an exposition

"How can you not know your own religion?"

I don't know how long it's been now, but those words (paraphrased or remembered incorrectly? maybe.) from a friend still stick out in my head. A comment on how the general trend in American culture is towards anti-intellectualism and people just not knowing the details of what they're supposed to believe, and how in some perverse sense it's actually encouraged in some places. It's been said that if people actually knew the controversial stuff that the Bible says sometimes, or actually read it for real, there would probably be a lot less "Christians" in the world. And that there's a trend that the more educated a society is in general, the less religious people are? I don't find it hard to believe.

Lately I've been growing rather preoccupied with... well, being "right" so to speak, although that sounds kinda petty when I think about it. I worry a lot about getting things wrong about God, about the way I'm supposed to be living - if there really is such a concrete thing like that - and about the truth in general. A lot of the questions that nonbelievers and others ask do get to me, even if I don't really have an answer or end up being silent about them because I haven't educated myself on the topic at hand. When I acknowledged this to a friend, I was asked - why haven't I tried to learn?

So for the past few years I've been trying to educate myself more on particular subjects, such as Christian history and theology and other writings, and the nature of the differences between the different denominations and churches, and why they exist in the first place - hopefully looking more into other religions in the future (although Perspectives was a good experience. :) ). This is partly because of my own personal doubts, and partly because of a felt need to know exactly where I stand on these issues and why I do, because such knowledge affects the choices I make in the future as well as how I approach everything from politics to my relationships with other people to the church I commit to.

I'll probably be updating more on where I am in later posts, just to keep track of where I'm going. But for now, I guess to provide some background and be more explicit on what's mulling in my head, a list of thought points... which I always seem to end up doing. I would try to make it flow more like an essay, but my mind tends towards random discrete points anyway.

• I went to a non-denominational church and a private Christian school based out of that church up through middle school, both predominantly white. Non-denominational by definition means not adhering to a particular denomination, but in practice (at least in the OC) implies Protestant, evangelical, typically reflective of the conservative beliefs you would find on the right in America.
• I've given a brief testimony/summary before to some people (and Perspectives/Hospitality Team when I was in them) regarding high school going into college and then IV, and I don't feel like writing out the specifics here cause it'd take too long to detail again. If you want to know, just ask me sometime. 
• I guess a simple way to sum up my progression thus far would be that the perspectives I've seen of my friends and others throughout high school and college have largely shaped or influenced my beliefs till now. I think the other Ryan is the only person out of my closest friends who is currently Christian. IV in most respects was more of a secondary community for me than a primary one, and it was difficult to keep going sometimes.
• With regards to politics - I don't believe that the particulars of religious morality (specifically addressing gay marriage, abortion, etc.) should be enforced on people who aren't believers. That said, I don't feel very strongly on whether or not they are sins to begin with - it really depends on the context for me. I also dislike how often Christians seem to make it necessary to vote religious preferences into politics - it's like no one believes in separation of church and state.
• I tend to have a moderate-liberal bias when it comes to most issues now (although I don't feel informed enough on the economic side of things yet), regardless or in spite of my religion. In some ways the more left-leaning option just sounds more justifiable to me, practically speaking. [I wish we had a better option than the current two party system, and if anything the Democratic party isn't left enough. I had a hard time paying attention to the debates yesterday, but what sense I could make of it was depressing to watch. I also feel bad for Lehrer even though he did kind of... not do so well.]
• This is probably true of a lot of people, but I often don't like being classified as an "other," as a "Christian" in the same sentence with mainstream political Christians and such, when I don't feel like I have that much in common with them, even though I should own up to the fact that our belief system is of the same root.
• As said last time, I don't entirely know where I stand in relation to the denominations right now. I find myself agreeing with a lot of Eastern Orthodox theology... in principle, at least, and leaning further away from standard Protestant or specifically Calvinist theology (I don't think I could be Catholic, but that's another story). But I still feel most at home in a more progressive and diverse Protestant community, and I don't entirely like the Orthodox claim to being the one true church, when officially even the Catholic church doesn't consider them outside anymore. Last I checked, anyway. 
• My last post on being skeptical about testimonies was particularly directed at the experiences found in charismatic/Pentecostal church settings. That said, I admire the amount of passion that they seem to have in worshiping God - I kinda wish I had the capacity to do so in the same magnitude.
• One of my bigger struggles for the longest time now has been with trying to discern whether or not I actually love God. I don't know if I do so much. I don't feel that my actions thus far have reflected any real sense of loving... God, in part because I find it hard to relate to someone who for the most part comes across as more unknowable the more I try to know him, even if that is to be expected. 
• That said, I haven't really been doing a good job of committing and being faithful either, which may partly factor into it. It's part of the reason why I feel (and have felt in the past) so reluctant to actually be a discipler or small group leader for other people, because I don't feel strong enough in my own faith to be able to effectively lead other people spiritually. [I know, God's known for using people in spite of having such kinds of weaknesses... I just don't see myself conforming very well to the progression of a church/community and being honest at the same time, though.]
• My small group leader asked me awhile back why I was Christian, to which I didn't have much of an answer outside of because it felt right. Because for some reason right now, I can't make myself not believe in the resurrection and that Jesus's path is right, at least; it's the reverse issue of those atheists who say that they can't just make themselves believe in God. I tend to agree with them there in that belief isn't just something you force to happen, although I disagree with the subset of people who think that we're delusional for believing anyway. 
• That said, part of me always second-guesses myself and wonders how much of this is me wanting to believe vs. actually believing for a good reason. I guess the requisite question would be, what can change the nature of a belief? Which almost always has boiled down to personal experience for most people, so far as I'm aware. I don't entirely know what to make of mine so far.
• The other big struggle for me as been in regards to the status of nonbelievers, considering that most of my closer friends are that. I find it hard to accept stories of people being "convinced" through some experience or vision of Jesus somehow, considering that I know people who desperately wanted to believe in him and just wound up... not believing because they couldn't. Or used to and now no longer - and I don't really buy into the idea of "once saved, always saved" that comes out of Calvinism. It makes me reflect on my own experience - wondering why I feel okay with accepting some things that other people just can't. 
• I have a lot of respect for professed ex-Christians (or ex-anything, actually). I think it takes a lot of courage, honesty, and integrity to be able to admit to yourself that you don't actually believe, cause the whole process of losing that aspect of your belief system (and knowing what that might mean if it were actually true) and making that known to your peers strikes me as one of the most terrifying experiences you could possibly have. 
• "I am not saved; I am in the process of being saved" is probably my favorite teaching from the Eastern perspective. I feel that it reflects my experience more accurately than other concepts I've heard of salvation. 
• "So... do you ever have fun?" - Erin, when I talked to her on related stuff recently. Yeah. back to that.

