God Thoughs
When it comes to faith vs doubt in God, I think my struggle is not so much with the academic and reason side of things. Although I do sense the need to resolve things more solidly in my intellect so that I at least have logic and facts to fall back on (not to mention the ability to reason more eloquently and effectively with non-believers), for the most part I've thus far trusted the greater Christian minds whom I respect, and who have evidently done their homework.
As I see it, without my having a dozen degrees in science, language, history etc, there will always be theological and scientific debate by thinkers who far exceed my schooling and reasoning capacities. I feel to a certain degree that I already posses enough evidence to trust with confidence ("run the ramp of reason before taking a leap of faith") that there is at least an intelligent higher being/originator, and a supernatural realm beyond what science can measure and touch. I am also fairly confident in the historicity of Jesus and in the ancient texts which speak of him, though I do leave room for the possibility of scribal error. (2 Tim 3:16 - Bible never claims to be "inerrant")
But where I get lost is on the personal plane - where theory and life diverge. Although I can intellectually play head games and ascent to the logic that allows a good God alongside suffering, when the suffering is your own and you're in constant and progressive pain (both my MCS and the symptoms of frequent brain injury are getting worse), the theories don't really matter all that much. I'm not just picking a preferred position/belief - this is my LIFE!
See, if God exists, then I am angry and must ask: "Why are you hurting me so much? Why do you help and bless most others around me, while constantly heaping/allowing more pain on my shoulders when I'm already so wounded?" But if He is only wishful thinking, made real like Peter Pan clapping for the fairies, with blessings, cursings, and answered prayer being nothing more than illusions and a game of coincidental roullette, then I am angry with myself for trying so long to believe and live sacrificially for One who only makes you feel better if you can delude yourself into thinking that He's there and will soon show up to help you.
How can I trust - let alone love - a Being who supposedly has all power in the universe but didn't prevent the physical and verbal abuses I sustained while growing up in a "Christian" home, and now allows that wounded and disappointed girl - who is already struggling desperately to believe - a plethora of illness, injury and loss that will crush and destroy what remains of her future and dreams?
Because of childhood/teen head injuries I easily acquire an average of 1 to 2 concussions a month from even minor bumps and jolts. My neurologist wasn't much help beyond "stay away from risky activity." (Dancing isn't football for crying out loud!) I walk around with excruciating headaches, tiredness, dizziness, blurry vision, hot flashes, tinnitus, and light spots, for days and sometimes weeks at a time - which all stands in the way of the writing career with which I'd hoped to sustain myself. Three weeks ago I bumped heads while dancing and the resulting concussion took about two weeks to almost recover from. SLOX arrived and I was elbowed in the forehead while taking it easy OFF the dance floor. Really, God? Was that necessary too?
This all along with ongoing uninsured dental problems from that fateful ski accident that cost me half my teeth, alongside chemical and perfume sensitivities as by-product of accidental pesticide and aspartame over-exposures (which also resulted in a year of skeletal weight-loss and migraines when I was 23), alongside losing my best friend to a murder when I was 18, alongside a number of other complications - from painful bunions to an injured hip to difficulties keeping housing and employment because of health issues, all the way down to the man "God gave me" after faithful years of virtuous waiting, promising "too much too soon" and walking away like it's my fault for being sick... and a decapitated partridge in a pear tree!
I'm sure somewhere there are many on earth whose sufferings are far greater, but I feel mine are magnified by living in full view of the girls who were selfish and often cruel to me throughout their charmed Christian childhoods, and now are blessed abundantly still, with love, homes, stability, spouse and children. They marry and have multiple children; I mourn and have multiple concussions. If there's a God I feel like he mocks me, just like the inmates of Alcatraz who could hear the sounds of San Francisco life from across the water; forced to live just close enough to know and glimpse the life they wanted but could not reach.
... If God "loves [me] and has a wonderful plan for [my] life", I wouldn't want to see what he'd do to me if he hated me.
The funny thing is, I believe that if I could be completely confident that God is and that God is good, it'd be an entirely different story for me. If God personally appeared to me and said "Kristine, I have a specific mission for you. It will involve you being sick and in pain most of your days, you'll live and die alone, perhaps even lose your mind from concurrent injuries and perhaps have to give up your favourite hobby dance just to survive... but when this brief life is over, I've got an eternity that will surpass your wildest imaginations - do you accept?"
... I'd like to believe that while I would continue to grieve a little every time I saw my peers' latest "happy life" pictures on FB ("It would not hurt any less even if it could be explained" sung Rich Mullins in his song "Hard to Get"), I could more easily surrender.
It's like Avalon's song "Can't Live a Day Without You" (see youtube link below to hear)... What on earth could be greater for a creature than to live the specific life and purpose a loving creator planned for her existence?
If this God is real and if heaven and hell are true and eternity is absolute, then I want to be on board with His project. No matter what the cost! Time is finite, sex is just physical... Eternity is forever.... but if He's a big farce, or worse - some all-powerful sadistically cruel monster screwing with my life like it's a cosmic chew-toy... then the price I'm paying to sustain this faith is higher than I want to be paying.
