Okay, so up to this point I have just been reposting facebook notes that many of you have seen before. This is not all I planned to blog about though. I have a vision that may be a little crazy, and I need some collaboration with many people to make this work. I will post on a variety of subjects, anywhere from faith, to life in general, ways we live life, to theology, and many things in between. Some things might be two-sided, others just interesting (I won't discuss dull things). Before I tell you how I will carry these things out, let me tell you a little bit about myself and my variety of acquaintances.
I am 18 years old, and will be heading off to college next year. I have been blessed with great friends and family. I am homeschooled, and enjoy it a lot. There isn't much I would trade for this way that I have been brought up. I have many homeschooled friends through Co-ops (places where homeschooled kids can take classes which are taught by Mom's / Dad's of other kids), Swing and English Country Dances, and other little networks of friends, networks like any other person has. My public schooled friends come mostly from my church. I attend a Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) that my parents have been going to since they got married. I attend many of the youth retreats, weekends, choir tours, and other events through the youth group. I am also heavily involved with the choir (I was elected president for this year). I have grown up in this church and love it very much. As you can tell, I am heavily intertwined with my church.
I have a great family also. Again, I am blessed, particularly with the strength of my close relatives, who are blessed also. All four of my grandparents are still alive and healthy. My Mother's side of the family all live in Texas relatively close, and my father's side of the family lives up north. I have good relationships with all of my cousins, and again, I feel very blessed to have the family I do. While all of this info is important to knowing me, I want to tell you how diverse I believe my friends and family are, and how that relates to the purpose of my blog.
When my Mom and Dad married, Mom was Catholic and Dad was, well, not. His parents were missionaries in Africa for a few years, and they have attended different churches including Missionary Alliance, Presbyterian (EPC, I think), Baptist, and nondenominational. So am I in a sense the product of two people with differing religious views that found agreement and compromise. Theologically, as much as I try to avoid labels, I have conservative influences among many of my homeschooled friends, and more liberal influences among my friends at church, which happen to be public schooled. By the way, I am by no means generalizing, and not trying to pit one group of people against another. Politically, both sides of my family are pretty conservative. Lots of my closest friends at church are more liberal politically than I am. I have had many interesting discussions with friends about abortion, gay marraige, government, and global warming, and other interesting subjects, including life in general.
To sum it up, my acquaintance's views are very diverse. My grandparents were charter members of the creation museum and are interested in the young-earth creationist movement, yet I have church friends who are on the other side of this debate. I have a few close friends that are vegetarians, and some who hunt regularly. I have a friend that struggles from depression, and others that seem happy all of the time. I know people who are very conservative politically, and others who are very liberal. I have discussed a wide variety of things with my youth pastor, and we disagree on many things. And to a great extent, I find that both sides often have very insightful views into many things. Sometimes it disappoints me that the two sides of any debate, mostly among Christians, do not take the time to discuss things calmly, not just on spiritual things, but life and other things. As far as not-so-controversial things go, I love the diversity of people and personalities and I hope to celebrate that also.
So in light of this, I am going to try something that might turn out to be a little crazy. Before many of these posts, I will personally message people from both sides, and then make a blog on it. Oftentimes, I will not come to an obvious conclusion, even though I could easily do so. Hopefully, I can represent different opinions fairly, and provide interesting posts on interesting subjects.
If you would like to help me with this, either comment on this post and tell me that you would like to help, or email, or facebook message or whatever so I can get going. All I will do is message you and ask for your views on a particular subject, you do not have to do very much work. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
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