Fitting in

All my life I’ve never really liked church people all that much. Well, me best mates don’t count. I used to find Cell Group (CG) a total waste of my time. Every time I give it a try, I always go home with the feeling of stupidity, incompetents and self-consciousness. I can never show my real side there for some reason. It’s like a huge heavy weight on my chest, like the need to get out of there as quickly as possible. Basically, I just sit there and sulk and make a sarcastic comment or two.

Honestly speaking, I can’t stomach churchy people. I see the youth there struggling with the same problems as any other ‘non-Christian’ youth will encounter. Just replace “pop star” with “super holy pastor”. They stumble to peer-pressures just like any other youths. Just replace “getting as much girlfriends as possible” to “hey, lets see who can keep their commitment to remain single for God the longest and the winner is the holy-est among them all!”. So what’s the difference between the church environment and the “world”? Plus, I don’t like the way the church segregates “non-Christians” like they are some ignorant sub-race of men that doesn’t know the truth like we do. Heh heh… I think the reason that I feel that way is because I feel like a designated Christian who probably isn’t really a Christian inside. (I used to say that my mother isn’t a Christian so I find those statement offensive but I can’t do that now as she suddenly lost her non-believer sarcasms status and became a Christian, with sarcasm! Haha).

Ever since I can remember anything, I’ve always had the feeling that I’ve fell through the crack of society. In high school, the “happening” kids used to think of me as a loser, geek and/or nerd (take your pick) while the losers, geeks and nerds in my school think that I was some cool person. Both sides resented me. Same thing in terms of religion I suppose. The Christians would think of me as a backslidden “creature of the world” while the outside world thinks that I’m your archetypical naïve church youth who never has fun, a stiff, prays all the time and goody goody two shoes.

However, after the Dec05 incident, I was left dejected. For the first time in my life, I’ve actually felt real emotional pain as the fakeness of the church suddenly transpired to the outside world which I thought was (even though evil, lustful etc etc) at least honest. You know, keeping it real. After reanalyzing what was my weakness during the Dec 05 incident, I’ve decided to just give things a try even though I’m not ready yet. Hence, tAking a ChAnCe.

2006 New Year’s Resolution number 2:
The world does not give you the time and day to get your shit in order. When opportunity comes knocking on your door, don’t worry about cleaning up the house before opening because frankly, it will never be neat enough.

After taking much thought of my current perception of life, the universe and everything else (cue in So Long and Thanks For All the Fish, David!), I’m suddenly reminded of a sticker outside my friend’s bathroom door.

“Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven”

2006 New Year’s Resolution number 4:
We are all brought up in different ways and we all view things in different “lenses”. Sometimes, it is not whether they or you are right or wrong. All views/opinions/judgments are correct in the eyes of the beholder. The only thing that you can do is to respect the other’s point of view, whether you like it or not.

2006 New Year’s Resolution number 5:
Never judge anyone lesser than you, as you would not want people to judge you the same way.

So with much humility, I’m beginning to reassess my views about the Christians youths.