it’s hard to write when the only point i feel like getting across is that i haven’t got much worth saying. i like to write but can only do it well when i’ve got something good that i have to get down before it slips out of my mind. there is an article i originally considered weeks ago and would love to throw together to post right now. there’s a lot i might say but i don’t know how and right now, it’s just not there. it probably will be later, when i’m trying to fall asleep, and i hate that. i have ideas to get across and a desire to do so and yet… nothing.

this must be that nagging reminder of my insufficiency, creeping up on me again. nagging in the same way a lion is a nagging reminder to the antelope that he’s tired and is about to be eaten. i feel my inability when i first wake up in the morning: soo… a day of class, and i’ll talk to maybe three people outside this house, and probably put off what little work i should do, and then repeat. soon the usual distractions get the day spinning, but again when i go to bed i remember that i’m useless at doing anything worthwhile. on my own, i am just another loser writing because i’m not good at much else. if i get my joy from cool music, a decent essay, or some new website feature, i will never stay happy for long. i may as well devote my life to a 4.0 or weekends of ignorant drunken bliss or a continuous cool-guy popularity act (or do the Miami thing and try all three at once). it’s true – my acutely incomplete belief in God does not give me immunity from distractions or depression.

my attitude is not good. it’s not terrible, and i will be ok, and if i were more stubborn i could probably live out my time here in my current mindset. even when i do move on, i will never get over my pride in my intelligence and creativity. i will never stop trying to be independent of my Creator. i can’t say for certain, because i’ve never been an alcoholic or a prostitute, but i’ll assume that my insistence on being insightful is just as spiritually hazardous. as long as i keep trying to accomplish and communicate and persuade as ends in themselves, i’ll have chosen to be stagnant – my attitude will stay “not good.” only when i look to God for my inspiration, only when i keep him in the front of my mind more often, will anything i do benefit myself and others.

and isn’t that the idea?

I’m a cave man. Cro-magnon, or maybe one of the others; whatever they’ll call me in a few thousand years. Doesn’t matter much to this simple cave man, cause my brain is not too developed. Like my ape predecessors and the assorted small furry things before them, it’s all I can do to find food and keep warm and reproduce. Now, don’t get me wrong, I do all of the above pretty well. And because of that – and nothing else – me and the folks thrive.

Call me biased, but this ‘natural selection’ thing… it’s a pretty sweet deal. I mean, you start with some tiny cell and then that becomes a few tiny cells. And those become something bacteria-ish, which after a few million years is a lizardy critter. Some of the lizards get a switch bumped that gives them fur, more randomness pumps up the brain a bit, eyes that were once light-sensitive spots end up seeing detailed colors. The stuff that’s good, stays; the stuff that’s bad — ends up eaten or stepped on. Mix in a mass extinction once in awhile, and voila: cave-man!

It seems a little unfair that I know how to make spears and fire and slings to launch rocks. My ancestors don’t stand much of a chance, which is ironic since their better chances are what eventually gave me chances that are better still. But then, random is random so who cares about philosophy as long as I can figure out which lizards taste good and what colors I should avoid. See, even now, I suppose evolution is still doing its thing. If I eat a few too many rotten Dodo eggs I will be evolutioned right out of the system. Those who had a ‘bad taste means poison, poison means no eat’ mutation will evolve onwards to become Frenchie wine makers… all I’ll get is the honor of being lizard food.

And that is all I need know about ‘fair.’ Instincts provide a basic government system where if an inpidual gets out of control, the rest of us know to whack him before he kills us all. Health care is not a biggie as long as we stay away from anybody who looks like they might die. After all, that’s just common sense. I don’t know exactly how disease travels but I don’t want to be close. I mentioned spears and slings and, yeah, I wish I could say that was all my idea. But one thing leads to another and the sketches on the local diner wall gave us a starting point. Just like nature, we learn to keep the things that work and pitch the things that don’t. Nature is always watching.

This is another reason I don’t need fairness or feelings. Aside from taking extra room in a brain with precious little useful space, non-survival instincts or “emotions” can be downright harmful. What if for some unintellible reason I become “friends” with someone and they get contagiously sick? My care for them will grind against my knowledge that I ought to get away. If the caring wins, I’m that much more likely to die. And so, even if mutation sticks me with a ‘friendly’ gene, a nasty dose of Monkey Fever(?) will keep that from being passed very far. Even disregarding disease, a cave-male spending time with “friends” when he could be stocking up on mammoth or making babies is a male whose genes will not leave very big ripples in the pool. Finding enough to eat, keeping myself from freezing, avoiding cliffs and making babies: that’s what it’s all about.

