The Christian Bubble

I expounded a bit on this last night at http://mtlproject06.blogspot.com but this past week has been like trekking out into the desert from a beautiful oasis. The only problem with this analogy, that oasis is no longer there. It's gone... never to be seen again. Allow me to explain.

This week seems to have killed my innocence. Let's have a moment of silence for it then move on. The reason that I say this is because although I knew that there was something hugely different about Christian and non-Christian conversation, it was all head knowledge. Because I was incredibly selective about the friends that I hung out with when I was in elementary and high school (and thus far in university) the conversation was always either about spiritual things (i.e. debating particular points of theology with other Christians) or just every day mundane things or video games/card games. Whenever the subject of girls came up, it was almost always in the context of the Christian setting and almost always about how one can be a godly man towards the women that he loves. Whenever the subject arose in my video game/card game circles, it usually killed the conversation so we moved on. This is starting to change, but that's a different story.

But just the other night, I was walking around campus with a bunch of fellow frosh bosses and after they took a few pulls on a joint, the conversation invariably turned to girls. But this conversation took a turn that I have never seen in my life, which was interesting to observe (now that I'm properly awake and not dead tired.) They began talking about the girls that were eye-f-ing them and then about frosh that were hitting on them and that they weren't allowed to hit on back etc. From this conversation, I gathered that normal modes of conversation suddenly change and that little things that you do are apparently signals as to how desperate you are or how dominant you can be in a relationship.

After listening to this conversation, I was totally blown away for a while. I didn't even REALIZE that this was how many men thought about relationships with girls and thought to myself, no wonder relationships are so screwed up these days. So if I'm polite and caring for my girl, I'm suddenly desperate and putting the - in their words - the "cat" on the pedestal (insert proper word in the quotation marks).

On a seperate tangent, I also went to Yuk Yuk's the other night. I'm glad to say that I found very little about the show funny, and what astonished me even more was that people were laughing.

"So years ago I was studying to be a protestant minister. - pause as people scoff incredulously - No I kid you not. But this comes back to bite me in the a** because now whenever my friends are looking for a babysitter they initially ask me and then say no wait, you'll just f--- them."

For me... this is a moment when the crickets should be going. First point, he's talking about the wrong sect, and second since when was pedophilia something to be laughed at or even be poked fun at. But the rest of the crowd starts laughing and I turn to everyone and think to myself WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE! That garbage isn't funny.

Or course, he doesn't stop there... he keeps on going by saying "Your kids aren't even hot."

Now I'm thinking that the crickets should REALLY get going at this point, but of course, he gets a lot of laughter yet again. See the problem is that since we're at a comedy club, the idea is that if you don't like the joke or disapprove, you don't laugh. And (excuse me here) but that shit wasn't funny. At all. And this is what the night was like pretty much the whole time. Some guy going up telling stories about throwing his feces at people, another guy talking about how he found out his best friend's dad made child porn and wondered why he was never approached, and it only gets worse from there. Interestingly, the only bits I actually found funny was when they stopped talking about sex and dirty things and started doing imitations, poking fun at the government, and anglophones (there was a Quebecois comedian there).

The funny thing about all this is that four months ago, I probably would have laughed at those other jokes. I'm glad now that a sense of decency has returned to my train of thought, because that other way of thinking was most DEFINATELY a runaway.

The point of all this is that the world is indeed a strange and scary place to be in. A good friend of mine from Montreal project reminded me last night about the spiritual warfare aspect of this whole life and it also reminded me that I haven't done a proper devotion in a very very long time. So if you could pray for me that as I finish off this week that instead of these guys and these things being an influence on me, that I would be able to - through God's strength - be an influence on them and shine a light in the pitch blackness of darkness.