Some people have told me that I assume that I'm right. Maybe it's true, maybe it isn't. I'm honestly unsure. All I know is that I'm tired of making excuses for others, pacifying them into their comfort zone, and hiding what I feel, because it may not be what others want to hear at that point in time.
It could be the falseness talking.
If others do not respect my beliefs, simply because they believe something different, why should I hide what I think? Is that the Christian way? I know Jesus said to turn the other cheek, give your enemies the chance to screw you over that second time with their screaming at the top of their lungs to cover up anything you could possibly want to say (or in this case, debate-hungry & aggressively-opinionated friends in their well-meant ways). But is this the extreme? Jesus took on the church for becoming corrupt in his time, but was this only because God had given him the authority to do so? Do I have the authority to question others or does that only reside with God? If I can speak out when atrocities are going on all around the world, can I speak out when my ideas are being trampled accidently by careless people? Does that make me too confident of my rightness, or too bossy, or too loud?
Questions flood my brain, synapses firing, but no answers accompany them.
My biggest fear is becoming the type of Christian people love to hate, because they are perceived as 'false,' and not part of the 'true' followers. I want to be true to God in everything that I do. I pray for patience in dealing with the people who try me most, and I use my writing to vent my intellectual overflow and my thirst to speak my mind when I become that quick-to-anger lackey of the devil, who speaks too harshly and too loudly, afraid of being unheard. Is silence weak, or the Christian way? I have found no evidence of either argument, except the amazing lover of my soul, who stood before his accusers with a still tongue and spoke not a word.
The thing I have personal evidence of is the astonishing pain of being misjudged because of my silence. I did not used to talk to peers at all becuase my words only succeeded in making them laugh at me. None of us cared if our opinions mattered, we thrived on hurting ourselves and others through our silver-tongued sparring and clever put-downs. The time for that is past, because now all my put-downs are received from the monster that is Unsilenced Unmasked Disregard, which is possibly worse than hate. I find hate irrational, but indifference is a kind of disrespect I cannot accept with the Spartan endurance that it requires.
I sit now with the music shrieking to cover the thoughts of yelling and cramming my thought into another's mind until it is all they can think of. It could be the power I wish to thrive on, the power of the phrase turned just right, and the tagline that forms your whole argument and makes it unforgettable and irresistable.
So people tell me that I assume I am right. Am I?
