Categories: uncategorized
Date: 02 October 2004 23:53:50
About losing one's faith...
I think that some of us ought to lose our faiths. That is, we might be better off, if the parts of faith and Christian living and worship patterns and understandings and habits that we've developed, would just wither and fall off periodically.
I think it has been, over all, a positive thing, like coming out of a chrysalis, or shedding a skin, when I have undergone it. Or something like it, anyway.
It is scary. But it was so freeing, when I got all stripped down to "bare bones", just me looking at God. All else, Earthly love and comfort, "the church", life in general, it's all a framework.
A fantastic framework, thank God for it, so much of life is a wonderful foretaste of Heaven -- but it's still just a framework. A trellis, an arbor. Something with which we nourish ourselves and on which we lean, while we grow toward the Son.
That's the point. That's the frightening and thrilling point.
Keep check on yourself and get advice, you may be depressed in a way that would benefit from counselling, or even medication. Don't be afraid of losing your faith. Sometimes we have to lose it to find it.
...As for the History Channel and the Discovery Channel and National Geographic specials and even the freakin' evening news, everything in the modern media is all created from the ground up from the position that there is no God, anyway.
God Himself could watch that stuff and start to doubt His own existence.
I've studied the Bible, surface and deep, for about 22 years now. I also spent many a rainy or cold or hot Sunday afternoon at my grandparents' house from the time I was very small -- any time it was a bad day to play outside -- reading the family Bible.
(It was either that or a big book about the care and breeding of all sorts of livestock. So, today, I am a fair Bible student and I always know what to do for the animals. )
Anyway, I tell you all that not to brag in any way. All that I have learned all this time just leads me to know that I have a lot more to learn.
When I boil away the extras and the frothy stuff smeared on top of the faith --
When I take into account the way I and we as a Western culture believe all sorts of ancient history and old documents scratched on rocks and clay tablets and leather, with very little evidence--
And yet we hold our noses and close our eyes and we don't want to believe huge chunks of Bible, when there is archeological evidence and biological evidence and astrological evidence and geological evidence that holds up the basics of the Bible --
I think we, us people, us modern people, are silly. We'd much rather believe stuff we make up ourselves and follow gods like Fashion and Opinion and Food and Sex and Sports and Popularity and Comfort and Power, we'd rather just about any god at all, over Yahweh.
SO anyway, after I boil away stuff that seems extra, man-made, and stuff that spins off into endless arguments over teensy details...
I am still left with so much truth about life and truth about myself and such a love, a love as wide as the universe, that no matter what, I cannot stop believing in God, and more importantly, believing God.
If I am worn away to a little bitty person with a tiny little faith the size of the proverbial mustard seed, that is still all I need, just enough faith to turn like a little weed flower to face the sun -- the Son. All power is His.
Might I be wrong about what I think matters to God? Sure. Might I be wrong about methods and histories and styles and actions, when it comes to following God and serving Him and worshiping Him? Of course. I have had wrong understandings before and I am sure I will again.
Still, after I boil away all the dross, all the slag, all the garbage, I am still left with this shining seamless 101% pure thing: God is. I rest in that.
I don't know much -- to paraphrase a song --
I don't know much, but I know He loves us. And that may be all I need to know.