I have been on a journey for many years. Maybe my whole life. For as long as I can remember I have desired to know God. Maybe it was because of the family I was raised in, a good, God-loving family in a evangelical church. My dad was basically a pastor, even if he wasn't officially one for most of my childhood. My mother's family has a long tradition of protestant christian service: all of my aunts and uncles are in some form of ministry. I went to a Christian college and studied to become a pastor. I spent over a year of my life overseas on mission trips. And through it all there has been one goal: to know God.
There are parts of me that are almost certainly a product of my family. Would I even be a Christian today had my family not started me in that belief system? We also have a long tradition of camping (the summer camp kind of camping, but also just tent camping) on both sides of my family. Without any intention of getting here, I find myself working at a camp now as my career. There are also certainly parts of me that are a product of my culture. I am very individualistic. I strive to be happy, comfortable and free. I tend to see the world in very concrete terms. So much so that even my spirituality has been a struggle at times, even if I couldn't ignore it in the end. And there are parts of me that come from my religious heritage, a evangelical protestant church. I love to define God and all that is spiritual. I have a strong commitment to the scriptures and a conviction that the Spirit will lead us all into the Truth. I know that I am saved through faith alone, by grace alone through Christ alone.
I know that my readers will read those traits and think of all of them positively. They are some of the things that are central to being a Maki, being an American, being a Christian. But my view of many of those things is changing, has been changing for a long time. I don't think I would disagree with any of them yet, but what I mean when I say them doesn't mean the same thing that my protestant friends and family mean anymore. I know this because as I've tried to explain some of the things I've been thinking to them, I get nods of agreement to things they shouldn't be agreeing to and warnings of doom for things they do not understand. It is my hope, through this blog that I will clarify some of these things, if only for myself.
For lack of any ideas on where else to start, I will start with the thing that has been nagging at me for pretty much forever. Well, maybe not forever. But for at least as long as I've been learning Christian theology. I believe that was the starting point because at that point I started having to wrestle with the Truth of Scripture, as it was taught by my church. While I don't remember voicing it very often, there seemed to be a gap between what we wanted to believe about God and what our theology actually stated about God. What I mean by that is that I was always taught that God is Love. That's a verse right out of scripture and I don't know any Christians of any flavor that would disagree with it (though I imagine that they exist). What I learned in theology though, didn't seem like God was Love. It usually sounds like this: "God is Love, but he is also Just". Which I guess is technically true, but isn't from a Bible verse. And the rest of scripture was very difficult to understand in light of a loving God as well. The God that was taught to me through my church's interpretation of the scripture wanted to be loving, but was held back by his sense of Honor. His devotion to justice is more powerful than his devotion to Love. And ultimately what God really wants to be is to be recognized as the greatest, the biggest, the best. And so he chose favorites, destroyed civilizations and threatened doom upon anyone who would threaten his Glory--all the while really really wanting to love us. Fortuantly he had a plan that would meet his Justice and it involved sacrificing his son. Which, don't get me wrong, is a very loving thing to do. But he only had to do it in order to satisfy the demands of his own pride, which seems strange since his own Son taught us to get rid of all our pride. In fact what Scripture teaches us about Love, and it does so quite explicitly, can't be applied to the Father. The Father does not love self-sacrificially. He only loves conditionally, as defined by his Justice. And to make it worse, the only one he's willing to sacrifice is his own son.
Ok, I'm characterizing a little bit. Please trust me when I say I know all the answers to these lines of thought. God is the only being in the universe for whom pride and Glory are ok for because he is the ultimate being, the creator of all. That kind of makes sense to me I suppose. His justice is important. A lovey-dovey god who just lets us walk all over him would be impotent and embarassing. I agree. Sacrificing your son is a kind of self-sacrifice. Well, I suppose so. In any case, I get it. I'm trained to be a pastor, remember? But it just never set right with me.
And that's where everyone is going to jump all over me. "It just doesn't seem right?" they'll ask. "You can't base your beliefs about God on what you feel," they'll smirk. But what else am I to do? I know quite rationally that things I think quite rational now are the very things I thought quite irrational not that long ago. So I can't trust my rationality. "Faith", they'll say. But faith in what? Why would I place my faith in something I just can't quite want to believe is true? Would that even be true faith? Maybe that gut feeling I have that God must be better than that, that ticking in my conscience that the universe just cannot work that way, that intuition that there is something I'm missing, maybe that's the Holy Spirit? Can anyone really say otherwise? And why should I not want there to be something better? What if salvation were something so much more than just going to Heaven? What if God really does love everyone--and not just love as in have good feeling towards, but actively and successfully pursuing their benefit? What if being a Christian actually played out the way we say it does? What if it actually played out better?
Never fear though. The gut feeling has motivated me, driven me in my search for the Truth, but it has not always sent me down the right path. It has pushed me, but I have had to use my reason and a sense of humility to make any progress (and the humility does not come easily). I hope to continue this blog with more reasoned arguments. But you should know the thing that started it all. A deep-in-my-gut feeling that something just isn't right.