The Plight (or Delight) of the Older Sibling; or How I'm Learning To Be A Man VI

I know very few who do not have a sibling, but even if you don't, it's hard not to find yourself in a surrogate role as one.

I myself am an older brother to a younger sister; it has been the single, most enlightening experience to watch her grow, and as I am six and a half years older than her, I watch with fascination as she enters a stage or phase of life just as I am leaving it. It is with both a pleasant surprise and a little guilt to realize that my actions have corroborated in raising her to be who she is, and as I look back and realize that she was a sole witness to many of my bad decisions, I oftentimes feel a dull glow of shame in the pit of my stomach.

But she's grown beautifully, and as I've begun to notice the varying dynamics of siblings all around me, I wonder—what is my role as an older brother?

The Imminent Burden
I can only describe this in the context of my own relationship and the observations I've made in the relationships around me—of course, this post then does not iterate a biological or fundamental basis to my proposal, but it rather reflects a experiential diagnosis that I've found to be true over time.

The plight of the older brother or sister is one we are largely unaware of, because we are simply living our lives. We test the waters of parental discretion, push the boundaries of authoritative reach, and define the parameters of societal infrastructures. In doing so, we are merely trying to, quite simply, live. We are all rebels, but none quite like the elder sibling; it is because we are working under an unprecedented dynamic in our respective family.

In the 10th grade, before I was able to drive, I decided with confidence that I was going to run away from home. However, I had no idea where to go, so I broke into a house across the street from ours that was in between owners; in the morning the following day, I opened the garage door while everyone had left for work or school to sneak back into my own house. For that night, I slept in the attic before calling a taxi the next day and getting myself a Greyhound ticket to North Carolina to visit some friends.

At the time, I had no notion that I was working under a nascent familial dynamic that was particular to my own; I just did it.

The Vicarious Experience
Siblings tend to sympathize and/or empathize fluidly with one another as the collective children of (a) common parent(s). We may innately assume the nature of our brothers and sisters. An older brother or sister will swear with confidence that their younger sibling is "better than that," assuming the best of them. Or it can work the other way; we may hear of a mistake that a sibling makes, and we may think, "I'm not surprised at all." Whatever the case, we say these things because we assume that we know the being of our sibling, what makes them who they really are because we have seen them at their best and worst in the home, where our most careful pretensions fall prey to leisure.

For younger siblings, however, I'd imagine that there is something remarkable about living in a household with their older counterparts. It is that they watch, intrigued, the actions of their brother or sister. Whereas we the older siblings make first-time mistakes, what is inherent to the person of the younger sibling is the front row seat to the aftermath of your decisions.

In the example above, my running away was the first of its kind to happen in our family. Since I'm out doing this, I don't get to watch what it does to our family. But my sister knew. She'd tell me years later that, even as a 9-year-old, she knew that I was in the attic and yet said nothing as an unspoken loyalty to her brother. I was both touched and intrigued by this—for the first time ever, I realized that she had access to a dynamic in my family that I never will, namely when it triangulates into a paradigm about and because of me when I'm not there. She witnessed firsthand the anger, worry, helplessness, and self-doubt that my parents underwent when I committed this transgression. Whereas she sympathized with me and didn't tattle on me, she empathized with my parents because she was a part of a hurting family at home, and this was a dynamic that I would never know.

The Imperative Responsibility
If it hasn't become clear by now, then it should be proclaimed: the older brother/sister is a surrogate parent. In this, both the pros and cons inevitably take effect—you are not exempt if your influence is not positive. In many matters, you are profoundly more influential than your parents are because you are also a part of the world from which parents have long since been dissociated. You are not just a sample of that world, you are an exemplification of it. Whether or not your influence is positive, you matter.

I guess I'd always known this, but it clicked for me on two separate occasions. The first is when I was bored in my parents' house one day a couple years ago and found a project of my sister's from when she was in elementary school. I believe it was from when she was in the 2nd or 3rd grade. It was one of those things where the teacher begins a sentence for the students, and they're supposed to fill it in. I read it with amusement—talking about her friends and hobbies in short subject-verb-object sentences—until I got to the last page. It asked her who she looked up to the most. I quietly closed it after I read the name; it was me. When she was in the second grade, I hadn't even found it worth talking to her because I was in middle school and much too busy with friends.

