Seth’s World View

I wrote this last year for my travel website and liked how I said things, so I’ll repeat it here…

Spirituality:
I am a Christian. I believe one needs to have a relationship with Jesus to be saved and go to Heaven. If someone chooses to reject God in any way or never hears the Gospel, I’ll let God be the judge, but the Bible doesn’t paint a good portrait for that path. The essence of Christianity is to love God and love your neighbor. That is much harder than following a religious routine where I can measure how good I am doing. All fall short, and therefore need the grace that God freely offers, but which cost the life of God incarnate. I don’t have life figured out, nor will I ever, as the point is to trust God in the process, to seek Him through our joy and pain. Even knowing this, I often trust God poorly, so I need to rest in His unconditional love, which I also do poorly, but it’s there if I choose to believe and receive it.

Politics:
I used to care greatly about politics, but have grown somewhat apathetic of late. It’s partially because apathy is contagious. It’s also because many politicians are professional liars and power freaks. Change can be brought about, but I’m tired of trying for the moment, as people believe what they want, and like comfort and security above all else as they often can’t see beyond their locality. Or perhaps I’m not passionate enough. I’m not big on talking about politics anymore, because it’s a lot of empty rhetoric where people defend their point of view. I want to start talking solutions, rather than tearing people or ideas down. Once I was conservative, but my college was more liberal, and now I am very moderate. Thus, it is just another way I don’t fit anywhere. I am 100% pro-life, which means I am against abortion, against capital punishment, believe active nonviolent peacemaking works better than violent warfare (though violence works better than nonactive apathy), believe we should morn at the loss of life (including murderers and enemy troops), and though I eat meat, am slightly disturbed at the millions of animals slaughtered just for food purposes each year. There, that should be enough to make everyone disagree with me.

Reality:
I believe perception is reality. Though I wholeheartedly believe there is a concrete absolute reality, and an absolute God, I think perceiving those accurately is not so simple. There are many voices interpreting our reality for us, and the limited structure of language helps us describe reality, and we have to form our own view from all this. And even when I know something to be true, I often live as if I didn’t believe it, and let other perceptions define my reality. Life is one big matrix.