There are so many things to talk about--sickness, "The Ten Commandments" Anniversary showing we watched with my dad the other night, my renewed desire to explore the science of God, etc. There are many things to talk about, but I'm going to talk about my brother, Mitch, who is an Atheist. Before he left to return to Chapel Hill, I took him out for one last Spring Break lunch. I tend to be honest with my brother about what I'm struggling with. I don't think it's necessarily more faithful to Christ to lie about where I am concerning God, esp. to my own brother who I've talked to about faith now for going on 26 years. So, I told him that I was struggling with staying sick and wondering if God was even there when I prayed. I told him that, at my core, I believe God is real, but that there are times of doubt, like right now, when I step outside a bit and sincerely think about how Mitch and I give different arguments from differing perspectives about the same things, and sometimes it all seems so pointless and petty, and I wonder sometimes if any of it even matters. I told him the truth about where I was. Right away, he pretty much strong-armed me into further doubts. I expected compassion and love and was served what he deemed as truth but what felt like poison. It was a bad decision to talk to Mitch whilst in the middle of doubt and sickness. But, again, I feel like we're so close, it's super hard to deceive him into thinking I'm doing better than I am. Likewise, I can't really hide the big things from him; that feels wrong somehow. He's the one family member that I've never hidden anything from; he's the only one I've never tried to protect from the hard stuff, including my own feelings. Every other person in my family has received the gift of grace and forgiveness in the form of me not sharing what I knew they couldn't handle. Mitch has never gotten that luxury. Mitch always knows my side, my hurts, and my exhortations, esp. when it has to do with God.
Mitch is what I consider my other-other-half. Isaiah, my husband, is my true other half. Both he and Mitch know that Isaiah stole this spot from Mitchell as my husband and I grew in love and got engaged. Mitch and I shared a very intense truck ride where he told me that he knew he was losing me to Isaiah, that he would never be my number one anymore, that, that would now be Isaiah, and that it hurt. Mitch and I have worked through a lot. And though I am very glad that my number one is indeed my husband, and that my number one is also a strong man of God, I still feel a bond with Mitch that I feel will never be severed. The greatest surgeons in the world couldn't untie what we have. There was a period of time when I dreamed about being disconnected from Mitch early on in Isaiah and I's marriage. It always felt like part of my own soul was dying. Though indeed, esp. since my marriage and the Boardwalk Chapel, Mitch and I have grown in separation as I have continued to grow in Christ, we still are, at our core, part of the same body. I don't think that will ever change. I've heard folks in Isaiah's family call this type of bond a soul tie. I think that's a good term for it.
No matter what, Mitch will be my first husband in a way. And no, not in a weird Freudian way. In a: we are each other's other side of the pillow, be with each other in the worst of times, never leave each other, kind of way. Mitch and I have been through so much damage together. It's like we're brothers in arms that chose different methods of healing. I chose God. He chose secularism. It hurts so bad to think about the fact that, in this way, we can't be bonded, that when it comes to the most important thing in life-Christ-we don't share the same skin. When I am at my strongest spiritually, my heart breaks that my own brother, my own flesh, could be in hell. I wonder how I won't feel it when he burns. I wonder how in the heck I will be so fully satisfied in the presence of God that I won't feel my own flesh melt as his does. It feels wrong that I could be so happy while he suffers forever. Pretty dark. I know. When I am weakest spiritually, I feel what he feels, I become even more empathetic and understanding and one with him, but I also feel wretched for I am then not with my First Love: Christ. When I feel closest to Mitch, I feel furthest from Christ. When I closest to Christ, I feel close to Mitch but also not one with him.
I've had so many conversations with Mitch about the gospel, about Christ, about faith, about truth. I know that, at this point, he would be more heavily condemned because he knows so much about God and is still turning away. The saddest thing is: Mitch remains the only person I've actually lead to Christ. Sure, I've talked to people about God. I've planted seeds. But I've never quite been bold enough. Mitch is the first and only one I've prayed the prayer with, you know the one that's supposed to beckon the Holy Spirit to abide in you FOREVER. And here Mitch is, years later, denying Christ with such boldness that it hurts my spirit. Let me tell you, knowing that you lead someone to Christ, knowing that, that person has read their Bible and gone to church, knowing that this same person, years later, claims to have seen the man behind the curtain: THAT will rattle your faith. It certainly puts a time-bomb on mine, which I then must pray about...yet again.
My other brother, Logan, also now claims to not believe, which gives me a new spiritual pain. I felt like he was still at least nominal and that God was going to draw him back. (Maybe He still will.) But no, he claims to be a full-blown Atheist too now.
How's a girl who feels parent to her siblings, esp. these two, not to feel responsibility or failure when they leave the person she bases her life on? These are my babies, and they are forsaking the one thing that I know gives life. Does God want to kill me? Did he give them to me so that I can scream and plead for them before the throne? Is He going to help them? At the core of my doubts is not truly questions about God making me well. I have discovered that at the core is the question: Can I truly trust God when he has abandoned my family? When he has torn away my flesh from the fold? When His Spirit left or perhaps didn't dwell in my people?
Mitch sent me some articles that he felt would explain how he left the faith and where he is now. They're pretty powerful. I only recently got into Creation Science and Ken Hamm. And now, as soon as I start to grasp the perspective I prefer, I get to see the whole other side of articles which focus on the opposite. I don't feel ready for this. I want to run back to my childhood faith and the joy of God that feels me when I turn to Him, but is that cheating on the exploration that could occur if I'd only trust the Spirit to keep me while I look? If God is truth, I am told that I will only find Him at the end of my searching. But how can I believe that, how can I not fear losing the Love of my Life--Jesus--when I see examples 1 and 2, Mitch and Logan, right in front of my eyes. (Also, some of my best childhood friends.)
