A Thing that Makes Me Joyful But Mostly Angry
Okay, so I need to speed this list up or I am never going to finish. I wanted the “joyful” versus “angry” posts to be tit-for-tat, so I am going to favor my negative self and quickly mention #s 6 and 5 on my “joyful” list. I will come back to them at a later date once this monstrosity of an idea is “successfully” completed…
10 Things that Make Me Joyful (Numbers 6 and 5)
6. Video games. Enough said. (My best friend and I, who still play them together from time to time, used to call them “cideo garnes.” When we were 16 or so, he made a typo in an IM conversation and I erupted into laughter. Still do on occasion.)
5. Glenn Beck. Love him or hate him, the man has passion and does his research. Conservatives and independents love him because he’s real, he’s funny, he’s smart, and he’s one of the few who isn’t afraid of the smarmy self-righteous Left. Liberals hate him because he’s completely unexpected for a usually stoic, stalwart movement and because he actually refutes their tired arguments. Thus? The usual, “Oh, he’s just a stupid bigot”… that same annoying record they’ve been playing for several decades now. Anyone who doesn’t regurgitate the mindless saws of the liberal elite is seen as stupid, because no intellectual energy need be expended on such a dolt. The American people are finally waking up and realizing that the liberals’ monopoly on rage and righteousness is running out. Enjoy getting stomped this autumn, Dems. You deserve it.
Here we are. This will be the first and last point on my two lists where I do this. I will first include it as a “joyful” thing, and then discuss the components—far greater—that leave me “angry.” Enjoy.
10 Things that Make Me Joyful:
4. Romance. The eros form of love. The unrivaled consummation of body and mind and soul of a man and woman. --I'm not delving into anything but that, thank you... I know, so old fashioned and intolerant of me.-- There is nothing quite like being in the presence of someone you love and who (you think) loves you, is there? There's a bonding, an electricity, a warmth, a chemistry. Time slows down and yet speeds up. You think you're in Heaven even if the person puts you through Hell (at first). Whether the person is flirtatiously sliding her finger along the back of your neck, or making wild love to you on your wedding night, there's a specialness and intimacy nothing else can match. God put woman here for a reason, and no, feminist readers, that was not to be a cooking, cleaning, subservient maid... nor a condescending, ruthless, excessively ambitious career gal who aborts her accidents. Moderation, as always, is nice. Anyway, God likely knows a man will never be content with a God he cannot see or feel or hear in this life, and He knows man in his weakness needs a tangible illustration of how much God loves us.
Allow me to be personal. I have been in love three times, I believe. Maybe four. I have never really had a long-term relationship, although two of those three/four times I truly believe the other person was in love with me for a time. I am glad I've loved, especially this last time, because it's shown me I have two things in me I never thought I had: a strong sensuality, like all men, which disproves the many times a nerdy, excessively bookish high schooler with my name and face thought he must be androgynous--ahem--and secondly, an inate ability to reach inside myself and realize that I really do have the ability to put others, one other in particular, before myself. I am far less selfish now than I was a year ago. I am more considerate of parents, siblings, friends, acquaintances, strangers (except when arguing politics, perhaps, but even then I try to maintain some semblance of decorum... key word being "some"). As I was in love I found myself going to great lengths to help her, to support her, to do annoying and sometimes arduous tasks that I would have complained about internally had anybody else asked them of me.
As if all this was not enough, I simply enjoy the feeling of being with someone beautiful and cool and smart I adore, and knowing that she also finds me fetching. Dates can be very fun and fulfilling, whether they are planned or spontaneous. I must confess, nothing long-term has yet worked out--I get bored easily, and I have an intense personality ("Really?" you ask) that tends to wear out even my most loyal subjects--but at the very least I've had some very valuable GP ("Girl Practice") and am a bigger, better man because of it. Who knows, maybe someday I will meet somebody--I find that unlikely these days--and will be able to more deeply experience and express these things.
Now for the fun part...
