Yep, this is happening.

Why I started this blog: I’ve been writing about TV for a while on a blog. It’s pretty fun, but it’s not what I’m most interested in. That blog gets about 400 views a day. Sometimes 300, and sometimes 600. It really depends on whether Charice is on Glee or not. Readers from the Philippines love her. The best reason to write about TV is that you still get to write and share opinions, but you never get into any trouble for that. I don’t like getting in trouble or having people misunderstand what I’m saying. It’s easy not to mess TV up, and it’s not a personal thing. You don’t have to let people see even a sliver of your heart unless you want to.

So I stayed away from any spiritual topic on the internet, because I didn’t want to open myself up to a world of aggravation. However, this topic is what I think about whenever I’m not watching TV. Last night, I thought to myself, “Whatever. I do what I want!” and created this blog. I don’t expect it to be nearly as popular as my other one. I don’t expect everyone to always agree with me or even understand. I don’t have a lot of experience writing about spirituality, so I’ll probably be pretty terrible at it for a while. Hopefully it gets better. Hopefully someone reads and discusses things with me and tries to answer my questions. If not, well, at least it will help to organize my thoughts on the matter.

Some notes to the readers, people I know and invited because I dig your God thoughts, and people who randomly found this googling “Charice + Glee”: If you are an agnostic or an atheist, you might not be interested and reading this blog, but you shouldn’t feel like you can’t. For some strange reason, more than half of my friends are agnostic. The rest are Jewish, haha. I want this to be a safe place where non-believers can go to just understand what it’s like to have faith or give their opinions. I’m not going to be threatening you will hell or getting super argumentative. I don’t even think those are possible ways to convert someone. This isn't a conversion tool, because that would kill it. People can smell an agenda a mile a way. This is also not a political blog. Come 2012, I’m not gonna tell you who I think you should vote for (on this blog anyway). I know non-Christians in both political major parties and Christians in both major political parties.

I love my agnostic/atheist friends, and I always remember that God loves them way more than I do, so I’m not afraid for them. Part of trusting God means that I know he’s got this. Also, oftentimes, atheists have a point. If an atheist never reads this blog, who is going to call me out if I start sounding like Pat Robertson? Talking about your spiritual beliefs is a lot like having a favorite movie that you think everyone should see. You want them to see the movie, if they are interested, because you know you enjoyed it. The real reason to love God is…because you love God. Not because you are afraid of hell. You talk about what you love and are interested in, because you can't help it, not because you are trying to rack up a certain quota of converts or something. I don’t want to get caught up in rules, semantics, clichés or legalism either. People of other religions: Eventually I am going to write about your religions. If you stick around, you’ll be able to tell me when I’ve got it totally wrong.

Fellow Christians should note that they will disagree with me sometimes too. I once had a friendly acquaintance who wanted to live with a Christian, because she thought that would make for a compatible roommate. I agreed and we moved in together, with two other people. To our shock, we spent a lot of time fighting. We hurt each other’s feelings. We had theological disagreements. And we were raised in the same denomination. We’re cool now, we love each other, and it was a good experience for us. I invited her to check out the blog, and I hope she stops by every once-in-a-while. One of our other roommates remarked, “You two believe the same things for completely different reasons.” I’m not going to TRY to stir up controversy, but occasionally I will bring up unpopular or minority viewpoints on a matter, for funsies. This is only going to be like 5% of the time. But when it happens, don’t freak out!!!! It is entirely possible and often beneficial to entertain a thought or belief for a few days or hours, and then go right back to what you believed before. Usually when this happens, your original viewpoint is even strengthened. Discuss everything, and eventually truth will win out. That’s the “marketplace of ideas” theory.

Still here? Good. Then this is going to be fun. I'll be posting every couple of days, whether someone reads it or not. The key to getting a blog going is to blog a lot for a while, even if it seems pointless. The more content you have, the more chance people googling will get there. I'm going to be quoting good people, asking questions, posting good sermons by other people, posting good spiritual tunes, and posting jokes/fun stuff too (my humor is less "family circus" and more cracked.com). I know from experience with my other blog that people are shy about comments at first, but the comments are our friends. I want dialogue.