Christianity?

I am not a good Christian. In fact, I'm not sure I can even call myself a Christian anymore. I'm a God believer, and that's as far as I'm willing to go. Because to say I'm a Christian says I believe in Christ, that he was the son of God, sent to earth to save us from our sins. And that's where I stop and say, "What? Who sets up a system like this? Who creates a beautiful place, fills it with amazing creatures, adds humans, and then sits back and waits knowing they'll fail, and then according to this plan, need to be redeemed? What?"

My relationship with the bible is tenuous at best. The God of the bible isn't a God I want to know. That's blasphemous to say. I should be afraid. But I don't want a relationship with a God I need to be afraid of. If I can't question a document created by people to describe him without incurring his wrath, then he's not for me.

In the last few years I've come to feel like a relationship with the God of the bible is like an abusive relationship. We're supposed defer to him in all things, praise him, and then take whatever he hands out without question. Or maybe that's not the God of the bible and just what Christians say.

I've always thought God's existence is made obvious by everything around me. I don't believe the world was a happy accident, that everything lined up just perfectly and--bam!--the world came into being. I'm not saying there wasn't a big bang, just that someone or something lit the match. Even if you don't believe in God and do think this was all a happy accident, what came before? What are the origins of the universe? Where did all the matter come from?

I said in a previous post that I've been dismantling my religious beliefs piece by piece since Mark died. It's as though I'm sitting surrounded by bricks, each one representing something I used to believe, bricks with words written on them: God, The Bible, Christianity, The Trinity, Jesus, Heaven. The only bricks I've put back are the bricks labeled God and Heaven, but I've crossed out the word Heaven and written Afterlife. All the other bricks sit off to the side.

So I believe in a God of creation. And I believe we're trapped in space and time and there's something else out there, some kind of afterlife of energy where I'll see Mark again. If the God of creation is exactly the God of the bible, then so be it. If the afterlife is exactly the heaven as described in the bible, then so be that, too. If God set up the system as described in the bible, if Jesus is his son who came to redeem our sins, then I'm guessing God will reveal that truth to me. Truth is truth and can't be hidden.

Edited to add:
I wrote this post and then let it sit for a few days. The next Sunday in church my pastor called Jesus truth. "Truth walked the earth," he said. I picked up the Jesus brick.

Here's the thing: church has become a place of miracles for me. A couple months ago as I stood in the sanctuary singing the opening song, I prayed that God would show me a miracle, a really good, physical miracle. And then that day at the end of the service I had a conversation with a little girl who was brain damaged and put on hospice. A CONVERSATION! She complimented my jewelry. We high fived. She was supposed to be dead, and if not dead, certainly not able to communicate verbally.

On the way home from church that day I asked God for a second miracle. Yes, that first one was amazing, but I asked for more, oh me of little faith. I asked for it to involve a large animal and assumed a majestic buck would cross the road in front of me, stop and stare, and I'd know that was my miracle. But this is what happened. The next week at church there was a very large stuffed lion reclining on some fake rocks in a winter scene at the back of the stage. I came in late, so I have no idea why that lion was there. There was a lamp post next to the lion, so I assume it was a reference to C.S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia, but I really don't know. I didn't ask anyone because I was a little freaked out. There was a large animal in front of me!

I haven't asked for any more miracles, but it hasn't escaped me that the two I asked for were both delivered at church. And my pastor's words about Jesus, "Truth walked the earth," have been sitting on my heart. I have the Jesus brick in my hand, but I'm not ready to put it back yet. I've divided the Bible brick into pieces, each book getting its own chunk. If the Jesus brick goes back, then the four gospels do, too. And that's where I get stuck.

If I put the Jesus brick back, can I call myself a Christian again even if the only books of the bible I'm willing to give any attention to are the four gospels?

On Faith

I've heard of people abandoning their faith in God after bad things happened to them.  I've always wondered about that. Why is your faith adequate when bad things happen to other people, and then suddenly invalid when bad things happen to you?  If you could remain faithful after learning about the Holocaust, for goodness' sake, then why abandon it when suffering touches you personally?

And yet.

Losing Mark has knocked me loose.  I've had to step back and reconsider everything I believe.  Everything.  I've had to pull it apart piece by piece to see if it's still valid.

