Changes in faith

Do you ever feel happy to hear that someone changed their opinion in one direction, and then happy to hear that someone else changed their opinion in the opposite direction? What about when that involves religious conversion?

I've heard stories of many people giving up on Christianity, from my brother who is quite unclear where he stands on matters of faith, but doesn't seem to consider himself a Christian anymore, to stories online on sites like exchristian.net. When I hear these stories I feel a twinge of disappointment that they've given up on the faith that I hold dear, but I also find myself thinking, "Good for them." And it doesn't even feel like a condescending "Good for you that you're thinking for yourself, but you're wrong" sort of way. So why would I be happy about this?

I can think of a couple of reasons. First, there are times when I feel like I don't actually hold my faith all that dearly. I doubt, I get frustrated, and I feel like giving it up. Maybe these people have the courage to make a change, and I lack that courage.

Or I still believe in Jesus and still hold God and my faith in him dear, but I wonder if these people have actually moved closer to the real God by giving up their faith. There are many aspects of my own faith that I've given up over the years--the infallibility of scripture, opposition to evolution, much of the opposition to homosexuality and approaches to dealing with it (and I am quite uncertain about any opposition that I still have), and intellectual certainty about the truth of Christian claims. And many other Christians have been fed beliefs that I would consider much worse than what I've been raised with and rejected. When a person gives up beliefs that they're raised with, it shows that they're thinking for themselves, especially if they take their time and don't just change their beliefs to match someone else's exactly. These people have not found the whole truth, but maybe their view of God was so distorted, the god they rejected wasn't real.

(Am I closer to the whole truth than they are? If I didn't think so, I'd give up on Christianity, but only time will tell for sure. I could be wrong. And by the way, this is not meant as an attack on my parents or on the church I was raised in. I have drawn so many positive things from my parents and that church too that I still embrace, especially from my parents.)

And then there are stories of people becoming Christians. A few years ago a good friend of mine started to get a strong sense that God is real, right around the time that he lost a parent. This led him to Christianity. I'm happy to hear how he finds it so much better to have God in his life, but I also hope he will show discernment and reject harmful or false Christian teachings. I've met several others over the years who've given up various self-destructive lifestyles, including heavy drug use, as they became Christians. In those cases, the benefits are clear.

And on the internet, and atheist blogger that I occasionally read (too over my head to read all the time) recently became Catholic. Even though I'm not Catholic and have some with Catholicism, I'm happy to hear this too, and maybe even less concerned that this blogger will adopt harmful teachings. She seems to be taking time to learn about things and isn't accepting every Catholic teaching unquestioningly. Besides, I have issues with evangelicalism too.

And so I think, "Good for them," too.

Sort of an explanation

Some of you might be wondering why I posted something in late February entitled "Making me a better person?"  I know one friend of mine was wondering.  Maybe I can shed a bit of light on the question.

I'm not sure if I can actually give a coherent answer to why I posted that.  Do I agree with the quote?  At least partially, but I hesitate to give it a full endorsement.  A simple explanation for posting it would be that it just resonated with me.  But if you want a more complicated answer, I'll give it a try.

The start of the quote I posted may have resonated with me because it's speaking against those who tend to reduce Christianity to a self-help, self-improvement system.  "Follow these principles and your life will be great."  It doesn't work.  But that's not really what the quote was about.

I think the rest of the quote resonated with me because it is an interesting way of articulating the mystery that the God who demands our complete devotion also loves us unimaginably much and offers to stop keeping score.  I don't know if the quote makes this mystery any less mysterious though.  The person who wrote that quote doesn't explain how people can "die" to themselves and give God control of their lives without caring about doing good things.  I don't know if that's a glaring omission or if he wants to leave that for everyone to wrestle with.  That question can take a lifetime of wrestling.  My friend said Christians "walk a fine line" between legalism and worldliness.  It probably looks that way, and sometimes we live like it is that way.  Really, it shouldn't be a fine line.  We should be excellent at both grace and good deeds.  We can go far away from both legalism and worldliness.  But this is part of that question that can take a lifetime of wrestling.  I sure haven't figured it out.  But I've seen glimpses of how good it can be to live unselfishly, to do what is good, to be free from guilt from the times we mess up, yet not use that freedom as an excuse to do bad things.  Maybe in this sense, Christianity can actually have many of the same advantages that my friend gave for atheism.  (She does make it sound good, doesn't she?)  The unseen deity has actually offered to stop "watching and judging our every thought, action, desire, and decision in order to determine our fate after death."  We can be compassionate because we believe in equal rights for the people around us, not just because we were told to.

