Two weeks ago I began my first quarter in college. Wow! What a big step. It's definitely exciting, not only because it is a step into adult-hood but also because of everything I've heard about it, the challenges, the Christian challenges, the moral challenges, the thinking challenges. Challenges everywhere!... Challenge is right. I have been blessed to have good professors, or so they seem so far, who aren't all about what they believe and that everyone should believe so, too. They seem pretty tolerant of what the students believe.
Still, some of the text books still have propaganda you might say. Everything has a message. Everything! From Disney Princess stories to Star Trek to Jane Austen's to Lord of the Rings to Action to everything else whether it's obvious or not. Ever have that feeling that "Something is not right" and you just don't know why? It feels great when you find out that your intuition was right, but what if you find out you were having bad feelings about something good? That's because the messages in school, movies, media, and just general life - culture - has tuned your intuition a little. Even if you didn't pick up on it, that little pattern finding radar in you did and maybe it converted it into a paradigm of life or truth. This doesn't always happen, but it isn't far enough from common. Ever watch a movie and feel "Something is wrong" too? That's probably because of the same thing influenced by something else.
Everything has a message and each message tries to shape our paradigm, our perspective, on life. It is impossible to shield off every single false message or perspective planting circumstance but it is good to be aware. It is important when you do realize you might be believing something you didn't think you did or you get that bad feeling about whatever you are learning/watching/reading to find out why to have an answer.
That is why I am hoping to create this series about countering acting college lies. It won't all be things I learn in college that is counter what I believe, it will be other things like media. So many young people go to college - which is a good thing - and get flabbergasted by a whole bunch of perspectives and opinions masqueraded as truths - not a good thing - or if they aren't, they still look pretty convincingly like truths. Some of them are, but some of them aren't. Whenever we are about to believe something, we should cross-check it with our standards of belief - that is the principles we have set for ourselves to believe if something is true or not and if it contradicts or coincides with what we have already set as the foundation of our belief and what we already to believe. Maybe it's time to rethink, but maybe it's time for them to rethink.
A lot of lies are underrated, not thought of as very important to cover or even confront. I am not going to turn a mole hill into a mountain, but I don't like mountains being turned into mole hills. And isn't every lie worthy of being replaced with a truth? Too many times in history tiny lies have eventually undermined an entire nation. Besides, when a lie comes along masquerading as a truth, it is very hard to simply say 'no' and not replace it with a truth and a reason.
Belief isn't blind, sometimes indirect, but never blind. Believing in PeterPan is blind, believing in the good girl turn bad boy to good Disney Princess paradigm is blind, believing in fairies and pixie-dust is blind, because there is substantial evidence to prove otherwise and none or very little to prove it so. Believing in atoms though no one has ever seen one is not blind, it is indirect. Believing in dogs are not blind, we seem them a lot. Two live next door and another two in the house behind mine. Believing in gases and chemistry and history is not blind, it is either direct or indirect.
I would even debate that faith isn't blind. Faith is seeing a pattern and trusting that whatever happens won't break the pattern. The most trustworthy thing we can put our faith into is God. We've felt God, we've experienced God, we've seen His handiwork - and only a small piece. God made promises, He's kept all of them. God has been faithful, He has seen people through time and time again. Sometimes is is not obvious, but if we look at the long run, we can be confident in God. When times of trouble come, we don't have to have blind faith that God will look after us, a foundationless hope. We can KNOW He will through the foundation of faith, through confidence that God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, so He'll be faithful today like was yesterday and will be tomorrow.
With that introduction to lies, blind-belief vs. belief, and faith that is not blind, I guess that will close this post up. Hopefully in the near future - usually on Mondays - another blog post will show up, but college is a lot of work with a lot of homework. I'll do my best!
Blessings!
-Lynsi Keye
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