On Faith, part II.
... Since no doubt you've been eagerly awaiting.
Of course I don’t intend to change your beliefs through this; I’m not that articulate. (I wish.) But anyway, here is what I believe, and why, kind of, and there’s so much more and I didn’t even start talking about the science or ‘proof’ of it all but I will later, maybe, and now it’s your turn.
But here goes.
So many people write off Christianity because it’s a “feel-good” religion; it’s something for the weak, something to make people’s lives easier. I hate hearing that because, quite simply, it is in no way true. You wouldn’t necessarily get that from going to church and listening to what a specific pastor had to say, and you definitely wouldn’t get that from talking to most Christians, either – it has become far, far too easy for us. Instead of martyrdom and persecution we have IXOYE license plate frames, “Christian Message” apparel and The Prayer of Jabez in every single airport and checkout stand in the country. It’s become sickeningly mindless for us – and I include myself in this, of course – to be complacent and lukewarm and that, God tells us, is anathema to him. But it’s so convenient, so easy, and I have to study/go shopping/do my own things, and I don’t have time to be perfect, or to try, and anyway I’m a good person, mostly. God loves me, God loves you, and there you go, I’m doing my part.
A few weeks ago, for instance, with the advent of the Christmas season, I began to look around and realize what I have: two car, two homes, a pending college degree, all the food and clothing and luxury items I could ever possibly want, and I felt guilty. This was not, I imagined, what God had in mind for me when there were others who actually needed basic things that my poorly-spent money could buy instead, so I thought, okay. I went to Trader Joe’s and bought lunch and juice for a homeless woman standing on the street corner; I bought toys for toy drives; I donated twenty percent of my bank account to the Red Cross; when they asked, I told Jesse and my friends what I wanted for Christmas was for them to make charitable donations for me. And I felt good about it; I thought, okay, God, that’s what you wanted, right? I thought, good, I’m practicing what I preach.
No wonder people think Christianity is easy.
But a little while after that, God grabbed me, basically, and said, No. That is not what I wanted. And I went and read the parables, and Jesus’ teaching on money, and I was blindsided by how drastically I didn’t come even close to measuring up to what he wanted: “Sell all your possessions and give what you have to the poor and come, follow me,” and it suddenly occurred to me how very far I am from what he wants and, what’s worse, I’ve somehow convinced myself that that’s not the case and that I’m doing okay, and that in fact despite knowing how Christ and his disciples lived that somewhere along the way I decided it was okay, right even, for me to have my little iPod and my mid-range car and my apartment in San Diego, plus my home here and my car here, and all the little other things I have, earrings and scrapbook stuff and cooking tools, while there are people who have no food or shelter or clothing. I don’t know when the hell along the way I decided this was a good idea or anything but a total, utter profanity of God’s design. Seeing who I was like that I felt sick and ashamed and wholly disgusted with myself.
It’s easy, when you grow up in church, to take that kind of thing – “Give all you have” – as a suggestion, or overcontextualize and say, no, it was only for that one specific rich man he was talking to. But I don’t think so – I think we are supposed to give everything, because that’s how Jesus and the disciples lived. And of course that’s scary and then I’d have nothing but I think that is also somewhat the point: to lose what I have and find everything, instead, in him. and also to trust that he will provide what I actually need instead of relying on myself. Letting go, I suppose. And also to give up the things I want, and maybe in the end I’ll realize I didn’t even want them all that badly anyway, that they were just things, merely “Rubbish compared to the all-surpassing greatness of knowing Christ” – but it’s very difficult to accept that now. I want to get married, I want to buy a home, I still have to pay for tuition. I don’t think I can “afford,” per se, to give everything up. And that’s the whole fucking point, that there can’t be anything but God, not even family or friends or even life that I cling to over him, and I cannot do it. It is so easy to hate myself. I read the verses and let them sink in and immediately – sometimes even simultaneously – I whore myself out to my modern-day idols: time constraints, my own agenda, things I want, worry.