Is there a God?  I admit that at first I wanted to abandon my belief that God even existed. After all, he allowed Mark to die, didn't he?  But it's hard to look around at creation and not believe in God.  I recently heard the world referred to as "an amazing accident."  I can't believe this was all an accident. When I'm confronted by the complexity of it all, the amazing intertwining, it seems obvious it was all carefully planned.

So, if there is a God, is he the God revealed in the bible?  In January I joined a women's bible study in the middle of studying the life of Moses and jumped right in at the book of Leviticus. Ouch.  It was not an easy study.  The God of the old testament feels very judgmental, a God who sees things in black and white and delivers swift punishment, a God who commands the obliteration of whole communities.  I haven't studied the old testament much in the past and I came away feeling rebellious, questioning passages and struggling to understand.  In the new testament (Matthew 22) Jesus says I am to love God with all my heart, soul and mind, and he says I'm supposed to love my neighbor as myself.  Verse 40 says: "All the Law and Prophets hang on these two commandments."  In other words, without love the whole old testament, every rule it puts in place and every decree delivered by Moses and the prophets, falls apart.  It's as though Jesus is reminding me that I only need to worry about loving God and people, and the rest will fall into place.  I can better understand the old testament when see through Jesus' words.

So, God exists, and he's the God of the bible.  Then why, oh why, does he allow suffering? And not just my suffering, but horrible, unspeakable suffering?  In 2 Corinthians 4:17 Paul says, "For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all."  How can he describe what we experience on earth as "light and momentary"?

Unless.

Could it be that our time on earth is insignificant when compared to what waits for us in heaven?  It's hard to imagine our whole lives being insignificant when compared to eternity. It's really hard to imagine eternity.  We're stuck here on earth  We're stuck in time.  We're stuck inside our own little brains.  We're stuck not understanding, and we're asked to trust, to trust in a God great enough to create everything--everything--we see, know and love.  In the same way a parent asks a child to trust and believe, we're asked to trust and believe in God's goodness.  I've spent my time since Mark died alternately kicking God in the shins in anger and grabbing onto his knees looking for comfort.

If God is all powerful, then he allowed Mark to die.  He allowed Mark to take his own life. People tell me it will all make sense when we get to heaven, but I think when I get to heaven it won't even matter.  I think when I get to heaven and see all its glory and understand eternity, whatever happened here on earth will be so insignificant that no explanation will be necessary.  So I rest in the knowledge that God's in control, that he allowed Mark to leave earth and join him in heaven, and that I'll see Mark again.  Sometimes for very brief moments, it's as if a curtain opens and I'm able to see eternity stretch out before me, and God's perfect peace washes over me.

Just because I get glimpses of eternity doesn't mean I have this all figured out.  Grief is a tricky thing.  No matter what I believe, Mark is still dead and I miss his physical presence. But I choose to believe in God.  Every day I choose God, even on the days I want to kick him in the shins.

I Am a Prickly Pear

Two weeks in a row now I've offended people at church. One poor guy had the bad luck of innocently asking me, "How's it going?" And I think he meant it sincerely, but all I could think was, What do you mean??? How the hell do you think it's going? I answered meanly through tears, "I don't think you really want to know how it's going." Most recently I ran out of the sanctuary sobbing--sobbing--just because someone asked me what was wrong when they saw me crying.

I hate church. I hate church because Mark should be there. On Sunday mornings we'd go to church and all disperse to youth group or Sunday school, then we wouldn't see the kids again until the coffee time in the dining room before the service. Mark would sit at a table with his friends. And then he'd sit with friends in the sanctuary. Now I can't find him. I look around the dining room and he isn't there. I look around the sanctuary trying to do a head count of my kids, but I come up short.

I love church. The people in our church feel like family. They've shown us love and compassion beyond measure. We have five pastors on staff at our church, and four of them were at our house the morning Mark died. Other people from church have reached out in very loving, tangible ways. You couldn't find a better example of a group of people living out the love of Jesus than the people of Elim.

But I'm sure I'll offend someone next Sunday. I can't seem to get through a Sunday without doing so.

I hate church. I love church. I am a prickly pear.