Small Town Talk

Coming from a small town, all gossip and news gets around about everyone, and it doesn't stop with age, it seems. So it was hard for me to hear about a friend of mine, a proclaimed Christian, that took her first drink with other proclaimed Christians and I'm not sure why, but it makes me feel so sad, and it seems to dark to me. It's funny because I'm not a stranger to these activities, I've witnessed them, and heard and seen worse things. And yet, for someone who is a good person, who hasn't even done this before, for them to start also means no going back, an inability to take it back. Our religion causes great guilt, and it's something you can't easily forget.

But why am I saying this at all - I'm no saint, I'm surely not any more Godly than the next person. Like I said, the guilt comes easily when we're told to feel that way. But somehow I'd like to believe that God is a loving God, forgiving, with open arms to those who are repentent. And yet we also hear about a God that is jealous, angry at our sin, and therefore separating himself from us. How can these two opposites exist within a claimed perfect being? Why make us if he knew we'd have to be judged by him someday? Why don't good people go to heaven too? I know, I know the answers to some questions.... but I don't understand it. And it tends to be a spiritual hang-up for me. It's hard to imagine some of the great people I've met not in heaven. But I don't make the rules.

Beyond all this, we all need to experience things to know what it means to have happiness or to know what we don't want from life. Hence, exploration with psychoactive drugs, physical love, etc. I'm not saying that we don't have to deal with the consequences or effects of it, we certainly must. But what if the effects aren't as bad as everyone told us they would be? Or what if the hard times seems so hard, so low?

I hope that girl finds her way. We all do, it's never easy. I just hope that life doesn't let her down. I have felt the sting of defeat, and I wish it on no one.