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So this morning... long train of thought, but let's just say I came across a series of both Christian apologetics and... *insert opposite word for apologetics* sites. Really interesting. And at the same time, kind of tiresome to read after a while. In the sense that it gets tiresome to read bad arguments and it also gets tiresome reading a lot of good arguments. Or just reading arguments in general. But anyway, to be honest, I'm not much of an philosophical thinker myself (or at least to the extent that some of these people go) - I tend to prefer more practical applications of thinking. But reading these sites did bring up something important to my mind.

Some people say that Christianity (or religion in general) is bad because they say it discourages people from thinking for themselves. If you deny what the religion says, you're automatically cast away from it, so don't think against it and just do it. Even if the doctrine doesn't necessarily say this explicitly, it is certainly reflected by the kinds of reactions that people in the religion have if you start expressing beliefs that go against it. It is definitely the way that religion has often been depicted in modern media. And a lot of people who have left Christianity have been even more hurt by the reaction and the attention that they've received for it.

What gets me is that I've always wanted to see things in reverse. That God gave me a mind to think for a reason, so I should be using it to think, even if it might lead to doubts and go against what is commonly accepted. That God gave me free will so I could choose whether or not to accept him. That if Christians really followed God's will, they wouldn't be judging people that choose not to follow God- that they would still be willing to go the extra distance and love them, NOT pity them or hate them. And not begrudgingly "love" people or simply accept that they exist, but to really be invested in those people. To be able to stay good friends even if we don't necessarily believe in the same things, you know?

Of course, this isn't what always happens in real life. It's really easy to take the concept of God wanting us to "be set apart from the rest of the world" as just another way to judge other people. To say that I shouldn't associate with you anymore because you're a dangerous influence. And so on. And then we start pushing our agenda on other people, saying that we're in the right because God is clearly on our side. And we start forming these bubbles around our lives, choosing to ignore the problems that happen in our backyards, because we're already experiencing a life that's better than that.

I think something I've been coming to realize a lot more lately is how much I don't really know. I don't know if "innocence" is the right term (and I really don't like it in this context), but there is so much I don't really know about issues. About other people's lifestyles, their circles. Oftentimes I feel like I'm too detached from the problems that plague my friends' lives: relationship issues, racism issues,  and I guess I can relate in some way to academic issues. But I have this tendency to start viewing things under a Christian lens- something I might have referenced before. That these issues don't seem as much of a big deal to me when you see the "big picture" and "realize" that they "don't really matter" compared to the bigger things that God's got planned.

But these really are issues that my friends are invested in or suffer from, and the more I hear about these issues, the more I start getting bothered by them. And then I start wondering, maybe God's trying to tell me something right now. Maybe I should start caring, maybe this is what it means to really be invested in people.

And then I have these moments where I start using this blanket concept of "being interested in people" as an excuse to listen to gossip. I hate it, because I know now that I'm just getting to the point where I'm turning other people's lives into sources of entertainment- and I mean it in a detached sort of way, like a tabloid magazine or something. Having all of these realizations just makes me want to shut myself into some hole and remove myself from the rest of the world, screaming "IT DOESN'T CONCERN ME" in my head repeatedly. I just feel guilty and ashamed of it.

Where do you draw the line being interested in people because you actually care about them, and being interested in them because they're just interesting for the moment? The more that I think about it, the more conscious that I feel of my own selfish interests. I say that I love people and I say that I care about them, but as one of my friends was so kind to point out, how often do I actually make it known through my own actions?

This train of thought didn't quite go the way I intended it to, but I guess I still have a lot of things to work out.