I’ve been encouraged this week. To continue thinking and seeking... to continue questioning and rejecting false aspects of widely-accepted ‘truths’... I’ve been encouraged to press on in my natural (and otherwise unavoidable) stubborn, persistent, and often irritating ways of over-thinking and over-analyzing reality.
Just as an adult would sit down to a plate of dirt at a high-class restaurant and proclaim in an aggravated tone, “That is NOT my food!” I am squirming in this created system of Christianity and my soul is crying out, “This is NOT food!” I am not being fed. I don’t want your pat answers and systematic theology anymore than I want the god that you serve whenever you feel like it, or whenever there isn’t something better going on, or whenever you have the extra money, or whenever temptation has landed in someone else’s lap. I don’t want to serve that god at all – because he is clearly not worthy of anyone’s time or effort.
My soul dries up in the puddles of Christian community and all of their superficiality; I need the ocean... I need to be drenched by something real. Something that has the power to overtake a life and stir one to do something that they would never otherwise do. I get so discouraged when I try to talk about this and no one hears... or I pull up to my Christian college to find so few asking the questions I’m asking. If I didn’t know any better I would think I missed something. But I won’t fall for that. I don’t think I’ve missed something... I think the Body of Christ has missed something. I think somewhere between taking a lead role of active participation in all the glamour of today’s sin-infested culture and sitting down for a full feast of self-gratification, the “Church” has missed it’s mark. But who will hear this? Who will have this? There is a strong spirit of resistance to accepting and repenting of this truth... but for crying out loud, if it weren’t truth, wouldn’t we see the impact of the church? Wouldn’t we be IMPRESSED by the outstanding integrity of those walking with the Lord? Wouldn’t we be shining as LIGHTS in this dark and depraved, grimy and selfish world?
My soul has been so refreshed, so completely refreshed, this week by one single person who decided it wise to question beyond everyone’s answers and who was unafraid to speak it out. Few things I have said with confidence lately, but I will speak confidently about this – I needed that... and the conversations I had that spurred me along with encouragement and conviction were no mistake. They were real... they were deep... and they raised my heart’s attention to the Living God. Out of the puddles and into the ocean.
This I find to be so true. We tend to stay in our little contained puddle just living the life most Christians live because it is easier and we don't have to accept the fact that maybe there is something better out there and all we have to do is challenge traditional thinking. Steve Curtis Chapman wrote a song called a Dive and it talks about just diving in and your post made me think of that song.
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