KALI'S PROFILE

author=Red_Nova
No. That was me that did this. I willed it. The playground, the children, the youth group, are all thriving because of my efforts.

this is only partially true. prepare to be educated

faith was a requisite for the context which allowed your assumption of leadership positions to happen. the drive to lead and to do good, on your part, may not have depended directly on faith, but it depended on the products of faith

i'm willing to wager 100 million dollars--and this is not a statement against you personally--that since leaving the church you've significantly decreased or stopped entirely your charitable activities. it's probable that you consider your severance from faith to be the logical severance from the good you've been doing within its system, but the actual logical behavior, if all you say is true ('it was my efforts which brought me so much fulfillment which they then took away'), is that you should have ramped up your community servicing, which i again wager 1000 billion million infinity dollars did not happen (and again not as a personal statement against you). this is because you provided 25% of the labor for change, but faith shouldered the rest--in ways which may not be immediately obvious to you (a reason to participate, a reason for the community which you operated within to exist, playground building materials). we're drawn to individual achievements, our own and that of others, but everyone forgets the importance of the invisible system which supports them

think about how difficult it is, in the adult world, to get anyone to agree or to get anything done at the community-or-greater level (from your personal experience, not in an abstract, internet-spectator way). doubts about leadership (why should i follow their lead?), doubts about validity (is what i'm doing right?), doubts about community/solidarity (anyone even here? i'm going home), conflicts against our own identity ('youre doing what? helping others? what a sap'), and beyond. how do you get a group of separated, slouchy, disinterested teenagers (ie: separated+slouchy+disinterested adults) to come together and organize a human effort of value? 'you need to put on this hairnet' 'that looks gay' 'look i dont like it any more than you do but we have to do it' (i dont like it any more than you do==unwillingness to impress upon youth the importance of cause and shouldering responsibility for validity/success of cause, and instead transferring this burden to god or a god-like authority)

this is why any effort for change outside of the church depends on a faith-substitute--sick children in hospitals, starving people in whatever, jews being the cause of red ring on my xbox, etc etc.--the more visceral, the more effective, and this is essentially the secular version of 'faith'. but the difference between secular faith and nonsecular faith is that nonsecular faith is a) constantly relevant and b) infallible and c) perpetuates itself indefinitely--all by design. it's completely unsurprising that churches are among the most powerful institutions on the planet and completely unsurprising why we continue to spontaneously generate variations of them: its the most natural method by which we depressurize. the sum vector of our individual lack created the phenomenon known as religion, a container for the negative space of human potential

and so this is the fundamental expression of god: an artificial sink in the game of societies which drains up psychological barriers to action, for 'good' or 'bad'