The last time it happened was not too long ago when, for the first time ever, my sister was bringing a boyfriend out to eat with us. Plans were hard to solidify as it was three separate parties—my parents, me and my wife, and my sister with her boyfriend—trying to align our schedules. I was on the phone with my mom earlier that fateful week when we were talking about our plans, and she told me how she had suggested to my sister that, since it was difficult to plan, they have dinner without me and my wife and plan another get together later on. To this, my mother told me, my sister said, "Then what's the point?"

Needless to say, I cancelled whatever plans I had for that Friday night and made sure to be there. He was a great guy.

The Elusive Enlightenment (or The Delight of the Older Sibling)
And so, it comes to this. I myself struggle with this, but it cannot be avoided. I wrestle hard with this because it calls for us come to terms with what resembles our resemblance to the messianic complex. Our mistakes have shielded our sister or brother from making the same decisions because they reluctantly witnessed the pain that it causes, but this is not to vindicate our mistakes or allow us to be proud of it. Deep down, we know we could've done better by them. We could have served by example, not negation. But the enlightenment comes when we realize that it is not about us.

Biblically, the lesson is hard-earned but self-evident: Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Ruth and Naomi, David and his brothers, David and Saul, Simon and Andrew, the prodigal son and his elder, Martha and Mary, etc. The characters are different, and some are surrogate relationships, but the sentiment is the same: the older sibling is called to play the part of honoring the younger. To guide and to love, to support and to accept. Unfortunately, there are many examples of failures biblically, but even these are extremely pertinent for the fact that it shows us the extent and impact of the older.

The role of the older sibling is to un-clothe ourselves of the glory that we think is ours to honor our younger counterpart. Don't deny it—as the elder(-est), you have believed that you are the center of the story, the recipient of glory, around which your family is constructed. Simply being older and thus having the experience of parental providers and a passive observer somehow clouds our perception to believe that it's about us. But what's best for the world is when we step aside to realize that the limelight belongs to a better version of who we are, because we have stood in the oncoming of the arrows that is our misgivings and shortcomings, while they have stood in our shadows, believing they live in our wake, when, in fact, we have thusly been shielding them; but the real mistake is that we conceive our role as a shield to be that we are in actuality the protagonist.

Or perhaps you are the golden child in the relationship and your younger brother or sister has slipped into relative obscurity. I once heard the lament of a friend whose older brother had found the integrity to begin succeeding at his studies and work, while their father did nothing for them at all. For years, he watched unperturbed as his brother became consumed in his climb. Then one day, out of the blue, my friend turned to me and said, "I wish he had just shown me how to get in college."

That brings us to the final example of the older brother: Jesus. If we believe the Gospel, then Jesus is God's first-born and our eldest; and though he deserves the glory because he is sinless, he fulfills the basest role as our servant, lifting up those below him while he was crucified into oblivion.

Whatever the case—whether your past is riddled by mistakes or an example of success—you are in a relationship to your sibling. If we actually believe in the deliberation of our existence, then our role as an older brother or sister is not circumstantial.

It is a call.

How To Be In A Relationship That's Worthwhile; or How I'm Learning To Be A Man V

I can't honestly claim to know what I'm doing.

My wife, Allison, and I married about 9 months ago, and so my experience is very limited—we haven't even hit our first anniversary yet. And I've been in several past relationships, but, obviously, they've all ended. So I just have a long line of failures.

But in the depths of my soul, from the very corners of my being to the rafters in my mind, I know that this is the one. I can't quite articulate it—I want to tell you about how literally everything she does is special, but to you, it's just another story about another person. But it's true in the greatest sense of the word for me. I guess all you can do is acknowledge that.

I mean, the other day, we were having pizza, and I sprinkled red pepper flakes on her slice, just a smidge more than she expected to be able to handle, and instead of saying, "That's enough!" or "Stop!" she just kept uttering, "Uh oh... uh oh!" It was beyond endearing.

