{"id":448,"date":"2003-04-27T23:50:32","date_gmt":"2003-04-28T03:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/?p=448"},"modified":"2003-04-27T23:50:32","modified_gmt":"2003-04-28T03:50:32","slug":"448","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/?p=448","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p><u><b>prelude to actual post&#8230;<\/u><\/b><BR>I added a new pic today.  Yes, I dyed my hair (a week ago now).  Yes, it has a massively purple tint.  No, it&#8217;s not supposed to ;).  It was supposed to be black but the dye was very deceitful.  It claimed to be &#8220;pitch black&#8221;, but was in fact &#8220;purplish black&#8221;.  With every shower it becomes less black and more purple&#8230; oh well.<BR><BR>Tomorrow starts finals week, and then school is over.  That makes me happy.<BR><BR><BR><b><u>Actual post&#8230;<\/b><\/u><BR><BR>Before I really get into what I want to post about I feel I should just say&#8230; that there are some people who I am pretty sure read my site at least from time to time who may not like what i have to say or agree with me.  That&#8217;s ok.  I don&#8217;t really care if you agree with me or not.  You are entitled to your opinion, but I have to say that I honestly feel you are in the wrong.  I will try to keep all of this as anonymous as possible, but people who know what I am referring to will most likely figure it out.  Consider yourself forewarned.<BR><BR>That said, there is a body of people&#8230; an organization, if you will, that has the ability to piss me off more then anything else that I know of.  Any ideas on who this might be?  That&#8217;s right&#8230;.  the church.<BR><BR>Now I can hear your response already&#8230;. but truthfully, the church pisses me off, all the time.  for lots of reasons.  The first of which seems to be a running theme with many people whom I have talked to.  That is the fact that the church for some reason feels the need to control people&#8217;s lives.  Pastors, leaders, people who hold other church leadership positions&#8230;. listen to me very carefully: It is NOT up to you who I can or cannot talk to, hang out with, do on any particular day, etc.  It is not up to you to decide that for ANYONE except for yourself, and, well, if you are a parent, then your children as well.  If a girl and a guy want to hang out, then they can hang out.  If they decide they want to date, then they can date.  Regardless of what you think about it, it is not your decision.  Do you have any right to talk to them about it?  As a leader, you may counsel them as to what you think, but that is all.  Once you have done so, that&#8217;s it.  Leave it be.  Don&#8217;t perpetually pester them.  If a group of kids decides they don&#8217;t really feel like going to church some sunday night, and would rather hang out at a friends house, then guess what?  That&#8217;s perfectly fine.  People always say how the people feeling it is their responsibility to control people&#8217;s lives have good intentions.  I don&#8217;t doubt that, I&#8217;m sure that their intentions are good, but that really doesn&#8217;t matter.  Your intentions can be the best possible and you can do an incredible amount of harm to a person.  The greatest harm can come from the best intentions.  It is not a sin to not be in church every time there is a service there.  It is great that there are several services a week for people to go to if they so desire, but that is not for everyone.  Christians aren&#8217;t meant to spend every waking moment of their lives behind the doors of a church.  So I think there is a key thing that the church needs to learn how to do (brace yourself) and that is: Stay the hell out of people&#8217;s personal lives.  Unless there is a sin being committed, in which case it is your biblical responsibility to address it, just stay the hell out.<BR><BR>The church also needs to start learning how to follow the teachings of the bible it claims to believe.  I bet some of you are still getting over that fact that I wrote &#8220;hell&#8221; twice in that last paragraph.  You get stuck on that, and yet when it comes to much more important things, you fail to do as the bible says.  To decieve someone into coming to a meeting under false pretenses is lying.  Also, the bible teaches, and it is common decency and courtesy, that when you have a problem with someone you should go to that person first and work it out with them, prior to getting anyone else involved.  There is no better way to drive a person away from the church then to tell everyone BUT them about all the things you see wrong with them.  Yet I doubt using the words &#8220;piss&#8221;, &#8220;hell&#8221;, &#8220;damn&#8221;, &#8220;shit&#8221;, &#8220;ass&#8221;, or even &#8220;fuck&#8221; would drive anyone away from the church.  About the only thing it would do is offend Christians and incite them to drive ME away from the church.  I am not going to say it is ok to use those words, that is not my point.  Hopefully you have seen the point I was trying to make.<BR><BR>That is all.  Hopefully I didn&#8217;t piss anyone off too bad, but, if I did, oh well.  That&#8217;s how I feel.  I am still praying about how I should be involved in the church this summer.  Whatever God wants to happen will happen, I am sure.<BR><BR>&#8220;This line is metaphysical <BR>And on the one side, on the one side <BR>The bad half live in wickedness <BR>And on the other side, on the other side <BR>The good half live in arrogance <BR>And there&#8217;s a steep slope with a short rope <BR>This line is metaphysical <BR>And there is a steady flow moving to and fro <BR><BR>And oh look you earned your wings <BR>Are you an angel now, or a vulture <BR>Constantly hovering over<BR>Waiting for a big mistake <BR>Oh my God, what have I done? <BR>Oh my God, what have I done? <BR>Oh my God, what have I done? <BR><BR>Wouldn&#8217;t you love to be? <BR>On the cover of a magazine <BR>Healthy skin, perfect teeth <BR>Design to hide what lies beneath <BR><BR>I feel the darkness growing stronger <BR>As you cram light down my throat <BR>How does that work out for you <BR>In your holy quest to be above reproach? <BR><BR>Wouldn&#8217;t you love to be <BR>On a cover of a magazine? <BR>Healthy skin, perfect teeth <BR>Design to hide what lies beneath, what lies beneath.&#8221;<BR><BR>-&#8220;Magazine,&#8221; by Pedro the Lion<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>prelude to actual post&#8230;I added a new pic today. Yes, I dyed my hair (a week ago now). Yes, it has a massively purple tint. No, it&#8217;s not supposed to ;). It was supposed to be black but the dye was very deceitful. It claimed to be &#8220;pitch black&#8221;, but was in fact &#8220;purplish black&#8221;. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/?p=448\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\"><\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/darkestlight.org\/xanga\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}