I have this drive to make sure you know you’re not alone. By “you,” I mean two groups of people: those who believe what I believe and those who don’t. We Christians have a hard time expressing our feelings because we’re afraid of what it would look like if everything was out in the open, if people really knew about the dark shit that goes through our heads from time to time, or our messed up family life, or what we said at work the other day. Because we have a hard time expressing this, we alienate people, oftentimes seriously hurting them in the process. I mean, it’s not like the rest of the world can’t see straight through us. I wish we could quit pretending.
So I get on here and I write about the dark shit that goes through my head because I want my fellow believers to know it’s ok. You’re not alone. I’m going through it, the people who stand next to you in church are going through it, David went through it (a bunch of his psalms are full of despair and fear and are right next to the ones that praise God for his never-ending love), all of the forefathers of our faith went through it (none of whom had what would even remotely resemble a healthy family life), and God still had mercy. He still loved them and worked through them and stuck with them. He just wants us to be honest, I think. Well, that’s part of what he wants.
And I get on here and I write about what I’m going through because I want the people who don’t believe what I believe to know that I’m a real person. Sometimes people who aren’t Christians hear that I’m a Christian and they automatically assume a whole lot, like for instance that my life is about a bunch of rules and that I’m in league with the kind of people who show up at funerals for fallen soldiers holding picket signs full of hate. And so the same people who complain about how Christians label and judge them label and judge me.
But I get it. The Church is messed up. In fact, sometimes I wish I could apologize to the world at large for the way that my Family fails. The Founder of our faith spent a lot of time telling us to take care of the poor and the widow and the orphan and we treat it like an option. The prophets before him warned of God’s judgment on nations who forsook justice and mercy and who instead participated in oppression, and on Sunday morning a lot of us end up hearing sermons that keep us comfortable in our opulence, sacrifice being reduced to giving up chocolate for Lent.
But I still believe in my Family. I still believe in the Church. I love her like crazy and I want to keep at it, to keep struggling with her.
Anyway.
Red Like Tango 