Another Thing I Can't Understand

Here's another one:

Why I Give Myself Way Too Much Credit

It's almost laughable how I go out of my way just to make myself seem more justified or cooler--I remember a long time ago whenever my mom told me I had done something stupid or wrong (and she was always right) I would refuse to accept her judgment. Against all reason, I would begin to remind her of all the ways SHE had messed up (oh yeah, well, remember when you didn't give me that piece of cake you promised to give me?) and would compile a literal list of things that supposedly proved my rotten attitude was actually pretty angelic in comparison. This would be followed my mother's reasonable reply of, "Well, that has nothing to do with you." And then I would argue some other crafty little tactic into my case, which would prove nothing but would distract from the fact that I had been a little snot. This could go on all day, actually, and was one of my most consuming past-times, and still is, just in different ways (I hope).

In fact, whenever I find myself trying to explain how cool I am, I feel compelled to write something like this, which ends up being an attempt to justify my self-justification, and then whoops... there I go again. Sometimes I wonder if our preoccupations with making up for or covering up things we struggle with are just leading us in crippled circles and miring us in the past; maybe I need to move on.

People don't care about your coolness or perfectness; they care about what your doing and who you are right now. And since no one is really the exact definition of "cool" and "perfect" and still likeable (although Batman almost pulled it off), just be yourself, and care about others--which means, Hannah, that you don't need to write silly blog posts and torture people with your lame past. I thought you learned something when you had to suffer through that agonizingly tedious memoir.

Things I can't understand

Alright. For the next week or so, I will be ranting a little bit.

THINGS THAT I CAN'T UNDERSTAND

1. Why people try to squeeze God out of everything.
We all, and I include myself, are swifter to attribute some terrible catastrophe--a natural disaster, sent to apparently punish the irreverent--as the work of God, as opposed to growth and positive progress. When a hurricane hits, there is an immediate debate about whether God is hating on the suffering nation, and bitter words are exchanged on the obvious unfairness of His partiality (even though He doesn't exist). When we look back on our growth as humans and as a country, we often try to squeeze God out of it. Oh, yes, America was founded by deists, but they were corrupt deists, so really, our country was founded on corruption, and has somehow successfully progressed to its state of present freedom through stealing, capitalism, and other bombastic measures...
Similarly, all of life came out of a single random mutation, which led to hundreds of other random mutations, which led to single-cell organisms, then to fish, then primates, then humans... all began from nothing, and, if you want to believe so, amounts to nothing...

It seems to me that the most random acts always have something specific behind it--yes, you might give the girl next door (that would be me) flowers as a totally random act of kindness, but it still means something, and something still inspired it. And yes, the volcano Mt. St. Helens might decide to erupt randomly or there might be a random mutation in a chemical warehouse that could lead to a cure for cancer or something, but still, something always causes it. Always. With the volcano, there is a buildup of lava over time, and whether we know about it or not, whether the scientists discover whatever caused the buildup before it blows or not, it still existed. With the random mutation, two chemicals still had to be mixed: thus, everything has a cause. Why can't God have been the cause of our world's beginning? Why is that so offensive to so many? And similarly, why can't God be the cause of much of the good that has happened in our world?

Hopefully that made some sense and wasn't too ranty.