10 Things that Make Me Angry:
4. Romance. The eros form of love. The unrivaled frustration of all a man's (or woman's) hopes and dreams and desire if it does not work out or if it produces undesired effects... which it inevitably does. I am sometimes unsure what percentage of my disillusionment with the concept of erotic love is because of my own fallen nature and bad experiences, and what percentage of it is simply an offshoot of our culture and the romantic/sexual madness it imposes upon us all. We are bombarded by suggestive ads, songs, books, movies, pictures, but are also told by the liberal flaunt-everything activists who push those things that we cannot in any way act on that sexuality or desire unless the other person absolutely, positively wants it. A perfectly illogical blend of endless titillation and fascistic fear of sexual harassment accusations. Translation: "You can do whatever the hell you want with your body or that of someone else, but you can't act on any of your urges unless you know you won't get caught." Nice.
Either way, my view of erotic love has fallen by the day, if not hour, and--it's pretty safe to say--my view of it could not be any lower. (I am sure I will regret saying that at some point...)
Many women reach a point in their lives where they so deeply tire of the concept and its related disappointments--the unsupportive husband, the disloyal boyfriend, the immature man they chose too soon and couldn't seem to shake for years--that they gladly cast it aside and move on with their lives. Very few men are willing or able to do that, but I think I may be one of them. While I still hold to what I said above, that romantic love can be fulfilling and can teach you how to love another person, I am not even sure the romantic component of that love is what does this for you. Agape love, the unconditional willingness to serve another human being or entity regardless of reward, is what makes a relationship really work, which would seem to mean that erotic love in and of itself is selfish, conditional, even spiteful. In short, refuse. Perhaps it is not even an issue of culture or society or modern-day mores, but rather something defective in the concept itself. All it has to offer is pleasure, which is self-absorbed and fleeting. Some might consider that blasphemy--we hear goofy pastors sing the praises of sex in crowded church gatherings, as though they wish to be moral versions of their hippie free-love opponents--but sex seems to be an intrinsic overly idolized part of a fallen world, although it existed before Man sinned against God. There is a pain to romance, a wistful unfulfilled and unfulfillable longing one feels, sometimes even when the other returns one's affections.
I look out and I see a culture that has no respect or value for the purity and virginity I hold so dear. And yet, as I said above, I'm tired of Christians also getting on the Sex Wagon. I am tired of it being the only thing ever discussed. In jokes, in books, in films, in everything. It's the one thing in life I'd like to experience and yet the one thing I want to get away from so I can focus on my life's work. Sex is not everything. Period.
I begin to wonder if I've been a fool for championing that idea at all. I hear many of my fellow Christians say I am doing the honorable thing, that my abstinence is upright, but then I look around me and see that these same Christians are divorced, having children out of wedlock, moving from relationship to relationship which even without sex seems to be a form of emotional adultery. I think highly of some man or woman I know from church or Christian circles, and then I hear rumors about their bedroom habits and my heart sinks into my stomach. Another brother or sister in the Lord who lives a lie, who makes the atheists I know assume I'm active too. This is why I no longer go to church, why I struggle to even open the Word or pray. I feel alone, one man in the world who's actually trying his best to preserve some chastity. Does my stand really matter a damn? Does anybody notice? Does even God notice? Are nice, smart, pretty Christian girls taking notice of me because I'm more prudish? If anything, it's the opposite. I see "nice Christian girls" dating drunks, atheists, non-Christians, which makes me wonder if I, too, should be seeking someone of a different faith or background. And yet I know I'd likely be miserable with someone who does not share my system of belief. I feel as though I'm in a "Twilight Zone" episode at times, that perhaps my very Christianness is what keeps Christian girls from finding me attractive. I’m too safe, I’m too boring, I’m not perverted or wild or interesting enough. Maybe I should get a little bit of vice, a little bit of vitriol.The order of the day now is to break barriers, overcome boundaries, prove you can do what’s wrong and still be upright in some weird way, purposefully forgive the most wild contradictions and violations. If God is so willing to forgive and forget, perhaps He laughs at my willingness to abstain, sees no moral supremacy in my approach to that of those who are sexually active with fewer boundaries. Maybe I am the immoral one, the sick twisted weirdo who actually wants to preserve some outdated mode of morality that most others—even in the church—are beginning to discard. I’m a relic, a dinosaur, a lover of history who gets weird looks from people, especially girls my age, when I tell them I majored in history and that I write books about it. I even read an article today that said women find history one of the ten worst topics to ever bring up in a conversation on a date. Forget that garbage. I want a woman—no, need one—who loves her roots, is proud of her heritage, who would defend me to the death, die for her family and her country and her God. That woman is apparently dead or nonexistent. Where are you? Where in the hell are you? Silence.
