Why I Do Not Write More Often and Why I Probably Should

     A little over a year ago I wrote a blog post about Star Trek Into Darkness, then, a couple months ago, I wrote one about God's Not Dead. During that time I constantly told myself that I was going to write more, sometimes I even did, but I couldn't bring myself to post it. I am now attempting to explain why that is. I think that it's fairly normal for people who start blogs to write about five posts and then get tired of it and quit. I expect someone has calculated statistics concerning it. Blogger is probably a graveyard of abandoned blogs; I feel sorry for the poor lost things. I don't know the common motivation that causes people to quit blogs, but I do think that I understand why I quit this one.

     The last year was incredibly difficult for me. To make a long story short, I failed a course I really needed in order to finally finish my degree, discovered that I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, and as a result struggled with depression. My job was fine but I never felt as though I fit in and often wondered if I was actually any good at it. During this time I started to find it very difficult to motivate myself, and stopped reading, writing, and doing other fun things like that. That isn't to say that it was all bad and one of the things that did help a bit was a class I took on writing short stories. The thing that that class helped me with was that by forcing me to show other people things I wrote, I then realized that people didn't necessarily hate the things I wrote.  What they would do is read them and tell me what worked, as well as what didn't. Sometimes the stories were awful but people weren't mean about it. The other thing that demonstrated that for me was this blog. I wrote a couple pretty bad blog posts and I wrote some okay ones, but more importantly I realized that I have some friends who would always read them, think about them, and tell me what they thought. I really appreciated that more than I think they realized.

     The problem was that whenever I wrote anything some part of me would insist that it was really just awful. I would write stories for class and as people discussed them I would think, "but they really just think it's rubbish". It started to get so bad that I would delete the stuff I wrote for this blog because I assumed that it was awful. I think this insecurity actually started covering more parts of my life too. I have a bad habit of not answering people on facebook or texts or emails because a part of me assumes they don't want to hear from me anyway. Over the year I saw these aspects of myself get worse, I would become more convinced all the time that I really didn't have anything good to offer, that I would never find my calling because really I had no talents.

     The realization that I reached is that a large part of me doesn't want to write because I enjoy it. I do enjoy it quite a bit, but I think that there is a substantial part of me that just wants praise. I want people to read something I wrote and say it's brilliant and that I therefore have some value. I want people to look at me and say "You are very special and talented," and then I just become upset whenever I start to think that I probably am not all that good. I think that it's probably impossible to have entirely pure motivations. I do genuinely enjoy writing, I just wish that I enjoyed it to the point where I'd be perfectly happy even if it the end product was unreadable.

     The internet is covered in lousy writing. Fanfiction sites have thousands of pages of dreadful writing, for every good blog there's a hundred completely dreadful ones, and youtube is filled with self-indulgent whiny vlogs. But the thing is that all those people are trying; they may be writing pretty awful stuff but they keep going, and by doing so they probably start getting better. I admire that. I admire people who write not because they want to be loved, but because they love writing. And that is what I want to be, not a lousy writer, but someone who writes to the best of his ability and doesn't care if it isn't very good.

     I think the biggest problem with the little voice in my head that constantly says I'm rubbish is that it is constantly focused on me. If I'm thinking about how good or bad I am at something then I am obsessing over myself, and my own perceived self worth (or lack thereof). A part of me thinks I deserve to be adored, as though I'm some tortured artist. I start thinking of myself as Cezanne throwing his paintings over the side of a hill, but then I am just replacing my own insecurity with a delusion of grandeur.

     There's an important tension in Christianity; We were fearfully and wonderfully made by a God who is both wonderful, loving and perfect, but we are also marred by the sin that separates us from that God. There is a hope though; Jesus Christ died, and rose again, so that we could be forgiven and reconciled to Him. At least, that's the quick version. I think I need to try to recognize both those things more. I am not a worm; I have gifts and talents and abilities given to me by God, but I am also not perfect by any means. I make mistakes, mess up, and sin, but I am also forgiven. For awhile I thought the solution to feeling as though I was awful at everything was to remind myself of what I am good at, but I don't think that's the solution. There's an aspect of that. It's important to remember that God gave me talents and wants me to use them for His glory, but if I just focus on what I'm good at then I'm really replacing one kind of self-absorption with another. As a Christian I believe that God is constantly working in me, living through me, and molding me. He cares about me unconditionally and loves me, and so the solution to hating myself isn't to try to think about how awesome I am, but rather to focus more on God and His will.

