this may come as a far cry from both my last posts regarding this subject and my general outlook on things, but i don't believe it is unhealthy to express doubt or have doubts themselves. i don't want these doubts nesting in my hair, though.
i've been thinking very much lately about how the lack of necessity of spirituality in others people's lives impacts its necessity and benefit in my own.
i have truly experienced such freedom in my own life from what i believe to be unconditional love. in my own life, i feel that growing up, i had very poor representations of love. a father who really shouldn't have been a parent, a foster mother that probably needed to do some healing of her own. it's a math equation: people who are emotionally, relationally and spiritually thirsty (they all go hand in hand) raise children who are the same.
i was just about to compare myself and my story to those around me who have had what it seems the opposite to me, but no division needs to be made. we've all had weird things happen in our lives and things that are missing which should be there, even if everything seems okay.
what i'm getting at is, in my own life there has been a very vivid need for god - for unconditional love. for something that brings me freedom.
rob bell says "often freedom is seen as the ability to do whatever you want. but freedom isn't being able to have whatever we crave. freedom is going without whatever we crave and being fine with it."
having become a christian in the past few years, i have seen myself grow and change so so much and i thank god for it. having established that it's my (foster) parents now, david and laura, who have greatly shaped who i am, and who have truly shown me unconditional love, i am (not for the first time) considering
if a) why i need god to show me love if my it's my parents who have done it
and b) i ca n 't f inis h typ i ng t h is
as i type a litle bit, read it and then erase it, i'm answering all of my questions in my head. if i were having a conversation in real life, whoever i would've been talking to would've heard all of my started-but-never-finished-sentences. ah, the beauty of writing. (and typing.)
one of the hallmarks of puting your faith in god and christ is that of the believer becoming childlike.
i come to these places sometimes, where i want the answers to everything, at all times, the second i ask them. technology shows us how obsessed we are with getting knowledge. wikipedia. i will wikipedia anything i'm curious about, read about it, and then be satisfied.
i tried to read the wikipedia article about unconditional love today, and it made me feel confused.
haha - this is not going to be a very satisfying entry, i'm afraid. i wish i could write all of the things i think about this freedom but it just doesn't do it justice. to write about it, at least in the form of a blog post, is to intellectualize it. it's just words on a screen. you can't intellectualize something that is, in its very essence, something metaphysical and not empirical.
the reasoning for all of this is one of the things about becoming christian, as you may have all noticed, is that thing we call sharing our faith. evangelizing. that word has a lot of weight, to me. like anything, if done just for the sake of itself, it can become mindless and damaging. but not many things are inherently wrong. (ie. sex.)
it's pretty much comparable to anyone who's found a really good brand of, say, cream cheese, and absolutely loving it, and wanting to share it with people around them.
"hey, have you tried this cream cheese? it's so tasty! i love putting it on twelve-grain bagels."
that's pretty much what christians are doing when they go on about god. i guess they tend to do it more than people of other reliigons and sets of beliefs.
what i've found myself lately doing, is talking about god so much and getting myself into intellectual discussions about god and the need for god, and the need to worship and blah blah blah, that i'm losing sight of it. it's true that everyone needs to find it on their own, and in their own way.
i had this conversation with a bunch of my friends the other day and my friend was expressing that he just doesn't see a need for god. this makes sense. he's a very rational person. a very passionate, but rational person. i hope this doesn't sound judgmental at all, but from my point of view, for him a need for god hasn't been awakened yet. i'm trying to make sense of how someone can learn everything about god and see that it is good and still not choose to follow it themselves, to dive in.
i'm thinking, and in my head, there are a few things that people struggle with that show a deeper yearning:
-questions about purpose, ie. why i am alive? what is the purpose of my life? what am i going to end up doing vocationally?
-questions about self-esteem, ie. am i lovable? if he stopped having sex with me would he still like me?, if she really knew me would she like me?
even questions about the world as a whole, the bigger picture, philosophical questions and not just personal things that we think about.
to hyper-intellectualize it, i guess if no one has ever needed to ask these questions, then of course a need for god wouldn't arise. if someone has been given pretty much everything they need, and they had good parents and a good upbringing, and they are relatively happy, then a need for god wouldn't arise. is that too logical? i'm trying to understand other people and therefore accept them i think.
what i want to do is challenge people. and if someone is humble enough to acknowledge that they are asking these questions, show them the freedom i have found.
