| | Playing: Metallica - Tuesday's Gone (Lynard Skynard Cover); Pearl Jam - Love Reign O'er Me (The Who Cover)
Update: I have not updated this thing in a truly long time, I haven't even really written anything in a truly long time. I kinda miss that, and I plan to get back into it. Consider it a New Year's Resolution of sorts.
I've been wrestling with my faith lately. For a long time I had completely fallen away from it. It wasn't until seeing how much that the lack of it affected those that I am close to did I even consider looking back. This was because frankly, things were going OK. I had some problems with relationships, but then again I had those same problems even when I had my faith completely intact. Or at least as intact as its ever been. Then things actually started to get better, things were going pretty good. Relationships started to improve, and I even started to form new ones. I was feeling happy. And I mean actually FEELING happy. Not the sort of numb, non-emotional, I should be happy so I'll look happy kind of thing that usually occurs with me and my emotionally fucked up self.
Anywho, I saw from a few examples, mainly two really close friends that my lack of faith was hurting them, and saw how much I had truly impacted them through who I was and through my convictions and insights that came from within that faith. That hurt. Broke my heart to see that I did that to those that I love. The second breaking point was when I looked around at the suffering within this world and it no longer made me feel sick to my stomach. The compassion that drove me before and the empathy of the suffering of those around me was gone. I had become numb to the human condition of simply existing. In my state of "happiness" I had simply become content. I didn't seek anything, I wasn't reaching toward anything. I was stuck, and realizing that drove me nuts. I felt trapped, worthless and disappointed that I could have ever let myself get there.
So, I started to look back at what changed, what happened to cause me to turn away in the first place. The strange thing is that it wasn't so much a conscious choice to turn away from faith, it just kind of happened because I stopped placing a high priority on it. It became secondary. Less than secondary, almost tertiary or lower in the priority list. Then, after pushing it onto the back burner, I just let other things in life dominate my focus, and I stopped reading the theology books, other Christian or religious writing, stopped going to church, stopped praying and eventually stopped thinking about God in general. Sometime in there, I did think about God and decided that if I was doing so much better now without Him than I was with Him then there really wasn't a point in it at all and I chose to turn away. I became literally faithless....didn't believe in anything but didn't really believe in nothing either. I think it was this choice that really hurt those around me. And still at this point in time I hadn't noticed. I'm sure that if I had paid the slightest bit of attention I would have.
Recently I've had some things happen both due to choices that I've made and unforeseen circumstances that have disrupted my life in a fairly substantial way, and while its not the end of the world. It jolted me. So I turned to those that I love for support. In talking with them, I learned just how much has changed within myself.
So, now I want to go back, I'm not entirely sure how to go about doing that however. I seem to have forgotten so much.
Thinking now about possible reasons why I "felt" so much better when I wasn't interacting with my faith on a regular basis was probably because I didn't have the crippling guilt that has always plagued me. Guilt over my own inadequacies. Guilt over the pain and suffering in this world and how I could do so much more to help. Guilt over choices that I've made knowing them to be wrong and doing them anyway.The guilt made me feel miserable. But it also pushed me to do better, to do more. It pushed me to improve myself. To try to improve the world around me. And while doing this I realize that I in turn pushed others to do better themselves. I don't want to come back to faith only to be burned again by people who are a better reflection of American Elitism than of Christ's humility. I don't want to come back to have a feel good experience and feel all warm and fuzzy inside. I want to come back to faith to be challenged by others in Christ who want to see me push myself. I want to have someone teach me who knows more than me in theological aspects and who is also willing to be pushed back and continue to grow themselves. Sadly, this is probably asking too much out of our postmodern American watered down Christianity but dammit I'm going to try!
And that's about the best I can do right now. Oh, and start praying again. Gotta work on that more. |
| | Posted 4/19/2009 2:47 PM - 12 Views - 2 eProps - 1 Comment
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Come to Blacksoil!