     I realized though that I don't know how to do that. I don't know how to focus on Christ and to live as He desires me to. I tried to pull myself out of the depression I was in by myself but I couldn't do it. I could barely find the motivation to do anything, not to mention change my life and my outlook. So I asked for help from my friends, as well as from God. I'm trying to pray more, and read the Bible more, and think about others more, and about myself less.

     I said I was going to explain why I stopped blogging, and I'm not sure I've really done that yet.The reason was that I decided I wasn't very good, and that I didn't want to do it if I sucked at it. I haven't decided that I am really good, what I have decided that is that it doesn't matter. I kind of like writing and I often feel better after I do write for awhile, so I'm not going to stop. I'm going to try to do it more, because it's when I don't do things like this that I start to feel more depressed. The only way to overcome my own insecurities is to keep doing going even if I either improve or just stop caring if I'm any good.

     I realize the hypocrisy in writing an entire blog post about myself in which I say I'm trying to focus less on myself, but I'm a work in progress. I sometimes feel like a failure, but I know that's not true. I'm a person and a person who was and is forgiven by Christ. I mess up and make mistakes and that's okay, because everyone does. I have to stop trying to get better and just start trusting in God, following God, and caring about others more. 

God's Not Dead: A Review

There is a popular urban myth[i] that tells of a young Christian who just started at a unnamed prestigious university. He excitedly goes to his first class but becomes rather concerned when the professor demands that all the Christian students stand up. He and several Christians stand up only to have the professor quickly and efficiently convince them all that God does not exist. Finally the professor gets to him, but this kid was secretly Albert Einstein[ii] and is able to destroy the professor’s argument very easily. The professor then cries and converts to Christianity on the spot. Well, apparently someone was inspired by this story and decided to make it into a movie.

             This is movie is so bad that it’s actually very hard to even talk about it. It has about seven plot lines all of which come together in the most irritating way possible. It quickly establishes several main characters most of whom never meet but are all connected in some way. For this reason it is very difficult to explain the plot of this movie, as it has several fragmented story lines that are only connected in a loose sense. A good writer and director could have made this work but this movie clearly had neither so instead it became a jumbled mess of bad acting and poor theology. 

             I’ll attempt to explain this by introducing our characters. The protagonist is a young evangelical named Josh Wheaton[iii] who wears Newsboys shirts and goes to Newsboys concerts and has a Newsboys poster on this wall. This means he’s a good Christian[iv]. He goes to his philosophy class where he meets Professor Radison (Kevin Sorbo)[v] who announces that his class is not an easy A and will be very difficult to pass. He then goes on to explain that as long as everyone declares that God is dead that they will all receive an automatic A on 30% of their grade. The class of eighty all eagerly write “God is dead” on pieces of paper, but not our hero who declares that he cannot betray God that way. He then agrees to “put God on trial” with Professor Hercules[vi] as the prosecutor and the class as the jury. This plot line is the least insufferable part of the movie as they at least put a modicum of research into their arguments so, while hardly great, they are at least not totally embarrassing. 

           We then meet our other players and I really don’t care enough to look up their names. The problem with all these characters is that they are not people but rather caricatures of types of people. We are first introduced to an atheist blogger who interviews famous Christians in order to show how terrible they are. At the beginning of the movie she interviews Willie Robertson[vii] who gives her a sermon on how good people are Christians, eat meat, and say “y’all”[viii].  She then goes to the doctor and discovers she has cancer. Her boyfriend (Dean Cain) breaks up with her because their relationship is apparently based off of what they get from each other and getting cancer was against the rules. Next we are introduced to a Muslim girl who iss secretly a Christian and is beaten by her dad, a Christian pastor and African Missionary, and the atheist professor’s Christian girlfriend. These subplots go on throughout the movie and mostly are unconnected except in order to preach the movie’s message.

           Ultimately Wheaton proves to the class that God exists and embarrasses the professor. Radison’s girlfriend dumps him and he goes into his office and reads a message from his mother where she says that she knows God has a plan for him. That night all the characters go to a Newsboys concert including Radison who goes there in the hopes of finding his girlfriend. At this point the Atheist reporter meets the Newsboys and they convert her to Christianity. Radison rushes to the concert and is hit by a car, but the evangelical pastor is nearby and converts him to Christianity. He dies and the pastor smiles as the missionary explains that death is nothing to be sad about because their brother has gone home. We then see that the car that hit the professor was in fact driven by Dean Cain who is the only atheist in the movie not to convert. The movie finishes with Willie Robertson telling the audience to text their friends the phrase “God’s not dead” followed by the Newsboys playing their song of the same name.