But I needed to write this to disperse any notion that our emergence as a relationship was with any kind of fairytale ease. It was extremely difficult, but infinitely more rewarding, and I'd like to share it for the benefit of anyone who may in any way find my writing relative.

As a disclaimer, I do not pretend to know how all relationships work, and all I can give is my perspective of how everything has come to be as it is.

As expected, work on yourself first.

There's this horribly misleading notion that another person, the right person, will make you whole in all the best ways. Though it's true to some extent, a romance-induced expectation of this kind of egocentric thinking is simply not fair. If you love a person, actually love an individual, then their happiness is your goal, whether or not it serves you. The hope that a person will come to make your life better is self-serving at best, deceitful at worst.

In fact, what should be is the other way around, that if you are to love an individual, then they deserve your best, or at least your attempt at it.

My turn of epiphany came when I realized just how insecure I was. Talking to another man, admiring someone else's work, spending time on her craft—these were all things I coveted, and I realized through a lot of personal paradigm shifts that this wasn't her, it was me. When I learned to let go of my insecurities, I could work on parts of the relationship that actually involved mutual cooperation.

That leads us into the second point, praise the other.

I can't stress this one enough.

A prevalence of narcissistic culture undoubtedly affects our relationships today. A relationship does reflect the self in profound ways, but—myself included—we sometimes objectify our relationships as a medium to showcase how great we are, e.g. how caring we are, how sacrificing we are, how great of a boyfriend/husband we are, etc.

What I've recently realized is the almost life-changing dimension of praising the other. It accomplishes two main things. First, it forces you to shift the focus from you to the positive aspects of the relationship and, more importantly, the other. Research shows that thoughts literally affect the health of an individual. There's countless studies on the placebo and nocebo effects in medicinal science, but that isn't to say the symptoms and results aren't real; they really exist.

I don't suggest that you should incorporate empty and hollow compliments in order to get the real thing. What I'm saying is that everyone has something positive about them, and when you find it, a thing showered with love will always grow.

This is my second point: the person him/herself will become more desirable to you in a concrete way. Praise always leads to confidence, and they will inevitably become a better person through it.

Next, learn how to fight.

As two distinct individuals, there will be inevitable conflict. A lack of conflict could mean complete compatibility, or, more realistically, that the things that need to be discussed aren't being discussed.

When I was dating Allison, we moved to Korea together, and we lived in the same apartment building, worked in rooms right next to each other, ate every meal together, and traveled together. It was too sudden a change, and we were seeing too much of each other. We bickered constantly for over a month. When we moved back to our respective homes a year later, the same thing happened because we were now not seeing each other enough, and another month-long battle ensued.

What strikes me now is that if we had ended our relationship there, it would have been justified. We could've chalked it up to "just not working out," and no one would've disagreed because we were obviously driving each other crazy. I mean, there were constant arguments for weeks. But we stuck through it, and in both cases, we reached a mutual equilibrium. The arguments were essential; it was how we were able to construct the boundaries that we as individuals needed, as well as communicating our needs and preferences to the other.

But it does take two present individuals who come together with the common goal to build a healthy relationship.

For a quick read on an amazing sociologist, John Gottman (who can predict the success of a relationship in the first 3 minutes of conversation with 96% accuracy), check out this article on how to approach relationship conflicts.

Lastly, expect the best from each other.

This isn't to say that you should set lofty standards for the other and be conspicuously disappointed if he or she doesn't meet them.

It's more than that; it's about the belief that the person closest to and most intimate with you believes in you. It's about having the whole world turn on you and still knowing that the person who matters most is still cheering you on. It's about never settling because you know you're better than that because the other knows you're better than that.

Allison has never let me give up on anything. In anything I do, she believes I'll excel at it. In those dark moments when I don't expect that I'll succeed, she comforts me, but more than that, she believes for me.

Take a moment. Really think about this. Can you imagine how utterly amazing this is, that at the worst possible moments of your life, there is another entire individual who lifts you up and challenges you?

