with little or no feeling in my fingertips.
Feels like I'm wearing band-aids over the fingers of my left hand.

I'm finished with undergrad-level college.
Of course, I was working almost nonstop for my last year of it, so I don't suddenly have a massive glut of free time.

And there's also the looming spectre of an August without school.
...is it sad that THAT spectre is the one casting a shadow over everything, and not the spectre of trying to find a job that can actually pay for shit in this economy?

BTW, screw spell check, I spell it the creepy way, not the could-be-the-name-of-a-stock-character-who-wears-spectacles way.
...gotta right
.........rite
.........wright
.........write that down for later.
And we wonder why people have trouble learning English.


Even as I acknowledge that the lack of a creative writing option would have killed my college life in its infancy, I don't feel qualified to do anything I wasn't qualified to do after high school.

I feel like my whole college experience, while wonderful and fulfilling and spouse-providing, hasn't prepared me for "adulthood".

I also feel like it gave me more tools for a journey I was already on rather than prepare me for a journey which would begin at graduation.

I was a writer BEFORE going to college to learn how to write.
Fact: College exposed me to a lot of different viewpoints I'd never considered.
Fact: College gave me a tonload more directions in which to potentially take my writing (especially comic book writing, an area I'd never even THOUGHT ABOUT doing beforehand)

Am I a better writer? Hell yes.
Am I a better person? Also hell yes, especially after everything my wife and I have overcome together.

Do I feel qualified to do ANY job which could pay the bills right now?
NO.

I've spent my entire life being told that someday, I would gain the magical key called COLLEGE DEGREE, and open the mystical, divine gateway to happiness known throughout the cosmos as the FULL-TIME JOB.
Slash CAREER.

This FULL-TIME JOB wouldn't be like the other jobs I've had.
There wouldn't be a paper or online application, no dingy office where a bitter old woman would ask deep questions about hours of availability or how much weight you could lift and carry.
The FULL-TIME JOB wouldn't be something you slogged through day after day, praying for 5 PM or Friday.
It would be a happy place that you couldn't wait to get to in the morning and hated to leave at night.

And best of all, the FULL-TIME JOB would give you enough money (for your happy-go-lucky time!) for you to own a home! In a nice neighborhood!
And you wouldn't have to worry about getting fired, because only those who hold the COLLEGE DEGREE key would even be allowed in, and those who hold the key are indispensable!
The key is too valuable and rare to let someone who holds it get away.



...oh wait.
I think when the college degree no longer required a person to PHYSICALLY SIT IN A CLASSROOM, its value started plummeting.
If the value of the thing is in the toils one must undergo to attain it, then the easier the path gets, the more the value shrinks.
Thus, if anyone with an Internet connection can get a degree, and get it quickly, then what value is there in it?

Excepting, of course, medical, law, etc. where the curriculum CANNOT be simplified due to the vital nature of the field (...did I just call LAWYERS a vital field?)

I'm supposed to be a fully mature ADULT by this point, and I'm still scared shitless anytime money issues come into play (thank God my wife isn't), which have been coming into play more often due to my ill-fated attempt at a private Christian college.

...which, ill-fated though it may have been in the academic spectrum, led to my marriage, which in many ways is the only thing keeping me going right now.

I suppose I could turn to religion, but I spent my childhood having the philosophy of Christianity (as opposed to anything meaningful in the emotional or genuinely spiritual spectrum) hammered into my head, and it still is any time I'm around my dad.

It's not like I disbelieve in God or anything.
Nothing but the Divine could have made me stay when my wife's late mother was diagnosed with cancer, and we'd only been dating a few weeks.
I was an arrogant bastard back then, so it's not like I can take credit for not only sticking around, but HELPING.
Spent two New Year's Eves in a hospital lobby.

I have seen God working in my life, and no amount of despair or anxiety can change what I have experienced.

But I feel as though I'm on the edge of a precipice in the midst of a basejumping event.
Everyone else (my fellow graduates) seems well-prepared, loaded up with safety gear (a strong support system, personal maturity, and useful skills) in addition to their actual basejumping gear (their degrees).