          The problem with this movie is not how badly written, directed, and acted it is. The problem is how angry and preachy it is. The movie consists of characters saying they don’t believe in God and characters explaining that God is real and loves them, and then two of the Atheist characters die. This is the problem with movies like this; it comes across as a propaganda piece meant to convince all people who watch it of its message. Worst still is the revenge fantasy that the movie seems to have. Two of the atheist characters die and no one is particularly sad about this. In fact they are happy because God used their death to bring them back to Him. There is a certain smugness in the movie wherein the non-Christians are punished for not believing in God and the Christians are all rewarded with praise and fame.

          I’m not actually of the opinion that Christian movies have to be bad nor do I think that the story concept had to lead to a bad movie. The problem with this, and many Christian movies, is that it’s not trying to tell a story. What it is trying to do is be meaningful and convert its audience even though its audience mostly agrees with it already. It’s only going to be watched by people who agree with it so it should instead focus on telling a story that will be meaningful to its audience. Maybe instead they should tell a story about a kid who goes to college and meets a reasonable and friendly professor who does not share his religious beliefs thus leading him to doubt those beliefs and ultimate choose whether he wants to remain a Christian.[ix] I’m not saying that would be a great movie but it would at least be telling a story about something that actually happens and it might even mean something to some people.

            I have no problem with corny Christian movies, I don’t particularly like them but I’m completely okay that there are people who do. What I do have problems with are movies that are perpetuating terrible world views and movies that are trying to sell a product. God’s Not Dead is not only guilty of an angry vengeful portrayal of non-Christians, it’s also guilty of an insane amount of product placement. There are three things this movie is trying to sell its audience. The first is the Newsboys; every Christian in this movie is shown to be a fan of them, non-Christians hate them, and significant events happen at their concerts. There are posters, t-shirts, and albums with their name on them all over the place throughout the movie. In this case this is product placement, because the Newsboys are not just some group of people, nor are they a non-profit organisation, rather they are a band that sells albums and concerts, and this movie spent an equal amount of time trying to convince me to buy their product as it did telling me about Christianity. The second product was the television show Duck Dynasty; Willie Robertson is in the movie in two significant moments where he delivers the message of the movie and talks about his show. The third product is the movie itself; at the end of the film we are instructed to text our friends the phrase God’s not dead in order to spread the Gospel. The problem is that that isn't an innocent phrase; it’s the name of the Newsboys newest album, as well as the name of this movie. Texting that to my friends is not just annoying, it’s advertising, and if I’m going to advertise a movie and CD then I should at least be paid for my efforts. And that’s the main problem with God’s Not Dead; it’s not a movie, it’s a really angry commercial. 

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[i] http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp
http://www.snopes.com/religion/chalk.asp

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp

[ii] Most of the time it’s revealed that he’s Einstein at the end of a story. If anyone ever ends a story with “and that kid was [famous person]" then it’s fairly safe to assume that that story is not true.

[iii] Not Albert Einstein; I was disappointed too. I’m not sure if they deliberately named him after Will Wheaton but I’d like to think so. For most of the movie I thought he was named Joss Whedon which was even funnier but alas I heard wrong.

[iv] This is very disappointing for me. If I had known I was saved by the Newsboys rather than faith I would have bought one of their albums. Actually I’m not sure I would have, but I would maybe have thought about it.

[v] It’s a really bad sign when Kevin Sorbo is the best actor in a movie. Dean Cain is in it too but honestly he was just as bad as everyone else.

[vi] I wasn't going to make the Hercules joke but at one point Sorbo does declare that in this classroom he is a god, so it became difficult not to at that point.

[vii] I had no idea who this guy was, but the movie was pretty clear that I should have heard of him so I looked it up later. I guess good Christians probably watch Duck Dynasty.

[viii] Seriously. There is a brief tangent on how great the expression “y’all” is.

[ix] I think Blue Like Jazz is far closer to what this movie should have been. It was far from great (It wasn't even good) but it was on the right track while this movie isn't anywhere near the right track.