However, this also takes audacity and consistency in areas that just aren't the easiest. What I appreciate so much now but couldn't in the moment is how Allison never lets me put up a stonewall. She's never let me put up a barrier to sulk on my own like how I'm prone to do; she fights for our relationship to actively turn in a better direction during our conflicts. I'm so grateful for it now, but at the time, all I wanted to do was shut down all communication and inadvertently allow the relationship to suffer. And I recognize the courage it must take for her to speak into those moments when I'm threatening to be volatile, and I love her more for it.

As an afterthought, I'd also like to talk about knowing when to let go.

I feel that I can speak into this from my past failures.

Not too long ago, someone told me that even though two people may end up together, if the timing is wrong, then they're wrong for each other. Allison and I have often mused on our long friendship before we began dating, and we realized that our relationship wouldn't have worked at any other stage in our lives except the one in which it happened.

Prior to meeting her, I was devoutly self-centered. I would have emotionally abused her and, because I was somewhat good at rhetoric and she is her biggest self-critic, I would've convinced her that it was her fault. It would have been a disaster that would've left us riddled with scars.

There comes a point when you must realize that you might be doing all the right things, but the other person is simply unappreciative or even emotionally and psychologically abusive.

Take it from a person who wielded immaturity masked in rhetoric. You deserve better because you are worth a loving relationship. We, on the other hand, used you for an emotional crutch and a source of vanity. We tell you we love you because it achieves a desirable effect. But we'll use our words to keep you chained to us because you serve our deficiencies. Let go.

When I Think About The World, What Do I Really Think?

I have school tomorrow. Oh well.

It's a click past 1AM; I told myself I'd sleep an hour and a half ago, but now luv(sic) pt. 3 is playing and I'm partially illuminated in front of the computer screen in a dark room.

When I think about the world, what do I really think? This stream of consciousness will keep me honest. When I think about the world, I feel sadness. I think it'd be ignorant to literally only feel hope; it's admirable, but it lacks a certain compassion for what I know is avoidable—and yet so heartbreakingly inevitable. People suffer at the hands of other people, and those who cause suffering suffer from their own ailments. It hurts to no avail that I'm just one man, and even then, I don't do as much as I could do. Is sadness what God feels? Probably, but partially. It must be like how Jesus wept before raising Lazarus; if he knew that he was about to bring Lazarus back to life, what was the reason for the tears? Well—what else but complete compassion for everyone weeping around him? They were so ignorant to what was possible, but it doesn't make their emotions any less real. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

A miscarriage earlier this week that's slowly killing its mother. A friend moving away tomorrow. I don't cherish the things in my life enough that really matter. I need to seriously open my eyes--my good intentions aren't good enough. If they don't fill my cup and overflow into the environment to stain the world all around me, then I'm not doing enough. There should always be moments of reflection, but it should be in the midst of moments of action.

Why do churches talk with such lingo? Why do pastors keep correcting me on my doctrine because it's not in the appropriate jargon? Okay, so my speech can be fixed to be esoteric, but how in the world does that help the world (pun not intended)? What really is the point of doctrine if we were literally given two commandments, and they both stress "love"? Is it human hubris to need to know--enough that people will give entire lives to devote themselves to defining doctrine--but doesn't it keep them plenty distracted from the needy? But who am I to talk...

I'm always busy. So, so busy. But, my God, am I even doing anything

Desperate for Stability

All of us spend our entire lives in order to stabilize ourselves.  We tend to move towards a state of stabilization.  This explains why some of us work very hard while others of us don't—they're both attempts to stabilize.  Those of us who work hard have certain notions of what it means to be ideally stable, and so they build it—careers, wars, revolutions all begin this way.  Those of us who do not work very hard—those of us who may be very lazy, in fact—attempt to maintain a relatively easier mode of stability with high predictability rates and low chances of interruptions.

It's true—unpredictability and chaos are uninvited.  We like it when things are within our realm of understanding.  New things are welcome when we believe it'll help us achieve a new level of stability that we perceive.  So change—smooth ones—always begin with a dawning understanding, a broadening of the mind.  Without it, we are thrown in confusion, and we flail to backtrack to a previous state of things rather than a progressive movement forward.

