Angry as a Hatter

This is probably the first post I'm ever writing without a specific point to make or bean to spill. I will be letting the thoughts flow like a newly sprung river. Who knows where it'll lead?

It has been becoming more and more clear to me lately that I am an angry person. I'm not sure why. It's been there for a while.

I don't throw tantrums, there are no holes in my walls, and I stopped beating my wife before I met her.

I'm not sure what caused this anger. My parents recall me bringing home a picture I had drawn in kindergarten of a meat grinder with all my classmates' names being put into the chute at the top, and being dispensed out the bottom as individual letters. What on earth would make a 5 year old kid draw that?

Either I'm willfully forgetting some hidden trauma, or I'm a dormant psychopath, or my dad's reputation as a strict teacher in the school earned me some dislike.

I think it's that last one. Over the next few years, I learned to expect a certain type of reaction from my schoolmates, and then I carried that expectation with me when I switched schools. So all the way up into junior high I carried the expectation that I couldn't have real friends, and my schoolmates accommodated me quite nicely.

Then my parents wisely moved me to a private Christian school. There were only 30 students there, K-12, and thus there were only a handful in my age group. In fact, my closest friend from that school is the one who got married last week.

My time in that school was, I think, a very healing time for me socially. But it was also the time that I received the most destructive of my anti-Catholic education.

Later, after I found the Truth that had been lied against (aka, became Roman Catholic), I was very angry at the liars. Perhaps it isn't fair to call them "liars" as a liar knows his statement is false, and I'm quite certain these people believed what they told me. Perhaps my current anger is directed at their sloppy zeal.

Perhaps I'm angry at myself for buying it all those years. It took me 10 years to realize that Jack Chick is wrong. The arguments are so shallow, so circular! "Catholics worship Mary! Catholics think you have to earn your salvation! Catholics think that a dead man's toenail carries spiritual power!"

Wrong, wrong, wrong. And anybody with a grade six reading level can find out otherwise. Anybody with eyes can see otherwise. Anybody with ears can hear otherwise.

So I'm angry at wrongheadedness. I'm angry at Jack Chick-isms. I'm angry at sheep stupider than the other sheep they denounce.

That's hard anger to get rid of. This is part of why I blog: to turn that anger into a somewhat more sophisticated zeal, trying to show those caught in the same web of lies that there is a Truth being hidden from them.

If you're a Protestant reading this and you want more information on why a born-again Christian would embrace Rome, read this first. It's where I started. If you really understand what it says, you won't be a Protestant for long. So tread carefully.

Then for the rest of my story, read this. I hope to finish off a more up to date version of my conversion story, but this one will do for now.

And don't be afraid to email me or leave comments.