People outside of the faith will probably see all of this as melodramatic about things that don't even exist or don't matter. And, in a sense, I understand this perspective. But then again, if any of you open up your minds when it's dark and you're alone about the deep stuff of life, you'll get why this is hard. God comes up in Philosophy so much because God is the marrow of the bone that we run from while we live our day to day. He's the thoughts late at night that we squash with pretend logic and rhetoric. So, go on, judge this post if you want, for being silly, but deep in your heart, you know it's not.
This pain is real. And spiritual. I don't know where to go from here. Both Christianity and Secularism scream their propaganda (that's what it seems like) at me, and I, like any good millennial, start to doubt everything. I want to be above it. But I can't be. For even if I claimed to know that neither is truth and that the arguments and articles are petty from both sides, I would still be claiming to "know." I would still be staking my claim in something...but only in a lesser something, a something which represents nothing, a knowledge of not-knowing. Seems pretty dumb to me.
So here I am, God. Feeling split in two. Having a much harder time than my husband in reading these articles Mitch sent. Wondering if I have discernment. Wondering if I can trust the Spirit to stay with me. I do so want to be His temple, to share this light of the world which resides in me with the people of Japan. Will exploring make the light brighter or dimmer? I used to believe searching would only strengthen my faith. Now, looking at all the case studies, I'm not so sure. I know that God IS....as I said in my last post...but is He trustworthy? Is He really the firm foundation that the hymns promise? ...Because He doesn't seem so firm to so many others.
I am always drawn to the Mitch's in the world. The intellectuals and philosophers who question everything, the dark ones who hide away from the world. I really thought I'd end up marrying one like this to be honest. I've always shined the light of God in my conversations with them. Maybe since this group is often who I minister to, I have seen less converts as a result. All you can often do with people like this, is empathize, listen, question gently, and open up their hearts and spiritual minds, getting them to trust even just a little less in their own seeming logic. But a light gets tired in such darkness. She gets weary, and starts to wonder: Is my light really working, or will it simply fade the more I look into the dark caverns of philosophy? Why on earth did God make me so sensitive if I am called to minister to the sufferers and to the dark philosophers? Why on earth did He make me so empathetic? I am often so empathetic that I forget discernment....or vise versa. I can only, at the end of the day, depend on His Holy Spirit, and not on anything residing in me, but the problem is....I am afraid of losing the Holy Spirit. I am afraid, if I look more for the man behind the curtain, he will be there, and then my Spirit will die. Just like all the others.
Perhaps we've come to define our connection with God in terms that are too human, or too dependent upon our expectations concerning relationships. I've come to think that what many call their relationship with God is little more than the echo of their own experiences, biases, fears, and hopes. That may sound cynical and cold, but I don't mean it that way at all. I feel God is a force much more potent, ancient, and ingrained than is commonly perceived. Today, one often hears the trendy phrase "God is big". While I think the statement is very true, I'm not sure we grasp the full scope of its meaning. Our human concept of "big" is enslaved to our own subjective perceptions. I think it might be more accurate to say, "God is everything". Sounds new agey, but that's okay. Christianity has become far too removed from its mystical core. After all, the foundation of our belief system concerns the bloody sacrifice of a god-man. I feel the total wackiness and absurdity of that ought to be embraced and organized religion and theology released.
ReplyDeleteFor myself, I understand the atheist perspective very well. One simply cannot reconcile the terrible world we live in with an omniscient, all-powerful God who has some grand design for it all, despite the random chaos that occurs every second of every day. Anyone who says they can reconcile it on a rational level is either consciously lying or living in stubborn denial. But then we look beyond the rational, to what truly makes it all inexplicable--the fingerprints of God that are occasionally impressed upon our human experience. What to do? One is forced to either embrace a God who is unpredictable and seemingly distant from the majority of his creation, or ignore him in bitterness and anger. I've done both. But I am learning to stop expecting God to relate to me on the same level as another human would. He is not my best bud and he is not the micro-manager of my life, and I honestly don't feel that he wants to be. God is in the dirt, in the roots. It is my choice whether or not to stand in that fact and to grow in that soil. To experience God on that level is to get beyond all the squabbling over doctrine, social issues, evolution, creation, etc. Perhaps it's time to embrace the fact that this life is short, chaotic, ugly, beautiful, everything and yet nothing at all. I cannot really define who God is in a logical sense, only that he is a violent whirlwind of unfathomable size. This is all his chaos. I think acknowledging that is where the 'firm foundation' comes in. The common image of God as a dependable father-figure is deeply flawed in my opinion, though I understand why people flock to that notion. I feel the truth is something we probably cannot comprehend and most likely do not wish to.
I might tell Mitch that God is everything, and that Jesus is a projection of that 'everything' into history. It's not pretty, it's not neat, and it's not black and white. There is no bible verse that can explain it and no doctrine that can define it. Some call it love, I call it pure insanity. God is insane. He's not religious at all. Our attempts to shoehorn him into human experience ultimately render him irrelevant. Because the reality is he exists outside our realm of relating to the world. To tap into him is to let go of everything, as in a free-fall. Let go of all prior experiences with life, relationships, and religion. It won't be easy, and it probably won't help much with day to day struggles concerning health, finances and so on. But it might just break us out of an endless loop of religious frustration and misguided expectations.
Sorry for the ramble! :)
John, I have been meaning to reply to this. It was actually super helpful, esp. in the midst of all of the doubt. Thank you for being a friend and posting. God is ancient and mighty and incomprehensible....we just forget that a lot as people. Defining him in human terms sometimes makes it harder to keep believing in him.
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