Looking Forward, Looking Back - 23/24

Another year is coming to an end, and another one is about to start. So let’s take a moment to look back at the year that was, and look ahead to the year that might be.

For me, 2023 had a lot that was new; but also a lot that was the same. I’m still working in the same job, despite having applied for other jobs on and off for over a year. I’m still no further ahead on the musical about queer faith that I started writing nearly two years ago now. I’m still in the middle of reading many of the same books that I was at the start of the year. I’m still not seeing many of my creative projects and ideas really go anywhere. But I’m also still surviving. Still fairly physically healthy. Still getting through each day. Which is a start.

What was different, then? Well, I moved house early this year. And then quite quickly was managing the lease, and needing to find two other housemates! But that meant being able to offer accommodation to some people that needed it, for probably cheaper than they’d be able to find otherwise. I’ve been in a consistent relationship through all this year, which has been kinda crazy. I haven’t had that in a while, and it’s been rather lovely. I visited Melbourne - a couple of times, actually! - which was a lot of fun. I marched in the Sydney Mardi Gras early this year with my church, which was amazing. I was on the board for the church for most of this year as well, and that was a new experience. I did sound for a musical, for a profit-share! That was a first. Also operated both sound and lighting for another show, when I haven’t really done lights before. I had my partner move in to my place - it wasn’t really planned, but rent increases be shit. And it’s worked out pretty well. I started a few new campaign games with friends. I finished up with the trivia host job. I kinda finished up at the church that I was at - not really something I’ve talked about online publicly, but that happened recently. Not through any ill will, just moving in different directions. I started playing public gigs again every now and then. Also started having board game nights at my place semi-regularly. And I got accepted into a music therapy course that will start next year - which brings us into 2024.

Really, that course - and the work I have - are the only concrete things I know about next year. Everything else is pretty up in the air. But, I suppose, here are some hopes. Some are probably a little optimistic and not likely going to happen, but hey, it’s still good to hope.

I hope that I can read a bit more. I have a To-Be-Read list as long as my arm, including multiple books I’ve bought relatively recently. I’d like to actually get to them. But so often I just don’t read, I spend my time watching videos and the like. So I want to put more time aside for reading.

I hope that I can play to people a bit more. I’ve loved getting back into doing gigs; actually getting to hear people’s reactions to my songs, what I’ve written, what I’m doing. It’s incredibly encouraging. I want to do more of that, and have more people hearing my music.

I hope that I can finish some projects; or at least, keep working on them. I’m very good at starting projects; coming up with a million different ideas and thoughts. But bringing them through to their completion, particularly when they require a lot of work, is something I really struggle with. I have so many projects that haven’t really moved in months. I’d like to see that change.

I hope that I can make some new connections. I love my partner dearly; but I also love a lot of other people! I am polyamorous. But, for one reason or another, nothing else has really eventuated. Which, though I’m used to, would also be nice to see change.

One that’s a bit more out of my hands - I hope that life will be less shit. It’s feeling more and more capitalist hellscape these days in multiple ways, which makes life more difficult for most people. I’m sitting pretty squarely within that. It would be nice for things to get a little better. Well. A lot better. Seems fairly impossible, but we can hope, right? But yeah. When a lot of things in the world are falling apart, it gives you less reasons to want to keep going.

I hope that the relationship I’m in will keep going. Like I said, it’s been really nice. I’d like that to continue, ideally. Would be nice if this could still be good for a while yet.

I hope I can get a different job. I really do. It’s one of the things that’s draining me the most, and just contributing to burnout. It would be nice to be able to change that for the better.

I hope that the course I’m doing next year will go well. I’m excited for it - and I think it should be good - but I haven’t done study like this for nearly ten years. So it will take some getting used to.

And I’m hoping I can spend more time with people. That’s what really brings me life. It’s a bit harder without a car to be doing those catch ups and the like, but hopefully I can still make it work.

There’s a lot I that don’t really know about next year. But hopefully, it can bring some changes for the better. 

What God Isn't.