Or, might it be beneficial for me to “care” about the females I breed with? If I decide to care too much about the first one, perfectly suitable partners will go mate-less. So, you see, if I waste my energy on fidelity, my silliness will be selected away in a generation or so: my “love” gene will be spread to a considerably lesser degree than the free-sexin’ genes of my neighbors. Popular opinion would take care of any chance that my new idea of “something more important than reproduction” might catch on. Because if love didn’t come from my mind, it would just have to come from someone else’s… after all, brains pre-programmed with anything other than survival would not be passed on to something as advanced as cave-man. Unless monogamy was somehow favorable, any inpidual who cooked up such a concept would have no more chance of affecting the population than would a lizard who decided he should teach his friends to line dance.

Natural selection doesn’t care about cozy, happy families. The very best I can do is stockpile food, figure out how to survive harsh winters, and reproduce every chance I get. If I do this, the babies I help make will be as well-equipped as possible for survival. Like me, they will have food and shelter. Like me, they will see the importance of gathering and staying warm and making babies. I need not read them bedtime stories, or give them piggyback rides, or take them to watch sabretooth tiger races. Unless emotions already exist, personal relationships don’t matter… and didn’t I just prove emotions would be lucky to make the recessive gene list? No, meat and warmth and new cave-men who know how to get both are the only evolutionarily important things.

Maybe in a few dozen generations there will be “games,” and “art,” and other time-wasting stuff. These will only last if, as I expect, their conception results from spare cave-man time on account of us having worked together to master getting food, keeping warm, and reproducing. If the sons of my grandsons’ sons are so efficient that they get bored and must find new things to keep them entertained, more power to ‘em. And if countries form, and cultures, these will be well and good so long as staying alive to pass on helpful genes is their focus. Plague will wipe out cave-men too sentimental to abandon their friends: only cave-materialists will thrive. Bad mutations combined with too much monogamy would spell disaster: in a matter of centuries, we’ll have learned to mate with no fewer than five different cave-persons.

Turn back on the “TV.” Impress yourself with the number of “songs” you have memorized and how much you can do with that new “computer.” But don’t forget the lizard who would have never passed us his genes unless his insticts focused on survival. Don’t confuse inventiveness with importance, and don’t assume emotions evolved same as knees and toes. Nature favors not the nicest or the most creative or the best dressed, but the sharpest at survival. I may be just a cave-man, but at least I know my place. You may be a smarter cave-man, but deep down a cave-man is all you are. I’m gonna go light something on fire, and maybe line dance.

I was walking to class one morning last week, thinking about the three tests I’d be taking over the next two days. I realize something funny: because I had studied, the idea of taking tests did not make me uncomfortable. Mostly because I never study, this was a new feeling. I considered how nice it was being able to enjoy the sun and changing leaves without a dark test cloud hanging over me.

I realized, what a cool trade-off! It wasn’t fun studying for a couple hours the night before, but even four hours of studying would have been worth it for the peaceful feeling that came from being more prepared than usual. I knew I had made a smart decision for once, and had foregone an evening of TV or laughing with the guys in order to be more responsible. Yes, I would even go so far as to say I was GLAD I’d studied!

As I walked down the street – I don’t know whether it was God or just my mind wandering – I got to appreciating how most of the decisions we make are big trade-offs. Granted, many of them are so unbalanced they are hardly choices at all. If you buy gas you’ve got $15 less to spend on other stuff… but there’s not a lot of other stuff you can get to when your car’s out of gas. If you have the joy of being a business student, you’ve heard all about opportunity costs in accounting. When you make a decision you have to consider the value of each alternative.

“You can’t have your cake and eat it too,” they say. Which I have never understood, because isn’t eating cake the only benefit of having it? The saying should be “you can’t eat your cake and eat it too” but then, that doesn’t roll off the tongue nearly as well. Good saying or not, the point does seem to be true. And anyone serious about being responsible with their money (accountants, for instance) knows the importance of making informed choices. Most big opportunities come around only once and if you miss the train, tough luck.

Time itself is much more important than money – if you do it right, it’s far from impossible to save more money than you can spend. In that case, you can have your cake and eat your cake, or do whatever else you’d do with it. But, although time is harder to manage and impossible to hoard, we often give our days less attention than our dollars. Every hour comes only once and we only get so many; do we weigh each trade-off as carefully as we should? Aren’t our hearts and souls more important (and harder to handle) than our cash?

I definitely do not put my decision making energy where I ought to. I am really bad about starting off my morning without prayer or time reading the Bible, although I know both of these will ready my heart for whatever the day holds. I know God’s there for me but most of the time still try to do everything on my own – and I wonder why at the end of the day I’m burned out. But the crisp fall morning mentioned above, I made a point of spending more than three sentences talking to God, and I let the few verses I read before class sink in.