Some of my friend's criticisms of Christianity are fair criticisms in my opinion.  When people say, "It happened for a reason," when terrible things happen, that bothers me.  When people use Christianity as an excuse to show hatred (while of course refusing to call it hatred), that makes me angry.  As for a few of the rules my friend mentioned, I'm not entirely sure if some of them are actually from God, but I do believe that if they are, God must have a reason for them.  It bothers me when people manufacture reasons for these rules though.

So I hope this makes some semblance of sense.  I started writing it a while back, then got writer's block, was busy with other stuff, and then finally came back and finished it.

Christmas

The week of Christmas started off stressful. About a week and a half earlier, my car broke down. It would've cost $500 to maybe get it running somewhat reliably, but there still would've been a major coolant leak in the head. So I decided not to get it fixed. I borrowed my parents' car for a couple days, then I spent the weekend in Calgary (I took the bus), and then I rented a car for a week. The next weekend, I picked out a car and I picked up the car on Christmas Eve. Meanwhile, I had some Christmas shopping to do.

The Cavalier and I had some good years together. She carried me 80,000 km, to various jobs, to Colorado and back, and to Fort McMurray and back quite a few times. Now I have a Neon (one of the newer ones, so it should be fairly reliable), and it has a manual transmission, so I'm getting lots of practice with that.

Once Christmas came, I was relieved. The urgent items were taken care of. I got to celebrate the birth of Jesus with a lot of my relatives, and my girlfriend (yes, I have a girlfriend now) spent a few days in Edmonton starting on Boxing Day. We had some quality time together and she got to meet lots of my relatives. They seem to get along well.

Later in the week, I got to see my friends who moved to Toronto a couple years ago. I've seen them a couple times since they moved, but this was their first time back to Edmonton since they moved.

I'm sure some new stresses will come soon, and I know there are some things I need to get done in the near future. But it's been a good break, and I really feel blessed to have all these people in my life.

A Recent Weekend

The weekend before last I had a guest in town, so we visited a few places like the rodeo:
Elk Island Park:

and we took a quick detour to Toronto while we were at it:

Oil and friends

Premier Ed Stelmach has finally announced his decision about oil and gas royalty payments, jacking up royalties by about $1.5 billion per year, total. I'm no economist, so it's really hard for me to predict what effect this will have on the oil industry and on job prospects in Alberta. While I don't want to see people lose jobs, it probably wouldn't be bad for Alberta if our economic growth was slower. As it is, we may be the richest province in Canada, but it's an expensive place to live. I've heard before that Alberta has the highest rate of depression in Canada--more evidence that money doesn't buy happiness.

One piece of evidence the premier may have found the right balance: people on both sides are angry.

On Saturday I went to visit two friends who moved to Forestburg, Alberta a while back. They went to my church while they lived in Edmonton. So a few of us from church went to visit them. They have a funny dog named Rolo who was scared of my other friends' baby at first. Actually, the dog was scared of all of us at first, but she got less fearful of most of us. Except Curtis. (If you'd seen how he treated Rolo, you'd understand.)

Our Forestburg friends took us to the school where they work and we played a sport called "pilo-polo" or something like that. Their description went something like this: "It's kind of like floor hockey, but you play with a ball. And there are nets." At this point I was wondering what the difference is. "You hit the ball with these foam bats." Then I was starting to see the difference. And it turned out the ball was larger and softer than typical floor hockey balls. It was a tiring, challenging game, maybe because I'm kind of out of shape, but it was fun and I scored two goals. One of them was even for my team!