Sunday, May 9, 2010

Snapshots of Belief, part II

I have been asked recently how Japan has affected/changed my views in regard to Christianity; I find it a really difficult question to answer, but I think I can formulate a small sliver of what is happening.

Really Japan itself has had very little affect on my Christianity. Rather it is the isolation from my family and friends and from a regular church that has affected me. The thing is, I have never been completely secure in my faith. I’ve struggled with belief for as long as I can remember. The only thing that has changed is that now that I’m older I don’t make so much of that struggle anymore. I used to lose sleep over the question of God and now… I’m more apathetic. This is a blessing and a curse simultaneously. It’s a blessing because I realized that God wasn’t going to reject me for doubt. It is a curse because I know part of this tendency is pure laziness and distraction. I’m often more interested in getting caught up on my favorite TV show than examining my beliefs.

However, I have to say that I think I’m going through a change – it may be a change I’ve gone through before, but sometimes it takes several times.  I have posited myself (to myself and others) as someone who was seeking “the truth.” This is why I sometimes doubted Christianity – because I didn’t want to accept in without scrutinizing it first. I told someone the other day that I wasn’t the type of person to accept Christianity simply because I was born into a Christian family. As I was driving home from this encounter. I thought about what I had said. And I realized – I’ve never looked into other religions or other beliefs for the sake of discovering whether they were true. And I have no desire to, unless it would be to satisfy that requirement on my quest for “truth.” This fact really bothered me at first. How can I say I am attempting to find the truth if I’ve never looked anywhere else. For a moment I pondered what my life would be like if I devoted myself to studying the religions/belief systems of the world searching for the right one. It would change my life. I would be a different person. It would also be exhausting, and, I’m afraid, very confusing

And then I realized, I don’t want anything else to be true. I want THIS.
I want the epic-ness of Israel’s history with Israel’s God. I want the humbleness of Jesus’ birth. I want his simple, earth-shattering, shocking 3 year ministry. I want the fact of his death. I want a ripped curtain between God and me. I want the beauty of Sunday morning, the reality of a religion absolutely characterized by a resurrection of overwhelming life.

“The thief comes in to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

I want THAT. And THAT is why I’ve never searched other religions. Because I want what I already have.

This is not to say that certain things about Christianity don’t drive me crazy, and I struggle to understand them. It doesn’t help that I’m generally disappointed in my fellow Christians. (Needless to say, they are probably disappointed in ME.) But the Jesus of Peter’s triple denial, of Thomas’ doubt, of Judas’ betrayal, would appear to be in the business of accepting people who had a habit of letting him down. Jesus has never been into pre-screening potential Christians no matter what WE may do with our fancy powerhouse churches.

I worry that this is just a cyclical thing. I doubt a lot and then I get tired and so I go back to faith. I realize that I’ve often approached Christianity with a desire to “prove” it – if not to others than to myself. I’ve also realized that this is absolutely ludicrous as far as the Christian message actually goes. There is no empirically proving these things. In fact, if one looks at Jesus life, death, and what’s left, one would feel that he was AGAINST leaving any empirical proof of who he was. I go back to about this same time 2 years ago when I was writing a paper for Dr. Charette on the Greek “doubt” that appears twice in Matthew. Jesus is walked on the water and Peter asks him if he can come to him. Jesus says come, but then once Peter gets out of the boat, “seeing the wind, he became frightened and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!” Jesus’ reply (after saving him) is “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

I realized then that Jesus was disappointed because Peter took his eyes off of him and looked at his circumstances. The way of faith in Christianity is shockingly similar. If you look at the state of the world, at the state of other Christians, at the profundity of opinion and belief, there is no way to take all of that in and stay secure in one’s faith. This is not to say that I am advocating clueless Christianity, on the contrary, that is what I believe is wrong with a lot of Christians. However, I have to learn to focus enough on the one I believe in, to stay true to him, and then I can look out and see what the world needs and how I need to be in response to that.

I don’t have all the answers. I never will. Somehow I have to learn to accept this. But I do hope to be the type of Christian that will do justice to the term.

John 10:10, Matthew 14:30-31