It turns out God reinforced me after all! As much as it felt good to know I’d studied, my peaceful mood held something deeper, too. It’s amazing what God will do if you give him more than a passing glance and a “thanks for the fruity pebbles” in the morning. I stop to think about which stocks I should invest in and how I should lay out the newest page of this website, so why not give my spirit a fair share of time? When I start my day by reminding myself I’m clumsy but loved, it takes so much weight off my shoulders and proves the most obvious trade-off of all.

Something is missing. A part of our lives that we need in order to be whole… is not there. This is the way everyone feels, whether rarely or constantly, and this is a feeling we try to overcome. There is a solution to the problem. And it isn’t a car, or a better girlfriend, or a cool new whatever. These things can be enough of a distraction, though, for us to ignore the ache caused by an empty space in our hearts. Attempting perfection through belongings and relationships is the first alternative to seeking out the God who designed us to connect with him. The others – denial and plain, frustrated anger – are equally effective and costly.

Everyone wants to be happy. And everyone wants to feel as though he or she is contributing something. Only the most extremely spaced-out academics would argue against these truths. But even when we accept what we undeniably feel, we tend to take the feeling for granted and leave it at that. The source of these longings is a dangerous, complicated topic that usually seems better left unanswered. Denial is pretty easy when we are scared of the answers. It gets easier with practice, until only your worst days stir the shouting in your soul – something is missing.

Obsession with unimportant things goes hand in hand with denial. If a bad day were all it took for people to seek real truth and turn their lives around, the world would be very different. But instead, when everything goes wrong we can blame lack of posessions or power. Immediately I can think of lots of cool stuff that maybe, if I could get my hands on, would fill the gap in me. This basic idea is the foundation for the very lives of many people: ie. “when I get out of school and get a good job, my sense of pointlessness will go away.” Sound familiar? From then on, the variety of potential achievements, experiences, and belongings available to me could probably occupy me for the rest of my life. A new car every few years, an attractive wife who shares my sense of humor… that should do it.

And this is a shame. If I work hard enough in school and at my job, I can make enough money and meet enough people to keep me distracted and denying the emptiness underneath it all. That’s it. All a person would have to do is ignore the longing that still surfaces once in awhile and maybe learn to be content with less than they’d originally planned. Again, this is what a great many people do – and enough people do it well that it’s become self perpetuating. The American dream of climbing the ladder and partying it out when you reach your desired level is popular, visible, and easy enough to imitate.

But obviously, something that requires success and money will not work for everyone. Capitalism really is a brutal thing and if you don’t have the right skills, work ethic, or timing well that’s just too bad. So you get stuck at the bottom, or knocked down part way, or just not as far as you want. The natural human reaction is to get angry, so that’s what we do. And rather than realize what we’re fighting for is pointless, our bitterness often spreads through every aspect of life. Whether we give up or keep plugging along, we’ve become mad at the world. Someone angry at the world is not likely to believe it was created by a loving God.

So, one way or another, pride has its way of making us so self-centered we cannot believe in anything bigger than us. For any or all of the above three reasons, God is cornered out of our lives. Not a good idea. God is the only thing capable of answering our deepest longings and making us worthwhile. He did create us to have fun but more so to experience true, unconditional love — which is not possible apart from him. Obviously I haven’t lived an entire lifetime but I’m not so sure that reduces my credibility. Maybe if I’d tried for 40 years instead of 18, perfection would have come to me and brought me peace. I say this sarcastically, but maybe people out there would agree.

Also sad is the fact that nothing I say can convince someone their frustrations are needless. I can’t write based on honesty and leave out the fact that, honestly, I know I can’t persuade people to give up their obsessions and ask God to step in where they’ve failed. Thankfully I do believe I have some degree of talent in writing, and if my words might bring one person a little closer to God that’s awesome. A real, daily relationship with God is possible thanks to Jesus and while it does not involve any strange religious voodoo it does require admitting you need Him. The decision is yours.

