My Twitter profile gives me 150 characters to describe myself - a nearly impossible task. I sat down tonight to revise my self-description (it doesn't get much more naval-gaze-y than that), and I knew with everything in me that although there is no one with whom I would rather identify than Jesus Christ, I also would be dishonest to claim his Name in any confident way.
I described myself as "a stumbling Jesus-follower."
That's what I am - kicking and screaming, yes.
~~~
I drove to meet an acquaintance for dinner tonight. I have hung out with her and her husband all of one time. I barely know her. As I drove, I contemplated how I would go about describing myself to her. I was overcome by emotion, because I can never be what these people need me to be. Certainty, confidence, boldness, these are things not mine in all fullness.
I want those things so desperately, and they're no where to be found.
Kicking and screaming, I'm learning to embrace the ambiguity that has come to characterize my life.
~~~
I married an evangelical in the full sense of the word. A verse-memorizing, Bible-donating, small-group leading man who is pretty much a word-for-word description of who high school me wanted to marry. (Except that he can't sing.) Through my relationship with him, I have learned that my doubts do not automatically exclude me from the community of believers. If he can accept my questions, if he can marry my questions, maybe, just maybe, there's hope for me. Maybe I'm not as alone as the voices whisper to me on the darker nights. Maybe I'm not crazy.
~~~
I'll never belong in the South. The heat and humidity, the trees, the lack of topographical variance: all of this means that adjusting is extremely difficult. I fell in love with a place, and this place will never be that place.
In the same way, I'll never belong in evangelical Christianity, at least not the strain in which I currently find myself.
And no, I have no intentions of leaving my church. I wouldn't change where I am for all of the world. In this situation, I have found love - a love individuals show toward other individuals, and a love for God that is admirable and speaks of God's presence among us.
After all, God refuses to be labeled, He refuses to be boxed in. He just Is.
~~~
I don't know anymore. I don't know what on earth kind of church with what on earth kind of members and what on earth kind of leadership I was raised in. I cannot comprehend the situation in which my home church finds itself, ripped apart at the very seams, with seemingly nothing left. I have no blame for any of them, I have no opinion in the matter. But I cannot help but wonder.
Who were we following? What were we following? Or rather, who and what was I following? Taking apart the pieces of my childhood and upbringing, I find myself more confused than clear. I was taught that we believed All of the Correct Things.
Clearly we didn't.
No one does.
And if we didn't believe All of the Correct Things, was any of it correct?
What, anyway, is this obsession with belief?
These days, I'm equally pulled by theology and practice. Inertia keeps me from following both poles whole-heartedly, but I am equally disturbed by the amount of things that I have no earthly idea about and convinced that all of the correct opinions about all of the theology still means nothing without action.
And yet, I'd be foolish and naive to assume that belief does not inform action (and action likewise informs belief). If I believe, for example, I'm going to another place called Heaven when I die and that one day this earth will be destroyed, that will make a difference as to my approach to life. Sometimes my actions are informed by beliefs I don't even realize I have.
...and so it goes...
~~~
I'm following Jesus with everything I have, but I'm stumbling down this winding road. There's no intellectual or even emotional certainty for me, only a relationship with a God who has turned my world upside down. I love Him, but I know so little about Him. I love Him, but my service for Him is so weak and betrays the weakness of my love more often than it does its strength.
I'm a mess.
Gracious Lord, have mercy.
~~~
I have decided to follow Jesus,
I have decided to follow Jesus,
I have decided to follow Jesus,
No turning back,
No turning back.
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