This is likely bitter ramble, but the point is made. Romance is inferior. The flame burns out, the feelings fade, the arguments and disagreements and insanity. I am overwhelmed by it. By the illogic. By girls who flirt and fawn and then resist genuine advances. By single women who detest me for my singleness then show comfort in the presence of taken men, using their miserable “daddy’s girl” complexes as lame excuses. By women who share my interests and my values but then settle for another guy because he's more popular or mainstream or physically attractive. Women I feel no attraction to, who pretend to like me deeply, only to reveal some hidden user's motive. Girls tell me how brilliant and interesting and delightful they find me, but I am not worth the trouble of a commitment, am not even worth introducing to their friends, let alone spending an hour or two together on a boring summer night. I am told, "You just haven't found the right girl," by one friend while another suggests I hook up with a single friend of hers, who is no longer single by the time I contact her. I want to run away from this. I want to find some deserted island, some distant canyon, and be alone with God and books and thoughts. I want to disappear into a library and never emerge until my soul and heart have been cleansed by a higher love, one of discovery and learning. Which form of love would that be? Agape, perhaps?
I will be alone on Judgment Day, I will be alone when I am cast into the grave. There again, what good can romantic love do me? I am me. I am mine. No woman can lay claim to me, and maybe that’s a good thing. Like the Starman in Rush’s classic rock album 2112, I am one man against an entire system, one naked natural soul holding up his hand against the red star of oppression and conformity. Like most men, I suppose. As I’ve said so often, it’s just God and me. Everyone else dies or drifts away. I guess I have to learn to live a loveless life and replace those urges with higher, loftier ones, whatever those might be. Should be fun…
10 Things that Make Me Joyful (Numbers 6 and 5)
6. Video games. Enough said. (My best friend and I, who still play them together from time to time, used to call them “cideo garnes.” When we were 16 or so, he made a typo in an IM conversation and I erupted into laughter. Still do on occasion.)
5. Glenn Beck. Love him or hate him, the man has passion and does his research. Conservatives and independents love him because he’s real, he’s funny, he’s smart, and he’s one of the few who isn’t afraid of the smarmy self-righteous Left. Liberals hate him because he’s completely unexpected for a usually stoic, stalwart movement and because he actually refutes their tired arguments. Thus? The usual, “Oh, he’s just a stupid bigot”… that same annoying record they’ve been playing for several decades now. Anyone who doesn’t regurgitate the mindless saws of the liberal elite is seen as stupid, because no intellectual energy need be expended on such a dolt. The American people are finally waking up and realizing that the liberals’ monopoly on rage and righteousness is running out. Enjoy getting stomped this autumn, Dems. You deserve it.
Here we are. This will be the first and last point on my two lists where I do this. I will first include it as a “joyful” thing, and then discuss the components—far greater—that leave me “angry.” Enjoy.
10 Things that Make Me Joyful:
4. Romance. The eros form of love. The unrivaled consummation of body and mind and soul of a man and woman. --I'm not delving into anything but that, thank you... I know, so old fashioned and intolerant of me.-- There is nothing quite like being in the presence of someone you love and who (you think) loves you, is there? There's a bonding, an electricity, a warmth, a chemistry. Time slows down and yet speeds up. You think you're in Heaven even if the person puts you through Hell (at first). Whether the person is flirtatiously sliding her finger along the back of your neck, or making wild love to you on your wedding night, there's a specialness and intimacy nothing else can match. God put woman here for a reason, and no, feminist readers, that was not to be a cooking, cleaning, subservient maid... nor a condescending, ruthless, excessively ambitious career gal who aborts her accidents. Moderation, as always, is nice. Anyway, God likely knows a man will never be content with a God he cannot see or feel or hear in this life, and He knows man in his weakness needs a tangible illustration of how much God loves us.
