I’ve been waiting for a while now. Waiting for truth to fracture my concept of faith. Waiting for God to show himself. I didn’t seek answers, I just waited. I didn’t want to delude myself as so many do, but I didn’t want to loose myself ether. Ultimately, I was afraid I was condemned to live the remainder of this momentary existence as a confused, unanchored cell.
I thought seriously about the efficiency of lying to myself. Allowing myself to rest in blissful ignorance. Everyone else seems to. They seem ok. But part of me knew I never could. I was like Truman standing on the edge of the horizon while my subconscious gentility reasoned me into turning back. But how? I now saw it for what it was, fake. Or at least most of it. Regardless, delusion wasn’t an option.
I considered turning away from my faith. I’d rather live in a real world I deeply disliked than a world I knew to be false. So long as that real world was honest with me.
I had resolved however, to wait. Wait for God to show himself. Or wait for the God I knew as a child slowly decompose into the cold earth. The earth of reason and honesty. A world devoid of infinite love. A world of fact and the occasional false warmth of human connection. A world where God was a nice idea for the undiscerning.
I wish I could rely on the popular cliche and say “something deep in me knew there was a god.” But instead, all I found was deep dissonance. An unsayable absence. Truthfully, a bit of fear.
Was I becoming too comfortable in the world? Was my small brain becoming lost in the noise? Was I not reading the Bible enough? Was I the only one seeing this?
At the beginning of September, my lovely friend Destiny and her fiance James came to Minneapolis to visit me. Both raised in the faith. Both fluent in “Christianese”. Late one night, after the house was asleep, James and I got to talking about our faith.
I remember at some point in the conversation saying, “This is crazy, what we believe is crazy.” I was fully anticipating a look of surprise, or maybe some subtle reassurance of God’s existence. But instead I saw a look of deep understanding. We talked for hours that night regarding our doubts and fears. This was no longer my battle.
I tried talking with other christian friends about this doubt I was having. Meanwhile reassuring them and myself with “I’m not saying I don’t believe, but…” I would watch as they internally defended their faith against these blasphemous ideas.
One of the few people who truly seemed to understand was my youth pastor Brian. After a long chat, he recommended I check out the work of Science Mike, a writer and podcaster. After listening to Mike for a few episodes, I began to feel as though my wait was drawing to an end. And it wasn’t God raining fire down from heaven or speaking through the clouds. It was much more nuanced than that.
It was simply the revelation that God isn’t beholden to a church, a book, or theology. That instead, all these things are simply flawed expressions and interpretations what is simply infinite love and intelligence. The God worshiped in church, prayed to for centuries and talked about in the Bible, is again, just a human construct of something infinite.
Let me be clear, in no way were my questions answered. Instead, I was simply allowed to ask them. Ask them of God, myself and the world. I was allowed to find the flaws in theology, the church and even the Bible without offending or disproving God.
I don’t anticipate finding answers to these deep questions I still have. Instead, simply to ask better questions and expect of God and myself to reply honestly.
