A Bridge Across The Stars.

The last time I updated this blog, I was well on my way to finishing a series of ten posts that I was writing up to illustrate my top ten list of general things I don't like about Christianity that are contributing to the rather awful state of affairs that Christianity is in. Yes, those two posts are still coming (for anyone left who actually cares!) but before I continue, I feel like I have something to say about why I feel like such a "Negative Nancy", and why, to be perfectly honest, I just don't feel like I want to do it anymore.

I know it's important to take a stand against what's clearly wrong - hate, injustice, intolerance - but how important is it to constantly go against the flow, against the tide, really, if it costs you your sanity and your happiness? Some may actually want to break free of the Matrix, and deal with all of the consequences which that kind of decision entails...but can you really blame people for being content to be little more than a faceless, nameless battery? Perhaps I am being overly harsh to fellow Christians when I make those kinds of comparisons (fair enough) but when people continue to not critically ask important questions about the things they do as Christians (or even worse, just fake it), to me it almost feels easier to just give up and either go back to joining in the current. Or, perhaps, to decide that it's time to step out of the stream altogether and see what life on dry land is like.

To me, Christianity always seems like that close friend I know who has other people consistently tell him (or her) not to do something which clearly wouldn't lead to anything good or useful or productive...and yet are left flabbergasted when they go ahead and do it anyway. In one ear and out the other. When the lesson is finally learned, it's too little, too late, and who's willing to be that they'll likely forget all about it tomorrow? (Or worse yet, twist it into a reason to keep on doing whatever it was they were doing, but harder, faster, better, stronger.) The token crowd of atheists/agnostics and such who love to rag on Christianity and Christians of course, conveniently ignore the fact that this is just as much a problem for people of other faiths and other belief systems (and them) as it is for Christians.

My point is that it just leaves me feeling frustrated, this constant desire to try to see Christianity improve beyond the constant closed-mindedness I see so rampantly, a closed-mindedness I see in how many Christians relate to the outside culture, to people outside their church, and people outside whatever social or economic grouping they belong to. It seems so sad when I look around me and find that as bad as I think things are, the reality is actually quite worse. I keep wondering when people are going to start getting tired of attaching and resting their faith and even whole theological world on things like the Culture War, and yet find that people are almost too eager to take up arms against Obama, the Homosexual Agenda, and modern science. It's left me feeling so alienated from Christianity that I find myself almost alienating myself from the Christians I know in my day to day life. I have a conversation with them and it feels like our minds aren't just on different levels -- they're on different planets altogether. And it hurt even more when you see that everyone's on that other planet, no one's on yours, and no one from over there isn't even trying to build a rocket to get to where you are.

Before this metaphor collapses under it's own weight, I just want to ask if it's possible to live on theological lonely planet - or if there's another way of building a bridge across the stars to span that distance.