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Going to get deep here, and if you don't agree with me about all of this, that's fine. I'm not going to get into any debates about it, so please don't try and start one or pick a fight.
Today I'm going to talk about faith. I have a lot of it, and yet not enough. I'm a Christian, and there's a lot of stuff in the Bible that is hard to understand. One of my biggest struggles with my faith is when my brain can't make sense of a lot of stuff. How can God make everything? How can he write the order of the universe? Etc. How do we know that it's not all made up? What is the meaning of life? All those deep questions that people pretend they aren't plagued with, but totally are. Why? Because we're humans and we need to understand everything. I think it's in our nature. Understanding means control. Control means safety. Control means we get to decide how it's all going - not the other way around.
It says in the bible that we are designed in God's image. God is a creative deity. Has to be. Have you platypuses? Tapirs? Some of the things that live in the ocean? Totally wild stuff. Humans are creative because God is creative. How can God create a universe? People do it all the time through their imaginations. Through fiction. When we create these worlds in our mind, they come with rules that we dictate. Harry Potter has a set of rules of how magic works and how certain things function. I've done the same thing with my dragons world, my aliens, my Muses. It's not weird or wrong to be creative.
How can God know the beginning from the end, but still let us have free will? This one I didn't get for a long time. I sat around and thought about that one pretty hard the other night. What's interesting is that as I'm writing, I know the beginning and the end of my stories. The middle has a few key points that need to occur too. However, there's always that moment where the personalities of my characters take it in a new direction. I can try to control it, but it isn't the right thing to do. It makes the experience hollow and lose meaning.
What is the meaning of life? That, I still don't know. We are all part of history. Our legacy might be simple to make way for someone else's legacy that is grand. I don't have all of the answers to all of the questions out there. I don't think I ever will have them all. My brain isn't going to make sense of things. My heart might eventually, and we are asked to believe with our hearts, not our minds. Hearts can find truth.
I know this is kind of rambly and clunky, but I guess the point is: God can be found in anything. If this helps someone else understand why I believe what I do, then cool. That's kind of all I was going for. That and how I use fiction to express my faith. That you can use fiction to express your faith without beating people over the head with it. That expression is sometimes asking those hard questions and seeing if you can find an answer. Or...seeing if you can be content without one.
Today I'm going to talk about faith. I have a lot of it, and yet not enough. I'm a Christian, and there's a lot of stuff in the Bible that is hard to understand. One of my biggest struggles with my faith is when my brain can't make sense of a lot of stuff. How can God make everything? How can he write the order of the universe? Etc. How do we know that it's not all made up? What is the meaning of life? All those deep questions that people pretend they aren't plagued with, but totally are. Why? Because we're humans and we need to understand everything. I think it's in our nature. Understanding means control. Control means safety. Control means we get to decide how it's all going - not the other way around.
It says in the bible that we are designed in God's image. God is a creative deity. Has to be. Have you platypuses? Tapirs? Some of the things that live in the ocean? Totally wild stuff. Humans are creative because God is creative. How can God create a universe? People do it all the time through their imaginations. Through fiction. When we create these worlds in our mind, they come with rules that we dictate. Harry Potter has a set of rules of how magic works and how certain things function. I've done the same thing with my dragons world, my aliens, my Muses. It's not weird or wrong to be creative.
How can God know the beginning from the end, but still let us have free will? This one I didn't get for a long time. I sat around and thought about that one pretty hard the other night. What's interesting is that as I'm writing, I know the beginning and the end of my stories. The middle has a few key points that need to occur too. However, there's always that moment where the personalities of my characters take it in a new direction. I can try to control it, but it isn't the right thing to do. It makes the experience hollow and lose meaning.
What is the meaning of life? That, I still don't know. We are all part of history. Our legacy might be simple to make way for someone else's legacy that is grand. I don't have all of the answers to all of the questions out there. I don't think I ever will have them all. My brain isn't going to make sense of things. My heart might eventually, and we are asked to believe with our hearts, not our minds. Hearts can find truth.
I know this is kind of rambly and clunky, but I guess the point is: God can be found in anything. If this helps someone else understand why I believe what I do, then cool. That's kind of all I was going for. That and how I use fiction to express my faith. That you can use fiction to express your faith without beating people over the head with it. That expression is sometimes asking those hard questions and seeing if you can find an answer. Or...seeing if you can be content without one.
