06.29.07
When To Talk, When To Walk
The major trend I see in attempting to “evangelize” or “witness” to people in the States (since that is where I am from, I will be concentrating most of my efforts here… applicability to those of you in other countries is unclear) fall along two major methods.
There’s the “Shotgun” method, as I call it, which generally involves going up to random people and asking them brazen questions (“Where do you think you’ll go after you die?” and such like, generally with the preface, “Can I ask you a few questions?”). For most people (Christians and non-Christians alike) I’ve talked to about this phenomenon, the only thing it generally gets across is that Christians are only doing it “for the numbers,” or to get as many people converted as possible, which, is most certainly not our goal. For every person that comes to Christ through this method, I would estimate there’s between 100 and 1000 that come away with a negative opinion of Christianity.
There’s also the “Shock Value” method, which generally involves very loud people standing on soapboxes and street corners, preaching that basically we all suck, and we’re all going to hell. As valid as that may be, the only thing it does is convince non-Christians that we’re a hateful, bigoted bunch.
Not exactly following Christ’s example, there, huh? Yes, I know He did talk about hell, but what He emphasized most of all was manifesting God’s love, and His saving Grace. A thirty-second conversation with someone on a deeply personal topic is not going to convince them that we love them, and through us, God loves them. Deriding them for their sins (because that’s honestly what it sounds like) is also not going to show that love, because most people don’t think they’re doing too bad.
The reason, I think, that these methods don’t work in America at all, is because we’re spoiled and jaded. We’re doing fine, for the most part, on our own. We’re not looking for ways to survive, or reasons to keep trudging through life (“Gotta get that iPhone….!”). We have someplace to sleep at night, we have three square meals a day, and we probably money we can spend on something other than survival means…!
To follow the very wise words of my mother (“Don’t complain about something unless you can propose a better solution and put it into practice.”), here’s an alternative. We, as Christians, care about people. We love them. We don’t want to see them fall to the consequences of their own actions, in this life or any other. Just like you can’t be best friends in an hour, just so you can’t convince people that you care about them, and so does God, in a brief conversation. Take the time to get to know people, to see them through God’s eyes, and to love them like He does, first. Then, when you do share with them, it’s genuine, from more than a surface level, and they’ll know it. It’s not a numbers game.
The seeds that fell on good soil did so, and thrived, because the sower took the time to prepare the ground – he pulled out the rocks, weeded out the thorns, and turned away from the road. So, follow his example.
My favorite book on this subject is “Permission Evangelism: When to Talk, When to Walk,” by Michael L. Simpson, and it, along with the Five Love Languages is on my “Should be required reading” list for Christians (and the love languages book for humanity in general). And I’m extending an offer: If you want either of those books but don’t want to spend the money for them — I’ll buy you a copy.
Zhai’helleva,
Raeliyah
06.22.07
The Delicate Art of Balancing Exposure and Shelter
The best way to start out this article, I think, is to tell a story.
I once worked in a PetsMart in the small animal department. I took care of the fish, reptiles, small cute fuzzy things and small cute feathery things, in addition to keeping the department straight and answering questions and things. I once had a woman come in to buy fish, together with her two youngish children – the boy about 12 with glasses with those clips designed to keep them from being lost, the girl about 7 and very pasty and skinny. As I got to talking with her (starting with the usual, “What size tank do you have,” etc) the woman told me that they’d had a leopard gecko up until a few months ago and were now looking for a replacement “pet.”
“Oh? I love leopard geckos, they’re so pretty,” I said, thinking of my wonderfully dense gecko at home. The lady immediately derailed into a monologue about how they’re dirty, carry germs, and imminently not suitable for children at their [her childrens'] age. Entirely confused, I asked why she thought this way and she told about how her daughter had gotten severely sick (so badly that she had been in the Intensive Care Unit for a few days) with salmonella from having the leopard gecko in the house (she hadn’t even held it directly, always in a clean tub, or so the woman told me).
From the conversation, this woman was one of those people who are worried about everything. She disinfects everything, wouldn’t allow her children to touch anything, and immediately made them use the sanitize-gel stuff in the event they did brush up against something. I would lay fair odds she didn’t let her children play outside or anything either. I may be overgeneralizing, and it’s certainly possible that these kids had some sort of immune-system problem, but in the course of the conversation nothing like that was even implied.
I have never gotten seriously sick, and acquired my fair share of scrapes, cuts, gashes, and abrasions in my childhood (living on the edge of a greenspace, in Florida, with all your playmates being active boys will do that for a girl). I caught snakes and lizards and frogs a plenty in the wild, and only maybe washed up before dinner (ssh, don’t tell my mom.)
