Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Skin Deep

As time goes on, my experience deepens, my opposition becomes more and more diverse, and the jazz resolves itself less and less, my views on certain things become more and more... wide.

Probably I shouldn't use the word wide, rather maybe, different. From many other people, that is. I keep running into situations where people don't understand me because I use everyday terms to go "deeper", but the everday terms do not suffice, or I'm not able to communicate their depth with the context I'm using them in.

Just tonight I was talking to someone, and I was in a situation where I couldn't talk like I wanted to, I didn't know how to talk, rather, how to communicate with the person, because I want to communicate more than our contemporary language allows us. I feel the depths of what I'm trying to say, but I'm not able to convey that with the atmosphere and context of our conversation. I believe it's because of the contemporary lifestyle. I'm tired of it.

What of grandeur is so... grand? What of majesty is so majestic? What of the classical is so endearing? Or is it only me? I can't help but be bugged by our skimming-the-surface attitudes, over-emphasizing things that block or view of the underlying problems. Basically, screaming our heads off at people who scream their heads off, and things like that. Here's a good example. The most-visited part of MennoDiscuss.com is the Theology part. Around twice as many posts as any other subject! I was impressed. Until I looked into it. Indeed, there are a few interesting posts, I daresay, quite a few, but looking at "Is it OK for men to wear shorts?" or "To Tie or Not to Tie?" or "Why the suitcoat?" or, (my personal favorite) "Mennos, Make-up, and Manicures...", I smile.

Now, obviously, we all understand that none of us can picture the perfect church body, or, more specifically, the perfect individual, but how we critique our own culture's essentially non-consequential behavioral habits, standards for "modesty", is just amazing.

In reality, it's only skin deep.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Tis vanity! *keeps straight face*

Nic Miller said...

I'm trying to figure out if I'm supposed to take that personally, or as a compliment...

Anonymous said...

I thought anonymous would make the game harder. evil grin. Just wanted to comment on your last three posts. LOVED the warrior poet! Awesome. Teenage guys reading philo eh? nice. Skin deep I'm with you man. Mediocre livestyles don't jive with me.

whimsicalfaery said...

Isn't it nice that with God, we can simply lift our faces to heaven and FEEL to Him, and He understands perfectly! So many times I've wanted to do the same thing with people. Not in this world...