Every Easter our church puts on a production called The Power Of Love, which tells the tale of the life of Jesus, his death, and of course, his rise from the dead.

Every year, they also incorporate a portion at the end that deals with present day, real life situations. Examining the things that we become caught up in. This year, they threw in something a little different. One of the guys stood up on stage, what exactly he was doing, I'm not sure. Selling drugs maybe. Then, the strobe lights began to flash as a horde of demons rushed forward, and snapped chains on his wrists before he could realize what was happening. He fought and fought and tried to run away, and they yanked him back, causing him to crash helplessly onto the ground. As he continued to fight, a door opened, and Jesus entered the sanctuary, moving forward with a team of angels. He called out to the man, who saw him, and at first confused, continued to simply fight against the demons. As Jesus got closer to him, he began to realize, and fought to move towards Christ. The demons retreated back a bit, but did not release their grip. They fought and fought. Jesus stopped when he was standing a few feet from the man, and urged him to reach out and take his hand. The man tried, but the demons were too strong. The demons nearest to Christ dropped the chains on that arm, and ran to help the ones on the far side, and the angels picked up the free chain. A struggle began between the angels and the demons for the young man. Jesus continued to speak to him, urging him to fight and touch His hand. The fight went on for two to three minutes -- every time the young man got closer to defeating the demons, they yanked him back again. And then, he cried out, Jesus spoke, the lights flashed and the demons let go of the chains and fled.

As I watched, I realized, this young man is me. Only. I haven't successfully defeated the 'demons' yet. I'm still stuck in that battle with the angels pulling one way, and the demons pulling the other. I keep reaching out for Jesus, but the demons yank me back the second I touch Him. I know where I need to be, I know where I keep going, but I can't seem to beat the things that keep dragging me down. It's easy enough to decide I don't want to do something anymore, and to work towards stopping it, but there's still plenty of times where I get caught back up in doing those things before it really dawns on me what I'm doing.

What I have to really figure out is what is it that is preventing me from breaking those chains? The desire to do so is certainly there, the belief, and faith, and passion is there, but yet I can't seem to make it past a certain point. Is it because I lack the influence of other Christians who are not only at my level, but who think, feel, and understand the same way I do? I'm sure a lot of it has to do with personal things I need to overcome.

Confidence is one of them. I'm working on that. I think in the last few months, I've come a long way. I'm not so pleased with my looks, or my weight, but I'm learning to be able to appreciate it sometimes. Rather than waking up every morning, seeing how I look and thinking 'I don't measure up to any of the girls in my class', I can at least see myself and think 'I look alright today.' There are definitely still moments where knowing that I am the least good-looking girl in my year really gets to me. It's not that I'm horrible looking, which is something I need to remind myself, I just happened to end up in a year where all the girls are drop-dead gorgeous. They got the luck of the draw in the gene pool, but I have to really learn to realize that not everyone gets that. And you can still be good looking without it.

I complain about a lack of friends a lot. But it's not really a lack of friends. I have an abundance of friends and acquaintances, but they're not the type of people I can call up just to chat. What I'm lacking is close friends. Even 'A' close friend. When Carrie and Sheena turned on me, I lost the two people I was close with. Carrie had been my best friend since the tenth grade. To go that many years having someone super-close, to having no-one, it's hard to adjust to. But, I think I'm starting to adjust. It still hurts. I still get depressed and lonely. But I'm getting used to it.

Relationships and guys it seems are a never-ending problem. I was speaking with Marisa about this not too long ago. For some reason, I feel my worth is determined by whether or not someone is with me. And it doesn't make sense, because I know that's not true, I just can't seem to FEEL the fallacy in it. It's difficult to integrate back into my church as well because other than a couple of us, everyone is in serious relationships, engaged, or married. We've grown up together, and now, it almost makes me feel as if something must be wrong if they're all taking this next step in life, and I can't even seem to get a date, let alone a steady boyfriend.

Maybe these three things are the reasons I can't break the chains. Maybe I need to overcome those to take the next step. They're the only constant I can see in how I've been that could be preventing the forward motion.

Whatever it is. I need to find out. And I need to find out soon.

In a world of over 6 Billion people, a good chunk of which proclaim to be Christian, I have often felt very alone in my beliefs on Christianity and faith. Which in itself is rather surprising, because even if only 0.1% of the world's population claims to be Christian, that's still over 60 million people. 

That's not to say I've always felt that way. There was a time, closer to the beginning of my faith, where I believed that what the Church said was law, that there could be no wrong in the church because it was the temple of God. It was the holiest of holies, the place to carry out God's will. I'm sure there was a time in the history of the church where this was accurate, or at least, close to accurate. 