This is what must be done regarding the Gospel.  Jesus always performs or says something that first broadens your mind, enlarges the capacity of the heart.  Only then can we see that we cannot retreat to a former way of things—in fact, retreating would result in a most destabilizing circumstance since we indubitably have a new paradigm in mind—but we must instead move towards a place that can receive this Gospel.  Such petty attempts at behavior modification is unfounded in retrospect and will result in a slide back into a former construct.

What's great about this is that the world is potentially infinite in possibilities.  God is eternal, and so stability is never fully recognized as the world perceives it—this may seem like unwelcome news at first, but it is actually good; because to us, the very act of chasing Jesus is to achieve complete stability in itself.  The means become the end.  Many of us work in order to reach an accomplishment; the struggle to get there, however, is a nuisance, a step to get where we want to go.  But when we chase Jesus, the struggle is the very act we wish to attain.  The act of running after Christ is in itself our source of pleasure.

A Word

I've always found that I can express myself better through writing, but writing to a beat is ironically liberating.  It might not seem so knowing that I have to follow a specific lengths and rules to fit it, but the constraint is rather a delicious welcome to the flow of writing.  It gives fuller meaning to the art of writing, and I feel that when a beat and my words meet serendipitously, it augments whatever intention I had originally.

Here's an example, one that is truly appropriate, for the beat was provided by Allison Rhee:

Lyrics:

Original like butterscotch, ain't no way this brother stop
And the world keeps testing me, tryna see I'm hard or not
All ya'll can just criticize, I'm not really for the top
I would think that I am so bad, but thank God that part of God
resided in this heart of rock, in the night I heard a knock
all I can for this homeless man, with some pants and shirt and socks
do this for my brother, pops, mother, sis who work a lot
sit and listen, it's in heaven, don't just go treasure the box

I walked oh so blindly, now my God's behind me
set right like a timepiece, do this for my HanBit
One Light, light one for the mind, please, climb these
mountains over through the cold, yeah guess like some pine trees
raise up for the OATH that, Over All There's Hope, man
from the coast to coast, land that I called my homeland
Christians to the dope man, in between and beyond that
sit and listen, it's in heaven, you get in through One Man

What a Man Should Be and How a Woman Should Be Perceived; or How I'm Learning To Be A Man IV

Disclaimer
Many different speculations attempt to explicate the roles of men and women, and there have been a lot of differing opinions that clash with one another as different beliefs of standards attempt to coexist. The following is my opinion and merely the way I view it, and so I'll take full responsibility of it, but you should also realize that I accept that this may not be the only way to perceive it, either.

Introduction
I look around and see so many people struggle with their identity—particularly at my age, when we're supposed to be making the change from boys to men. It's heartbreaking to the point of rage when I see that so many of my people are stripped of their happiness and put in front of a series of obstacles all because fathers decided it was too hard for them. What did my friends do to deserve it? Nothing. Seriously, nothing at all. It moved me to tears when I realized that almost all of my closest friends had to grow up without stable fathers.

But there's a resonating inference that comes from this. Roles are real and expected, and they are invaluable to life. Otherwise, we spend our lives bumping around in the dark, hoping to find the way in a chance encounter with the light. From experience, it seems that we're most happiest and free of anxiety when we've found our particular roles and find that we're able to play them.

However, that leads us to the question, why are we the way we are? Or, better yet, what are the implications that arise from the way we are, in accordance to that salient trait that seemingly precedes all of our other traits, our sex?

Marriage as the Paradigm
I'm now twenty-five, and I'm surrounded by weddings and marriage. Lucky for us, I believe that this is a good model to explicate our curiosities because marriage is ubiquitous and sacred in almost every culture on earth. The rituals may be different, but in every culture that I know of, the entire ceremony, as well as the focus of the people who attend it, revolves around the bride and groom. And thus, I believe that we may extract our inferences from them as well. What better paradigm to explicate our roles as men and women than an occasion that joins them together, one practiced indiscriminately by almost every culture and nationality?

Our roles in relation to the world can be uncannily compared to how we perceive a bride and groom at a wedding. Let me explain.

Men should identify with the groom.

The groom represents at that moment all the things a man should be. He is secure, knowing that he gets to be with his beloved. He is the very definition of a steadfast promise as he makes his vows to his bride.  He represents strength and security—because, otherwise, why would the bride have chosen him?—and the marriage indicates that he willingly and joyfully made these covenants. That is why we must identify with the groom.