Allow me to be personal. I have been in love three times, I believe. Maybe four. I have never really had a long-term relationship, although two of those three/four times I truly believe the other person was in love with me for a time. I am glad I've loved, especially this last time, because it's shown me I have two things in me I never thought I had: a strong sensuality, like all men, which disproves the many times a nerdy, excessively bookish high schooler with my name and face thought he must be androgynous--ahem--and secondly, an inate ability to reach inside myself and realize that I really do have the ability to put others, one other in particular, before myself. I am far less selfish now than I was a year ago. I am more considerate of parents, siblings, friends, acquaintances, strangers (except when arguing politics, perhaps, but even then I try to maintain some semblance of decorum... key word being "some"). As I was in love I found myself going to great lengths to help her, to support her, to do annoying and sometimes arduous tasks that I would have complained about internally had anybody else asked them of me.
As if all this was not enough, I simply enjoy the feeling of being with someone beautiful and cool and smart I adore, and knowing that she also finds me fetching. Dates can be very fun and fulfilling, whether they are planned or spontaneous. I must confess, nothing long-term has yet worked out--I get bored easily, and I have an intense personality ("Really?" you ask) that tends to wear out even my most loyal subjects--but at the very least I've had some very valuable GP ("Girl Practice") and am a bigger, better man because of it. Who knows, maybe someday I will meet somebody--I find that unlikely these days--and will be able to more deeply experience and express these things.
Now for the fun part...
10 Things that Make Me Angry:
4. Romance. The eros form of love. The unrivaled frustration of all a man's (or woman's) hopes and dreams and desire if it does not work out or if it produces undesired effects... which it inevitably does. I am sometimes unsure what percentage of my disillusionment with the concept of erotic love is because of my own fallen nature and bad experiences, and what percentage of it is simply an offshoot of our culture and the romantic/sexual madness it imposes upon us all. We are bombarded by suggestive ads, songs, books, movies, pictures, but are also told by the liberal flaunt-everything activists who push those things that we cannot in any way act on that sexuality or desire unless the other person absolutely, positively wants it. A perfectly illogical blend of endless titillation and fascistic fear of sexual harassment accusations. Translation: "You can do whatever the hell you want with your body or that of someone else, but you can't act on any of your urges unless you know you won't get caught." Nice.
Either way, my view of erotic love has fallen by the day, if not hour, and--it's pretty safe to say--my view of it could not be any lower. (I am sure I will regret saying that at some point...)
Many women reach a point in their lives where they so deeply tire of the concept and its related disappointments--the unsupportive husband, the disloyal boyfriend, the immature man they chose too soon and couldn't seem to shake for years--that they gladly cast it aside and move on with their lives. Very few men are willing or able to do that, but I think I may be one of them. While I still hold to what I said above, that romantic love can be fulfilling and can teach you how to love another person, I am not even sure the romantic component of that love is what does this for you. Agape love, the unconditional willingness to serve another human being or entity regardless of reward, is what makes a relationship really work, which would seem to mean that erotic love in and of itself is selfish, conditional, even spiteful. In short, refuse. Perhaps it is not even an issue of culture or society or modern-day mores, but rather something defective in the concept itself. All it has to offer is pleasure, which is self-absorbed and fleeting. Some might consider that blasphemy--we hear goofy pastors sing the praises of sex in crowded church gatherings, as though they wish to be moral versions of their hippie free-love opponents--but sex seems to be an intrinsic overly idolized part of a fallen world, although it existed before Man sinned against God. There is a pain to romance, a wistful unfulfilled and unfulfillable longing one feels, sometimes even when the other returns one's affections.
I look out and I see a culture that has no respect or value for the purity and virginity I hold so dear. And yet, as I said above, I'm tired of Christians also getting on the Sex Wagon. I am tired of it being the only thing ever discussed. In jokes, in books, in films, in everything. It's the one thing in life I'd like to experience and yet the one thing I want to get away from so I can focus on my life's work. Sex is not everything. Period.
