Robots and Rebels

I once was a robot. I was the perfect Christian. I didn’t knock up any girls or buy cigarettes for minors. I didn’t cuss or drink, or smoke, or partake in anything remotely secular. Not to say that today I buy cigarettes for minors or get girls pregnant, but I didn’t do it back in the day either. I was programmed to be a completely functioning moral spiritual being. Much in part thanks to my parents and the religious structure known as the church. I had other fellow robot friends. We were all basically the same person. We believed in the same things, went to the same events, participated in the same activities. We all lived in the Greenhouse. We were the kids who when other parents would complain about how Johnny was smoking crack in the basement, our parents would be like “Well, Levi didn’t make Gold honors this year, but he still got silver, so I guess it’s all right.”
I had some other friends. They were rebels. They most definitely bought cigarettes for minors and occasionally had a pregnancy scare. They most definitely did drink, and cuss and smoke and watch porn. They would go to parties on the weekends and sneak off from their house to go to hookah bars on school nights. They had piercings and listened to secular music. They also went to the religious structure known as the church and had parents that taught Sunday school there. But for some reason, they became rebels. Often times these people would play along with the whole church thing and then go off to college and forget about it. Other times they would pretend that they were following God because they went to church on Sunday but would very rarely be sober enough to have any sort of real conversation with.
Throughout high school I was friends with the robots and the rebels. It seems like almost everyone I meet in Christianity is either a robot or a rebel. They are either a Christian because it is what they are supposed to believe, and they do it for their parents approval or out of political party obligation (the robots).These people do not always think for themselves and believe what everyone else tells them. Then there are the people who go freakin nuts because they are so freaking sheltered their whole life that they don’t know what to do with themselves (the rebels.) The rebels are people of action but are tired of being told “don’t do this and don’t do that” and so they go out and do everything they are not supposed to do because there is nowhere for them to put their energy. They go out on the weekends and go to town like freakin lions that just got off the Adkins diet. They are the Christian version of Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan. They start off cute and innocent, but before you know it they are throwing up day old organic spinach thanks to a stomach full of Bacardi 151.
Christianity has done an excellent job of manufacturing both robots and rebels. There are few who make it beyond these two camps.