on doubt

double post.

It makes me wonder, you know. How vastly different this experience is for a lot of people. When I read people's testimonies, especially the ones that go on about how much God was working here and there, there's a part of me that wonders how real it is. Like, I guess it'd be nice if it were true, but is it, fully, entirely, really?

I guess you could extrapolate that to most of what we talk about in Christianity in general. In some ways I feel like my heart's been hardened (Christianese, I know... can't think of a better way to put it >_>) to a lot of the stuff that get said here over time. You have to approach it with a certain mindset that's willing to accept the things that people say and believe at face value, in spite of the fact that people tend to be known for embellishing the truth or exaggerating when the situation fits it, or even lying to themselves. Maybe because I've been feeling self-conscious of all the times I've been guilty and done the same myself, and wondering, if I could do it that easily, what's not to say that other people haven't been doing it too?

I still don't know where I stand on a lot of this. I'm somewhere in-between, half-wanting to believe but still second-guessing a lot of what I see. Couldn't it all just be just convenient coincidences? And if you answer with the usual - faith, trust in God - why? Why does God value it so much?

Sometimes I feel like the main reason I still stick around is because I can't shake this feeling, inside somewhere, that this is real, against my other senses. I still can't bring myself to fully trust God and go much further than that, which is why I still feel somewhat like an outsider whenever I am around. Why I feel more at home when I'm outside the room than when I'm in. Why I feel so resistant to fully committing to a church, to worship, to a particular theology, to a denomination, to a belief system, to anything in general.

The more I read, the more I learn, the more perspectives I see, the more I find myself distancing from what I believed and thought I knew, to the point where I just throw my hands up and am just left with a bunch of unanswered questions. Sometimes I feel like that's what this life is, or what God intended it to be. Just a bunch of unanswered questions.

I admire people who are much stronger than me in what they believe and have the courage to say and do something good and meaningful about it. I don't feel anywhere close to being at that point right now, in spite of what others might have told me in the past - and I've been mostly silent on this for a while. I think I've grown too accustomed to being paralyzed and indecisive, and leaving the choices out there for another day... like all of the other big decisions in life. Procrastinating on God himself.