It's one thing to "present your bodies as a living sacrifice" (Hebrews 12:1-2) - it's quite another to be a "living suicide." The first implies a giving up of self TO another, for a higher gain. The second is simply a worthless deprivation and loss.
It's a tough gamble. One certainly doesn't want to be wrong on the wrong side of the equation. Losing out on earthly pleasures like sex simply sucks if earthly pleasures are all there is. But... "what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" (Matt 16:25)
So that's where I'm at. It's a large motivation behind my extended traveling. I've left behind my known world and asked "God" for direction and divine appointments along the road, if He's out there. I've made some incredible friends, and had some spiritual interactions that border on incredibly coincidental if they were not divinely appointed... but I've also had those head injuries and a few other incidents that I refuse to blindly disregard in light of the ones that paint God in a more hopeful light. Can't credit God with blessings then permit him to have turned a blind eye when the hammer dropped.
A friend of mine recently asked me to "give God a chance"... Is 13 years (from the time I left home) of prayers unacknowledged and questions without answers enough of a chance? When I'm seeking an answer with all my heart that seems to be the time God is most likely to grant me a new hurdle. Just how long am I supposed to keep believing that God is for me when the evidence tells an uglier reality?
In the Bible God says that if you seek Him you will find Him if you seek with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13 & Proverbs 8:17) I really hope that this is true... It just occurred to me that I may not be seeking with all my heart if I'm giving God an ultimatum. And yet, I'm only dust, God. I'm parched and hurting! Why are you deaf to my cries and blind to the tears that have soaked many pillows since my childhood? Or am I talking to myself? I really do need to know if you're there...
In the end I think it's probably ok to not understand or make perfect sense of it all. I know even the wisest of teachers/authors is probably going to miss something somewhere. We're supposed to only "see in part" anyway (according to 1 Cor 13:12) ... It sure would be nice to have a somewhat better picture though. "I don't have any answers but I'll pray for you" only carries one so far.
I am grateful the Bible teaches that Thomas doubted and Peter flat-out denied and cursed Jesus - and those two were among Jesus' closest disciples - they'd personally heard every word of His and witnessed all those miracles, and yet still their faith and devotion wavered. But Jesus doesn't write them off. He responded with patience and grace and individually gave them what they needed. If He's really real today, then there may well be hope for later-day doubters and disciples too.
God "help thou my unbelief."
And if God be not, or be not good... then may I learn to live as best I can and put to death childish notions of one who's hand isn't too short to save... maybe, somehow.
-------
"Hard to Get" written by Rich Mullins just before he died, covered by Rich Stacey http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp7BOiT0L5o
"Can't Live a Day Without You" by Avalon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_DVlb3Knf8&feature=related
As I see it, without my having a dozen degrees in science, language, history etc, there will always be theological and scientific debate by thinkers who far exceed my schooling and reasoning capacities. I feel to a certain degree that I already posses enough evidence to trust with confidence ("run the ramp of reason before taking a leap of faith") that there is at least an intelligent higher being/originator, and a supernatural realm beyond what science can measure and touch. I am also fairly confident in the historicity of Jesus and in the ancient texts which speak of him, though I do leave room for the possibility of scribal error. (2 Tim 3:16 - Bible never claims to be "inerrant")
But where I get lost is on the personal plane - where theory and life diverge. Although I can intellectually play head games and ascent to the logic that allows a good God alongside suffering, when the suffering is your own and you're in constant and progressive pain (both my MCS and the symptoms of frequent brain injury are getting worse), the theories don't really matter all that much. I'm not just picking a preferred position/belief - this is my LIFE!
See, if God exists, then I am angry and must ask: "Why are you hurting me so much? Why do you help and bless most others around me, while constantly heaping/allowing more pain on my shoulders when I'm already so wounded?" But if He is only wishful thinking, made real like Peter Pan clapping for the fairies, with blessings, cursings, and answered prayer being nothing more than illusions and a game of coincidental roullette, then I am angry with myself for trying so long to believe and live sacrificially for One who only makes you feel better if you can delude yourself into thinking that He's there and will soon show up to help you.
How can I trust - let alone love - a Being who supposedly has all power in the universe but didn't prevent the physical and verbal abuses I sustained while growing up in a "Christian" home, and now allows that wounded and disappointed girl - who is already struggling desperately to believe - a plethora of illness, injury and loss that will crush and destroy what remains of her future and dreams?
Because of childhood/teen head injuries I easily acquire an average of 1 to 2 concussions a month from even minor bumps and jolts. My neurologist wasn't much help beyond "stay away from risky activity." (Dancing isn't football for crying out loud!) I walk around with excruciating headaches, tiredness, dizziness, blurry vision, hot flashes, tinnitus, and light spots, for days and sometimes weeks at a time - which all stands in the way of the writing career with which I'd hoped to sustain myself. Three weeks ago I bumped heads while dancing and the resulting concussion took about two weeks to almost recover from. SLOX arrived and I was elbowed in the forehead while taking it easy OFF the dance floor. Really, God? Was that necessary too?
