Stumbling Toward God?

For those following closely, it’s March, and I just got off an airplane.

(Before you begin, here is something old that I never finished.)

It used to be my job to find places for various things. One day, I was looking for a place to store some block-and-tackles. I realized that an ideal spot would be to hang them on a nearby wall, so in order to confirm this proposition, I placed them exactly where I thought they should go. I watched in disappointment as they dropped in a heap on the floor. An onlooker said that at that moment, he lost all faith in “faith.” For there were no hooks of any kind on this wall. I had simply placed them up against the wall and let go, hoping that they would defy gravity of their own accord. My friend claims never before to have seen anyone act with so much confidence in something that so obviously was not true.

As the preacher says, it is not faith that saves you, but faith in the truth.

There is far too much in the world for anyone to take it all in. We have no choice but to be selective. We filter, and thus create our own individual “realities.” I get that. But I still contend that there is a greater reality outside of each of our individual realities. I “believe” that there is universal truth that effects all of us, whether we choose to believe it or not. If “truth” and “reality” are only in our heads, then no one would ever get in a car accident. Or, as one speaker put it, “Truth is what you believe. Reality is what you run into when you’re wrong.”

Some of my readers seem to suggest that I would do well to find my own place in the world, and then find a concept of god that suits me. I reject this outright. If I was simply looking for a “god” as a way to make me feel better, I like to think that I might look for something that actually made me feel better.

I want to know if there is a god that exists outside of my reality and outside of your reality. A god that simply IS, not subject to individual perception or perspective. Is such a thing possible? I do not know, but it seems reasonable to assume that if God exists, and that if He was willing and capable of revealing Himself to mankind in a way that they could comprehend, then He would have done so by now. That if the truth about God can be known, then someone already knows it. I happen to think that such issues of whether or not I actually LIKE God, or whether or not I think that He likes me, are fairly irrelevant to the question of His existence.

Nobody else here, baby.
No one here to blame.
No one to point the finger,
It's just you and me,
And the rain.

[Soulless, soul down
By your door]
--U2

I was going to change the title of the blog this weekend. In fact, I nearly stormed out of my church group meeting on Sunday night in order to do so. That title just does not not seem honest anymore. However, to my recollection, I have only “stormed” three times in my adult life, and this occasion did not quite qualify. I would hate to expend all that energy for a group of people whom I doubt would have understood the point anyway. And once again, why does everything always have to be about me?

That’s right, I am so utterly indecisive that I literally have to weigh the pros and cons before I can even lose my temper. (If you think that I am being facetious, there are witnesses who could confirm this.)

Anyway, I have not thought of better title yet.

I think that God is a real prick.
I would feel a bit better if I could say that God was an imaginary prick, but there’s nothing for it.

Last week, I went to a talk given by Lee Strobel, a very well known Christian apologist. Lee Strobel also claims to have been an atheist for thirty years. He said a great many interesting things, but the one that has stuck with me the most is when he stated that Christians have an unfair advantage in debate, because “The truth is on our side.”

Atheists obviously do not like Lee Strobel. Initially this troubled me. “How can you not like him?” I ask to the imaginary group of atheists. “He was one of you!” But that assertion is down right idiotic. He is obviously not an atheist.

So I have to wonder, what makes a guy like this tick? After thirty years of atheism, how can he stand there and so openly declare that Christians have truth on their side? How is he not haunted by the doubts and struggles that I battle daily? Perhaps he was not really an atheist. Could he just be saying that to try to add what hip hop would call “street cred” to his message? Maybe he was really just casually indifferent for awhile, and not a real hard core disbelieving skeptic.

That could be, but still it does not seem to get to the real core of the matter. At some point, it came up that his wife was a Christian first. AHA! Now this is significant. I think many, if not all of you would agree that the rules guiding a man’s life change when there is a woman involved. reason and rationality are usually the first to go.

So I can not help but to question, if this man became a Christian because of his wife, can that really be considered a legitimate conversion?

does that count?

I went to a party tonight. It was an entertaining time, for most of it. As things were winding down and a lot of people had left, two people were engaged in a deep theological discussion off to themselves. I was somewhat participating in another activity with far less cosmic significance. Perhaps I don’t need to say, I was deeply envious of those other two. But it definately did not seem like the sort of conversation that was open to a third party stumbling in late. I went away sad.

Why can’t I ever get involved in deep theological disscusion? I mean seriously, what is it that is stopping me? I honestly do not know why I can’t; all I know is that it doesn’t happen. Back when I was going to a new church every week, one thing that I really desired was to have someone to go to lunch with afterwards and discuss the sermon. Now I go to lunch with a group nearly every week after church, but most weeks I think that I would be hard pressed to even recall the title of the sermon by the time we get to the restaurant. Where did it all go wrong?

Or perhaps a more pressing question, why do I have to get depressed over every single event of every day? Why can’t I ever be thankful, content, joyful, about anything? Ever? All I do is complain about the same crap over and over. Who’s fault is any of this but my own? Why don’t I just shut up and start taking some action? I am so sick of me.

I’m sorry about the attitude
I need to give when I’m with you
But no one else would take this shit from me
I’m so terrified of no one else but me
I’m here all the time
I won’t go away

Yeah, it’s me.
But I can’t get myself to go away
It’s me, but I can’t get myself to go away
Oh God, I shouldn’t feel this way
–Matchbox 20

On another level, I recognize that this has happened before, when God has said to me, “You know that thing that you want more than anything? Not only am I not going to give it to you, but I’m going to give it to someone else, right in front of you. Whatcha gonna do about that?”

I’ve been here before. I know how this ends. I just hope that I learned something last time.

For number (2) in my last post, I considered putting in something about how I know from personal experience that you can not come to God on your own terms, but it just did not seem not seem to fit the flow of that passage.
It is, however, entirely true. I have been trying to find God on my own terms for going on three years now. I have never once gone to church with any intention of worshiping God… not even when I was on the, ahem, worship team. (That’s a christian euphemism for “the band”.) I only went to church to learn; and I have learned and learned but nothing has come of it.

It would be meaningless to call my own post “thought provoking,” for clearly I was thinking about this topic already. But I have been thinking about it a lot more since then, and I finally realized how I am like that rich young man. I know what my issue is; what it is that I can not give up, what I will not give up, what I do not think that I should have to give up…

I never heard Jesus say, “Follow me.” On the contrary, I thought that God was essentially telling me, “Whatever you do, don’t come this way.” But I was so intrigued by the idea that there would actually be a god telling me anything at all, and I was determined to go that way, whatever it took. Well, almost whatever. There is that one thing, that deep down I have really wanted all along, that was more important to me than God- that I actually thought I could get to through God…

There it is… my “great wealth.” So what now? Do I just go away sad?

For awhile now I have had the picture in my head, of me stumbling on my own, and every time I fall down, God is standing back with arms crossed asking, “Are you done yet?” But suddenly I shout, “No!” and jump back up and start off in my own direction again. And God just patiently says, “Well, okay…”

From that analogy, it seems clear that I just need to learn to stay down, and let God come help me up. I need to put my faith in God, abide in Christ, make Him the Lord of my life, and so on… But while that works in analogy, what does it really mean? What does ANY of that mean? If I decide to entirely trust God with my schoolwork, and therefore I stop going to class, stop doing homework, stop taking tests and finals, because God has it all under control… I just don’t think that that would work out. Clearly I need to do something. But every time I pick a new direction thinking that it is of God, I just fall flat on my face again and realize, “Nope, not God. That was just me again.”

I am tired of this.