If we don't, then our focus is with the bride. That's just how our minds work: we need an object to receive our attention, so if it's not with one, then it's with the other. So if we're not looking at the groom, considering what he's thinking and how he's feeling at this momentous occasion, then we must consequently be looking at the bride and wondering about her instead. And, undoubtedly, we will wonder about her desires. We'll look at her and wonder if she'd look at us the way she's looking at her groom.

Honestly, how else could we men look at the bride, especially when she affords absolutely no attention to give us, but looks upon another man with all the intensity of her desire? We would wonder if we could have had her, if there could have been a path of circumstances that could have led her to desire us, even sometimes going as far as to wonder if we could still get her to look at us and find a satiating victory over the groom who thinks he's gotten her... But then, how dare we insult the groom at his own honoring by lusting after his bride? It has to be lust, it can't be love. Love simply cannot be if we're not happy that she's happily joining with the object of her love; then it's jealousy. It'd be quite different if the bride is unhappy and sees us as the true object of her love instead; but alas, we're in the audience, and it can be inferred that's where we are because we were invited for the reason that the two central figures of the occasion are in love.

Furthermore, women should identify with the bride.

The bride indicates what I believe all women should be. She'll be loved and protected. She'll be fulfilled and cherished. She will forever hold the gaze of a lover. Women should look upon the bride and relish in the love that she'll receive and the promise she holds.

But if women don't identify with the bride, then their attention shifts away from the rightful perspective, and then I'd imagine that the women in the audience will begin to desire the groom and the things that he promises her. Because he'd be the reason why they envy the bride, for the promise of protection and constant love he makes to her. But then, how dare they covet what is promised to the bride and to her only on this occasion, while they were invited to share in her joy during her ceremony?

An Answer to Our Insecurities and Anxiety
Now, this is what the bible says about the church in Ephesians 5:31-32:

     31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will
     become one flesh." ³²This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.

If Christ is the groom and the church is the bride, then things all begin to make sense about our insecurities and shortcomings. I believe that this may also shed light on homosexuality, at least in a biblical sense.

See, if the church is the bride, then men must identify with the bride as well, for we are invariably part of the church. But because of the fact that we are inherently men, we can only perceive the bride as the groom perceives the bride. We then ultimately identify with the groom in that we must emulate his feelings and promises for the church to become real men. We must protect and provide. We must be strong and steadfast. That is why we gaze upon the groom, and all else becomes mere reactions to insecurities. And if we see the bride as being our own while seeing the groom as being our exemplification of our duties, then this biblical paradox makes perfect sense (Ephesians 5:33):

     However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her
    husband.

If we don't believe we're up there, getting married, then we must consequently perceive ourselves as mere audience members—for, whatever the case may be, we're still present at the wedding. And then, we don't see the church as a beautiful bride, but our eyes become hoodwinked, and we see a desirable woman of the world instead. Then, insecurities begin to flare. Why aren't we respected? How do we receive that attention and affection that the bride shows? How do I shift attention from him to us? In short, how can we manipulate the situation so that we can undermine the groom and attain the bride's gaze? We feel envious of the groom and lustful for the bride. But how dare we desire the bride in God's own ceremony?

We shouldn't kid ourselves. A lot of everything we men do is based on how we can best receive female attention. We constantly compare ourselves to other men, competing with them. It starts at an early age when we do downright stupidly silly things so that pretty girls will notice us. We never stop to think how it is that Christ views the bride. But the best way to love a woman is by paying close attention to the Rightful Groom.

Women should identify with the bride because the bride is cared for and protected by Christ, as all women should be. They are loved for who they are and are secure for the fact that they are already accepted, as the wedding indicates.

However, if they don't, then they must invariably see themselves as part of the audience watching the event unfold, and they are jealous. Once they convince themselves that they're merely a part of the crowd, their eyes become veiled, and they don't see Christ, but rather a desirable man who offers what they want but doesn't notice them. They can't know it's Christ, because if they did, then they'd recognize that they're the bride, and it would negate their perception of themselves as mere members of the audience. And if they don't, they find themselves as simply witnesses, and they jealously see that the bride is fully appreciated and loved, while they wonder why they themselves are unappreciated for their beauty or unloved for their character, and they become insecure. All of this pain and anxiety!--when, in actuality, they are appreciated and loved, and it should be, it is them up there, being married to the True Gentleman.