Are you a skeptic? by Josh McDowell
Ancient evidence for Jesus from ‘non-Christian’ sources by Christianity.com

our language has no shortage of odd cultural attachments. consider the commonly misused but convenient word ‘religious.’ used vaguely, as in, “is so-and-so religious?” (everyone is religious, by some definition… what we usually mean is “does so-and-so go to church?”), we can determine a person’s feelings about God without bringing up any offensive specifics. and most importantly we stay comfortable. over the course of human history, i believe three things ran their course to shape the way we use the word today. one: people do stupid things. two: because people in general are stupid, comparing our own mistakes to those of others does a great job of making us feel better. three: people who profess a faith in God (Christians, for the sake of this essay) tend to believe in moral guidelines more strict than the general population would like.

combine these things, and it’s only a matter of time before the Christians – who, being human, rarely practice the love that they preach – start to grind on the non-Christians’ nerves. everyone has different tastes but that’s all they are: inpidual preferences. therefore, no one can pretend that what they say is fun or appropriate is more fun or appropriate than anyone else’s favorite activity. no one – except for those darn Christians, who have to complicate the matter by claiming their morals come from a higher power and apply to everyone. but then the radical doubt philosophers came along and said, ‘hey, don’t get all worked up about these Christians with their right and wrong and absolutes! there’s no logical proof that God exists at all, so religious beliefs are just another personal taste!’ (by the way, not a direct quote, but you get the idea). their arguments were not great but the implications of there being no God sounded good to many people.

and for many, from academic elitists to pop-culture fanatics, it’s been all downhill ever since. what we know of science and technology has been built upon exponentially, allowing for more and more sources of fun and distraction – and an ever increasing number of things to sample and choose favorites from. strictly speaking, the philosophers (and later the Darwinists) never disproved God – but things sure are easier without the idea of someone smarter than us always looking over our shoulder! so, as usual, the bulk of society took the easy route and just let God sit somewhere in the stack of things to check out whenever we get around to it. if you don’t want to think about something, you don’t need much proof to be convinced it’s fake. with God “disproven,” it only made sense that ‘religion’ should become just another column of check boxes on a survey, a personal taste no more right or wrong than choosing blues over jazz.

in spite of all this, the Christians continue to grow in numbers. unfortunately, many aren’t bothered by the relativist theory of multiple ways to God* and heaven. because again, like everyone else, Christians are human and get sucked in by culture as surely as anyone else. yet in spite of foggy vision and widespread misdirection, there are believers in God who still try to spread his truth and love. while some of us apply our gifts wisely, others make a downright mess. the result, naturally, is the prominent feeling that Christianity is a way for the judgmental to ruin everyone else’s good time. we live in a culture turned off to ‘religious’ people and the old-fashioned, stuffy, boring tone carried by such a word. is this what the radical philosophers of centuries past intended? some have, at least, come up with a popular alternative not only to Christianity but also to any sort of absolute truth.

“relativism” is a very popular, academic-sounding word. the thinking man’s replacement for any connection to God. unlike “religion,” relativism is a word with worldliness and education practically oozing from its every syllable. and, it’s a cop-out. ask a Christian how he knows that right and wrong exist, and he’ll tell you because the Bible and our own deepest instincts tell us so. the philosopher’s reply? Christians beg the question, beat around the bush, retreat from the issue. ask your local relativist philosopher the same question about right and wrong, and he’ll reply that they are relative: what’s good for you may be bad for me and vice-versa, and there’s not a lot we can do about it. right and wrong change to keep up with the latest issue of rolling stone; that’s not to mention differences in truth from one continent to the next. as a dedicated seeker of logical answers, how can a philosopher overlook the fact that relying on culture for truth is nonsense? if relativism is truth then truth is meaningless…and every philosopher is out of a job.

an example problem: who gets to pick the definition for ‘society?’ what if i have always lived alone, and decide one day to start kicking every person who walks past my house? if the only practices and ideas i knew were my own, i would be blameless in kicking all hapless bypassers, (and punting their dogs) so far as relativism is concerned! who says that a society has to be a country or even a state or county? if i never have contact with anyone besides myself, i am society – as far as my crazy brain is concerned. but, no, i’m sure there is some handy rule that works around little kinks such as this. i suppose in their spare time after disposing of God, the great atheist thinkers found a few social absolutes to apply to their theory that there are no social absolutes. what happened to being flawed, less than omniscient, human? those seem to have gone out of style along with philosophies that make sense and worldviews that are not self-contradictory.

* – Jesus told him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 New Living Translation

Has anyone noticed that TV, movies, and simply walking around town have gotten way too visually provocative? Yes, I realize that’s a stupid question. I really didn’t know how else to start, but this serves to introduce my argument by displaying the obviousness of my point. Let’s focus on the part about walking around in public – and when I say provocative I mean this: a lot of girls roam around half-naked all the time, which is not good for anyone. Maybe you don’t even notice it (that’s a lie) or aren’t affected by it (that’s a lie too) but I’m going to continue whether you like it or not (which doesn’t matter because if you didn’t you’d have stopped reading already).