This, I think, is a wonderful example of both physical health and spiritual health – if you are never exposed to anything that might harm you, your natural defense mechanisms will never have the chance to develop properly, and consequently when you do come into contact with something severely harmful, those defense mechanisms have a far more difficult time protecting you.
What about those parents who continually strive to shelter their children from anything “wrong” or “bad” in the world? I believe they are doing their children a disservice, unintentionally of course – for if they have never encountered the little evils, how will they survive when they finally leave their parents’ control and encounter the big evils?
Many people have told me, “You will feel different when you have children of your own,” and I’m sure if I do I will agree with them. To a point. I haven’t yet seen any studies done on this particular subject, I have done quite a bit of my own observation through the people and the families around me, and this is what I continually find to be the case. At the very least, it is a question designed to be thought-provoking.
06.17.07
Creation Versus Evolution
It’s going to happen, so I might as well get it over with sooner rather than later.
The Great American Dilemma: Creation, Evolution, or Something Else?
There has been a huge unnecessary amount of drama over this subject in the news and on people’s blogs – all over the place. It’s not exactly the prime tenet of Christianity (nor Judaism, nor Islam, so far as I know) and it’s not even really all that important. One can be a perfectly fine Christian (or Jew, or Muslim) without believing in Creation as accounted by the book of Genesis.
With that said, I don’t believe in either one, but not on the basis that you might think. Evolution (and by that I mean Neo-Darwinian Evolution) has its serious flaws that aren’t exactly publicized, and its devotees also have their flaws. Creationism also has its serious flaws, and its devotees their imperfections.
Humans, I have observed, have this tendency to identify “position” with “person” – ie, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, Sanford’s Biolistics Process. When people can’t, for whatever reason, attack or deconstruct a person’s position anymore, they begin attacking the person: “Well, you must be a moron,” or, “Your credentials are bogus,” etc. The movie “Thank You For Smoking” was a wonderful example of this – distracting people from discussing the position to something entirely different.
Evolutionists do this. So do Creationists.
It isn’t, obviously, very loving. And in the case of the Creationists, it certainly is the farthest thing from Christ-like. As Biblical Christians (for the most part) in the public spotlight lately, Creationists should be doubly aware and doubly on guard to avoid even the appearance of wrongdoing. (Romans 12)
I am more familiar with the inner workings of the Creationist research facilities than I am with the Evolutionist ones, and have met many of the big names in person, and talked with them. (I live very close to the Institute for Creation Research) They are, at the very least, sincere in their work, and go strictly by the scientific method. In terms of scientific integrity, they are no worse and slightly better than the majority of Evolutionists out there.
True Science doesn’t care where you got your starting observations and hypothesis, so claiming that Creationism isn’t real science is about as legitimate as claiming that Einstein wasn’t a real scientist (Creationists get theirs from the natural world and the Bible, Einstein got his from “thought experiments”). All True Science cares about is repeatability and falsifiability. You can apply the method to anything, regardless of it’s starting philosophical assumptions.
The fact that Creationist papers aren’t in “standard” academic, peer-reviewed journals says more about the prejudices of the editors of those journals rather than the standard of Creationist work, I would say. If you can’t get anyone to read your work, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it is bunk, just that no one will read it (which is the other person’s problem, not the Creationists’). If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it really make a sound? Physics tell us yes.
On the other hand, a great many Creationist organization list in their mission statements that part of their goal is to deconstruct Evolution (with the goal, one would imagine, of leaving Creationism the only viable alternative). This is not Biblical. They quote verses like 2 Corinthians 10:5 : “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
As a corporate policy (ie, more than an individual basis) this is not helpful in the current ideals of the culture. If you want to deconstruct evolution on an individual basis, fine, go ahead – That is living love, and that is Biblical. But as a corporate policy, all it serves to do is to allow the Evolutionists one more reason to dismiss them. (“Scientific creationism is 100% crap. So-called “scientific” creationists do not base their objections on scientific reasoning or data. Their ideas are based on religious dogma, and their approach is simply to attack evolution.” -TalkOrigins.org) If you take away Evolutionists’ ability to dismiss you on the basis of your approach, they must look deeper in your work to find some reason to dismiss you.
I’ve heard some say that we must fight Evolution because it is Satan’s influence on the world to turn people from God. Even if that’s true, they miss several important Biblical facts: Satan is still God’s Devil – he’s on a very short leash. And, we know that words alone will never convince someone anyways, it takes An Act of God (quite literally) to do so. 1 Corinthians 2: 1-5
“1When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. 2For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. 4My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”
There are also huge differences in kind of science that Creationists and Evolutionists do versus, say, the kind of science that an Engineer does. Operational Science provides us with nifty tools like laptops, phones, fiber optics, electric scalpels, vaccines, etc. Historical Science doesn’t provide us with anything but theories, because it cannot be replicated (Big-Bang Cosmology is Historical Science.) It is still falsifiable, but completely non-repeatable. Its predictions, however, can be tested.
