I just got back from a mission trip down in Tennessee. I am tired and a bit hungry and I suppose that things will make sense tomorrow afternoon. In Western Culture there is a phrase about coming down from a mountain-top experience. We have seen the face of God or witnessed some sort of epiphany and all of a sudden the clouds come and its just us again. Its hard when that mountain-top experience never really comes and you are plunged into a deeper valley. I combed the myriad of e-mails and found most of them to be spam or unrelated threads of thoughts thrown into the universe. (I suppose that is what this blog post is as well.) I deposited money into a bank account that has been much depleted from various trips and malnourished with my measly pay-check. My computer screen is full of half-started starts of stories where the perfect words seem to escape me. Life is full of imperfection and we just say, "Get over it. Move on."
To a degree these people are right. We cannot just stay still and immobilized, but neither should we accept the fact that our lives are fragmented and fractured. Too often they lie broken and disheartened. Maybe that is just my life and I am projecting it on others. There is a sad chord humming through the course of our lives. It never goes away and it gives some sort of importance to our existence that would be missing otherwise. I try and cure it or ignore it or "move on", but it never goes away. I wonder if others are afraid to talk about it: this sadness. The sad feeling of coming down into the dirt and dust and muck and mire of a world that seems so frankly indifferent about our survival that it borders on cruel.
This is the world of the atheist and this is the world of the Christian. These two people exist in the same world. I suppose I'm a lost cause. I have tried so hard to free myself from fear. I can't do it. I lose my old faith daily and each day I have to keep coming back to a new vision. How I wish I could throw away my faith in God, but the alternative cannot exist in my worldview. I wish this world was a place where I didn't have to answer to anyone at all. I wish this world was a place where I would be pat on the back because I, by my own initiative and power did good and resisted evil. I wish I were God.1
But I can't. I would like to stay in my room all day and work a dead-end job and read books. I would like an easy victory with no work. I just can't do it though. I am not strong enough and so I join the legions of failures; the group of people that Nietszche said had destroyed the world by stifling the Übermensch and creating a world where the dregs of society end up on top. I am a Christian. Why do I keep coming back to this problem? Why can't I let it go?
In order to be anything you must go back to square one all the time. I suppose we never outgrow numbers no matter how far into math we descend. My reason is this. I gave up the thing I loved most. I gave up trying to have all the answers and worry if people think I am smart. I stopped trying to predict my future.2 I just gave up. And I gave up worrying about my timing. I stopped getting angry that I had not reached a point where I thought I should be. I gave up listening to a lot of things. The point is, I take things a lot less seriously because I take life a lot more seriously. I am not what I am. I am a lot of broken fragments that don't know where I fit. Big deal. Walk away. Stop being perfect. Just be human ... be what I am created to be.
And so, I just got back from Tennessee. I think I will take care of a few things, get some water and read. I think a deserve to take a break from worrying about things I didn't do wrong and can't control. Mazel Tov.
- Yes, I said it Spencer. I would also like to see how many other people out there believe they have a "God complex."
- Oh sure, I do it still. Its my personality. I am built that way. It is my blessing/curse; that strange aspect of your humanity that is both your attribute and achilles heel. I am a know-it-all, but I have to make sure that I am never defined by it and sprawling on a pin under the heading: A prime example of a know-it-all.
1 comment:
So many beautiful 'I's' in that piece.
You are earning your faith, Phil. Life is worth the hard work. You're doing a good job.
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