When I was talking to Becky the other day about our experiences with weed, she expressed hers as different from mine. I think what I was feeling what just what I am now, only amplified. The only other person I know who felt things like this stoned, and I mean really felt them, not just pretended because he thought it would sound cool, is the same friend I mentioned earlier. His name is Marty. His brother and father had schizophrenia. He was never quite on the same level as everyone else. I should look him up sometime soon.

Well, this is officially the weirdest post I’ve written to date. I feel reluctant even to post it for fear of creating fear. But what the hell, this shit doesn’t happen to me all that often, so why not share the first time I’ve really tried to explain it. Writing it down, it seems to odd. But I always assumed it was normal. But it does seem rather odd.

The first time I can remember it happening, I must have been younger then grade 2. I was sitting on a chair, sitting backwards of a chair, and the room sort of became surreal. Everything faded to black and white, and I couldn’t get out of my mind. I was stuck in my head, and to the best of my efforts I couldn’t interact with the world. I think I was starring at a baby sized rocking chair, trying to get up and move it. My trance was broken when my older sister walked into the room.

Another time, I had the flu. This was the weirdest of them all when I wasn’t on drugs. I’ve always attributed it to hallucinations that one can get when they have a fever. I was lying in bed, and I fell into my mind again. But this time, everything that was touching me started pressing in. I got up and took off my clothes so they couldn’t press in. My mom found me and tried to get me to put something on. She found me my baggiest shirt, but I still couldn’t handle it. I’m not sure what happened after that.

When I get it now it’s not so extreme. I can usually snap out of it by getting up and walking around some, or trying to take my attention of it. Sometimes though, like now. I just let it go. It’s an odd feeling, and it’s sometimes a welcome change from normality. Maybe that’s why I loved drugs so much. The change from normality. Heh, come to think, it’s really more like a cheap high. Not near the calibre of a drug, but for much cheaper. Maybe I should stop writing before you all think I’m insane. Maybe it’s to late for that.

But when she starts talking, when you start to get to know her: you find that she is really quite tragic. She is unfulfilled by these things, and does them anyway. It seems like the only thing she is passionate about is her husband. She lies to her small group because they demand she confess sins, and yet she meets with them still. It’s sad. It’s the fist time I’ve found myself having pity for misguided Christianity rather then anger and frustration.

As an aside, I think I’ll tell you about one of the most satisfying things I’ve read in a while. The boyfriend of this girl is confronted in the halls of their high school by a member of their youth group. He says that they have had people following him and his girlfriend (this person doesn‘t know they are married), and that they know they’ve been having sex. The boy replies by picking him up by the neck, smashing him against a locker, dropping him to the floor, and punching him once in the face as he says if he ever finds this happening again he will break into his house and smash his face with a tire iron. Hmm, maybe I’m a little sadistic for finding that enjoyable.

I can remember going for a weekend seminar once. It was all lectures by a man named Peter Bocchino. One night, and I can’t remember how the topic came up, there was a discussion about the soul, and whether an animal has one. The question seemed crazy to me at the time, but over the course of the discussion it seemed that Peter was in quite the indefensible position. He was trying to argue that animals, such as dogs, did not have emotions, or a will, or even appetites (strictly speaking). He wanted us to believe that a dog is governed strictly by instinct. He claimed that anything we might see as the above, was simply different instincts trying to win in the battle for what the dog will actually do. Though no one would say that instinct is not a primary facet of the decisions of a dog, Bocchino’s trouble was in asserting that these other things simply were not present.

Emotions, and emotional attachment are something that we see clearly in pets. Sometimes contrary to self-preservation, the emotions of a pet can cause it to do all sorts of things. Say, a dog who risks his own safety to save a master. One must jump through very shaky hoops to justify these things by instinct alone.

Or take appetites into consideration. Dogs are renown for humping. One might say: this is the instinct to reproduce. But the other day, when my little sister’s dog started humping our cat, there was not even potential for reproduction.

The will follows from these things. I’m certainly not one to claim an understanding of how a will actually functions, but certain things, I believe may be said of it. Once one has instinct, emotion, and appetite all fighting for control of the action of a thing, it seems that this is what we call a will. A decision made to act in one manor over another.

This all comes back to my first point, that animals do, in fact, have souls. The question can‘t help but be asked: what is the difference between humans, and animals? If animals have souls, then why are we not concerned with telling them the gospel? The answer, I believe, is that we have the ability to reason. It is the specific difference between animals and man.

Why reason? The question is begged. I believe I first read this in Kant, and later in Lewis. You see, it seems that man would be all around happier if we could not reason, or at very least, if we could only reason enough to realise how happy our instincts made us. But reason as the foremost part of our soul does more to hinder happiness then to help it. We can often identify a thing that would make us happy, and yet, we refrain from it. We do this because of reason; we judge the action, deem it immoral, and then we don’t do it. Our happiness is hindered. This can lead us to only one conclusion, then. That reason is important because it gives us the capacity to make moral decisions.

So, animals have souls, but we are still set apart from them due to our ability to reason. This ability to reason is important because it allows us to make moral choices.

I suppose this is really what it means to be made in the image of God.

What kind of image do I project? Sometimes I think it’s not quite me. I tell anyone I meet that I’m a philosophy major, because I think it reflects better on me; transitions is a ministry program that is associated with the college, not the university.

The concept of the wandering sage: this man who does nothing but love philosophy and seek knowledge with others. It seems like such a good image to me, I can’t help but think I take it on to the misleading of others.

I am not really wise. I could list the things I do not know all day. I find myself torn on many issues: able to convince one person that men are robots, and another that their beliefs make God and Satan look comparable. Well, at very least they can’t counter my assertion of it. But what do I believe, when the discussion ends and my arguments are laid out?

You see, I look smart to the person I talk to, but feel less so. I create an image.

- Thrasymachus, Plato’s Republic