And that’s just the money. There is so much else we are commanded to do: love, for instance, in the face of everything else. It’s become somewhat trite with time, but Jesus loved the men who killed him; he did not fuck around with concepts like that, and yet I have a difficult time sometimes loving the people I live near or go to class with or who cut me off on the stupid San Diego freeways. And there is no room for that in Christianity; love is not an option. It is a way of life, a condition of the heart, a choice I am instructed to make every minute of every day. This is not easy for me. It was never meant to be easy, and Jesus never pretended this (he warned, instead, of the horrible deaths and torture and sacrifices that would befall his followers; I’m not sure how the whole Thomas Kinkaide Christianity movement that it is today sprung from that). And each time I read the Bible there are so many things I am not doing that I should be, or things I am doing that I shouldn’t, and while it’s very easy to sort of let those slide, and not think of them, and picture Jesus with a huge Aryan smile and a little while lamb in his arms, welcoming and accepting me anyway, that is not Christianity the way he intends it; that is my own sinful nature trying, as always, to get what I want. That is me missing the entire point.
By nature I am very Catholic: I understand the concepts of penance and purgatory, of justice and punishment and “deserving.” Each day when I let myself think about it I am struck by how badly, even in such a short time, I have failed. And I want to earn my way back into God’s good graces, somehow – I want to be good enough, perfect enough, contrite enough that I can feel I legitimately deserve his mercy.
It took me a long time to realize that that's just pride: believing that somehow I can be good enough. Holy enough. When it occurs to me how deeply, and how daily, I sin, it fills me with this sick and guilty sense of shame and it would be so much easier if I could rid myself of that alone, on my own power and on my own terms. It is so scary sometimes to realize that I will never be good enough to earn God’s salvation, that I am not, in fact, a good person and will never be despite how hard I try. And it is even scarier to realize that I am the reason he endured being mercilessly taunted and beaten and killed, naked and humiliated, without any scrap of dignity. I couldn’t handle watching The Passion of the Christ; I can never watch movies with that kind of suffering, actually, but even though I don’t watch, I am responsible for that kind of suffering and every fucking time I sin I throw what Christ did back in his face. It’s become fashionable to make light of sin, I think, and even glorify it a little, but imagining what it cost makes it seem so sick, not cute or in any way romantic, but depraved. That is why I do not believe I am making this up, or believing blindly – it is not something I wish to believe, nor is it the way I would have interpreted the world if, given the choice, I could have.
(There are also many scientific and logical reasons I believe in God, but that will be for another time.)
But that too is where the beauty comes in, where I have reached the bottom and relearn that that is precisely why God’s gift is just that – a gift – something I could never afford on my own. My favorite verse is from Corinthians, and it says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” It is so beautiful, so inexplicable to me that in spite how often and how grossly and how sickeningly I make the same mistakes, how worthless I am, how quickly I shatter and how often God should want to just squish me so I stop screwing up, instead he chose to do the most illogical, most ridiculous thing in the world: love me anyway, and more than that, forgive me, no strings attached. That does not make sense to me when I stop to think about it – which, growing up in church, you sometimes don’t end up doing for years after you thought you understood it – because it is something so entirely unhuman, so … absurd. It does not fit my concept of justice. And yet God has had this wild, passionate love affair with humans since he created them, with more ups and downs and heartbreaks and disappointments than I can even conceive of, and in the end he broke every single rule imaginable and gave up everything to come live with us and save us, in an entirely unglamorous way. And, wow, that blows my mind, and a part of me feels so odd about it because it doesn’t make sense, but at the same time it is so beautiful that such an act so far outside our comprehension could occur. It is incredible that something so sacred and so holy, that a name you couldn’t even write, could come to us in the form of a … baby.
(The absurdity of it, too, suggests legitimacy to me. Why would a Jewish nation locked in a political power struggle create such a laughable, gentle, Messiah? Why not a political ruler or powerful king? They expected someone who would deliver them physically, and instead they got this crying bloody poopy baby born to a thirteen-year-old unmarried girl, one of the poorer, trailer-trashy members of society, who would later grow up to tell them not to hate their enemies, who would defend the women in their society and who would basically throw their patriarchies and hierarchies and social conventions out the window and preach the most radical message they’d ever heard – and not only that but this baby-turned-odd-man claimed to be God. This is not, I believe, something any self-respecting citizen would make up, because it’s just so … weird.)
