Walking the Line

Alright, I finally got some time to write on this blog! I've got a lot of writing below, but you can skip it and go straight to the question at the end if you want.

I've been thinking lately about balancing. Activities, sure, but also beliefs. After coming to Wheaton, I've been getting my mind opened way up. It is incredible how much you realize you've been assuming things until you get challenged. It is also extremely frightening to be forced to throw out one of these assumptions. I bet a lot of people know the panic that ensues when you're like, "Holy crap. If that was wrong, how the heck can I be sure that anything I know is right?"

The reason this is a balancing act is because once I throw out an idea, I tend to veer to the other extreme. It usually takes a while for me to get to the "happy medium". And even now, there may be "happy mediums" I've found that are only gonna get thrown out too.

The most recent example of this is a time that I was playing cards with some friends, including my extremely patriotic friend Sam Randles. I myself do not consider myself a patriotic person, but maybe I'll talk about that later. Anyway, someone was telling me that some mail service was hiring and that I should look into that. Sam threw up a fist for me to punch and said, "Government jobs dude. Work for America."

I instantly recoiled at this idea, thinking, "Sam's saying something great about America. I probably disagree." Since then, I've thought about it and I realized that in my non-patriotism, I had become straight Anti-American, which I never intended to do. Since then, I've learned to be a lot more grateful for my country, and proud of it in a sense.

Comments on balancing activities or beliefs is welcome, but asking a question about balance would be boring, so instead, here's this:

Do you see yourself as a Patriot, an Antipatriot (as it were), or somewhere in between? Why?

Looking for: Inspiration

I'm so bad at updating this! I remember doing Xanga before and how much it helped to always get my ideas written out, so here I go.

I'm currently listening to Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. This is really good music. I'm trying to broaden my musical horizons a little bit, but I can't seem to find much music that's not either straight pop/rock or weird new classical music. Suggestions?

While I'm asking about music, I should ask about reading too. I've had these ideas running around my head about a sci-fi fantasy type of book that I'm thinking of developing. To get prepared, I'm doing some general reading. Just got done with The Master of Ballantrae by Robert Louis Stevenson, which I liked, and The Metamorphosis and In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka, which I hated, but after thinking about them for a day, they don't seem quite so bad. So, any books you really like would be good suggestions, but sci-fi and fantasy especially. I'd like to get a little more familiar with the genres. Are the Star Wars books any good?

This is kind of a disjointed post, but I'm probably just used to journaling all my random thoughts in no particular order. I'm sure the rust will come off soon. Anyway, one last thing: My dad has been talking about two contrasting ideas.

1) Christians are still sinners and will be until the resurrection, therefore they are fighting against their sin nature their whole lives.

2) Christians are no longer sinners, and are acting against their nature when they do sin.

Those are severely simplified summaries, but it's mostly just to get the conversations going. Which of those ideas do you subscribe to?