Since becoming a Christian when I was eleven years old, I have only once questionned God's existance. The same cannot be said about my faith in the Christian 'religion'. Anyone who has known me a long time has seen me struggle with my faith and my Christianity most of the time I have been a Christian, and has probably witnessed me reach a point where I was ready to walk away from it at least a couple of times.

In trying to figure out why I find it so hard to walk in my faith, I've had many people give me lists upon lists of reasons why I must be stumbling. My faith isn't really that strong, I'm still too much of a sinner, I haven't really made the change in my heart, and on and on and on. It wasn't until a couple of years ago, near the end of my first year of college, that I discovered the real reason why I struggle so much. Having been raised that the church is the centre building point for the body of Christ, I was finding that the church was not the perfect place I was led to believe it was. And because of being taught that it was the centre, I have discovered that I find it difficult to associate myself with a place I have become so disillusioned by. 

And this is where I felt I was quite alone. I found myself looking at the church, and looking at God's word, and wondering how they could be the same thing. Not that everything about the church is bad -- a lot of good does come from the church. I found however, that a lot of that good has become reserved solely for believers, and for people who fit the ideals of what the church deems is 'truly a Christian'. 

Over the holidays my brother lent me a book that, much to my delight, touches on everything I have been struggling with when it comes to Christianity and today's church. The book, entitled 'Dear Church: Letters from a disillusioned generation', examines the phenomon studies are showing, that this generation of twentysomethings is the biggest one to turn and walk away from the church. 

The biggest reason for this disillusionment? We're a generation of truth seekers. Many of us are looking at who Christ was, and who the church is telling us to be, and going 'Huh? Somethings not right here.' While Jesus loved and befriended everyone, no matter what their sexual orientation, life profession, history, sins or bad habits were, the church excludes everyone who isn't like them. They use the bible to back up their reasoning, ignoring the continuation of what is said. My biggest argument to prove that has always been, and probably will continue to be the great 'homosexual' debate. The church will argue that homosexuality is wrong, it is a sin, and that originally homosexuals were to be killed because of their sin. They will argue that homosexuals have no place in our church, or even in our social groups. But what they like to conveniently 'forget' is that those were the laws of the old testament. And while what happened in the Old testament is equally as important as what happened in the New Testament, a lot of things were changed because of the coming of Christ. Homosexuals and other sinners were judged and killed because sins that terrible were impossible to redeem yourself from. There was no forgiveness that could be achieved by such a terrible sin. BUT, all that changed when Christ came along. Christ taught us that all sins are equal, and that because of his sacrifice, all sins can be forgiven. And because all sins are equal, and ALL of us are sinners, until we are perfect (which is impossible, since we are human, and thus born sinners), we have no right to judge. Instead, He taught us to love everyone, to treat them with respect, and to teach them who He was by how we treat them. 

I don't blame the world for turning their backs on Christians and labelling us hypocrytes and closed-minded. I know I've been on both sides of the spectrum. I've been one of the hypocritcal Christians who preach God's word, try to convert everyone, and believed that because I was a Christian, I was somehow better than everyone else. I'll tell you, I will forever be grateful for the people who snapped me out of that. Believing in something doesn't make anyone any better than everyone else in the world. It simply makes you a believer in something that drives you. I look at myself and I see a terrible sinner. I see someone whose stubborn ways continue to cause me to stumble, and fall. I have a terrible temper, a big mouth, and I get caught up in distractions far too easily for my own good. But despite that all, I know Jesus still loves me and welcomes me with open arms. And if He does that for me, someone who certainly isn't anywhere near landing the 'Christian of the Year Award', that should be teaching something. Christ's love is not restrictive of who you are, how good or bad you are, or what your interests and lifestyle are. Christ's love is unending. It has no boundaries, and it doesn't change just because you screw up or fall flat on your face. If the Church is supposed to be Christ's body on earth, then isn't this what we should be doing? 

When I've brought up this point in the past, I've had many Christians try to counter me by saying 'well, I don't think God wanted us to go around and just have a laisez-faire attitude about everything everyone does'. But that's when the point is missed. Loving someone without boundaries doesn't mean you agree with what they do, or decisions they make. It simply means you love them. 

The book, Dear Church, brings with it for me, a deep sense of relief, and a rather large amount of excitement. Because it means that it's not just me who sees this, and its not just a select few of us fighting to make a difference without any hopes of achieving our goals. Seeing this book showed me that there are more of us than we thought, and that maybe, just maybe, we might one day be able to show the world what the word Christian really means.