// December 23rd, 2008 // 3 Comments » // My Thoughts
I have to start with a disclaimer, or maybe just a qualifier… I am SO grateful for my upbringing and the experiences I had, at home and church, my parents did a great job raising me to love Jesus, and to love truth. However despite that appreciation, there are things that happened, or rather things I saw happen to those I loved that made me sick to my stomach and left lasting impressions. Legalism, complete and utter dishonesty, politics, and outright deception were commonplace among those “Christians” I saw as a child and adolescent. As I grew up a little I realized that every “church” I had ever been a part of had exhibited some of these horrible qualities…and I began to think there was no real “Church” left. You know, the Church Im talking about… the one Jesus started…the one Peter and the Apostles baptized 3000 into on Pentecost. All I had seen had been so fake, so based on appearance, or status, or knowledge, or whatever else the head honcho decided was important…there was not a REAL person among them. I was angry. I would find things about those people that disgusted me and I would speak out against it with zeal and energy. I would write long articles detailing the utter stupidity of the things they were doing and why they should stop…knowing all the while that I was offending and angering and even just irritating most folks. I became something of a religious activist for my own little cause… I then decided I needed to be educated in the scriptures…so I went to a place to get educated. I left home and want far away… and I met some good people…people that seemed real…people that had problems and didn’t have all the answers…people that disagreed with me and yet still loved me…people who refused to argue and fight or condemn another for disagreeing with them. I began to realize that there were good people left… that some wanted the same thing I wanted and that they were struggling with the same things I was…I slowly began to learn that my anger and disdain and activism, were not productive, and in most cases had been counterproductive. I learned that people don’t change their minds just because you tell them they should, or because you have all the scriptures and proofs necessary to make good argument… I learned that being honest, is valuable, but being mean, and calling it honesty is what we usually do, and it does nothing more than hurt feelings and build walls…I learned to keep my mouth shut, even in the face of argumentative and divisive people…and even when my own morals and values were being challenged… I began slowly but surely unbuilding the structures and edifices of religion and christianity I had built for myself over my short life as a christian…I did not abandon my values, or toss them by the wayside, but rather pulled them down from the places I had put them, and stacked them neatly to the side until I could learn where they needed to be and how they should be expressed. I began to climb down off of the mountain of what I had always stood on and believed and stand down on the ground with everyone else.
So, now here I stand on the same plane as the rest of the world…I say that tongue in cheek… I don’t think I know very much, and I don’t feel like teaching anyone what I do know…I have no desire to argue or prove anything, I have nothing to argue or prove. I am like a newborn baby again, not knowing how to walk, or even stand really at this point… I just watch the big people walking and talking and wonder if I will ever do that. Then I wonder if I ever want to do that again…or would I rather lie here and let Jesus take care of me…It is in our weakness that He is strong… but then I feel like a backslidden Christian. I feel like one of those people Paul talked about that should have been able to digest heavy meals of meat, but instead were still drinking only the milk of the Word. I’ve been a Christian for almost 15 years… but I feel like I have regressed to the point of a brand new convert…except I don’t have the excitement and enthusiasm but rather I have fear and hesitation to once again plunge myself into the world of “Religion” and once again find myself drowning…
I have found a group of people who do not know who I was before…they see only a sincere, weak, wounded brother, and they have loved me…they have shown me that there is still a “Church” to be found here. They couldn’t argue any of the issues, in fact they haven’t heard the issues of the various religious eras I have passed through… they barely know the songs that we sing…but they know Jesus…and they know their sobriety dates. Some of them are alone after a nasty divorce that was their fault, some are going to and from court to settle charges against them…some hope not to get stopped by police cause they have warrants…some come to church still feeling the effects of last nights indulgence…some are still fighting the craving for illicit drugs as they sit in the chair beside me listening to the Word of God being spoken, some hold guilt, anger, and fear at bay for actions of their past, some have simple struggles and some have nothing to fear or feel guilty for and simply seek true religion, but they all crave Jesus…they all want to be more than just christians by name, they refuse to claim to be anything unless they have truly become that…If they struggle with a sin, they tell you… in church… and they try to fix it… and they are loved before they fix it… while they are swimming in sin, they are loved and encouraged…no one writes articles about the sins others commit, nor do they say mean things under the guise of honesty…if honesty is sought, it is given…but usually they don’t offer what isn’t asked of them.
Strangely, I find my faith at this point to be stronger than ever. My understanding that God always takes care of me and will always love me is from experience and not theory…I struggle with sin just like I always have, only now it’s a common struggle. I struggle together with others who are like me. There is no religious aura around us prohibiting us from speaking our struggles out loud, or shaming us for having them…and I find myself strangely unsure of how to be a Christian…how to live my life in a way that is useful to others, encouraging, real, and faithful to Jesus…It seems way too simple now…there must be more to it…but what if there isn’t. What if the complexity of my yesterlife was a product of that very thought… not a result of reality. Perhaps it is simple…perhaps it is nothing more that loving God, and loving people and living a life that is honest and real…
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