I should start taking some real risks for once, though, and not just mope about everyday looking for the next big entertaining distraction to come along. Distractions can only turn away attention from the sickness, from the emptiness for a while, while it continues to grow and fester inside. And honestly, every so often when the distraction is gone, especially when I'm at church and have trouble paying attention (because the sermon doesn't always flow in a way that my mind can follow), I can feel it.

A slow, dull, deadening inside.

I think I'm overdue for a new journal.

on music and other stuff

- Almost drove into a table lying in the middle of the freeway the other day. Wound up swerving to the next lane but my front right wheel still hit the table a bit, and afterwards I thought I was smelling the scent of burnt rubber. Took the car to the dealer afterwards for a long awaited service and there didn't seem to be any damage though, except for a scratch on the underside that can't be seen normally.

- When I'm alone and left to my own thoughts, typically when I'm trying to sleep (although it happened today while sitting in a balcony while watching a concert) - I start getting half crazy thoughts about arranging future meet-ups with random people I haven't talked to in a while, or even just sending them letters or something even though I don't usually write letters. Like I'm schedule-planning who I'm going to contact soon. And afterwards, when I'm more awake (or wake up after sleeping), I ask myself what was I thinking? On a normal daily basis I wouldn't be having these thoughts... or at least that's the kind of thoughts that they feel like.

It's more like I have this mood or mindset that only emerges once in a while, and when it takes effect it feels like I'm having a withdrawal from not seeing specific people.... even if we haven't really talked before, which is weird. And I feel really desperate about wanting to talk, even without knowing what to talk about yet. And then afterwards... it's like I don't know what I was thinking.

And then there's those times, once in a while, where the imagined hangout actually ends up taking place, but it doesn't turn out the way I wanted it to because we didn't have the kind of conversation I was hoping to have or it just went by too fast and felt like we barely hung out at all, perhaps because we didn't know each other that well to begin with. Especially for the non one-on-one's, although even with one-on-one's sometimes this happens too. Except what I was hoping for was probably not in the other person's interest, so nothing comes of it.

I don't like using terminology like one-on-one's though, cause it makes it feel like I'm doing some kind of job like I'm a staff worker or something. Sometimes I just want to hang out with people who under regular circumstances, I might not get to hang out with or talk to as much, for whatever the reason. Do I actually have to have a reason for wanting to see people?

- Speaking of concerts, I feel like I've been over-concerting myself this year. (I blame it on Elan.) I think I'd been seeing an average of less than 1 concert per year since college started (a bunch during a freshman year craze and then one GY!BE concert a few years later), and then all of a sudden this year comes around and I feel like a concert-aholic already.

-- Radiohead
-- Godspeed You! Black Emperor (round 2)
-- Beirut
-- Animal Collective
-- Beach House
-- Stars (in a few weeks)

It's like I've been trying to check off all those bands I got into back in high school (sans Beach House), since for the past while I've only been listening to music on and off, which was why I hadn't been keeping up with music news in the first place. If I want to keep this trend up, then the only bands left on my favorites list that I still want to see or could see are:

-- Broken Social Scene with Feist and/or Emily Haines in the lineup.
(I've already seen them live with only the male members)
This likely will never happen unless I try to see them in Canada. I mean, Lisa and Amy are cool too, but apart from All to All, all the other big female-backed songs were originally sung by those two. Just to see Almost Crimes, 7/4 Shoreline, Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl, Swimmers, and Sentimental X's live... okay I'm gushing too much.
-- Asobi Seksu.
(when are they going to tour again?)
-- Yo La Tengo
(has a chance of happening next year since they're releasing a new album! still going strong.)
-- Los Campesinos!
(I feel really tempted to buy a ticket to Treasure Island just to see them... but I don't think it'd be worth it as much with less songs than a normal concert. although M83 and The xx and Joanna Newsom are nice bonuses, I guess.)
-- ...My Bloody Valentine?
(on second thought, I don't want to go permanently deaf from a concert.)

- I usually hardly ever talk about the music I listen to on this blog... or in real life in general, cause it feels like most people I talk to have never heard of the stuff I like (except for Elan and Justin to an extent). And there's those of my friends who go "wtf are you listening to" when I do play something. I guess I do feel the same way about most stuff that plays on the radio though.