I, on the other hand, am wearing a "Musicians Duet Better" t-shirt and jeans, with a backpack full of manuscripts.
Even so, my entire family is yelling "Jump! You can do it!"

My wife stands nearby, gathering her safety equipment and putting on pieces of her suit, a rope connecting us for the journey down, almost ready to take the plunge.

And I know I should jump, but it feels like jumping would be disastrous because everything which should have prepared me for this moment of flight will simply weigh me down.




...hope you enjoyed the analogy.
I really should post more often. Apparently my brain has plenty of hoarded literary vomit to spew.

Graduation Day

So in about six hours, I'll be sitting in a big room full of parents and spouses.
Oh yeah, and a bunch of people dressed in mortarboards and robes like myself.

I've been by intervals trudging with the weight of the world on my back and skipping lightly with a song in my heart along the road of higher education for eight years.

Let's look at what I've gained during my college years:
-Huge leaps in my abilities as a writer and editor
The University of Central Oklahoma's Creative Studies program has made me a better writer.
Which is what I set out to become when I took a year off (after three years of progressively worse failure), and decided to do college on purpose, so mission accomplished.
Everything from my concept of good storytelling, to character creation and development, to mastery of language has evolved to a huge degree in the three years I've been here.
I've also learned how to give and receive criticism with grace and professionalism, to the point that a visiting novelist giving a masterclass formally asked me to edit his next novel after I demonstrated "a natural gift for editing with the big picture in mind," and offered me $500 for the job.


-An amazingly deep and talented circle of friends
In high school I had always heard about how the social circle you form in college lasts a lot longer than the one you form in high school. At my first college I became very skeptical of this because all I saw was more high school. Even though we were all adults, even the eldest of us still behaved like teenagers.
Since my change of scene, however, my circle of friends has broadened and deepened with each succeeding semester.
Even when I would only know a person for a few months, then never see them again in class, we would keep in touch and continue to spend time together.
This trend has really ramped up in the past year, with eight new people added in a matter of months, and all of them already feeling like part of my group's bedrock.
Of course, the most amazing thing about it is there is no feeling of "aw, I'm graduating so we'll have to break up the group" like there was when I graduated from high school.
There's no sense that I'll have to find new friends just because I'm finally getting my bachelor's degree.

Oh yeah, there's also...
-A Bachelor of Arts in English with a focus on Creative Studies
I dunno what kind of monetary value the business world puts on this degree, but for me it represents a period of explosive growth in my life, as an artist, as a social creature, as a husband, as a friend, as a student (which really will never end...especially since I can just walk into a class and hang out at the back of the room).

That's a brief smattering, to be sure.
I've also learned what study habits and pre-test rituals work best for me, but the odds of me ever using those again outside of grad school is pretty much nil.

Some would criticize my choice of major based on economics, because a degree in Creative Writing doesn't automatically lead to a job with benefits and room for advancement.
Others would say that because of the above fact, I'm not "contributing to society" by not choosing X-other degree.

For me, though, once I decided to get a degree, the reason was not economical.
I knew myself at least kinda well back then, and I knew where my greatest strengths, abilities, and interests lay (all around the same two things: music and writing).
I knew college could help me get better in the areas I was already good in, so I chose to attend, and focus on becoming a better writer.

I've discovered a love for writing comic books that I never would have been exposed to otherwise.
I've learned what makes each form of written storytelling unique, and how to master the nuances of each one.
I've expanded my literary repertoire to a massive degree (pun!), as well as my own body of work.

...and I think I'm to the point of rambling now.
My apologies.

I guess the reason I'm going through all of this in my mind is because at various points along this journey, it felt like it would never end.
Not because I would give up on it, but because time seemed interminable.

I didn't realize until the halfway point of this semester that school has become my comfort zone, a source of stress RELIEF rather than a source of stress.
This result has come about partially because I was able to structure my class schedule so that my last two semesters would consist solely of electives.
In the Creative Studies department, electives consist of round-table classes which focus on a particular type of writing (comic book writing, screenwriting, novel writing, etc), and creating at least a mid-sized manuscript of that type.