I begin to wonder if I've been a fool for championing that idea at all. I hear many of my fellow Christians say I am doing the honorable thing, that my abstinence is upright, but then I look around me and see that these same Christians are divorced, having children out of wedlock, moving from relationship to relationship which even without sex seems to be a form of emotional adultery. I think highly of some man or woman I know from church or Christian circles, and then I hear rumors about their bedroom habits and my heart sinks into my stomach. Another brother or sister in the Lord who lives a lie, who makes the atheists I know assume I'm active too. This is why I no longer go to church, why I struggle to even open the Word or pray. I feel alone, one man in the world who's actually trying his best to preserve some chastity. Does my stand really matter a damn? Does anybody notice? Does even God notice? Are nice, smart, pretty Christian girls taking notice of me because I'm more prudish? If anything, it's the opposite. I see "nice Christian girls" dating drunks, atheists, non-Christians, which makes me wonder if I, too, should be seeking someone of a different faith or background. And yet I know I'd likely be miserable with someone who does not share my system of belief. I feel as though I'm in a "Twilight Zone" episode at times, that perhaps my very Christianness is what keeps Christian girls from finding me attractive. I’m too safe, I’m too boring, I’m not perverted or wild or interesting enough. Maybe I should get a little bit of vice, a little bit of vitriol.The order of the day now is to break barriers, overcome boundaries, prove you can do what’s wrong and still be upright in some weird way, purposefully forgive the most wild contradictions and violations. If God is so willing to forgive and forget, perhaps He laughs at my willingness to abstain, sees no moral supremacy in my approach to that of those who are sexually active with fewer boundaries. Maybe I am the immoral one, the sick twisted weirdo who actually wants to preserve some outdated mode of morality that most others—even in the church—are beginning to discard. I’m a relic, a dinosaur, a lover of history who gets weird looks from people, especially girls my age, when I tell them I majored in history and that I write books about it. I even read an article today that said women find history one of the ten worst topics to ever bring up in a conversation on a date. Forget that garbage. I want a woman—no, need one—who loves her roots, is proud of her heritage, who would defend me to the death, die for her family and her country and her God. That woman is apparently dead or nonexistent. Where are you? Where in the hell are you? Silence.
This is likely bitter ramble, but the point is made. Romance is inferior. The flame burns out, the feelings fade, the arguments and disagreements and insanity. I am overwhelmed by it. By the illogic. By girls who flirt and fawn and then resist genuine advances. By single women who detest me for my singleness then show comfort in the presence of taken men, using their miserable “daddy’s girl” complexes as lame excuses. By women who share my interests and my values but then settle for another guy because he's more popular or mainstream or physically attractive. Women I feel no attraction to, who pretend to like me deeply, only to reveal some hidden user's motive. Girls tell me how brilliant and interesting and delightful they find me, but I am not worth the trouble of a commitment, am not even worth introducing to their friends, let alone spending an hour or two together on a boring summer night. I am told, "You just haven't found the right girl," by one friend while another suggests I hook up with a single friend of hers, who is no longer single by the time I contact her. I want to run away from this. I want to find some deserted island, some distant canyon, and be alone with God and books and thoughts. I want to disappear into a library and never emerge until my soul and heart have been cleansed by a higher love, one of discovery and learning. Which form of love would that be? Agape, perhaps?
I will be alone on Judgment Day, I will be alone when I am cast into the grave. There again, what good can romantic love do me? I am me. I am mine. No woman can lay claim to me, and maybe that’s a good thing. Like the Starman in Rush’s classic rock album 2112, I am one man against an entire system, one naked natural soul holding up his hand against the red star of oppression and conformity. Like most men, I suppose. As I’ve said so often, it’s just God and me. Everyone else dies or drifts away. I guess I have to learn to live a loveless life and replace those urges with higher, loftier ones, whatever those might be. Should be fun…
posted by Douglas Schrock at 6:57 PM
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