I realize that other people have noticed said problem, and further I do understand that many think it’s no problem at all. I also realize the whole scantily-clad women issue is equally problematic in the entertainment industry, hence my mention of movies and television back in that cheesy first sentence. And while neither of these are good news, what we are most affected by on a daily basis is just that: who we are daily in contact with. Drooling over half naked (or just plain naked, for that matter) movie stars is no good but at least you don’t have to face any realistic temptation to jump into bed with them. When a guy is directly surrounded by immodest females, however, the potential for obsession and temptation enters a whole new dimension. We’ve got a vicious cycle going, and failing to acknowledge it as a problem is not likely to help.

Call me a prude. I’ve been called worse, so if you are all about “freedom to act like a jackass and dress like a whore” then feel free. You’d be overlooking the real issue. But if you’d like, you could glare at me and call me a moral extremist, turning things around so I look like the one whose thinking is distorted. Heck, if you’ve put thought into it you could slap together an entire semi-impressive argument; I’ve heard the joke about sex being clean, healthy fun and other related theories. “Why fuss over self restraint if the best method is to do it with whomever you’d like at any given point?” I have heard some academics say self-control is only repression and they tell us that’s not good, while still other crazies insist that marriage is prostitution. You should be warned that these people are idiots. If you are one of them, please reconsider. Honestly. Do you really think you can have sex whenever you want, and it won’t mess you up emotionally? And that’s not to mention all the diseases.

Clearly, some people think that the more skin we see, the better. Think twice: it’s a trap. A painful lure that, for men and women both, can be difficult to escape. Gone are the days when girls dressing questionably was a shock. A shallow Rolling Stone culture and large quantities of denial have numbed us through that stage. Now we’ve run headlong into an atmosphere where only the ‘very conservative’ make a conscious effort to dress appropriately (or, in the case of men, try not to stare). It seems that, as nearly-naked women become nearly-naked mothers, a whole generation is growing up without parents who will tell them “You’re not leaving the house in that!”

The more adjusted men become to seeing women in public practically undressed – and the more adjusted women become to seeing other women that way – the more skin we gradually accept as normal. But it’s not normal — suggestion is a powerful thing. How much further than a 4-inch skirt will a girl go for attention? How convinced can a guy become that sex is a harmless way to have fun?

When people fool and harm themselves, it cannot be anything but catastrophic for society. Look at the teenage pregnancy rate. It has dropped recently, but is it low enough? Do a little research and see what percentage of marriages end in divorce; how many stories have you heard of an enjoyable divorce? But we refuse to learn. Too many parents have begun telling their kids to use protection instead of teaching them to wait. Too many view abortion as an option for the one out of a hundred cases when our beloved “protection” doesn’t work.

People are starting to have sex at younger and younger ages, more children are being born into single-parent homes, the list of tragedies goes on. And we say that society’s general disregard for any form of physical modesty is not a problem? When sixteen year old girls dress like prostitutes, it’s going to cause huge difficulties not only for them but for their male friends as well. When kids are having sex in junior high, it should be no surprise that a scary percentage of college students have contracted STDs.

If we will not recognize the threats of casual sex, things will only get worse. Sex used to be considered reserved for married couples – and with good reason. Approaced in any other fashion, it is a poison or at best a time bomb for later relationships. Yet we continue doing whatever we want, and then get pissed that our dating lives are complete garbage. Meanwhile we seem to become more confused and twisted every day. “Alternative lifestyles” that are clearly wrong are pushed as acceptable; men and women having promiscuous sex with each other has become such a foregone conclusion that the elite are moving on to more exciting topics. This must not be the direction in which we continue. Gentlemen, have some respect and stop obsessing over curves. Ladies – put a shirt on, for crying out loud!

At this rate, in 20 years we’ll be back to running around draped in vines and assorted leafy materials. That would not be good.

Sheesh… I don’t know why I even leave my room. I came with my friends to this church so I could worship and learn a little more about God, and here I sit worrying about some girl in the crowd. But this discontent is not about the girl – not about this particular girl, at least. Most of the time I’m fine with being alone, I suppose as a product of being alone for so long. Lately, though, I wonder about the assurance I’ve always had that someday I will find someone and get married. A wife and kids are and have forever been vital characters in the full adult life I’ve imagined – but I’ll be twenty in less than six months and haven’t been on a date for more than a year. How far past a year could this stretch without so much as a spark last?

My feeling of only semi-severe but no less authentic loneliness lasts only a moment, which is longer than it should. Two more seconds of my thought are wasted on the pretty girl sitting at the front of the sanctuary. I think of how apathetic she seemed the last time I tried to talk to her; the front of the sanctuary might as well be miles away. As usual, this depressing thought leads me through a catalog of the girls at school I have considered dating – they all seem a little too popular to pay attention to me. This point is where I usually give up on every female I know and tell myself if I could only be patient, I would meet the right one.