For the most part, both Creationists and Evolutionists deal in Historical Science, which has far more subjectivity than Operational, and is more open to varying starting philosophical assumptions. (ie, Positivism, which in its most simplistic form basically says that so long as a new theory fits all available data and doesn’t impact any other theory, it has to be considered.)
Practically, however, Science can’t be divorced from the worldview of the scientist, or that of the peer-reviewers, or academic climate. Just as no man is an island, neither is anything he creates or develops. They’re all interconnected and influence each other.
In conclusion, I suppose, I personally don’t believe fully in either, based on the imperfections of Man’s wisdom. I take the entirety of the body of evidence, and leave it at that, without attempting to wring meaning out of it. That is, I suppose, the only truly honest thing to do, and that is what I would encourage the rest of you to do.
Zhai’helleva,
Raeliyah
06.16.07
Obligatory Introduction Post
I see too much shallowness in the world. The only things people feel safe talking about are the only things that don’t matter – what so-and-so wore to such-and-such an event, what video games are the best, the newest techno-gadget that just came out that you must have to be a complete fully-evolved Man.
My grandmother once told me that there are three things that as a rule you must never talk about in polite society: Sex, Politics, and Religion.
Polite society, if there is such a thing any more, nixed Sex from the list and replaced it with Morality.
I plan on breaking that rule for all three.
Why? Because those are the only things that really matter. It is the subject of our hearts, of our bodies and minds, and of our souls. It is my opinion that you cannot truly know a person until you have talked of such things with them, and gone below the surface seemings of the mundane.
So, I am writing here, so that I can explore some of the deeper facets of life, and that you all may know me and that together we can discuss. With that said, to get to the deep parts of the ocean, it is best to begin at the shallows and swim outwards, so let me share those basic facts.
My name is Samantha. I go by Sam or Raeliyah, depending on the origin of knowing me and the familiarity of the speaker. Here, I will accept either, although most often on the Internet I am referred to as Raeliyah – it is, in a sense, my heart-name.
I am a follower of the man we know as Jesus the Christ. I haven’t always been so – I was raised Roman Catholic, and disabused with The Church, I set out to find out what else the “supermarket of religions,” as a friend puts it, had to offer. I learned, and am still learning, a great deal about a great many religions, from Eastern philosophies to Druidism to New Age Re-constructionist. There are very few religions or philosophies I haven’t heard of, more that I am only familiar with the name, but for the most part, I have an ever-growing knowledge of many of the current ways of life. I had settled on a re-constructionist eclectic version of Shamanistic Animism, with the Winds as my major spirit in my personal pantheon. Now I am a Christian (although I dislike the term), and after the initial love affair that is the conversion process, I have set about to learning with the same atavistic hunger that I have always had for all things immaterial.
I am a therianthrope – or that, I believe the shape of my soul doesn’t conform with the shape of my body. My soul’s shape is a gryphon, called Raeliyah, and if you want me to be more detailed than that you will have to ask. Perhaps I will write an article on it one day. At least that’s how I identify the feeling – there have been other explanations, some of them probably more “in line” with standard Christian theology, but as far as I know I’m a rarity within the church body that way. Whatever it is, I have it for a reason, and that’ll probably become more clear as I grow and mature as a person and as a Christian. Phoenixes are also specially important to me, but not in quite that way. 
I have a passion for beauty. I love art, and fantasy, and those explorations of the mind that is in any way called aesthetic. I once fancied myself an illustrator, and once a graphic designer, but in most things, being an artist is as core a part of my identity, my worldview, as being a Christian or being Raeliyah. I appreciate beauty in Nature, in Man, in all things. I have pets because they are beautiful and deserving of care, I build vivariums because they are a slice of Nature’s beauty accessible to all.
I seek to be the embodiment of perfect agape love – so that I am approachable and not intimidating, so that perfect strangers feel comfortable talking deeply with me. It is what all Christians are called to strive for, and yet it is so much more to me than simply a “should be.” My early encounters with Christians were the antithesis of that love, so I call myself to overturn that encounter for others, and within myself. It is my goal, and although I don’t think I will ever attain the fullness of it that I seek while I am alive, I still strive for it, as much as can be accomplished. I’m still seeking for what I think God is calling me to, but this particular goal is part of it.
I think those are my core attributes – they shape the way I interact with everything else, and, are the most important. I have a few topics that I wish to address, but this is enough for now.
Zhai’helleva (wind to thy wings),
Raeliyah