Thus I've been able to treat my classes as a time of release, a segment of the week to embrace my creativity and join with others in doing so.

In fact, most of my trepidation regarding post-college life has nothing to do with finding a job or establishing a career, but with suddenly LACKING that time of release, and having to find it in a life suddenly turned nebulous after more than two decades of structure.

What Christianity is Really About

Got into a debate on the nature of "Satan" earlier today.

The problem with a literal interpretation of an ancient document is that ancient storytellers found their audiences were totally okay with an explanation of a current system/problem/etc. happening "a long time ago, before any of us were around."

That sufficed for their explanations, because writing either didn't exist or hadn't been around for very long (depending on the culture you're looking at).

For us, here, now, it does NOT suffice, because as a species we have developed methods of recordkeeping which extend far beyond an individual lifespan, as well as finding evidence of events and creatures which predate our entire species.

The issue of "Satan" (a word which simply means "adversary," and is not capitalized in the oldest versions of scripture) becomes moot if you treat the "adversary" as a literary figure rather than a literal being.

Literarily speaking, "Satan" represents bestial human instinct.
To kill or be killed. Fight or flight.
Survival as one's highest achievement.

This base instinct is the adversary of higher existence (what we in our limited vocabularies call "God"), because higher existence strives to overcome simple survivalism (inherently selfish) in favor of acting in the best interest of others (inherently selfless).

Higher existence could only communicate with base instinct in small amounts, and most of the time this communication was misinterpreted by multiple peoples as favoritism of the "gods".

When different people groups with different interpretations of higher existence began to interact, base instinct caused them to fight and kill one another, believing that the other's interpretation of higher existence posed a threat to their survival.

Fast-forward a few millennia.
Higher existence, having been unable to overcome base instinct no matter how many times it revealed itself, interjects directly into our existence with a direct example of how we can each overcome our selfishness and achieve a utopia of selflessness.

As expected, many to whom it is revealed joyfully accept this new way of being.

Also as expected, those who had clung to the ancient misinterpretation rejected the direct revelation, preferring to stifle the example, and hope their barbaric action would terrify the acceptors to a degree which would prevent them from spreading the revelation.


Fast-forward a few more millennia, when humanity has moved beyond hunting/gathering, beyond simple architecture, beyond the printing press, beyond industrialization, beyond digitization.

We now have more information about ourselves and our world than ever before, yet some still hold to the ancient, literal, misinterpreted revelation of higher existence.

Thus, hypocrisy run rampant.
Thus, haughty, judgmental people guilty of the very things they condemn in others.
Thus, a world confused and infuriated by this group of people claiming to have THE TRUTH, yet showing zero signs of having achieved anything which is impossible without "their" truth.

The Passion of the Christ

First time seeing it: Horrified at the level of detail, but understanding it to be realism.
...then horrified again that I was in a movie theater with TODDLERS and SMALL CHILDREN, whose parents had FORCED them to watch this bloodbath solely on the hearsay of it being a "Christian" film.

Second time seeing it: This is just torture porn, in the strictest sense of the term. The film is centered around watching a human being slowly and brutally murdered, and there is ZERO narrative outside that center.

Overall, Ben Hur was a much better Crucifixion/Resurrection movie.
We FELT the injustice and brutality of Christ's death because of the genius of IMPLICATION and actual CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT instead of blood and guts flying all over the screen (a screen we are forced to keep our attention on because of the subtitles).

Also, Ben Hur actually has a STORY.

In all cinema, in all STORYTELLING, every event included in the plot must serve a purpose in the overall narrative.
Even documentaries must choose from a huge list of events, and present them in the order which will create the greatest dramatic effect.

Where previous films had included scenes of Jesus' torture as an increase in dramatic tension leading up to the climax (the actual crucifixion), we got there after a long series of ups and downs, each release in tension preceding a greater increase.