And then there's the friends that like to rant about the hypocrisy of indie-hipster culture which is another thing altogether. Of course... I don't really subscribe to the whole idea of it not being cool anymore once it becomes mainstream and everyone listens to it - you gotta own up to liking the stuff at some point. Although it does get tiresome hearing the same songs played over and over again sometimes. I actually like Midnight City, but I keep wondering why the radio station doesn't ever play any of M83's other stuff for once. As usual, I guess.

- Slowdive - Blue Skied An' Clear on repeat. If I were depressed or looking at pictures of dead pets right now, I would probably be crying.

(I don't have any dead pets, unless you count some aggressive goldfish and a goldfish-sized shark.)

"Stanford should just change their mascot into a castle. And then Cal should change their mascot to bears with siege weapons."

 - random quote of the weekend...
after discussing a game in which bushes evolve into trees which evolve into castles? O_o

snippet of a year

I worried so much this past year about such little things. Feeling incredibly resistant to meeting new people because I wasn't sure if these people were the kind of people I wanted to hang out with. And even after the fact, feeling left out of the loop even though I hadn't really tried that hard to begin with. Sensing that there were still things I might not like about them, or that there might be things they didn't like about me. Maybe that was the reason I always had to invite myself to events?... until I stopped and grew tired of it.

The best advice I got on it recently - "don't worry about it."

And to realize that all wasn't as it seemed. That even the people I thought I might dislike or never see again were still people I enjoyed interacting with, even if I hadn't said a word to them at all for months. I think some of my favorite interactions are with people who I haven't spoken with for a long time and are perfectly fine with it being that way... although maybe that's more typical of the working life to begin with.

Overall, I think this experience has been mostly the opposite of what I was expecting. I remember at the end of senior year expecting to be a recluse and lose touch with most people, or writing something along those lines on one of the posters at Chapter Camp. and now I'm just the guy who somehow ends up either at Berkeley or out of town every other weekend or is otherwise off being too popular for his other friends except for pity hangouts. (which they aren't!! -__-)

It doesn't make sense because my idea of a perfect day is some combination of a bunch of single-person activities. Reading a book [in bed], watching a show, playing a game, coding, and then sleeping. But somehow I have five different plans in succession this weekend, and it's starting to stress me out a little the way these things suddenly just stack up, even if they are good things.

(random aside, but I think I also suffer from the incessant desire to always befriend friends of friends. It tends to not work out so well. There can only be so much friendliness in the world.)

Kickstarter Game Projects

Obsidian finally made their Kickstarter!!!!

If you don't know what Kickstarter is, it's a platform for announcing and obtaining (all-or-nothing) funding for creative projects. The project creators make a page announcing their project and set a funding goal and a deadline, and then as time passes up until the deadline, people who visit the project page can pledge funds to the project via Amazon Payments, to be collected on the deadline. If the project doesn't meet its funding goal by the deadline, no funds are collected by anyone, and hence it's all-or-nothing volunteer funding.

Technically, it's possible for scams to be set up through this process where a bunch of people end up paying someone to produce nothing or something really stupid, so a lot of the process is dependent on the contributors' faith in the project makers to deliver on their promises. At least for the gaming-related projects (there's a ton of other kinds of projects on the site that I haven't looked at yet), the projects that have come up have been announced by people who have made some great games in the past, so hopefully it'll deliver well.

This year is in particular has been a good year for [hyping about] PC adventure games and western rpgs (the stuff that I obsess over for stories in games nowadays), as a lot of makers of classic games from the 90's/early 00's have been jumping onto Kickstarter.

- Double Fine Adventure
(adventure; from the designer of Psychonauts, Grim Fandango, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, etc..)
- Wasteland 2
(wrpg; from the founder of Interplay)
- The Banner Saga 
(srpg; ex-Bioware devs)
- Shadowrun Returns
(wrpg)
- Jane Jensen's Moebius and Pinkerton Studio
(adventures; from the creator of Gabriel Knight)
- Tex Murphy - Project Fedora 
(adventure; they've been trying to make this game happen for years)
- Dead State: The Zombie Survival RPG
(wrpg; from the designer of Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines)
- Planetary Annihilation
(rts; from the people behind Total Annihilation)
- Broken Sword - The Serpent's Curse Adventure [ongoing]
(adventure; Broken Sword's going back to 2D!)
- Homestuck Adventure Game [ongoing]
(adventure)
- Project Eternity [ongoing]
(wrpg, the new Obsidian project)

A recurring trend behind a lot of these projects showing up on Kickstarter is the limitations of relying on traditional game publishers; the Wasteland 2 video pitch conveys it pretty well (if not a little exaggerated for comedy's sake). A lot of times game designers are prevented from creating the games they actually want to make due to lack of interest or willingness to take the risk by publishers, even if there is fan demand for those games. It gets even more frustrating when legal issues come into play, like losing the rights to make the sequel to a game because of company politics or closures (Wasteland 2; Tex Murphy; Anachronox; and so on)... hence why it's kind of exciting to see all these game developers able to get by publisher issues through crowd funding.