But for the first time my daily quarter-minute of feeling pitiful does not stop here, with halfhearted self-assurance and loneliness mutated into sentimental hope. Something causes me to honestly reflect on what I’ve been thinking. I give my heart a chance to reject the all-too-accepted idea that as long as I’m single, I’ll be missing out. As I allow my mind to slow from its buzzing pace and force myself to look away from the girl, the floor of the church catches my eye. Suddenly I feel God’s hand firmly on my heart: simple but beautiful, this hardwood paneling and the tall, beautiful stone building above and around it have stood for over a hundred years. My current crush will not last for a fraction of that time, and as I grasp this a smile sneaks onto my face.

Like so many others, this unexpected realization’s power is in its simplicity. I know that God is with me, loves me, and has a great plan for my life. And every time I have moped the way I started to just moments ago, I’ve looked back with shame for being so childish. Noticing how irrelevant your worries are is an excellent way to kill them. This should be obvious, but one way or another we always let ourselves forget. Instantly a handful of examples come to mind where I tied myself in knots over someone, spent energy trying to impress her, and in the end wondered why I stressed over her at all. Does this mean I should not think about or talk to girls; that I should swear them off for life? I certainly hope not – but sense and experience prove that I ought not obsess over brief glances or 12-word conversations.

What an incredible truth I’m finally getting into my head! Here I am sitting next to a great friend in a beautiful church with a couple hundred cool people, worrying myself about a minor relationship I’ll probably have forgotten in six months. Maybe the girl I’m into likes me, maybe she does not, either way I should relax and simply be myself instead of trying to plot a possible date or think of perfect things to say. Greater still, this idea of peace applies to everything: I’ve got tests next week but will have enough time to study. My GPA is a little lower than it needs to be but I still have my scholarships and am doing well this semester. I’m angry and pessimistic more often than I’d like but that’s slowly improving, too.

Is there any aspect of my life that God can’t take care of? I doubt it. How could there be, when He designed my mind and soul and the very stone used to build this church? The last few years, I’ve seen that the more seriously I focus on God, the more things seem to fall into place. He has gotten me through difficult times, helped me realize when I’ve messed up, forgiven me when I ignore His direction. I may be single, but I am not alone. I don’t doubt that God will guide me into far better times even than this, mold me into a stronger, kinder person, teach me patience, joy, and peace. Right now, I have so much to be thankful for – I’m at a good school, I’ve got a good roommate and reliable friends, I’m healthy and near my family. I am learning, very, very slowly, to relax.

Maybe my most flexible and most treacherous talent is my ability to convince myself that, in any and every situation, I am at least partially right. I hate being hurt by someone else’s mistakes, but hate even more to admit my own. Why? I really am not sure. All too often, I am painfully aware of my feelings but can only guess at exactly what makes me I feel the way I do. And this, too, bothers me – why do things always have to be so complex? Because my head and heart are wired for more than just enjoying steak and driving fast and making out. That’s not a groundbreaking announcement; I’d bet it all that you’ve felt this way too.

Why do we feel like this? And why do we pretend this feeling is less real than the foolish thoughts we entertain? Well, humans aren’t perfect…we all die and makes mistakes and so forth – I can handle that idea. At least I can until I get sick or do something less than perfect and want to weasel out of it. Who came up with this right versus wrong garbage? I did my best and that was awfully good, but here I am getting hosed again. I thought there was a God but why does he have me puking when cokehead Billy next door is meaner than me and didn’t catch the flu? In no time at all here I am with all kinds of reasons for saying “screw it” and going on as if my shifty feelings of right and wrong are the best I can do. I don’t need evidence – I’ve got bad experiences that tell me the world sucks, so I’d better stick to looking out for myself.

But nearly as often as I’d like to doubt all else and hold on to my rationality, I get the impression there’s something bigger that I should be holding onto instead. These feelings don’t fit with the rest of my picture. In fact, when I help someone or am helped by someone or fall in “love,” it’s like the focus of my lens auto-zooms away from me and onto a different image altogether. As often as I’ve been wrong, I wonder if maybe the pain I’ve experienced is truly due to everything being crap or instead is simply a product of others being almost as self-centered as me. It’s a question that even on a bad day I have trouble shaking, and one that on good days tugs at my pessimistic side and roars at my brain for some answer.

Now I come to school and find myself in a pre-med science course on genetics and the evolution of species. Its lack of real rational, scientifically proven fuel stuns me. How did you say we got here? Millions of years of random mutations that started for no reason on sea-foam and/or mud? The part of me that believes in God and feels the real weight of love chuckles at how preposterous this is. Even my coldly logical but proud brain tells me its incomprehensible workings did not come from luck and a smart monkey somewhere along the line pushing a big, dumber monkey out of a tree. Basic polymers plus the perfect environment plus a whole lot of chance do not add up to thousands of species of animals and one distinctly different creature at the top…animals with complex thoughts and feelings had to come from somewhere special. A gorilla that can do sign language and chimps digging with sticks are pretty sad proof that we’re only another link in an intricate but meaningless chain.

