Ranting and raving. . .

I have so many thoughts in my head, I need to express them somehow. I'm sorry if all of this sounds rash or whatever, but I am just going crazy with everything that is going on in my head.

I have been in classes all day, and every single one of them was about some social issue: Bonhoeffer's response to World War II, my senior sem project about liberation, the idea of colonization and stripping native peoples of their culture, and racism, homophobia and culture vs. religion. My mind is absolutely overflowing, and not exactly with anything in particular. I think so much about these social issues, and maybe I'm foolish enough to believe that someday these things will actually change, and that I can maybe work for that change. I also had a conversation with a friend today, about being very disillusioned with the church. I'll admit it, it's true. I am VERY disillusioned with the history of religion, especially Christianity, and all of the injustices that have been perpetuated and all of the atrocities that were done in the name of Christianity. My heart just hurts whenever we think that these issues are so easily solved with a black and white, logical answer. They are so much more complex than that! Maybe I'll graduate from college with all this zeal, thinking that I can actually be about change, and then I'll fall on my ass, get even more disillusioned, and resign myself to powerlessness. But what is actually changed if I just allow myself to become stagnant and apathetic about the state of our society? Is anything going to be changed if we resign ourselves to believing that we're in too deep, we might as well survive it the best that we can. I look at the revolutionaries of the past century: Oscar Romero, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, Rigoberta Menchu, and so many others. . . .I want to believe in the possibility of change as much as they did.

I guess that if I worked for change just for the sake of redeeming humanity, that would be worth it. I've heard the term "humanism" thrown around like an insult in religious circles for way too long, and I'm beginning to realize that we all have something to learn from the humanist ethic. I'm reading "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" right now, and it's all about the idea of dehumanization and re-humanization. I used to think that I would work for social activism because of my Christian beliefs, but now I'm not so sure. Christianity and social activism, in our day and age, seem mutually exclusive. DOES ANYONE ELSE SEE SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS? I can't get over that question. I want to be about social justice, but somehow I also want to see something deeper in the Christian faith than evangelicals have attempted to express. Right doctrine, right belief, right morals. . . . .BULLSHIT. I'm sorry. Shouldn't there be SOMETHING MORE about this radical religion? Somehow, I thought Jesus was a revolutionary. . . .I don't see much of that in Christianity these days. I want to be a revolutionary. I want to believe that Christianity is about more than what evangelicals have made it.

I was (maybe still am) an atheist/agnostic for most of this past year. It was a beautiful time, because for the first time in my life, I wasn't seeing everything through the screwed-up rose colored glasses that are Christian beliefs. I wanted to understand parts of culture that most Christians wouldn't touch and understand the world as it is, not as I choose to see it. I've had my worldview deconstructed throughout my years of college, and I have a feeling that it's going to keep happening for quite a while longer. Maybe I won't end up being a "Christian" again. And that's okay. It's a viable possibility. Just because I always was one, doesn't mean that I always will be one. I want something real, within which I can struggle with the real questions of life, and all of that shit. I'm out of this christian college in a matter of weeks. . . . .and then on to tackle the rest of the world!!!! Freedom!!!!!!