I find myself standing under Tolkien's party tree with Bilbo saying, "I regret to inform you that this is the end. I am going away...goodbye!" And in a flash we disappear. At least this is how I'm feeling right now in terms of faith, belief. Most people who know me know that I haven't attended a church for years and the reasons why, which is what the previous incarnation of this blog spoke of at length.
In the past year, having begun to homeschool my kids and rethinking like never before what has come to be called Christianity, I feel like I'm finally seeing the boxes we choose to live in. I keep coming back to the idea of Neo taking the red pill; having left the "Matrix", I no longer see things the way I used to. I'm unable to. This has cascaded into everything. I didn't one day decide I was going to view the world differently...I just do.
I have razed everything I've believed to the ground, my pre-concieved notions, my assumptions, my confidence in the well trod path. My hope is to find a foundation. I want the real.
George Carlin once said of Christianity in one of his sets that he really tried, but the older he got, the more he realized something wasn't right. I can't help but wonder if our perceptions, our expectations of God are way off...if we assume too much of God.
I miss my matrix, my certainty that God loves me warts and all, that there is a great plan for my life, that God is somehow behind the scenes guiding it and concerned with it's details. Maybe some of these things are true but I need a better foundation to build those beliefs on than someone else's convictions and following the herd... and what do I do with two thousand year old texts penned by authors I've never met who had as much ability to screw things up as anyone?
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>>and what do I do with two thousand year old texts penned by authors I've never met who had as much ability to screw things up as anyone?<<
well, I dunno bout you, but I take great comfort in the fact that all those guys were screw ups ;). And I would be willing to let all the preachers, and books and commentaries and "paradigms" on christendom go to hell in a handbasket, but I will cling to the Word. Not a 2-4000 year old text written by dead men, but love messages encrypted and meticulously recorded by a living God who transcends time to reach down and out to all humanity of all time. It's not the Word that we need to take issue with. It's not that we've had "too much" of the Word... we've had too much "opinion" of the Word shoved down our throats and not enough mere seeping in the Word and being "with" Him, to let HIM guide us into what it's all about.
Personally, I think we westerners take a Hellenistic approach to scriptures and that's royally screwed up. The Bible is not meant to lead us into intellectual and scientific utopia. It's meant to lead us to a baser, humbler attitude that is all about principle. Like I said in your dear wife's blog... it can pretty much be boiled down to (at least this is how I've chosen to boil it down to keep my sanity) living out the fruits. The first of these is Love. I could spend a lifetime on that alone. Learning what it means to really love God and to really love my neighbour. Heck, when I just keep it to the fruit, I don't have time to worry about all the peripheral crap people are all up in arms and arguing about.
Seriously, it's just distracting us from the work at hand.
That's just my 2 cents bro.
Prayin' for your peace and sanity and a deeper walk and faith in Him.
Oh, and I'm sure your one who doesn't like to have proof texts thrown at you, but the verse on my heart is
and faith comes from the hearing of the word. Seep yourself in it man. not with any preconceived notions or ideals... just drink it in, swish it around and swallow it. It'll get around to nourishing you without any huge effort on your part.
Let me first say, so you know where I’m coming from, that in writing these things it is not my intention to preach a better way to someone else or to imply that folks are unintelligent for their beliefs whether Christian or otherwise. The very last thing I want to do is to rob someone of their faith or to introduce a line of thinking they aren’t ready for in their journey (I’m not implying that I have any higher or better knowledge than any one else). My position on things spiritual right now is agnostic in an “I don’t’ know and I’m not sure that I can” sort of way.
…”I take great comfort in the fact that all those guys were screw ups…”
I do too, but my point in saying so is to recognise that those authors didn’t necessarily have a better bead on the situation than anyone (at least anyone I know of) in our time to my knowledge. Did they know a fellow called Jesus Christ? My point here is that I can only assume they did or didn’t. I say this not because I want to draw debate or controversy but because I’m looking for the truth, however uncomfortable or comfortable it may be.
The truth is that I have no personal experience to draw from. I would simply be shooting in the dark, pronouncing this or that as true or untrue in a relative vacuum of knowledge. Plug in the 20th century “personal saviour” jargon (which as I understand it does not appear in the scriptures anyway) to the above and we are in the realm of faith rather than a knowable truth. Could we reliably trace the scriptures to the authors? In some cases it seems likely, but I would have no more to go on here than if, for example, Tolkien had penned the Silmarillion at that time. These authors and events are so far from me in time that I cannot rely on them as knowable truth. I consider all of this key if I want to talk about knowing and communicating in relationship with someone, God or otherwise.
”…the Word. Not a 2-4000 year old text written by dead men, but love messages encrypted and meticulously recorded by a living God…”
With all respect, in my opinion one would have to be a“…2-4000 year old…” fly on the wall for that statement to hold water for me. When I see a declaration like the one above, I come back to the well worn tale of the two fleas who expound with words of certainty the complexity of the dog they’re on. They’re advantage being that they could at least comment about something that they know occupies space and time by reason of their senses. I can’t create a foundation for my beliefs based on assumptions of events I haven’t witnessed or circumvent reason by declaring those assumptions to be facts at this point in my life. That is what I would define as belief and there’s not a thing wrong with that…it just doesn’t work for me.
That’s not to say that I don’t have beliefs. Having said all this I agree with you in that whether or not one takes the scriptures at face value, there is much to be gained in putting the other guy first and living with a measure of responsibility towards one another. To put it another way, if one were to live out “the point” of the scriptures honestly without taking thought of the issues, no harm done and much good whether the big questions are answered or not. It would be no different than Islam in that sense however. I’m going cross-eyed.
I think that ultimately one must look at what’s been written, said and experienced, all anecdotal and decide for his or herself if that’s convincing enough to act on as if it were “knowable”, regard belief as fact. For thousands of years folks have been asking these same questions and ultimately I think this is the best that can be achieved. Unless of course I am the first in humankind to come up with an certain answer, but I’m not holding my breath ;}
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