Personal: When the going gets tough, bite back.

Sometimes, you just feel like the world has got you under its thumb. I'm fairly sure I'm not alone in feeling like this.

One of the hardest parts of talking about faith is not that people are unresponsive or don't care. That definitely happens, but what gets under my skin even more than that is the fact that for a lot of people, thinking or talking about God or Jesus are just not things that they've been allowed to do. Cultures, government, societal norms--everywhere, there are voices that tell us that it's not worth thinking about the possibility of more to this life than life itself. That reminds me of something that struck me in the foreword to Aldous Huxley's dystopian novel A Brave New World:

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

That, friends, gets me all up in arms. That's just a blatant disregard for the design of the human experience. We have big questions; we need big spaces to work things out for ourselves. Exploring the idea of God is not an option; it's a necessity.

Discussing these things and really examining Truth can feel like being this tiny lizard--you push back against powers that threaten to overwhelm you. It can feel futile, but it's crucial to keep thinking about, to keep talking about, to keep fighting for in whatever ways we can because it's the right thing to do. We are called to wield our freedoms in ways that help others become free to wrestle and think for themselves.