Two Struggles

I am having a really hard time getting past a sense of futility that's flourishing in my head. It's not personal futility, it's sort of societal futility. The quantity of negativity in modern press begs the question, how bad are things really? If they're as bad as they sound, it's hardly even worth fighting to make anything better, because I think there's hardly a chance of improvement.

My preoccupation with the suckage of life in general has graduated to the degree that I've sworn off Foxnews.com entirely (the pervasiveness of perverted stories... people killed in terrible ways, animals tortured, bizarre goings-on with drugs, rapes, and other violent crimes has grown too distressing to see in the headlines there, let alone read in the articles... it makes me physically ill) and read only with great trepidation the rest of the news sites I frequented each day.

I really want to know, are more bad things happening in the modern era, or are we just hearing more about them? Was there really less bad news in days gone by, or did we merely hear about it less, as news traveled slowly and what counted as news didn't involve six hundred pound cows falling on cars or one man's effort to shoot a fifteen year old boy over road range?

Then it gets bigger... the news is bigger. Whether or not I endorse the global warming rationale of the earth's climate change, hearing the predictions of dying wildlife and fossil fuel shortages stress me exponentially. Christians and their warnings of eternal damnation unless I and everyone else accept Christ stress me. My broken fence... how people are paying for Christmas... my skin... Baby Grace... flooding in the yard... fires in California... flying in this terroristic era... finding someone to love... dealing with holidays... spending, gifts, regifting, parties, turkeys, travel... it all just freaking sucks and makes me frustrated, frightened, and furious all in equal measure.

Life happens! Life happens, and yet, we're supposed to fight it! Why can't we just live it?

There was a wonderful article on our hometown paper website not long ago about the migration of the peregrine falcons through the city. The article extolled the power of these predatory birds as they'd dive from the skyscrapers to feast upon pestilence-spreading rats and pigeons, both of which run rampant downtown, with no natural predators. Not a word about the struggle of the peregrine falcon to fight extinction. Not a complaint about the bird decimating the population of some obscure and terribly threatened source of prey. It was an article remarkable for its local relevance and enchanted tone. It's quite a contrast to most of the other articles that comprise modern news.

All these stories about tortured pets and other animals... why doesn't someone write about a wonderful, pampered pet? A story about a pet that lives a good life, and a story that doesn't include the pet's inevitable aging and eventual decline? Why do all of us have to suffer? Are we so lacking in a catharsis?

Some people are happy, I suppose... a couple of my gym friends, a couple of people at work, and a few of my relatives I'd put on that list... but a lot of people in my world seem to be suffering. Two friends are contemplating ending their marriages. Another friend of a friend has already ended hers and is embarking already on her next. Toxic personalities in my radar decry the establishment and maintenance of romantically exclusive relationships as unnatural and artificial. I begin to wonder... everything is so askew as I've seen it lately, well, maybe those people are right. While my upbringing and my nature has always assumed that close and significant relationships contribute to a person's sense of well being and esteem, everybody seems so screwed up. My ex husband. My ex boyfriend. Some of my friends, apparently. I will not find the stability I crave, because I am beginning to think I am my own stability I crave, and I refuse to invite a man in my life if the disease of instability is something he carries with him.

I think everything is just toxic. The society's toxic perspective is infiltrating the passionate natures of people I know, and rather than find strength from one another, they find one another part of the problem.

That brings to mind another issue that has been bothering me. The whole idea that we can't judge one another is bullshit. It's complete and utter bullshit. If I had faced the music when I was dating my ex husband, then I would have judged him and found him wanting. He was not an honorable man. Yet, because "judging people" is so evil or inappropriate according to modern dogma, I avoided holding him at all accountable for the things he did that didn't fit with my own values. These weren't things he hid from me, these were sins, so to speak, in plain sight. Incidents that I explained away by bathing them in the panacea of love. What a fool I was. I cannot, I must not do that again. If someone does something not worthy of my respect or admiration... then he does not merit a place in my life. My job is not to find a way to respect and admire him anyway. My job is to move on.

I've said this before in other posts, but I guess it bears repeating. In the last few days, I've tallied up the events from my relationship with my husband that distressed or provoked me, and it's as clear as anything that I chose to ignore, reframe, or dismiss some terribly telling choices he made. They include:

1. Ignoring the son he fathered by an ex girlfriend before we met. He claimed she was cheating on him, so he wasn't going to believe that child was his without a DNA test. Even when his paternity was a fact, he still ignored the child. I made this okay in my own head by figuring that the girlfriend had a new husband, so the baby had two "parents" in his life that loved him. I ignored the spiritual and character flaw my ex exhibited.

2. Hiding smoking from me... the smoking at all enraged me, and he knew that, so his solution was to hide it, not to stop it, and that enraged me further. My mom's advice was, "Go home to your husband, because you're married, and if he isn't doing this around you, it's not hurting you." She had a point. I was married; we weren't just dating. So I dealt with it.

