Apparently my school thinks my creative thinking distracts me from the task…

The truth (I think, since I could be lying but I seriously doubt) is that I just don’t give a sh*t. They ask for a recount, I give them a recount – of course, it’s far from succinct and it doesn’t have any significant events in them. I would like to say this, my memory can quote books. It cannot quote sounds, sights or smells, however. I don’t have an eidetic memory.

Second, I’m not Holden Caulfield. I don’t wonder about town, I don’t have many friends, I don’t get into fights, I’ve never lived with an idiot who thought he was a Communist, I don’t have a baseball glove covered in poems, I don’t have any dead family members I would care to write about in a school paper (I’d rather keep them close to my heart), in fact I don’t do anything. I read, and I’m not going to describe to them a whole bloody book. I play games, but explaining how a game is beautiful is not a true recount. I go out only to buy new games and books with my dad while listening to Irish music.

I got a congratulation when I wrote it on a specific topic – namely, that we went to a zoo on a school trip. But that was fine, because things actually happened then. Even if I didn’t think too much of it… If you are unfamiliar with how English in NZ colleges work these days, all you have to do is write a crap-load of adjectives these days to sound like you know what you’re doing (to the teacher, at least).

eg, The wind blew vehemently against my new yellow umbrella.

I don’t know about you but that line sickens me, because it just overuses adjectives. This is why I hate it when they focus on dumb goals like using adjectives effectively. It results in an unbalanced piece of writing.

My own recounts just go off into other topics – I make Soviet Russia jokes, quote sitcoms, and gently mock politicians (I pity them, openly). It consists with me loosely tying events together

(eg, ‘If you ask what happened to him after that fateful night I’ll give the same answer as Holden Caulfield – Off in Hollywood, being a prostitute’)

I don’t have much to do, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have much to live for. Games and books do for me, and if I turn out not to be a robot like everyone says I am then I’ll probably fall in love.

To hell with the rest. All I do is stare at lampposts and call it beautiful, why’ll trying not too sound banal or ignorant.

Some of my favorite moments in life are spent in a car, at night, listening to ‘Monto’ on the radio and thinking for hours on end…..

The new generation of Christians and their ideas.

People like C.S Lewis, Tolkien and G.K Chesterton are the kind of people we need in the Church. I’ve had enough of people who interpret the Bible literally, to the point of self-destruction (this is not the subject of the post so I won’t go into depth about it).

The thing all three of these people had in common was that they could “recognize metaphor” when they saw it, for the Bible is not entirely literal. What all these people did was determine that there had to be some sort of God – or at least a force that could be considered a God (God is often depicted as a person but is something more).

Whether you think Him to be the good in one’s heart or the the forces of history and fate crushing empires and bringing communities together, He exists even if you don’t call Him God.

Otherwise you’re a nihilist. I urge you to find a reason for living.

When the existence of this God was determined, they most likely found historical sources to figure out which God it was that was right. They were drawn to Christianity because of the eye-witness accounts of Jesus and the Ten Commandments that even atheists think are good ideas to live by.

The difference between God and every other god is that Jesus came into the world to fulfill the law, in other words Jesus was sent to follow up on what God told them. In most other religions you cave to curry favor from God – which would make Him no different from a corrupt city bureaucrat. He offers people the key to their Salvation. God actually sent Jesus to Earth.

Many would doubt the benevolence of such a God, as He sends people to hell.

I am with C.S Lewis when he says that we unlock the door to our Salvation, for without God or morals we are in Hell.

He doesn’t consider loving one another the thing to do because they can pay you back, or because of a sort of justice served to you while you’re on earth. On the contrary true Christianity would have us do things because they are right, not because we benefit from them when we go to heaven. God respects the decision to turn away from Him, but He still offers us the love and wisdom to rescue ourselves.

Wise would mean we would be making our way in the world, right would mean we are making our way to God.

(Do not quote this and take it out of context, since this would only work with the above paragraphs)

That being said, we should not ignore the teachings of other religions, since there is much to learn.

Such as the vision and example of figures like Buddha – who achieves inner peace the same ways Jesus told us (the absence of a God who loves us all however is the reason why it is considered wise instead of right, and although some would say being wise is right they are probably the same people who, on any other day when they are not met with this argument, would say this in reverse and say being right is wise  - in other word they will do anything to sound smart).

When I read about Buddhism in a book of Eastern Religioons I was struck the by the similarities between Jesus and Buddha, but after this when I read a paragraph in my school’s Catholic textbooks I was appalled by the inaccurate information about the Hindus having several different Gods. In actuality, Hinduism has several schools of thoughts. Some include a God, while others don’t, but one of my favorite interpretations by these people is their belief that God can be found almost anywhere, even in inanimate objects.

His hands and feet are everywhere, He looks everywhere and all around,

His eyes, ears and face point to all directions, and all the three worlds are surrounded by these.

This is a wise thing, I think,

God is shown throughout the world, but, when I look at history and at the various thoughts on God in the world I can only say that Christianity is the only religion that has a truly fair God, one who would send His own Son, and, by extension, Himself (being selfless this would hurt Him more than if he had come Himself) to pay for all our sins. Jesus willingly had Himself nailed to the cross.

I talk about God in a very Christian way, and a very European way, so I realize the difficulties this could pose for someone unfamiliar to Christianity. But I’m sure that if, like Bishop Pompallier (a man who my textbooks greatly admire, and so does the man of reason) we accept our cultural differences and pray to God in our own ways, we can refrain from killing each other.

Therefore Be At Peace With God, Whatever You Conceive Him To Be

Desiderata

The Catholic Church and the need for reform.

I think it has become evident to all that the Vatican can be short-sighted, but this is not reason to abandon faith.

I would like top to use the same argument as Hans Kung – the Church as an institution will fail continually, as all do, but why stop believing in American democracy (or whatever political idealogy you believe in) if they violate their own beliefs every hundred years or so?

It’ll eventually happen, since we are human.

Must a man be scarred by mistakes done unintentionally?

That being said, the Church also needs to clear up misconceptions that they have of themselves, such as the myth that Jesus established the political authority the Vatican has over all others - since, as we all know, the Church (and the people it is made out of) established itself, but not everything they say is definitely  true.

Although I am a Catholic I do not believe in all of the Church’s ideas, nevertheless many of my beliefs correspond with what they say.

In any case, God did not ask for the Church as it is – all the Churches have decided they are right, although I believe that none of them are completely right.

If we say that I’m right, just for the sake of argument, then this is the timeline -

Jesus preached the Word, the humans built the Church and corrupted it – what next? 

It’s time for the Vatican to purify the Church, not to claim that they are better but rather to show their interpretations with humility, and to give their arguments that which it is now missing – advice that they don’t violate themselves (eg, don’t judge, gays, acceptance turning the other cheek etc), to give it merit.

Doing otherwise would impose their views on people who dismiss them because they think they are better than the Church in that respect, despite the fact this cannot be an argument against it.

It is, rather, a consequence of the corruption that Christianity is facing.

The Vatican (and all Churches for that matter) have to realize this, since it’s not a matter of the Church being right, it is, however, a matter of it being able to speak and to be able to get the message through.

I am not, however, trying to get the Church to sing Pop songs about Christ – I am trying to have them restore their reputation (which the ignorant take as credibility) so that the Church can continue to exist, and so that no one will ignore it for the wrong reasons.

Some would argue this is bowing to secularism, nihilism and the norm of stupidity – but I maintain the position that this is a chance to save the Church, to go into the modern world and become recognized, and when the world realizes the Church has something to say, to rid themselves of their ignorance.

T.A