One of the common difficulties of deconstruction, I feel, is that as old ideas start to fall apart, what you do believe becomes less clear. It becomes harder and harder to define what it is you think is true; what is God? What are they like? Things get a bit foggy sometimes. And so it can be easier, instead of trying to think about what you do think is true, to think about what you don't think is true. To look at the negative space. So, today, I'm going to look at a few things that I think God isn't.

God isn’t trying to trap us. 

I think this is a fairly common one that people think. People feel like God is lying in wait until we sin, do something wrong, to then jump out and yell “Gotcha!”. God doesn't take joy in our mistakes, unlike siblings or people on the internet can at times. God hurts with us; feels our pain, and doesn't want us to be doing things wrong just so they can catch us at it. That's not the point. God isn't trying to keep to a quota of how many people they can catch sinning every hour. I think this idea can make a lot of people walk on eggshells around a lot of things; but it's not how God works.

God isn’t weighing up our “good deeds” against our “bad deeds” to see which is bigger.

This is an old Ancient Egyptian idea, actually! Or close to. They would weigh your soul against the feather of Ma'at, and if it was lighter you would continue on into the afterlife, otherwise your soul would get eaten up and destroyed. It's also a similar idea to some parts of Catholicism - needing to counter out all of your sins through penitence, or indulgences, or purgatory, before you could get to heaven. But that's not really what God cares about; they're the sort to wipe the slate clean, give people a new start, and not really care about what's happened so far. It doesn't matter. That's the point of being made new, after all.

God isn’t distant. 

God is many things, but distant isn’t one of them. They are everywhere, always present. But not just as a silent witness or watcher - as an active communicator and engager with the world and those within it. A lot of people, I think, look around and go, "well, if God was here then all this crap wouldn't be happening!" And that's fair. I ask that question too at times, what God is doing about all of the pain and suffering in the world. But I believe that God feels it, acutely, with us. That God is among us.

The story doesn’t go, “kind and forgiving Jesus came to save us from the angry wrathful God”.

This is actually in the Bible, for a brief moment, in a sense. But it's when Job is in the midst of his pain, and suffering, and anguish - and he wishes that he had someone who would act as a mediator between him and God, so that God would stop punishing him. Because that's what he believes is happening. (Job 9:32-35, for reference.) But if that's what we believe - then Jesus and God cannot be the same. Jesus cannot be God. And - at least for most Christians - Jesus being God, being divine, is a rather fundamental part of faith.
When people do a quick glance through the Old Testament, compared to the New Testament, this is the sense that they can often get; angry God of the OT, kind Jesus of the NT. But that view and idea misses a lot of both. It misses the God who saves Hagar and Ishmael; misses the Jesus who turns over tables; misses the God who was sending birds to give this one guy bread for a number of days; misses the Jesus who was literally sitting there making a whip and then cracking it at people (John 2:15). God and Jesus are much more complex than we often make them out to be.

Humans weren’t a mistake of creation. Neither is diversity. 

We've had Ancient Egypt - I think this one is Ancient Greece, though it might be in a few creation stories. In a few creation myths, humanity is basically a mistake. An afterthought. In one in particular, there's the idea that people are made out of clay; and with some people, the gods were drunk at the potter's wheel. Accidents. But that's not the picture that the Bible paints. Rather, humanity is a focal point of creation, a joyous crescendo in this glorious symphony (okay, I may have waxed somewhat lyrical there). In the same way, diversity is not a mistake. Time and time again throughout the Bible, we see people on the margins, people on the outside, being brought to the inside. People from different cultures, people that were sick, people that were poor, people that were disabled, women, eunuchs, tax collectors, soldiers, children, and more. Now, you might say, "well, we don't see gay people or trans people in there!" Sure. Neither do we see phones or porn, but I've heard Biblical sermons around both. The point is the pattern - and the pattern is one of inclusion, of diversity. God didn't do that by accident. God set out to make a diverse world; you can see that by just looking around you.

God isn’t a puppeteer. 