Here at last is a source of progress. We sometimes imagine that faith in God is shaken out of the rational tree, so to speak, without considering that there is no more evidence against God than there is for Him. With this in mind, why does the college community seem so anti-religion, and against Christianity in particular? Someone might tell you it’s because the traditional (which in and of itself has become a bad word amongst educated people) American childhood is a brainwashing process whose spell is broken once we get into the “real world” we’ve heard so much about. But all political correctness aside, I wonder what percentage of college students nationwide have stopped to honestly consider the weight of Jesus versus self. Self-righteous professors and the stupid media hint constantly at the silliness of Christianity, and bad impressions from imperfect Christians tip the scales – ‘nope, I’ve seen enough, that Jesus business is not for me.’ Is faith in God un-cool because people seriously think about it and find it makes no sense, or because we do what’s easier and pretend our own way is best?

My bias towards Christianity will not let me overlook the grossly overestimated brainwashing argument. How much time have I spent praying and reading the Bible, opposed to the amount of time I’ve spent watching moral-free TV or listening to the dirty radio? If I weigh my hours spent focusing on God against my hours doing otherwise, I see that if anything has been leeching off my ability to think for myself, it’s the screwed-up world. I don’t understand everything about human life or the universe that surrounds it…but neither does anyone else. When I’m being honest I see it’s the worldly thoughts that wreck my healthy relationships and my own mistakes that get me hurt in the first place. Aren’t these bumps and bruises what originally led me to doubt the standards that, if I’d followed them better, would have served me well? Now what is it that makes doubt so “rational,” exactly?

Or instead, look at it another way – I listen to a lot of rock, alternative rock, and punk music, which typically is not the most romantic sort of stuff. Yet while past mistakes have made me seriously cautious, CDs full of broken-hearted lyrics and angry guitar jamming do not shake my feeling that some day I’ll find true love in a relationship deeper than fun times or commitment with an expiration date. Could you suggest that this idea of love springs from watching romantic movies for days on end – long enough to counter the time I’ve spent listening to anti-girl music? How many hundred exposures would I need to Beauty and the Beast for that argument to make sense? But maybe by now you’d rather not think, and will shrug me off as an idiot instead. If you’re realistic you’ll call the thing an emotion that leads you to react so strongly. Where do you think that emotion came from? Nature?

What is life all about? What is the meaning? For centuries, across the generations, through the widest array of societies and belief systems imaginable, mankind has been always striving for the answer to this question. The day to day can get boring to the extent that we feel like a waste of space, a waste of everyone’s time including our own. Sure, I can find people and things that are fun for awhile – but I’ve got a brain and I just know I can do more. I want a bigger picture: what is it I’m working to accomplish, not this week or this year, but with my life? Will my trials ever amount to anything? If not, then why should I bother trying at all?

People are always attempting to become invincible or at least complete something that will give us a sense that when we are gone, an immortal trace of us will remain. Everyone does it, whether through conquering the business world, winning football trophies, writing poetry, or designing buildings. Some of us feel younger around our children, feel secure if we move into a bigger house every few years, feel more influential with each salary increase. If I can invest shrewdly enough and speak well enough to impress or simply shock the world around me, I will serve a purpose. If I load up on hazard insurance and watch my weight and maintain careful control over my daily life, I can practically live forever. And once my greatest goals are accomplished, the mark I leave on society means part of me will never die.

But sometimes it seems I cannot succeed. Everyone wants a cut of what I have earned. When I have finally put the kids through school and bought my wife all that she asks for and sent the tax man packing, all that will be left for me is a shadowy reminder of my formerly impressive income. I will not be able to buy all the things I want or do all the things I want or maximize my enjoyment. And common sense teaches me this is life’s point – day to day, moment to moment, having all the fun I can. Because as I get older I must be realistic; my mind is gradually slipping and my joints are weakening and one day I will not be able to walk. Even with the greatest technology and the most powerful friends, someday I will die. That day will come too soon; not long after I have done what they said I could not and earned the millions I dreamed of and made my mark, the respect these things bring will be useless.