Brief Thoughts on Homosexuality
As for homosexuality, well, it becomes a little clearer for me in this paradigm.

Men who don't believe that they're up there being married believe that they can't identify with the groom. Some opinion of ourselves causes a block that hinders us from identifying ourselves as the church and the groom who loves it. However, they look upon the bride and identify with her, unable to make that bridge to the groom who cherishes her. And they want to be loved and appreciated as she deserves to be loved and appreciated--for all people want to be, whether men or women--and they see and respect that other men can deliver this for them. I honestly don't see what's wrong with this except that it means we as men must forsake our role as proactive lovers and leave our bride to spend our lives seeking other men as the beloveds.


For women, they identify with the bride, but they then look at themselves and regretfully believe that they're not her--they don't see themselves as the rightful beloved. And then they find this same sentiment in other women as well, and so these women mutually fulfill this role for one another, and they find happiness in this way. I honestly don't see what's wrong with this, either, except that they must turn away from the True Groom in order to lift one another up.

Honestly, I struggled with the notion of homosexuality briefly in my past, and this paradigm fits adamantly for my ambivalence. I was emotionally very unstable growing up.  It took a moment of profound thought to overcome this struggle in identity, and now I have a relatively very low level of insecurity as opposed to my former self, whatever it may be that people may think or say about me, because ultimately, I'm secure because I know I'm not.  But that brief struggle gave me insight into the insecurities that lead us to believe we're counter to the expected roles, even rebellious to it, and how it can consume our souls to make us turn away from what we're called to be.

How To Rebel Against Society; or How I'm Learning To Be A Man III

Disclaimer

Before I say anything, I should make it clear that I'm not referring to you underdeveloped, whining, self-nominated "rebels" who like to become angry and smash things, throwing tantrums all over society's floor, only to later receive a bottle, get burped, and gently be rocked to sleep while being told that everything's going to be alright.

This is about true rebels, the ones who know that this world is seriously messed up and that the only way to exist is in defiance of it—and for the ones who have truly graduated from even this level of thinking to realize that true defiance is love.

Why We Feel the Need to Defy

It seems to me that many of us in society own a rebel's heart and soul.

I remember when I was much younger, my friends and I encouraged one another to break the rules, and then we heartily praised each other when we did so.  It was like we innately saw the irony of setting rules when, on a much more profound plane, there existed the crooked values of humanity, and so we broke them satisfyingly knowing that we were against such skewed notions of justice.  And then we laughed about it; for, really, how else can we react to such despairingly ubiquitous and heavy lawlessness?

But here's the real question: why do we possess such a rebellious heart and soul?

I believe it's because it's only natural to oppose the world.  It's as if we're all inclined to recognize the world for being the unjust, inconsiderate, and discriminating place that it is, and we become angry about it at a ripe young age when we are just young enough to behold the world with untainted eyes while we're just old enough to understand its intrusion.  Alas, that was the basis for much of the anger that my friends and I felt against the rest of society.  We are all designed to know what is fair and real.

Now, it's all a matter of whether or not we succumb and acquiesce to this unmoving world.  Or--do we continue to fight, continue to struggle, until we're rewarded for our defiance?

Because this is what I see—many of us have a period of rebellion early in their youths, but rather than compromising our anger, we compromise our defiance.

Goodness gracious, our dissatisfaction is JUSTIFIED; why in the world do we close our eyes, breathe deep, and SWALLOW IT??  It's time to man up.

We let go of our loftier ideals because it's easier to accept the tipped standards of the world and learn to function by them.  But really, the "world" is just a bunch of people who themselves are confused about what justice truly is.  And shouldn't it be up to us, the rebelling souls, to show them what is compassionate and just?  The souls of the very people who "make the rules" desperately need us to persevere in our defiance, to rage on the battle against them—which, ironically, becomes for them in the end—and convey a deeper truth through our struggle, for the very people who are most sure of their lives are, by our definition anyway, the most lost.

