Human

In the Christian culture, there are certain catch phrases that are widely used and within six months, you begin to find yourself saying the same things. Whether it be "guard your heart" or "authentic community," they are implanted throughout sermons, praise songs, and quick, unemotional, serviceable answers to tough questions. They remind you of deep fried fast food that are trite, unoriginal, but just do the job. It leaves no room for patches of breath, no room for creativity, and when you start using phrases like "authentic community," it ironically strips bare the very essence of authenticity.

One of the words that keep rising up in these circles like a bad Ashlee Simpson song as something that you do not care for, but cannot ignore either. Vulnerability. The dictionary defines it as "being susceptible to physical or emotional injury." Why Christians like this word and its definition confuses me as well, but the puzzlement only begins there. The interesting thing about many Christians, let me stop myself. Someone told me I make too many generalizations. In our politically correct world, it's always more acceptable to mention yourself in the category. The interesting thing about a select number of Christians like myself is that we constantly will use vulnerability without ever actually being vulnerable. It is like that UGA Bulldog fan that prides himself on being diehard when he cannot name more than five players on the team. Conversations often run like this:
A: Peter Christ of Saint Elijah, what are you struggling with?
B: I just need to be more vulnerable. I have a lot of things going on.
A: Mmmm, yes I will pray for you.

The very question that A asks assumes the fact that you have "things going on," so will someone in this Christian world just say what is going on!?! Instead, we hide in our masks of preachers galore, attempting to call out our very own inability to say anything. <----That is exactly what a man or a woman wearing a mask of a preacher would say. You see how easily it is to be pushed around by these words till you walk out of the conversation or the sanctuary, realizing to yourself, "Wait a minute, he did everything to prove the point he was trying to argue against."

So allow me to cut the bullshit from the past three paragraphs that have essentially stalled this thing called vulnerability. And let me just be goddamn vulnerable.
1) Curses have always been my way and my family's way of expressing ourselves. And by you telling me I shouldn't do it has only made me to stop doing it around you who tell me that. I am not saying it is right. I am not saying it is wrong. I am just saying I'm confused as fuck.
2) There are times when I absolutely hate God. And there are times when I say "there are times" because it always assumes that is the past and removed from the present, when most of the time, it is the present. At this time, I absolutely hate God.
3) I have stopped hating God not because I now love God, but because I keep reading that God is good and perfect. And to define God as anything but that wouldn't make any sense. It's like declaring the NY Knicks = Good Team. It just doesn't make sense to say that God does not equal perfect. So in light of that, I have found it easier to simply say he doesn't exist or doesnt' care about me. Nonetheless, I must channel my anger, my frustrations, and my ridiculously dead and false hopes to something or someone. And that just makes hating myself so much easier.
4) I want a girl. I'm sick of freedom and I want a little romance.
5) I just want to quit this whole Christian thing sometimes, get drunk, get high, go to the strip club, grind on as many strange women in the club as possible, be vain as I waste my money on clothes and games, get into fights verbally and physically, and just say "fuck off." Wrestling with God is like hitting yourself in the face. Even when you win, you lose. In fact you lose much more if you win.
6) I am just going to say it. Because men don't. I do not struggle with lust. I do not struggle with the way I look at women. Not because I do not struggle with these two things, but because the phrasing of how we say these two things are so buttered down that it makes the word lust sound like I am struggling from abstaining from eating Krispy Kreme Doughnuts, rather than the raw and disgusting thing that it is. DISCLAIMER: WOMEN, DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MEN THAT YOU SPEAK WITH ON A DAILY BASIS AND MEN YOU DO NOT SPEAK WITH ON A DAILY BASIS. We. No, I need to own it. I masturbate. I look at pornographic movies, magazines, stories, and even jokes. I fantasize. I do not care about your body or your life many minutes of my life. Hell yes, I feel guilty. Hell yes, I want to change. So why don't I? Punch your pillow out of frustration the same number of times I have done it since I was 12, and then we will talk. Think of a crack addict or an alcoholic without support groups (and the ones that do exist are unprofessional "blind leading the blind" conversations between peers) and everything within ourselves that says "it's fine or that it's cool" including what you wear and what you say to us and the men that you pick. Ironic thing is that I am working on putting this Porn Nation thing together for campus, when honestly, I just need the show to myself. If no one shows up to this thing, it will be a success because I will be there.
7) I do not care about anyone but myself.
8) I do not trust anyone right now. I have been hurt. Vulnerability has led to one of three things and they each hurt equally: a) Vulnerability has led to an outpouring of my own heart and my own soul with nothing to show for in return. Like the Olympic athlete who trains for 8 years for his one moment, but injures himself in the pregame stretches. b) Vulnerability has been used against me in the future. c) Vulnerability never fully served it's purpose in correcting wrongs, but it simply found more company in my misery.
9) Tomorrow morning, I will hate (literally) myself even more that I had expressed all of this. And I will read faces tomorrow morning who have ready this, and an air of awkwardness will fill our space, to the point where you will break it by saying "So I read your blog..." awaiting my response or even worse, "How are you doing?" not owning up to the fact that you have read my mind's soul, playing dumb to the realities that face the conversation's full capacity to be uncomfortable.

I do not want you to be my Savior. I do not want you to be my shoulder to cry on. I do not want you to make me feel any better. I just want you to know that whether you see me as Joe Schmo, self-righteous, nominal, apathetic, leader, friend, or enemy, I will not be your fairy tale ending or your fairy tale hero with a blog that tries to make sense of this crazy world. I go to church, but I am not mad at the preacher. I do not go because someone has forced me or my parents have given me to habit to live by, but because I want to. I am not so glazed over by the impressive lights and Christian contemporary soft rock that I have forgotten its truths. I go to church, but I am also not perfect. We say that too stinking much and everyone knows that, but there are times (there I go again) when I just believe that I suck. And I know that grace and glory to God is the ending, but it's like watching Rocky 4 for the 45th time. You know Rocky will prevail, but that does not mean that the tension does not exist. In fact, it is real. Very real. Apollo Creed dying hurts. And I'm in that moment.

This life thing...it hurts. I'm in that "I SUCK" moment. Don't make it your life mission to take me out of it. Don't pretend you understand. But for crying out loud, learn, know, and remember that it does happen and it can exist. I can no longer listen to another Christian heavyweight who covers him or herself up with so much fluff of Christian phrases that it begins to make me feel guilty for being human. Sometimes, I don't want to be a Christian and I can honesty relate with people who do not want to be either. It seems as if Chris Tomlin, the Passion of the Christ, and the book of Romans take away our humanity rather than give us more of it.

Allow me then to stand on my blogging pedestal on top of the Internet world, and declare that I'm human, I'm living, I'm breathing, and by God, I am struggling! Please block away every piece of advice you are preparing for me. Let me just ask you one question. Just one.

Is there anyone out there who will cut the crap and just be human with me?