this is so deep without context

am i doing tumblr correctly

god box, ken arkind

i feel like the bible is just really bad fan fiction that accidentally got published and god’s just sitting up there on his puffy cloud throne like

“no really why did you have write me to be such a dick NO ONE LIKES ME NOW”

and then a tear rolls down his face and it rains because that’s how weather works because science is wrong

what

no.

i will never stop being sad that people guilt themselves and others out of trusting their totally valid emotions.

Sometimes I feel really guilty for being so preoccupied with literature and stuff when there are kids out there being shot by the people that are supposed to protect them. Literature shows me that the world can be better and we have it in us to make it that way, but how many kids will be shot before that happens.

I don’t know what felt worse, losing god or losing john lennon.

now that i don’t almost idolize Matthew Thiessen,

I’d really like to have a real conversation with him. One where it’s not fan-to-musician. I mean, I guess it would be. But not the kind of conversation where the artist feels like they have to frame things a certain way so as to protect the fan, and the notion of any crossable line is thrown out.

the really old songs were horrible. they were corny, cheesy, yeah, i guess. but it’s more than that. they were so clearly the product of a teenager who grew up with this severe youth group mentality. and then the middle of the discography tones it down, until you get the most recent albums they’ve put out. mmhmm, five score and seven years ago, forget and not slow down. it’s broader. you wouldn’t catch the allusions to God unless you’re looking for them. I think that’s great. I’m so proud of how far thiessen came with his lyricism. But, I don’t know,

sometimes I wonder about the stuff he doesn’t sing about. i wonder about the times he’s stopped believing. i wonder how he keeps believing. i wonder if he still does.

i think about how far i’ve gone away from what i used to believe and how

good i feel about not believing it anymore. how

freeing it is

and i wonder if he’s ever felt that way. I wonder if he’s putting on some kind of show for his fans

because he has the type of fans that actually criticize how his songs “don’t revel in the glory of God enough” or are “too secular” or what the fuck ever.

I don’t know, that’s so sickening to me. It’s so sad. I feel bad for the guy. I think if he ever came out as Atheist, there would be people that would react the way you would expect your conservative father to react to your homosexuality.

I think faith is such a complicated, nebulous sort of journey that never really ends even if you discover you’re an atheist— you’re just putting your faith into what you can see and touch and feel— that everyone is bound to have bouts where they give up or have thoughts they can’t write around in a pretty sounding song and are just always at the back of their mind.

I don’t know. relient k helped me figure out a lot about myself growing up and a lot about my faith, and a lot of that transferred into how i feel about humanity instead of how i feel about god, so their music will always be a part of me, no matter how disgusted i feel about certain songs or how long it goes that i don’t listen to their music. so, i know i shouldn’t care, but i still wonder about matthew thiessen’s mental well-being. i never believed as hard as he did, but i still went through this weird existential crisis that shook me up, so i can’t imagine how someone even further entrenched in religion would feel if they ever came close to losing it. he always kind of skated over those bits. he always sort of sang about running away from god, but then miraculously finding his way back. Happily ever after, convincing himself someone from the sky was reaching right back.

i guess i just wonder if there came a point when he was writing the same song over and over again to try finding his way back by convincing himself he was finding his way back, or because he gave up on finding his way back. and i guess i don’t really think he lost it. i don’t even know him. i think there’s a reason he keeps such a distance from his fans.

all i know is that a lot of his fans complain that all he writes about is love anymore,

but really, what if there’s a reason for that? what if that’s all someone could believe in anymore? 

i don’t know what i’m trying to say anymore. it’s just really weird to look back on what used to mean so much to me and realize the real reason i left so much of it behind. and i think about my old hero and how maybe he’s always felt left behind but we were all too busy believing everything he sang to really care that there were things he didn’t sing. if there was anything he wasn’t singing.

and i guess if i could have a real conversation with him, i would thank him for getting me through so much. and then i would tell him about my experience and ask him about his, and if he never found his way back, i’d ask him to sing about it to me. or let him know he could. and i would let him know that there are fans that wouldn’t leave him behind if he ever felt something that contradicted everything he had written about before. How even though the things he believed at 16 still breathe over his shoulder and sing into his ears through the mouths and vintage relient k tshirts of youth groups everywhere, it’s still okay to sing them.

i don’t even know who i am right now in writing about this. i don’t know if i’m just projecting what i believe onto the blank slate that this man has become to me. but here it is anyway, because i have too many thoughts and internet connection.