The Passion simply threw us into the rev-up to the climax, stretched that rev-up out for so long the tension threatened (or perhaps was designed, stupidly) to distract the audience and take them out of the story, and hoped we stuck around long enough to see the final resolution.

“The weakest possible reason to include anything in a story is: ‘But it actually happened.’”
-Robert McKee, Story

That a film revolves around a particular religious tradition is no excuse for incompetent storytelling.
That there are so many well-written films about Jesus makes The Passion's glaring flaws that much more obvious.

Not Quite an Adult

Lately I've been realizing how slow my mental maturation has really been.

Mainly through stuff I'm responsible for, which intimidates the crap out of me.

I only started taking care of housework without hesitation a few years ago.
My parents tried to get the "if you don't do it, it won't get done" mentality into my head from an early age, but it wasn't until I was actually on my own (including out of the dorms) that I started just taking care of housework because it needed to be done.

Car maintenance stuff still intimidates me, and I couldn't tell you why to save my life.
I'll do six laps around a mechanic's place before deciding to go have lunch instead of getting my oil changed (and this when the dipstick is almost DRY).

Money issues feel waaaay beyond my ken (yay archaic saying of the day), especially around tax time.

If it took till age 22 to take care of housework without problems, how long before I can take care of our household finances without feeling like I'm jumping in the deep end without a floaty?

40s? 50s? Will we have grandchildren running around before I can just HANDLE shit?

Even as I read books about how my generation is taking longer to reach levels of maturation our parents and grandparents hit earlier and earlier in life, it still feels like everyone else has their shit together and I'm just treading water on my best day.


Especially as I get ready to graduate with my B.A. after spending nearly a decade (god I'm old) floundering around three campuses.

Suddenly all the good-student responsibilities, which I picked up within seconds of starting kindergarten (and nearly lost before taking a year off from college), aren't going to matter anymore.

What good is knowing the precise studying and preparation rituals to succeed in test-taking when you're looking for/working at a job?

What good is knowing MLA/APA/whatever-the-fuck citation format when you'll likely NEVER write another essay as long as you live?

I'm also torn between two modes of thought when it comes to career-hunting (given that I, unlike what seems like everyone else, didn't choose my career by age 12).

1) I find a job that takes full advantage of my writing abilities.
Advantage: Uses the skills I expounded upon and developed in college.
Disadvantage: Could make me hate myself by turning the art into work.

2) I find a job that in NO WAY uses my abilities.
Advantage: I don't have to worry about #1's disadvantage, and could practice my art for art's sake in my spare time.
Disadvantage: Because of that advantage, I end up hating life because all my attention and desire is focused on evenings and especially weekends, when I CAN practice my art.


All this while most people are saying that the first job out of college is usually #2, mainly because you have to pay bills before you can do anything else.

Men, Women, and God

Ours is not to reason why, our is but to do what our moms/girlfriends/wives tell us.


God calls whom He will to the roles He will, then He qualifies them to fit the roles to which He has called them.
End of story.

This happens on an INDIVIDUAL level, not a socio-economic, nor an age, nor a racial, nor a gender level.

To apply archaic sexism to life here and now is the exact same mistake the Pharisees made when trying to apply the nitpicky details of Mosaic law to Christ (aka "straining at gnats").

God has not changed since He first revealed Himself, but humanity has, and with our maturation as a species has come a more mature understanding of God.

Thus we who say "God is love" are not hampered by the tales of atrocities committed in God's name in the Old Testament, nor the sexual repression common (and in some cases government-enforced) in the first century A.D.

God is love, He qualifies whom He has called, and any attempt to enforce rules written two thousand years earlier in humanity's spiritual maturation process just gets in His way and turns people away from Him.


Thus...
I do not lead our household. My wife does not lead our household.
We are walking through life at the same pace, trying every day to stay focused and keep each other focused on God.

In astronomical terms, God is the Sun, and my wife and I are Pluto and Charon, orbiting about each other as we stay in orbit around God, always making every effort to orbit closer and closer to Him.