Constant Evaluation

I have been writing this post for a week now, one sentence at a time. Some new things have come down the pike in my life and my time for things seems to come in short bursts.

Anyhow, I am constantly reevaluating my faith, defining new boundaries, and exploring new territory. This has been one of those weeks.

It began with a post at Free Believers Network...Do people consciously choose not to be free? This post challenged me in several ways. In part, because I found myself nodding my head. I know people, personally, who refuse to be free. They choose to chase traditional evangelicalism as if it will be their salvation simply by way of adherence. However, this post also gave me that still small voice, that check in my spirit. Why? Because of the level of anger expressed towards those who choose not to be free, literally, zero tolerance of people who reject it. One point really did make me think, though.

"When people decided not to get it, Jesus purposefully hid it all from their sight and made them even more blind than they were before they had encountered Him. He literally made them become stupid. He threw out stumbling blocks in front of them so they couldn’t receive it and believe it or not - Jesus took great PLEASURE in the fact that these people were blinded to it..."

Nate has returned to his blog for at least two posts, and his thoughts never fail to cause me to look deeply at some of my own perceptions. "Each person has to learn God in their own way", and "What happens when a person's belief structure collapses?" And then, is this always due to study, or sometimes tragedy?

"Those people that love to go to church, you know the ones I mean. The ones depicted by Dana Carvey as the church lady. They are understanding, "in THEIR own way." Those who just go in and don't rock the boat, those that are on fifty committees and are at church every day, to those that come when they feel like it only fifteen to twenty times a year, or maybe just Easter and Christmas. Those that go to church as in chat rooms and blogs. Those that will just meet with some friends on occasion and talk about God. That is "THEIR" understanding, and it is enough for them. Who am I to judge?"

"BUT, when those that are in earnest about their faith study, and find a different God staring up at them out of the pages of their bible, than the one being told about in church, their belief structure doesn't just crumble, it collapses. Crashing down on them, leaving them angry, bitter and in utter despair."

My response in the comments: "In my case, it wasn't so much study as it was always knowing the God who lived in me was not the God I was taught about. Then, finally, a life event that proved to me beyond any doubt that these people didn't practice what they preached...they were dead on hypocrites."

And Barry, who recently came out of the closet as an agnostic, and the ensuing conversation on his post has made me think. Does a lack of absolute certainty automatically make one an agnostic?

"It is simply not possible to prove that God is real. Of course, the flip-side is also true: it is also impossible to prove that there is no God."

"The next question, of course, is this: even assuming that there is a God or gods, what evidence is there that Christianity is right about who God is? Why not the Hindus, or the Zoroastrians, or the Wiccans, or the Deists…. You get the idea."

But then, does it depend how one defines "God"? My response in the comments was this: "But then, I wonder if absolute certainty is overrated? I mean if the belief in the existence of God (however we perceive that) makes our lives better and inspires us to do good in the world, then what have we lost if it turns out we were wrong? So we just vaporize off into nothingness when we die, but at that point, will we even care?"

It's always fascinating to me how a few seemingly unrelated posts will move me to some serious thought about my own existence in this faith. Yesterday, I found myself contemplating some of the things I still hold true from my Christian belief system, and I'll tell you there aren't many of those things left.

I love constantly being challenged to grow and learn. I'm hoping to write another post soon about what these three posts have caused me to reevaluate.