This all along with ongoing uninsured dental problems from that fateful ski accident that cost me half my teeth, alongside chemical and perfume sensitivities as by-product of accidental pesticide and aspartame over-exposures (which also resulted in a year of skeletal weight-loss and migraines when I was 23), alongside losing my best friend to a murder when I was 18, alongside a number of other complications - from painful bunions to an injured hip to difficulties keeping housing and employment because of health issues, all the way down to the man "God gave me" after faithful years of virtuous waiting, promising "too much too soon" and walking away like it's my fault for being sick... and a decapitated partridge in a pear tree!
I'm sure somewhere there are many on earth whose sufferings are far greater, but I feel mine are magnified by living in full view of the girls who were selfish and often cruel to me throughout their charmed Christian childhoods, and now are blessed abundantly still, with love, homes, stability, spouse and children. They marry and have multiple children; I mourn and have multiple concussions. If there's a God I feel like he mocks me, just like the inmates of Alcatraz who could hear the sounds of San Francisco life from across the water; forced to live just close enough to know and glimpse the life they wanted but could not reach.
... If God "loves [me] and has a wonderful plan for [my] life", I wouldn't want to see what he'd do to me if he hated me.
The funny thing is, I believe that if I could be completely confident that God is and that God is good, it'd be an entirely different story for me. If God personally appeared to me and said "Kristine, I have a specific mission for you. It will involve you being sick and in pain most of your days, you'll live and die alone, perhaps even lose your mind from concurrent injuries and perhaps have to give up your favourite hobby dance just to survive... but when this brief life is over, I've got an eternity that will surpass your wildest imaginations - do you accept?"
... I'd like to believe that while I would continue to grieve a little every time I saw my peers' latest "happy life" pictures on FB ("It would not hurt any less even if it could be explained" sung Rich Mullins in his song "Hard to Get"), I could more easily surrender.
It's like Avalon's song "Can't Live a Day Without You" (see youtube link below to hear)... What on earth could be greater for a creature than to live the specific life and purpose a loving creator planned for her existence?
If this God is real and if heaven and hell are true and eternity is absolute, then I want to be on board with His project. No matter what the cost! Time is finite, sex is just physical... Eternity is forever.... but if He's a big farce, or worse - some all-powerful sadistically cruel monster screwing with my life like it's a cosmic chew-toy... then the price I'm paying to sustain this faith is higher than I want to be paying.
It's one thing to "present your bodies as a living sacrifice" (Hebrews 12:1-2) - it's quite another to be a "living suicide." The first implies a giving up of self TO another, for a higher gain. The second is simply a worthless deprivation and loss.
It's a tough gamble. One certainly doesn't want to be wrong on the wrong side of the equation. Losing out on earthly pleasures like sex simply sucks if earthly pleasures are all there is. But... "what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?" (Matt 16:25)
So that's where I'm at. It's a large motivation behind my extended traveling. I've left behind my known world and asked "God" for direction and divine appointments along the road, if He's out there. I've made some incredible friends, and had some spiritual interactions that border on incredibly coincidental if they were not divinely appointed... but I've also had those head injuries and a few other incidents that I refuse to blindly disregard in light of the ones that paint God in a more hopeful light. Can't credit God with blessings then permit him to have turned a blind eye when the hammer dropped.
A friend of mine recently asked me to "give God a chance"... Is 13 years (from the time I left home) of prayers unacknowledged and questions without answers enough of a chance? When I'm seeking an answer with all my heart that seems to be the time God is most likely to grant me a new hurdle. Just how long am I supposed to keep believing that God is for me when the evidence tells an uglier reality?
In the Bible God says that if you seek Him you will find Him if you seek with all your heart. (Jeremiah 29:13 & Proverbs 8:17) I really hope that this is true... It just occurred to me that I may not be seeking with all my heart if I'm giving God an ultimatum. And yet, I'm only dust, God. I'm parched and hurting! Why are you deaf to my cries and blind to the tears that have soaked many pillows since my childhood? Or am I talking to myself? I really do need to know if you're there...
In the end I think it's probably ok to not understand or make perfect sense of it all. I know even the wisest of teachers/authors is probably going to miss something somewhere. We're supposed to only "see in part" anyway (according to 1 Cor 13:12) ... It sure would be nice to have a somewhat better picture though. "I don't have any answers but I'll pray for you" only carries one so far.
I am grateful the Bible teaches that Thomas doubted and Peter flat-out denied and cursed Jesus - and those two were among Jesus' closest disciples - they'd personally heard every word of His and witnessed all those miracles, and yet still their faith and devotion wavered. But Jesus doesn't write them off. He responded with patience and grace and individually gave them what they needed. If He's really real today, then there may well be hope for later-day doubters and disciples too.
God "help thou my unbelief."
And if God be not, or be not good... then may I learn to live as best I can and put to death childish notions of one who's hand isn't too short to save... maybe, somehow.
-------
"Hard to Get" written by Rich Mullins just before he died, covered by Rich Stacey http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp7BOiT0L5o
"Can't Live a Day Without You" by Avalon http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_DVlb3Knf8&feature=related