Testimonial

Lately I've been living in the dark. Not just living -- I've been setting down roots, getting myself used to a life lived perpetually in the darkness of fear and doubt and despair. After a couple of months, darkness became what I was about; when in doubt about how to act in a social situation, revert back to playing the character mired in darkness. Except it wasn't a character anymore, it was who I really was.

You see, I lost sight of the light. I entered the caves but forgot to bring my flashlight. And after a while my eyes adjusted; I could see pretty well, so I mistook that for seeing well, and decided that maybe the darkness was a good place to say, and no matter what God said to the contrary I closed off my ears.

But the time has come, He told me today. The time has come to turn my head toward the light and head toward it, no retreat. And that's one of the scariest things I've ever been told. You see, after a while, the darkness becomes a comfort. It becomes a safety blanket, and I know two things about it: if I can't see what's out there, what's out there can't see me, and there will be less in here because most creatures want to live in the light. So in any situation that scares me, I just pull back into the darkness and close my eyes, and wait for the monsters to fade away. What I've been failing to come to terms with is that this darkness is the monster. I cling to it because I think that it's part of my identity, and I don't know who I'll be when I'm not the girl with emotional problems who's depressed and hates herself; I'm scared of what I'll have to act like if I come out of my cave and have to take responsibility for my actions and can't just hide behind hating myself for them.

I'm scared of that. Scared of telling people who I really am. But here goes. Guys, this is who I am, who I really really am:

I am Karis. My name is Greek and it means Grace and I haven't been living up to it lately. I am a Christian, but a bad one. I believe that Jesus Christ died to save me but I haven't been living like I know that. In fact, it's been a long time since I've truly believed that God could really love me. You see, I know He created me and I know he loves what he creates, but I've convinced myself that I've ruined that beautiful creation of His and therefore He must hate me. In fact, if I'm going to be honest, I still believe that. It's so hard to convince myself that I haven't ruined my chances of having God love me -- as hard as pulling my own nails off would be.

I am Karis. Lately I have been living in the darkness, a creature of the night who is scared of the light. I cower away from any expression of love, and even go so far as to try and scare it away. I am scared of opening myself up to real human interaction, which is why I never tell anyone the whole story -- because I fear the power that would give them over me. But I'm done living like that. I'm tired of being ruled by fear, sick of being exhausted by the extent of my despair.

I am Karis. I'm still lost in the darkness, but I've finally accepted that I'm not without hope. There is a Friend by my side, and I know that if I just reach out to take His hand He will take me safely through the tunnels. I know it won't be easy, I know it will be as hard as pulling my own nails off, but I know that the end result, when I step out into the beauty of daylight, will be more delightful than the best feeling I could imagine. I am a Christian, and I'm finally going to step forward and act that out in my life.

I am a follower of Christ, and followers of Christ don't live in the darkness, they live in the light and embrace all the horrors and beauties that come with that. They make a public stand and don't back down. So this is my stand: I am coming out of the darkness and will never again turn my face back towards it.

Old Laws

I saw this picture on Pinterest a couple weeks ago, and it made me incredibly angry. Apparently someone decided to go through the Old Testament and find all the examples of strange allowances for marriage and then put them together and somehow use that to prove that gay marriage is okay. No, wait, I think maybe it was sarcastic: "Look, the Bible is crazy. It says a woman has to marry a rapist and that a man can also marry his wife's slave or just three random women, but a man can't marry a man? Crazy. Look how clever I am to find this."
Oh yes, you're brilliant. It's like you completely forgot about the New Testament. "The what?" The New Testament. The one that came after the Old Testament. Duh.

See, here's my theory. (Actually, I'm 90% sure that it's not just my theory, that it's actually written somewhere in the Bible, because I definitely didn't think this up on my own. I know I read it somewhere, just can't remember where). My theory is that God didn't necessarily want the people in the Old Testament to have multiple wives or have to marry a rapist, just like he didn't originally want them to get divorced. But, just like people nowadays, people in the Old Testament ran around trying to sin as much as possible (it has to do with the fact that they were still human and humans like sinning), so he had to make allowances. For instance, women who fornicated were supposed to die. But obviously he wasn't going to kill a woman for being raped. But he also couldn't have her running around single cause then all the other virgins would get jealous and nobody wants to have a stampede of jealous women on their hands (trust me). So he made it so that she would marry her rapist. And then this funny thing happened a couple thousand years later: He sent His Son to Earth and He spent a lot of time preaching and clearing things up, and one of things he cleared up was: one man, one woman. That's how marriage works.

So these people who run around citing the Old Testament where the Old Testament is no longer the final word on a subject make me angry. It's kind of like this: when I was little my brother and I used to play this game, where we cut up paper and put it in a trash can and pretended it was macaroni (yeah, we were real smart). And one time I leaned over the bucket right as Josh cut. So, snip, there goes a lock of hair, and little Karis is running around with a crazy spiky haircut for the next few weeks. So my mom made a new rule: every time I used the scissors I had to put my hair in a ponytail, so my brother's rogue scissors wouldn't give me another wacky cut. This lasted for a few years until I was old enough to use scissors responsibly, and the rule was gone.
And I think that sometimes the Old Testament was like that. The ancient Israelites were in a sense like children; they'd just been initiated into a whole new way of life and didn't know what to do with it. They were showered with a boatload of new rules and sometimes they couldn't keep them straight. So God was merciful and made some allowances (yes, you can divorce your wife. For now) because they were still struggling to adapt. A couple thousand years later, however, they were used to being God's people and being different from everyone else. So when Jesus came to Earth to save everyone's souls and die a gruesome death on the cross He made a few changes: one man, one woman. Not one man, three women; not one rapist, one woman; not one woman, one man, he dies, his brothers.

Sometimes the rules change. So if you're gonna try and make a clever statement and defend gay marriage by using crazy example from the Old Testament, don't. Those rules aren't in place anymore, and instead of looking all brilliant, you'll just look stupid and ignorant.