Still, though, it’s so scary for me sometimes to try to accept this, for so many reasons – I’m afraid that God will change his mind and realize how worthless I am; I’m afraid that I’m wrong; I’m afraid that all the persecution that for now is conveniently overseas will touch me and that I’ll crumble and not be able to withstand it. But in those things God reveals himself to me, sometimes blatantly, because I’m often rather dense, sometimes subtly – in music at times, in the beauty of the simplest things in nature, in others; sometimes through really specific and almost audible instructions or promises or provisions. (Though not yet, however, in potato chips, Bry, but I’ll let you know if that one ever happens.)
And this gives me hope – because even though I’m never good enough, and even though through my own power I can never achieve perfection or satisfaction, I don’t have to. I don’t have to find meaning in the world or in other people, which is good, because I don’t think I ever will, or that anyone, really, ever can. Humans are all the same, all depraved, for the most part, so instead I will turn my sights to the only thing left in this world that is not. And maybe this is ‘easy,’ in the sense that it’s pretty convenient and works out well, but whatever. It’s not at all easy. It’s a daily process, one of submission and obedience, and one at which I am truly horrible, one I can’t perform on my own, and one that is so opposite my nature and so amazingly difficult for me that I am convinced it is not my own heart working in me, or my own ‘desires’ or just deluding myself into believing what I want (because this, believe me, is not how I design things, and I suppose that’s good), but Christ in me. And this, I believe, is the point: that when I stop fighting and trying to do things on my own and interpret the world through my own lenses, when I give everything I have to God, when it hurts me to do so and yet I do it anyway, when I submit everything and learn to obey – then I will experience a joy and a peace that is so completely not within my own power to feel. This is my pact with Christ and my only offering to atone for my sins, my only way to thank him for dying so brutally so that I didn’t have to. And this is the great mystery, the sacred romance, the incomprehensible story of grace. And it is so beautiful to me.
Of course I don’t intend to change your beliefs through this; I’m not that articulate. (I wish.) But anyway, here is what I believe, and why, kind of, and there’s so much more and I didn’t even start talking about the science or ‘proof’ of it all but I will later, maybe, and now it’s your turn.
But here goes.
So many people write off Christianity because it’s a “feel-good” religion; it’s something for the weak, something to make people’s lives easier. I hate hearing that because, quite simply, it is in no way true. You wouldn’t necessarily get that from going to church and listening to what a specific pastor had to say, and you definitely wouldn’t get that from talking to most Christians, either – it has become far, far too easy for us. Instead of martyrdom and persecution we have IXOYE license plate frames, “Christian Message” apparel and The Prayer of Jabez in every single airport and checkout stand in the country. It’s become sickeningly mindless for us – and I include myself in this, of course – to be complacent and lukewarm and that, God tells us, is anathema to him. But it’s so convenient, so easy, and I have to study/go shopping/do my own things, and I don’t have time to be perfect, or to try, and anyway I’m a good person, mostly. God loves me, God loves you, and there you go, I’m doing my part.
A few weeks ago, for instance, with the advent of the Christmas season, I began to look around and realize what I have: two car, two homes, a pending college degree, all the food and clothing and luxury items I could ever possibly want, and I felt guilty. This was not, I imagined, what God had in mind for me when there were others who actually needed basic things that my poorly-spent money could buy instead, so I thought, okay. I went to Trader Joe’s and bought lunch and juice for a homeless woman standing on the street corner; I bought toys for toy drives; I donated twenty percent of my bank account to the Red Cross; when they asked, I told Jesse and my friends what I wanted for Christmas was for them to make charitable donations for me. And I felt good about it; I thought, okay, God, that’s what you wanted, right? I thought, good, I’m practicing what I preach.
No wonder people think Christianity is easy.