People have actually been waiting for Obsidian to finally do a Kickstarter for a while. Even though they've been pretty active lately (Fallout: New Vegas, Alpha Protocol, Neverwinter Nights 2, Star Wars: Knights of Old Republic 2...) and have a good reputation when it comes to game writing, their games are known for being ridiculously buggy, sometimes incomplete, and plagued by other development issues due to time restrictions. Not to mention, for whatever the reason, they seem to always get the short end of the stick in negotiating with publishers - like being only given a year by LucasArts to make Knights of the Old Republic 2, or the New Vegas Metacritic story from earlier this year. So naturally, it leads one to wonder what kind of product they could make if they actually had enough time, money and full creative control over their work for once. Especially after the Wasteland 2 project kicked off successfully (which Obsidian is contributing to), it seemed like only a matter of time for them to do their own project for once - what might end up being the next Planescape: Torment, but better?

One thing I like about this process that's coming about is the increase in transparency between the developers and the fans in the making of these games. In part because fans themselves are directly funding the games and kind of merit it, the developers have been using the Kickstarter platform to provide frequent updates on the current development status, along with documentary-style insight into how these games are being made in the first place at the same time through videos, release of the game design documents, adding other making-of material as bonus gifts, and more. I think the whole phenomenon in general has made me a lot more conscious of the individual people that are involved in the development of games - like who the big movers and shakers are - and also the challenges that they face in trying to release a quality product.

There's still some concerns about the process, though - like for instance, if most of the people who would buy these games in the first place are already contributing to these projects in the development stage (and hence are effectively getting "free" copies), then how will these games make a profit when they come out? And of course, it's possible that some of the games from these projects will just end up being not as great as they've been hyped up to become in the future, and Obsidian could still mess up and deliver a buggy product like much of their past work. If that happens, then it's likely that people will lose faith in the process and not contribute to future projects if they come up. But in the meantime, I'm hopeful.

[Also, I think ex-Humongous devs should get together and do a Kickstarter ala Spy Fox or Pajama Sam or Putt Putt or something similar. But that's just wishful thinking for now. At least they're starting to re-release the old games on mobile platforms.]

Blog options

I've been meaning to revamp this blog to a newer format for a while now, but I've been putting it off out of laziness cause it takes a considerable amount of effort to actually set stuff up the way I'm looking for, and my efforts so far haven't been too successful.

wordpress.com: has a bit more options when it comes to customizing, compared to blogspot, but the site's too slow for me and the lack of ability to modify the php files comprising the site is a turnoff.

wordpress.org: requires that I get my own webhost first, and I don't feel like paying for one quite yet...

jekyll: the concept is attractive (especially writing posts with markdown), but I'd literally have to write a layout from scratch, and static blog post generation time increases a lot when you have a lot of blog posts.

octopress: I messed around a bit with the default layout and the css/sass, but the same static generation time issue from jekyll applies. and when it comes down to it, I don't feel like putting that much effort into dealing with the under-the-hood details (or pretty much all those rake steps) when I want to blog.

and I don't feel like looking at other blog/cms systems, although the evernote generating blog idea looks attractive... if not fully developed yet.

and so of course I end up sticking with what I'm familiar with here. I will probably migrate to a web-hosted wordpress blog with the markdown plugin at some point in the future when I feel like it, but for now this will do. Although, if I do, I might try to set things up so that blog posts here update on a sub-blog there or something like that.

Part of my motivation in revamping is setting up another blog about tech/coding/work related stuff concurrently with this one, for posts like this one (and also for those random "aha!" moments I have while working), and markdown is pretty nice for delineating code sections. I suppose it's also the popular thing to do nowadays when you're in the tech industry, but eh.

...now that I think about it more, part of me wants to just start from scratch with jekyll again, just cause. aagh I can't decide. Maybe I'll just implement the work blog in jekyll and tie it to blogspot somehow?