Sounding out loud...no more God made in my image.
I've read a lot this year about religion, and my most recent project, rereading of the Gospels, has reintroduced me to a different view of Christ. I decided to let go of all anxious constructs, all my ideas about what this denomination is doing wrong and what part of this particular scene seems right, and the result has been less tentative and more surefooted progress. But this kind of progress..unravels a very different faith. It is an ensemble of baby steps, of quiet questions and prayers that come not in the context of some set-up time with God, assured and true, but more in desperate moments or pretty spaces of days that unwind in sweet measures that have a different rhythm than the life I knew before.
I'm shooting in the dark, trying to describe a life I only now start to grasp on my own. I think what it is is a faith that holds open the mind, that has no preconceived bars--a type of window that once frightened me when I glimpsed it in other people, but which always seemed more subtle and certain, in this unspoken way, than my own. And I find myself ... opening, in this place. Because here is a God who lets me use my mind.
I don't know how many times I did it, but I lived many days with this shut on/off button, this filter pushed onto the world. I felt threatened, uneasy, uncomfortable, uncertain, and anxious much of the time. I constantly analyzed, repented, questioned, repented again. And always, always the focus was me[myself] and I.
But this...view, is different. It's plunging me into a world of sights and sounds and colors and, most shocking of all, peace.
For the first time in my life, God is not about instant results, and I am not the one leading. For the first time, the progression of living is actually a process. I can admit there are things I don't know without a paralyzing fear, because now I get to find them out. But not the way I did before, all puppeteer, and God on my strings.
There is a sense of something so great just beyond my comprehension, and the idea that I will spend my new life constantly altering my view of who he is, centered in the faith of a living Christ, a divine Redeemer, but a person whose love and grace enable me to have a faith that thinks. And dreams. But most importantly, trusts in the dark.
Oh, goodness...I don't know if any of this makes sense. Yet it has reason, to me. And value that merits the imperative and unsteady step past the chasm of unbelief, to a world no more certain, yet still more worthwhile, than a life without faith.
*I was going to say "a life without God," but that's inaccurate, because either He is real or He isn't, so the world can never be wholly godless unless He doesn't exist. Saying you can have a life without God is like saying you can breathe without air just because you don't think it's real.
I'm shooting in the dark, trying to describe a life I only now start to grasp on my own. I think what it is is a faith that holds open the mind, that has no preconceived bars--a type of window that once frightened me when I glimpsed it in other people, but which always seemed more subtle and certain, in this unspoken way, than my own. And I find myself ... opening, in this place. Because here is a God who lets me use my mind.
I don't know how many times I did it, but I lived many days with this shut on/off button, this filter pushed onto the world. I felt threatened, uneasy, uncomfortable, uncertain, and anxious much of the time. I constantly analyzed, repented, questioned, repented again. And always, always the focus was me[myself] and I.
But this...view, is different. It's plunging me into a world of sights and sounds and colors and, most shocking of all, peace.
For the first time in my life, God is not about instant results, and I am not the one leading. For the first time, the progression of living is actually a process. I can admit there are things I don't know without a paralyzing fear, because now I get to find them out. But not the way I did before, all puppeteer, and God on my strings.
There is a sense of something so great just beyond my comprehension, and the idea that I will spend my new life constantly altering my view of who he is, centered in the faith of a living Christ, a divine Redeemer, but a person whose love and grace enable me to have a faith that thinks. And dreams. But most importantly, trusts in the dark.
Oh, goodness...I don't know if any of this makes sense. Yet it has reason, to me. And value that merits the imperative and unsteady step past the chasm of unbelief, to a world no more certain, yet still more worthwhile, than a life without faith.
*I was going to say "a life without God," but that's inaccurate, because either He is real or He isn't, so the world can never be wholly godless unless He doesn't exist. Saying you can have a life without God is like saying you can breathe without air just because you don't think it's real.