Will at least my children remember me? Maybe. If I gave them the things they asked for and went to most of their little league games and didn’t hassle them, they might visit me fairly often in the final years before I expire. A broken old man, at the end I will be little more than a burden to those who “love” me. And what of love? The wonderful sensation we call love fizzles out, runs dry, itself dies of age. Can I find a woman who will not leave me, friends I can count on for life? Can I enjoy being around my children enough while they are home to counter the pain when they move away? All the truest love will one day fade, disproving the very definition of an overrated term. Is “love” as we use the word truly a capacity of the human animal? I have seen too many examples of the opposite to believe it is. I say we should look at this as the most harsh of the four-letter-words: a fable passed down by generations of childish people, fools scrambling for acceptance and long term feelings that simply don’t exist.

I will concede that sounds crazy at first – but what is love if not mere overemphasized attachment? The so-called wise look to love to fill in for other wants, to feign some sort of meaningful life, to distract themselves from their material failures. Day in and day out we hear that love is bigger than genes or thoughts or money, that love is the point of life on earth, even that a loving deity put us here in the first place. I know too many shattered families, harmful relationships, heartbroken lovers to rely on such a fairy tale. So in the end, it seems there is no way to be invincible. My money will go to children who were wishing I might die as soon as I couldn’t maintain myself any longer. Their children will forget what I looked like and how the wealth they inherit was made. One day, it will be forgotten that I ever lived at all.

And what if there is something else after life? Even as a youth I was too smart to buy into that, and I will not be one of those people to sell out now that I realize I’ll eventually die. What weakness, to parade under the banner of strength while physical ability is with you but just as highly wave humility’s colors when no longer can you fight for, argue with, inspire those around you. Is physical ability, then, the source of power? Money is not, for it intoxicates us to seek more but can potentially be stolen or lose its value without warning. Dollars may last longer than muscles but cannot be enjoyed, once your muscles have worn out. All good things, it appears, are fleeting. Again, what of the afterlife? I have never seen an angel, never heard gods shouting from the sky. I have no proof, no sensible reason to think I will continue on another level when I have died. I might as well go back to pretending I’m invincible.

But yes, I am young. I can stand, I can fight for myself and for the things I want. I am intelligent. I agree with the scientists, when they bring overwhelming evidence that man evolved from the apes. I revel at the simplicity, the energy, the power that our ancient relatives possess. Perhaps we should not think ourselves so unlike them; maybe we have become too caught up in ourselves. I waste my strength climbing someone else’s ladder because self-righteous men decided I had to “earn” the things I enjoy. However, I’m not convinced our superiority over the apes lies in our competitive market structure or sense of justice. Power in feelings, philosophies, and social systems? We can hardly keep track of half our own emotions or thoughts. These are not our source of power, but further wasteful attempts at immortality.

Youth and our natural gifts are the only real sources of power. Inpiduals once settled issues, decided who was the best, made the rules – long before we were domesticated, before we fell off track and into the cages we now call home. We are better than the chimpanzees and gorillas. The human brain knows greater depths of trust and fear, more intricate senses of deceit and diplomacy. Why squander the strength and intelligence we have, spending our days in front of a computer or behind a counter or next to an assembly line? Meaningless rules pen us in, break our drive, keep us from the things we would have. Simple, rational justice has been forgotten in the race for wealth and love and fleeting power. Survival is the key. If society were pure, based only on what we rationally know and freed from the muck of old religions and traditions, the truly strong would be most likely to survive and prosper. Then man would see his full potential: more intelligent and creative than the primates but not such a different species that some set of higher laws must be obeyed.

Bear with me: realizing that survival is the highest goal in life, do we really need so many laws to protect the weak? Science has shown us what we really are, leaving no more excuse for imaginary gods or proud notions of justice. Tradition, armed with tales of good and evil, “right” and “wrong,” is the weapon of every government. From birth we are told, like our parents were, that there is a correct way to act and an acceptable way to live. We are tied by nonsense to our families and told we must follow made-up rules to be happy. We are permitted to strive for what we want only within these strict terms. We can maximize our enjoyment only in doses. We are trapped by generations of rhetoric and left with one solution.

Centuries of tradition are not changed easily, but living in a society does not necessarily mean abiding by its standards. What can you do, knowing that there’s no bigger picture? Ignore the rules to the greatest extent you can get away with. You have no reason to look over your shoulder. Forget what you have been tricked into believing, and remember that daily enjoyment is what really matters. Only a fool would search for more. If each would take what he could get, his true intelligence, willpower, and cunning would determine his happiness. His weaker opponents deserve not what they cannot take by plotting, cooperation, or force. Let them lose if losing is in their genes. The very history of life itself is a story of survival: follow the rest of the planet’s example.

this is not at all how i feel…i wanted to set up an anti-God argument and realized anything halfway is watered down. ie. if you don’t believe in God or creation then believing in love or truth would be silly. this is extreme and exaggerated, i know — but proves my point, i believe. read part 2 for the opposite opinion.