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Faith(less)
I was recently invited to contribute to the excellent new blog my cousin, Aaron White, has created called Faith and Geekery. I initially turned Aaron down because of time constraints but I think they’re actually a deeper issue keeping from being able to contribute. You see, while I have geekery in spades I don’t have much faith anymore. It seems every new day I’m that much closer to become an agnostic.
Warning, this is long, religious and probably pretty melodramatic…
Save the easy answers please, I’ve been there, done that. I grew up as Christian, I’ve participated in five missions trips to places like El Salvador and Romania, when I was in my young teens I thought I was ‘called’ to be a missionary and I even thought I would die a martyr in a persecuting country. I’ve been to, and even volunteered for a summer at worldview places like Summit Ministries, not to mention the countless Christian apologetics classes, seminars and books. AWANA, Teen Mania, Church, check, check and check. Listened almost exclusively to Christian music? Yep. ’Led people to salvation?’ A few. What else do you want to see? My Christian resume is pretty extensive.
Thing is, life, reason and cynicism has cut it’s way through that. Oh yeah, I know you’re tempted to say it was a non-Christian university that did it, that statistic, the one about 40-90% of “born again Christians” lose their faith in college, nope, that’s not me. If anything college gave me a good two or three years where my only real connection with Christianity was the university and the way I argued my case whenever possible. I attacked the Da Vinci Code in art history, argued for Bush in his second term, wrote papers on being pro-life (which I still am, FYI), the sanctity of marriage and—more interestingly—postmodernism and deconstructionism, I was, after all, an art student.
I might be tempted to say it was all the painful church experiences, the rough rode I’ve walked with many of the close Christians in my life or all the silly little apologetics arguments that don’t hold up in the real world—let’s ignore young-earth Creationism and anti-environmentalism—but those aren’t the real reason. Maybe it’s my cussing, maybe it’s my usually light enjoyment of alcohol, maybe it’s my enjoyment of a pipe or a good cigar and it’s definitely caused by trying pot a couple of times and being absolutely desensitized to violence, language, sex & nudity. But these are all the surface level factors most Christians might point to, but really there’s much deeper things driving my doubt.
Okay, got the easy stuff out of the way? Let’s be sincere then, sincerity has become a driving force in my life, sincerity to myself and open sincerity to others, scars and all. Welcome to me.
For me it’s the silence.
I recently post this to Twitter: “Anybody heard from Mr. Damnit recently? He doesn’t seem to be answering his phone or checking his voicemail.” That’s my way of flippantly expressing how I feel.
You see, those callings when I was a young teen? I don’t think there was anything divine about it, they certainly haven’t come true, nor is my life at all pointed in that direction. I’m not entirely sure I ever have had a relationship with Christ, growing up in the environment I did it would be very easy to argue that it was all manipulated by a a child’s placebo. How hard is it to sensationalize what I thought was truly meaningful when I’m listening to a rock band belting out praise and worship from the stage? How hard is it to feel overwhelmed with God when you’re young and in a foreign country with fifty other short term missionaries all cyclically and self-perpetually raising the excitement and emotional levels? How many times did I and everyone else talk about those mountaintop experiences and the emptiness when we’d all gone home? Everytime.
But it’s deeper then that, it’s not in the sensationalize high points that I feel most responsible for my present doubts. It was in the pain, in the depression and in the utter emptiness. Admittedly, I struggle with depression and have to continued to require psychiatrical help in maintaining emotional balance. But where was He in that? Silence. Emptiness. Darkness. I know exactly what people mean by a “God shaped hole,” I totally have that and I yearned with everything in me for that hole to be healed and my scars begin to heal. It hasn’t, they don’t and the scars grow deeper as I progress through life without His presence.
Unquestionable, I’ve been left scars by many other relationships and I’ve withdrawn emotionally from everyone I love. If I seam distant to you, you wouldn’t be the first one to notice. These are real relationships with imperfect people, yet they are duplicate models off what is supposed to be my most sacred relationship. Cold. Empty. Broken. Sounds a lot like a father to me, give me everything in the world that’s unsubstantial but fumble around in the silence anything deeply meaningful.
I know you’ve got great easy answers, I’ve said them to others, I’ve tried to tell them to myself but they aren’t answers, they’re excuses.
Whatever. In the silence of the darkest night when I’m alone and screaming out for God to heal me He never does and these broken jars are all that remains. Show me, heal me, love me, the shouts begin to fade to whispers and the sound of my whispers fade into the void.
There are things I still believe, I believe in beautify, I believe in joy, I believe in the beautiful fairy tails of Lewis and MacDonald. I want to believe in the God Lewis speaks of. I want to loose myself Peralandra, in the country of the North Wind and world within world traveling further up and further in. I believe that the most beautiful fairy tale I’ve ever heard is Christ’s blood to purchase my atonement. Maybe that’s all that story really is, a beautiful fairy tail. Yet, some glimpse of hope shines on the horizon, maybe the Sun can spill over the mountains and shine down on me. Maybe.
God, You can show me Yourself when You’re ready, until then my faith is too broken to walk alone tonight.
Still here? Really? Dang, you’re persistent. Sorry I rambled so much, this just kind of came out, I wasn’t even intending to write anything before I started typing. Feels good though. That’s it, that’s how I feel, hope it was coherent. Can you see through the pain? No easy answers, remember. Please don’t tell me your praying for me, it doesn’t help.