But a little while after that, God grabbed me, basically, and said, No. That is not what I wanted. And I went and read the parables, and Jesus’ teaching on money, and I was blindsided by how drastically I didn’t come even close to measuring up to what he wanted: “Sell all your possessions and give what you have to the poor and come, follow me,” and it suddenly occurred to me how very far I am from what he wants and, what’s worse, I’ve somehow convinced myself that that’s not the case and that I’m doing okay, and that in fact despite knowing how Christ and his disciples lived that somewhere along the way I decided it was okay, right even, for me to have my little iPod and my mid-range car and my apartment in San Diego, plus my home here and my car here, and all the little other things I have, earrings and scrapbook stuff and cooking tools, while there are people who have no food or shelter or clothing. I don’t know when the hell along the way I decided this was a good idea or anything but a total, utter profanity of God’s design. Seeing who I was like that I felt sick and ashamed and wholly disgusted with myself.
It’s easy, when you grow up in church, to take that kind of thing – “Give all you have” – as a suggestion, or overcontextualize and say, no, it was only for that one specific rich man he was talking to. But I don’t think so – I think we are supposed to give everything, because that’s how Jesus and the disciples lived. And of course that’s scary and then I’d have nothing but I think that is also somewhat the point: to lose what I have and find everything, instead, in him. and also to trust that he will provide what I actually need instead of relying on myself. Letting go, I suppose. And also to give up the things I want, and maybe in the end I’ll realize I didn’t even want them all that badly anyway, that they were just things, merely “Rubbish compared to the all-surpassing greatness of knowing Christ” – but it’s very difficult to accept that now. I want to get married, I want to buy a home, I still have to pay for tuition. I don’t think I can “afford,” per se, to give everything up. And that’s the whole fucking point, that there can’t be anything but God, not even family or friends or even life that I cling to over him, and I cannot do it. It is so easy to hate myself. I read the verses and let them sink in and immediately – sometimes even simultaneously – I whore myself out to my modern-day idols: time constraints, my own agenda, things I want, worry.
And that’s just the money. There is so much else we are commanded to do: love, for instance, in the face of everything else. It’s become somewhat trite with time, but Jesus loved the men who killed him; he did not fuck around with concepts like that, and yet I have a difficult time sometimes loving the people I live near or go to class with or who cut me off on the stupid San Diego freeways. And there is no room for that in Christianity; love is not an option. It is a way of life, a condition of the heart, a choice I am instructed to make every minute of every day. This is not easy for me. It was never meant to be easy, and Jesus never pretended this (he warned, instead, of the horrible deaths and torture and sacrifices that would befall his followers; I’m not sure how the whole Thomas Kinkaide Christianity movement that it is today sprung from that). And each time I read the Bible there are so many things I am not doing that I should be, or things I am doing that I shouldn’t, and while it’s very easy to sort of let those slide, and not think of them, and picture Jesus with a huge Aryan smile and a little while lamb in his arms, welcoming and accepting me anyway, that is not Christianity the way he intends it; that is my own sinful nature trying, as always, to get what I want. That is me missing the entire point.
By nature I am very Catholic: I understand the concepts of penance and purgatory, of justice and punishment and “deserving.” Each day when I let myself think about it I am struck by how badly, even in such a short time, I have failed. And I want to earn my way back into God’s good graces, somehow – I want to be good enough, perfect enough, contrite enough that I can feel I legitimately deserve his mercy.
It took me a long time to realize that that's just pride: believing that somehow I can be good enough. Holy enough. When it occurs to me how deeply, and how daily, I sin, it fills me with this sick and guilty sense of shame and it would be so much easier if I could rid myself of that alone, on my own power and on my own terms. It is so scary sometimes to realize that I will never be good enough to earn God’s salvation, that I am not, in fact, a good person and will never be despite how hard I try. And it is even scarier to realize that I am the reason he endured being mercilessly taunted and beaten and killed, naked and humiliated, without any scrap of dignity. I couldn’t handle watching The Passion of the Christ; I can never watch movies with that kind of suffering, actually, but even though I don’t watch, I am responsible for that kind of suffering and every fucking time I sin I throw what Christ did back in his face. It’s become fashionable to make light of sin, I think, and even glorify it a little, but imagining what it cost makes it seem so sick, not cute or in any way romantic, but depraved. That is why I do not believe I am making this up, or believing blindly – it is not something I wish to believe, nor is it the way I would have interpreted the world if, given the choice, I could have.
