It's almost the end of the semester. I have 5 more days of my mwf classes and only 3 more t/th classes, and my lab is already completely over. Looking back, this semester has been an interesting one, but not necessarily in a good way.
This weekend has done a lot of things to make me realize how much I want to, and how much I need to return to how I was and not continue in the direction I'm going. It began on Friday at Agape with a talk given by Rice Sociology professor Michael Lindsay. The point that he made before I had to leave that really struck me was this.
That sin, at it's very core, can be reduced to one single act. Idolatry. Making things that aren't God into God.
I've been doing this way too much this year. It began as popularity. I tried to get as many freshmen as I could to like me, while trying to also keep us with friendships that I had made last year. I went around Rice meeting people, trying to make myself known. I let me ego take a hold of me and turn me into someone who thinks everyone wants to get to know who I am because I'm just that interesting of a person. I've learned that I need to put my pride aside and strive for humility as I did during my senior year of high school. There was also a point this year where I tried to tell myself that the best way for me to become friends with others and be more social was to go and party. Usually there wasn't alcohol involved, but on some occasions there was and it only made things worse.
I tried my best to please everyone that I could. I kept trying to make myself fit into every group of people that I associated with. To my friends at Agape and CSA I took on the form of a devout believer, the type of person that I actually want to be. To those on 3rd south at Jones, I was a person who liked doing crazy, stupid things because they were fun, and would say that I thought my friends on 4th south were childish and lame, yet when I went to hang out with people on 4th south where I lived last year, I would enjoy their more civil company and talk about how it was a mistake for me to move and how obnoxious some of the people on my floor were, the same people that I had been hanging out with the night before. To those who liked to go out and drink and party, I would go and drink and party, yet for those who enjoyed different forms of entertainment, that would be all I wanted to do as well.
My idolatry also began placing girls in the place of God. I spent a lot of September and October putting most of my thought into how I could get a relationship with a certain girl to work out. I wanted nothing more than to just spend time with her, and as it progressed, that time took more and more out of the time that I should have been spending with God. My desire to build a relationship with her quickly surpassed my desire to build a relationship with God. Then it all ended about a month ago, leaving me with a feeling of emptiness, as if I had wasted all of that time for nothing. Even after that didn't work out, it took me only a day before I had found another girl that I convinced myself I needed to spend time with and start a relationship with. And then my suspicions were confirmed this weekend and I realized that didn't work out as well. It took until this weekend for me to realize that while humans will disappoint us, God never will.
So now I'm struggling to find a happy medium, where I can still be friends with those I care about, yet not ever contradict myself. I'm trying to get rid of the things that distracted me from giving God the proper place in my life. It will be difficult, but I'd much rather turn around now than continue on the road I've been travelling on. I'd appreciate your prayers.
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godzilla: humble beginnings
14 years ago
3 comments:
I hate to say it with regards to your popularity problem...but I told you so. If you've formed good friends in the process, great, but don't compromise, and don't be a hypocrite...be who you are. If you lose friends because of that, so be it, it probably would have dissolved anyway in the future.
Regarding idolatry in general, it's a big problem, especially when romance is involved. But use the trial and fall as an instruction: learn how you should be pursuing God by seeing the tenacity you used in pursuing the girl. And then some.
I've learned though, that if you find you can't juggle all the balls, drop some to keep the others in the air. If you find that, no matter what you do, a friendship or pursuing a relationship always hinders your relationship with God, it may be time to drop it until later, when you can handle it.
You're in my prayers.
I found your blog for the first time tonight. I'm glad you're being so honest with yourself. I missed Lindsay's talk at Agape, but I hear they recorded it for me, so I'm looking forward to hearing it.
Lindsay's talk was amazing. And you're right--that comment about sin and idolatry was striking.
I've struggled with the same thing that you seem to be going through. We as believers want to be a light in a dark place and all of that good stuff, but we also want to be relevant. We don't want to be seen as on a pedestal or unreachable and out-of-touch to our friends. So there's that balance between being sold out to God, bringing Christlikeness to your friendships, and not being a Christianese robot. It's tough.
What I've learned is that so much of my relationship struggles have been perspective-based. Oftentimes the other person doesn't know what I'm wrestling with (such as the need to be true to oneself and the feeling that it's not happening), and removing myself from the relationship would do more harm than good. Rather, take an inventory of your relationships and examine which ones you need to cut off and which ones about which you just need to especially be mindful about not performing or putting on false airs.
Sorry if this post is a little late--I try to keep up with blogs but I lapse. Keep it up, though, man. Looking forward to seeing you in the new year!
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