3. Opening an online account that he kept secret from me. He said he was doing it only for the duration of the free trial, so I overlooked it. I told him I wanted him to close it, and so far as I know, he did.

4. Once when we were out at the rodeo or a concert or somewhere, he bought beers for the underage kids sitting behind us. I was so disgusted with him, I could barely talk.

These are the things that now, I realize were flags. Some happened after the marriage, when I was limited by the vows to influence, but there was no opting out. Short of abuse, addictions, or adultery, I'd never have left or even have threatened to.

Maybe I should just be grateful that he left, but he didn't drive me away by being cruel... bringing home a girlfriend to snort cocaine with him and then to join us in a threesome, smacking me around when I balked.

I'm just tired of negativity. This blog is pretty negative. I want to feel happy, not worried about the end of the world and all that leads to it.

Biblical Tradition

I was talking to a friend last week about homosexuality. She's a Christian woman in the best sense of the word. She's open, she's loving, she's affectionate, and she's both comfortable with and a testament to her faith, approaching it with humility and dedication that I admire. So, as the idea of homosexuality being "wrong" has been lurking in my mind recently, I decided to ask her what she thinks.

Sometimes, I get nervous asking self-professed Christians questions like that, lest they start spouting Biblical rhetoric with which I am unfamiliar or unprepared to analyze in context. Also, I get impatient with Bible-speak, because I want to know what the person thinks, not what the doctrine may or may not say. It unnerves me to suspect a friend has no genuine independent opinion and has become a parrot of an ancient text. But as I said, this wide-hearted woman of faith considers the data and works out her ideas for herself.

"I think it's wrong," she said immediately. "If I were, well, like that, I'd never act on it. I can't imagine violating the law of the Bible by having a sexual relationship with a woman."

This answer interested me, because she applied the rules as she understands them to herself alone. She didn't say homosexuals are wrong. She said, only, that she would not do something she believes is wrong.

I mentioned that the Bible also says things like selling your sister into slavery is okay, so long as it's not a neighboring country to which you sell her. She smiled a little. "The old testament has a lot of contextual situations that don't apply to the modern world," she remarked.

"But the homosexuality rules are part of the old testament," I said, being reasonably sure this was true from my Bible.com research. "What does the new testament say about it?" My friend didn't know, and again, I admired her ability to admit her lack of knowledge on this touchy topic. Most "Christians" I know are more eager to spout their beliefs than to consider the nature of an intelligent discussion on doctrine, at least with me.

Now, I know that in the beliefs of most Christian denominations, though not all, the new testament "trumps" the old. For example, Jews cannot eat pork or shellfish due to kosher laws, but most Christians can. Some don't, like the Adventists, but most believe all food is fine. Their rationale is that Jesus said that food is not what makes a person unclean. "Not what enters into the mouth defiles the man, but what proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man . . . Do you not understand that everything that goes into the mouth passes into the stomach, and is eliminated? But the things that proceed out of the mouth come from the heart, and those defile the man" (Matt. 15:11, 17f). So the Christians figure that people can't eat anything that renders them unclean, so eat on. New testament trumping the old.

So logically, whatever the new testament says about homosexuality trumps the old.

Jesus says nothing about it.

Now, I understand the rationale for the proposed Christian view of homosexuality, which is first cousin to its views on extramarital sex and birth control. The prevailing attitude is that sex is akin to life, and life matters. That sex is not just an expression of love or biochemical urge, but a conduit to the creation of life, a gift from God. As such, preserving the opportunity for life is an act with value worth preserving if not outright elevating. It's an act truncated in a homosexual relationship, which includes no opportunity for the creation of life. It's an act curtailed by birth control, by eliminating the opportunity for life. It's an act that invites opportunity for abortion -- the end of life -- or pain and suffering of the partners or their ostensible offspring when it occurs outside of a sanctified relationsip. Christians believe marriage is a sacrament to house the act of sex and the creation of life. Removing the chance for life turns the act of love into a mere act of fornication, an act merely for pleasure and physical gratification without humility, respect, or honor.

However hypocritcally it might seem to those who know me, I believe in that rationale.

At the same time, I believe that people are going to do what they're going to do, and sometimes, well, following doctrine isn't the most important consideration, or at least, it's not the most compelling one in given moment. If those decisions are mistakes and lead to suffering, then to great regret, maybe that person will repent in some cosmic way, finding his or her path to greater oneness with whatever God he or she understands. Will do better next time. All people suffer, but people who find humility in their decisions to elevate themselves and learn, instead of making the same mistakes over and over. I want to be like that.

At the same time, if Jesus didn't condemn the homosexuals, then who am I to do it?