Views to Carefully Consider Before Rebelling

Now, in my opinion, there are just two ways to view the world.  When regarding the world, one may either want to control it or to save it.  There may be a third, but it involves being either ignorant or indifferent to the general population, and so there's no consequence in skipping it at this point.

There are those who simply just want to control the world.  This is a simple exercise of power.  Either they want to outright flex their will and have their desires become done or, when this isn't a viable option because of a lack of resource or credibility, manipulation becomes the satiating choice.  Napoleon Bonaparte fits this description well.  He was obsessed with gaining supremacy, but, as we all know, his hubris was his downfall in his attempt to overtake Russia and its geography.

And then there are those who wish to save the world but ended up trying to control it instead.  The English Church, The Holy Wars, and the "White Man's Struggle" all come to mind.  So does Adolf Hitler.  While people gathered behind Napoleon for his power, people supported Hitler for his ideals, namely that the world could only become a better place by eradicating all impurities.  Unfortunately, however, he had a severely simple and crippling notion of what an impurity was.

So how do we truly save the world from its moral plunders?  We can try and save it by our own ideals, but then we must coerce our ideals to those who oppose it, thus committing the terrible transgression of desiring power to control.  It seems to me that the process must rather be an inductive approach, starting from specific cases to a generalized idea of how to save ourselves.  We must start with the people; only then can we truly progress.  But even then, many people lack the capacity, or even the desire, to begin change.  And we've learned that we can't force it, or else we begin oppression, a thing to be avoided for the very fact that we'd like to save people from it.

Democracy was a great example of this.  The American government was by the people for the people.  But this inductive approach to politics gave way to a deductive perspective and a desire for control of a centralized generalization of how to govern the people—a formidable and respectable beginning gone awry.

How To Rebel Against Society

And thus comes the realization.  We can neither force a revolution from the head, for there is always the danger of seeking power to further our own progression in the world, nor can our rebelling hearts watch from the side.  Well, isn't it obvious?  We must use ourselves as the very pawns.  We cannot tell people how to act, we must become the act.  We're not forcing an idea, but we are exemplifying one, and thus, if they desire to emulate it, then we've done our part.  And if we perish, we perish.

Think of love; when you unexpectedly act lovingly to an absolute stranger who looks to have met with hard times so very often and recently, there's always this confused silence and frown as he sits and considers the rarity of such an act of love; but I think what confuses him the most is how it makes perfect sense, a direct contradiction to how he's learned to live until now.

After a group of people rejected a homeless man I met, I walked the ten minutes with him to the nearest MARTA station to buy him a ticket.  I respectfully declined his request for money to go buy the tickets himself, but I told him I'd go to buy it for him myself, and he looked at me with a confused but glad face and said, "Now that's real."  For the next forty-five minutes, he told me about his life, and there was more than one time that he hugged me and laughed.  He even went out of his way to keep two other men we met on the street from coercing me for money.  His name was Adrien.

I learned an important lesson from Andy Stanley in Atlanta's 2011 Catalyst Conference, a movement for young leaders and aspiring world changers, when he said, "Do for one what you wish you could do for everyone."

Thus, we must become strong and steady rebels.  If the world is diseased, then we must remain the cure.  Never through coercion or manipulation.  We must keep ourselves credible so that our ideals may be considered, mulled over, and then finally either accepted or rejected, but it should never be rejected because they see that we can't meet our own standards.

And so, the only true answer to this lies in the notion of free will.  It must be exercised for there to be any real salvation.  One must choose to be saved, or else it becomes an exercise of control by the savior, thus rendering him not a savior at all, but an oppressor.  This is the kind of God we have, a true savior for the fact that he doesn't force his hand but rather sent his son—who else could he trust with such a profound role?—to defy the world freely as an exemplification of the rebellious life we must lead.

Because if we sympathize with the world's plight; if we are tired of the power hunger and manipulation; if we are angry, then why would you add to the world's list of maladies by being stoic, rioting, or becoming bitter?

Man up.

Become counter-cultural; become a cure; become a rebel.