It feels like this one doesn't need to be said, but I'll say it anyway. God isn't interested in puppets. If God is just making people worship and do what they want, it's not worth anything. The power - and proof - comes from choice. And that's what we do, every day; choose what we want to do with our lives. There's some choices that aren't great, and some that are probably pretty terrible. But there's some good ones in there as well.

God isn’t a wish fairy. Or Santa. 

This seems to be how some people interact with God. "If God doesn't just give me what I want, what good are they?" That's the point of prayer, right? Asking for stuff you want? Well....not exactly. But God's purpose isn't to make all of your dreams come true, and give you everything you want, and make you happy all the time. Besides, most of the time we have a rubbish idea of what's good for us. But the prosperity gospel still has a lot of followers, unfortunately. It's a nice idea; but it falls rather flat in practice.

God isn’t doing secret tests to see if you’re a true follower. 

This one seems to come from people looking at Job and going, "that happens all the time, right? God is definitely testing me!" Which rather misses the point of the book of Job. (Besides the point that it's quite possibly just a parable, rather than a recording of actual events.) It also somewhat contradicts the idea that God is all-knowing. If God knows you completely - they wouldn't need to do any sort of "tests" to see if you were a "true believer" (whatever that means). But again, that's not how God works anyway. It's not what God's interested in.

God isn’t punishing you for your sin. 

This one was still around a fair bit in Jesus' time. You can see it in the passage of John 9:1-3, where Jesus and his disciples chance across a man born blind, and they're asking him if it's because of his own sins, or the sins of his parents. And Jesus is like - actually, no. This was another idea from other religions of the time, of course; being punished for what you've done wrong. But once more, God isn't interested in punishing us, hurting us more. Often, our mistakes have enough punishment in themselves. We don't need more to add on to it. 

God isn’t talking about a far-flung future. 

In the New Testament, Jesus talks a lot about the "Kingdom of God". Many people seem to equate this to heaven; as in, the place they'd go after death. But if you actually read what Jesus was saying, most of it isn't talking about some time that's far away in the future; it's talking about now. What's happening here, on Earth, among us. The new life has already started, in many ways. But the trick is, we're part of making that real. What we do here, in this life, matters; but not because God is going to punish us if we'll do the wrong thing, or because of going to Purgatory, or going to Hell. But because we create heaven or hell, here on earth, through what we do. That in itself I could do a whole post on, but some other time.

God isn’t getting the world ready for “the Rapture”. 

This is a popular one over in America. If you're not American, you probably know the idea still through things like the "Left Behind" books/movie, or some songs of the time. If you are American, you'd probably be surprised to hear that the rapture is a very modern idea; it first came about in the early 1800s, with Edward Irving doing a fair bit of work there; and then later, further popularised by John Darby. And all of it basically comes back to one Bible passage, that was interpreted in a particular way. Which is kinda both hilarious and sad at once in a way? But that seems to be the way of things, all too often. It also seems to misconstrue the book of Revelations as being solely concerned with the future, and the end of the world, rather than in many instances being a veiled description of the actual time it was written. 

God isn't small. 

God isn’t small. And this kinda means a lot of different things at once. Yes, it means that God is big and powerful enough to have created the universe and everything in it. But it also means that they’re greater and better and more than what we think; we can’t put them in a box. Though, oh goodness, we try…

God isn't exclusively male. 

A lot of folks have grown up with the idea of God as male; not helped by the fact that the Bible tends to use he/him pronouns for God most of the time, and the name Father is often used for God. But if God is exclusively male, and humanity is made in God’s image - well, then, we have a rather large problem. Because we’re not all male. Which means - logically - that God can’t be either. (I did a whole post on this at one point if you want to read more on it.) Arguably, in fact, God is beyond gender; but within then we can find all that is in both femininity and masculinity. So I tend to use they/them pronouns for God, or sometimes she/her if I’m feeling spicy. 

-------

I could probably try and come up with some more. Maybe I will in another post, or maybe I'll add to this later. But this has already been sitting in my drafts for most of this year, and goodness, it feels high time to actually get it out there. Things are still pretty foggy for me a lot of the time, honestly. It gets tricky to define where I'm at; I have some ideas, but not many. This, though, is a start. And it will do for now.