Stumbling Toward God?

Sometime over the summer, I came to a website called “American Atheists” in my internet travelings. I was reading an article challenging the reliability of the authorship of the Bible, and I realized that it was basically true, from their perspective. The Bible (whatever else you want to say about it) in the simplest terms, it is a record of God’s interaction with humanity. Well, if you are convinced that there is no God, then he can not possibly interact with people, therefore any writer who claims that He has is obviously unreliable. That case practically proves itself before even looking at any evidence.

It occurred to me that you can’t possibly win- it’s like arguing with a blind man about rainbows. Using pure logic, you will never convince him that you are looking at something that he can not see. Likewise, he will never convince you that what you think you see is just a hallucination.

The trouble with this “online theology” that I have been trying to do is that there are no objective websites out there. Everyone has an agenda. Even if they did not start off with one, I believe that by the time they get around to actually telling you about it, they have already reached a conclusion that they are now trying to sell you on. No web page that I have ever come across honestly presents all the sides.

That is when a little voice in my head declared, “It’s you dude, it’s all you!” As if my humble, barely-updated page could actually capture the whole picture. For I too only relate certain bits of information, from a certain point of view. If you want to see the whole picture, you have to use all of the pieces. This echoed around in my head for a few days, perhaps even a couple of weeks:
To see the whole picture, you have to use all of the pieces…
… You have to use all of the pieces…
…ALL OF THEM.

I don’t think that anyone really wants to look at all of the pieces. I am sure that we all have things that we have stuffed away somewhere that we never want to see, admit, or think about ever again. Barring that, I do not think that I could even remember all the pieces, even if I want to.

Then began a rather odd two week period in which I repeatedly either was reminded of or actually encountered a number of people from the past whom, all other things being equal, I prefer not to think about. So the pieces are all there, but then next issue that I discovered is that it is very difficult to fit them together because I find that I really only seem capable of looking at one piece at a time…

I’ve been casually waiting for a certain “}” for a long time. It finally came today. I took it in stride at the time, merely thinking, “Ah. I was wondering where that was.” I imagine that the greater implications may take a little time to sink in. Though perhaps now I can finally evaluate the entire block.

Easter is one of the busiest times of the year for the company I used to (and occasionally still) work for. I was loading out a stage at a church in Orange County on the first Easter after I was saved. As we were finishing up, someone from the church commented to the head of our crew “See you next year.” It seemed to me like an awfully presumptuous thing to say. How did he know we would even be here in a year?
I’m not suggesting that the company might fold. Actually, influenced by a lot of stuff I was hearing on the radio, at that time, I was under the impression that the rapture really might happen any day. To talk about something a whole year away was just absurd, for you know not what tomorrow may bring, as they say. It turns out he was not the foolish one, for a couple of Easter’s have come and gone since then.

The Muppet quote in the title is not a sentiment I agree with. Life is not like a movie. There is no ending. No matter what happens, there’s always another day after that.

For some time now, I have felt as though things were winding down. They are not really. It seems like everyone I know is getting married or having babies or moving, starting a new job, whatever. Everyone is starting something new, while I keep looking at my watch wondering “Is Jesus coming back soon, ’cause I’m pretty much done here.”

I almost wish I could say I’ve stumbled again, fallen. Or that “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” The truth is, I feel like I’m standing just as tall as I ever have, only I can’t even remember what I was looking for.

On the first day of class, one of my professors was explaining how he will only allow make-up work in extreme cases. He related a story of one student whose mother had died, I think it was somewhere in Indonesia. She had to take a fourteen hour flight plus an eight hour bus ride to just get to her village. Apparently, she was back at school in four days. This student got to make up the lab she missed.

Four days? What kind of slacker am I, taking two weeks off? But wait, I protest, it is not a fair comparison… my mother was still alive when I left. So, to be fair, after she died I only missed, let’s see… oh who bloody cares? What kind of boxed up competition is this?

My mother died in Europe, and we had a sort of memorial in Europe. For a long time I had dreams in which, since we had not yet had anything in America, and the time change putting Europe ahead of us and all, in dream logic, it worked out that she had not yet died in America, and I still had time…

Nonsense of course. But either way, that time will be over… soon.