Traveling Thoughts

Change can be extremely uncomfortable.  When you find comfort in a routine or a place in life or a state of mind, and that suddenly changes, life can become extremely disoriented and disillusioned, which I have also found not to be a completely bad thing.  In my own fears of being brainwashed and stagnant, I have found myself in a place of emotional and spiritual ambiguity.  I have begun to question many of the things that I have always found to be fundamental and central to life. Consequently, my paradigm has threatened to change drastically which is both terrifying and exhilarating.  
    For many people who have grown up in church, the teaching seems dualistically a blessing and a hindrance, whether the teaching was sound or ludicrous.  There are things about my own faith that I have never really understood or owned that I now find myself questioning.  Unfortunately when a Christian begins to question the foundations of his tradition there is the realization that new convictions may remove him from participation in mainstream Christian faith or being a part of the communities that seem to be so important.  
    Last fall, I took a trip across Europe with a friend.  We started in Ireland and made our way through Scotland, Britain, Amsterdam, and ended in Italy.  It was an amazing experience that left me with a sense that the world is so much bigger than I had ever thought.  This world is full of people with different histories, cultures, lifestyles, and faiths that are vastly different than our own.  After seeing this, I had this nagging feeling that there was something greater than I had ever been able to grasp.  The American church is so convinced that they have it all right, and that we are the chosen and blessed nation.  Except that the vast majority of the world does not believe like we do.  We study our theology and doctrines and have the Bible interpreted so fully that we have not left room for God to be big.  We love to attend church and small groups and conferences and worship services.  We will sit through music that moves our spirit and a presentation of The Passion of the Christ that moves our emotions.  We feel so victorious and justified with all of our efforts with making church “relevant” and “engaging” and “seeker-friendly” when we are able to say that 300 people raised their hand during the invitation.  But after sitting through hundreds, possibly thousands of these worship services I have become bored despite my greatest efforts.  Church has become a job and a place of income.  And I’m just not so sure that I buy it all anymore.  
    Biblically we are told that we must “accept” Christ and that we will be justified through the sacrifice that Christ made for us on the cross.  We are told that grace is all encompassing and that we will, through our life with Christ, become more and more like him.  Well, all of that sounds really nice, but what about reality?  When I think about the history of my own faith, I cannot pinpoint a point when I was “saved”.  As a matter of fact, I’m not so sure that I’m really any better than I ever was, that I have seen sanctification in my own life.  I’m just not a very good Christian by church standards.  I like to drink whiskey and beer (even in public), I swear, I like cigarettes, I smoked pot in Europe and don’t feel guilty or embarrassed, I hate Christian music because it sucks.  And I doubt.  I thought that all of that was supposed to go away when we become endowed with the power of the Holy Spirit.  I thought that the desire and ability to resist sin was ingrained in us.  
    Instead, I feel like I am just not who I am because I am trying to fit the mold.  Trying to be a good boy so I don’t get rebuked.  I don’t want to be a “stumbling block”.  Because I want to wear my righteous piety like a plumed marching band hat.
    Now, I find myself at this point of change when I want to know what I believe and really believe it even if I am judged and ostracized.  
    I have been wondering if everyone might be saved.  Meaning that no human soul will suffer eternally in hell.  The idea of universalism is ridiculed and discounted as heresy by the majority of Christians, but we will say things that flirt with the boundaries.  We will say that it is by grace that we have been saved, not by works.  We will say that God loves the world; the whole world.  We will say that God is sovereign.  We will say that God wants all men to come to a knowledge and love of him.  We find hope in the prophecies of a worldwide kingdom of Christians that will be established.  We do our best to expound on the vastness of the grace and mercy of Christ yet we limit both of these things to what we have explained by theology.  With my heart, I sense that there is something more than our salvation formulas.
    For the first time, I am trying to approach the Bible objectively without all of my preconceived notions and indoctrinations.  It is hard.  It is scary.  It is painful.  What if every word of the Bible is not God-breathed and infallible?  Paul, a man, wrote a vast part of the New Testament 30 years after Christ.  Christianity had just been invented in a radically different world and culture, yet we take all of these words verbatim and direct our lives based on a literal interpretation of Scripture.  What if we actually have to think about Scripture and not read off passages as mindless regurgitations of the rules?  What if we are supposed to view Paul’s letters as a conversation instead of a dictation? What if we actually took time to understand overarching themes of the Bible without feeling pinned down by specific scriptures, allowing them to choke our intellectual and emotional questions?  Is it possible to appreciate scripture and the traditions while still feeling free to pursue God with a different mindset?  

I don’t know.  

    But these are my questions, and I intend to pursue the answers if there are any.  I know that God is not offended by my questions like you may be.  I feel that it is my responsibility and privilege to pursue and seek knowing who God is my whole life without feeling confined to certain regulations.  I feel that I have been invited to drink deeply of knowing God.  Maybe I’m not a Christian.  Whatever.  You can keep your titles and labels.  I don’t need to be witnessed to or saved.  I’m not backsliding.  I know that I am afraid and uncomfortable.  But I am trying to be brave enough to follow my heart and ask the questions.  I invite you to join me on this quest.  What if you dropped all the mystic answers that you have about how God interacts and communicates with us and forgot about all of the church answers that you have for all the questions?  Let’s let God be God and be big and be incomprehensible in all of his ways.  We can search for God together.  I think that this search will be much more rewarding and fulfilling.  The search for who God is instead of how to be a better Christian.