Snapshots of Belief

I seem to have multiple focus disorder. If my brain were a series of snapshots, it would look like this:

The sun is just setting behind the mountains out my front door. It strikes me with it's majestic beauty. Surely that's not an accident?

There's a fight being waged in the U.S. A fight between conservatives and liberals - or so they say. Anymore, I really don't care. Something in me wants to distance myself as far away from politics as possible. Please please please don't get God involved in this, I think. Don't dirty his name with your petty money and agendas.

I'm playing this song in the background:
There are tears from the saints
For the lost and unsaved
We’re crying for them come back home
We’re crying for them come back home
And all your children will stretch out their hands
And pick up the crippled man
Father, we will lead them home
Father, we will lead them home

Sometimes I read Paul and anymore I get more frustrated with him than anything. I can't handle condemnation at this point. I have a problem with judgment, with hell. I tell myself that this is something I have to come to grips with - somehow. I'm not always sure how. I see people as victims for the most part. Victims of things that have happened to them. I suppose I have a problem with responsibility. I feel there are 2 sides to these stories. I'm taken back to Vic Lit and our talks about MacDonald and Universalism. I can see it's appeal now.

In Japan, there's very little positive Christian feedback. Mostly it's criticism. I hear criticism of everything from American Republicans to the rapture to whatever else happens to be on the plate for sarcasm that day. It's not that any of this is directed at me, but it affects me nonetheless. People's opinions have ALWAYS affected me. I've decided I'm too egalitarian with regard to ideas. It's like I think they're all equal. Even in my own church, I sometimes feel the need to filter the things I hear, filter them through my education, through my own beliefs about church and the way Christians behave. I'm sick of hearing about politics in church.

The lens refocuses - there's too much. I'm a little girl with a hymn book; my favorite song is "Trust and Obey." I also have an affinity for "It is Well With My soul." Strange songs for a little girl to like. But I questioned back then too - all the time. Mommy, why does it say "Let there be light before God created the sun?" It didn't seem to compute, until I realized that he is God. It's not hard for the Father of light to shed it before there's a ball of fire to do it for him.

I ask myself, why, why, why.

Because I want to believe that there's more to life than getting my PhD, publishing novels, and driving a nice car. I want to believe that the people who have been pressed down, kicked, beaten will someday get their recompense, that someday the tables will change. I want to believe that the cosmic beauty of the earth isn't accidental. I want to believe in mystery, beauty, truth, moral transcendence. I want to believe that we are each precious in our own way, apart from some hippie individualism. I want Jesus to be more than a "nice man." I want to believe that what I do matters, that the last will be first, that people can change. I want to believe in the resurrection of relationships, futures, lives. I want to believe in hope. I want love to triumph.

And so I try to sift through it all, the filthy, philosophical, individualistic debris of postmodernism, the plastic faces we don to keep everyone else in the dark. How are you? I'm fine. We're all fine. We're all PERFECTLY fine. We don't NEED anything. Religious expression is a pathetic relic of the past, supposedly. We're too self-sufficient. It's disgusting. I hate it, but I deal with this belief on a daily basis. To "help" me is the sad truth of the religious institutions of my homeland:

There are schools full of hatred
Even churches have forsaken
Love and mercy
May we see this generation
In its state of desperation
For Your glory
This is an emergency!

The songwriter is right in saying so. God save us. I hope He is what he says He is. No other deity could triumph at this point.