(There are also many scientific and logical reasons I believe in God, but that will be for another time.)
But that too is where the beauty comes in, where I have reached the bottom and relearn that that is precisely why God’s gift is just that – a gift – something I could never afford on my own. My favorite verse is from Corinthians, and it says, “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.” It is so beautiful, so inexplicable to me that in spite how often and how grossly and how sickeningly I make the same mistakes, how worthless I am, how quickly I shatter and how often God should want to just squish me so I stop screwing up, instead he chose to do the most illogical, most ridiculous thing in the world: love me anyway, and more than that, forgive me, no strings attached. That does not make sense to me when I stop to think about it – which, growing up in church, you sometimes don’t end up doing for years after you thought you understood it – because it is something so entirely unhuman, so … absurd. It does not fit my concept of justice. And yet God has had this wild, passionate love affair with humans since he created them, with more ups and downs and heartbreaks and disappointments than I can even conceive of, and in the end he broke every single rule imaginable and gave up everything to come live with us and save us, in an entirely unglamorous way. And, wow, that blows my mind, and a part of me feels so odd about it because it doesn’t make sense, but at the same time it is so beautiful that such an act so far outside our comprehension could occur. It is incredible that something so sacred and so holy, that a name you couldn’t even write, could come to us in the form of a … baby.
(The absurdity of it, too, suggests legitimacy to me. Why would a Jewish nation locked in a political power struggle create such a laughable, gentle, Messiah? Why not a political ruler or powerful king? They expected someone who would deliver them physically, and instead they got this crying bloody poopy baby born to a thirteen-year-old unmarried girl, one of the poorer, trailer-trashy members of society, who would later grow up to tell them not to hate their enemies, who would defend the women in their society and who would basically throw their patriarchies and hierarchies and social conventions out the window and preach the most radical message they’d ever heard – and not only that but this baby-turned-odd-man claimed to be God. This is not, I believe, something any self-respecting citizen would make up, because it’s just so … weird.)
Still, though, it’s so scary for me sometimes to try to accept this, for so many reasons – I’m afraid that God will change his mind and realize how worthless I am; I’m afraid that I’m wrong; I’m afraid that all the persecution that for now is conveniently overseas will touch me and that I’ll crumble and not be able to withstand it. But in those things God reveals himself to me, sometimes blatantly, because I’m often rather dense, sometimes subtly – in music at times, in the beauty of the simplest things in nature, in others; sometimes through really specific and almost audible instructions or promises or provisions. (Though not yet, however, in potato chips, Bry, but I’ll let you know if that one ever happens.)
And this gives me hope – because even though I’m never good enough, and even though through my own power I can never achieve perfection or satisfaction, I don’t have to. I don’t have to find meaning in the world or in other people, which is good, because I don’t think I ever will, or that anyone, really, ever can. Humans are all the same, all depraved, for the most part, so instead I will turn my sights to the only thing left in this world that is not. And maybe this is ‘easy,’ in the sense that it’s pretty convenient and works out well, but whatever. It’s not at all easy. It’s a daily process, one of submission and obedience, and one at which I am truly horrible, one I can’t perform on my own, and one that is so opposite my nature and so amazingly difficult for me that I am convinced it is not my own heart working in me, or my own ‘desires’ or just deluding myself into believing what I want (because this, believe me, is not how I design things, and I suppose that’s good), but Christ in me. And this, I believe, is the point: that when I stop fighting and trying to do things on my own and interpret the world through my own lenses, when I give everything I have to God, when it hurts me to do so and yet I do it anyway, when I submit everything and learn to obey – then I will experience a joy and a peace that is so completely not within my own power to feel. This is my pact with Christ and my only offering to atone for my sins, my only way to thank him for dying so brutally so that I didn’t have to. And this is the great mystery, the sacred romance, the incomprehensible story of grace. And it is so beautiful to me.
posted by Kelly at
7:03 PM
|
4 comments
