De-conversion

I met with my tutor Dick Keyes at the Southborough branch of L’abri several times before I realized I had been dishonest with myself for a while.  I was raised in a Christian home and I was reading Bible verses and listening to sermons ever since I was two.  I thought I knew this faith pretty well, inside and out.  There were parts I liked, a lot of parts actually, and parts I didn’t like.  I would take the parts I thought made sense and leave the rest.  The problem with picking and choosing different doctrines in a faith you will adhere to, as I was told in so many words from a dear friend months before, is the religion cannot stand without those doctrines you would rather not believe in.  The problem is obvious though I was altogether ignorant of the fact that I was not equipped with the knowledge to pick and choose aspects of a faith that has been around for two thousand years.  I had the right to deny it altogether but I did not have the right to recreate the Faith in my own image.  Once I realized that I didn’t accept the Faith and instead only parts I decided to embrace my agnosticism.

The world looked different altogether after I realized I wasn’t what I thought and believed I was for so many years.  I felt healthy and honest after my de-conversion.  I didn’t know what would come next but at least, if nothing else, I was being honest with myself.

The next few days were filled with keeping myself busy.  I started to feel overwhelmed.  I now knew that I really had no faith at all, but that isn’t an ending, that just suggests another question: what is it that you think and believe?  My philosophy was crunched into pieces after I realized I was supporting my thinking by the faith I was raised with.

Apart from Genesis one I could no longer believe that people, all people, were created in the image of a God making them equal in value.  I no longer even had a reason to believe the world I lived was meant to be “Good”.  I could no longer claim something was right or wrong.  Love, goodness, truth, all these words were void of meaning tossed up for me to decide what I deemed.  I was thinking, is God really dead?

Solitude, elitism, and one day the end, death.  These were my new companions.  At first I welcomed them, after all, why not?

‘A’ ‘in Latin translates to without; ‘Gnostic’ translates to knowledge.  This was indeed the perfect way of describing my current state of mind.  I didn’t know what to think any more; the world started to look like a really bad joke, it still does most days.

I had read the Cosmological and Ontological arguments for the existence of a god.  Kant had made them both look like jokes too in his Critique of Pure Reason.  He said both could be used to hold the idea of a god but neither proved any deity’s existence.  That made sense to me.  I was looking for a formula, a reason, a line I could use at dinner parties just incase the question of “faith” came up.  I didn’t want God to know me I wanted to know God so I could use him as I pleased.  I was confused why I didn’t know what to think.  The only funnier thing than the world around us is the ideas behind our eyes.

If there is a God the hope isn’t found in people making their way to God but God making his way to people.  I had everything backwards, upside down.

Life isn’t clear, simple, or comfortable so why did I expect this to be any different?  The stories the Bible tell about people aren’t unrealistic, they’re just as messy and gruesome as the world I see around me today; the arguments made for the God the Bible is about are the unrealistic stories.

Once I understood that the mists started to clear up a little bit.  I was in a horrible world, a messy and disorganized wreck drenched with corruption that had soaked to the heart of things.  Yet there was a line of something that made sense in people, in me, something that was beautiful and true.  Every time I was about to put my finger on it it would disappear.  I knew I wasn’t who I wanted to be.  Doing things I knew I shouldn’t, not being able to do what I wanted to do.  Then the four books chosen by men just like me were right in front of my nose telling stories, narratives about this man who lived two thousand years ago.  He claimed strange things, he did crazier things, talked about a knew way to understand our world, established a new kingdom, and despite what people might tell you, changed the entire world.

I remember going to school when I was younger and hearing arguments for whether or not your salvation is pre-determined.  I mostly thought they were a waste of time, I still do, but those arguments came back to my thoughts.  Did I have a choice in all of this?  I don’t know why the hope the Christian faith offers is spoken of so rarely.  The Christian hope makes the most beautiful Utopia’s pale in comparison.  How could I say no to an offer of that magnitude?  If the Christian faith is true then Mankind was not a mistake and there is a future for all people, especially “the least of these.”

This is no argument for the Christian faith; if it were it would be a weak one.  This is about a choice to trust the words of a man who may have made way to the first tangible hope mankind has seen since the dawn of time.  In the end the man Jesus Christ was either divine or he was not.  We may have a future bought for us by the sacrificial, loving heart of the Father; or we may just spend the rest of our time on this planet until at last we all pass away in blazing, or freezing dismal glory, probably laughing and eating until then.  I place my lot with the rabbi.

The Point of Friction

There’s something inside of me that wants to rebel.  I’m not about to say that’s wrong though.  My pastor once told me I have a problem with authority, that’s true, I don’t know many people my age who don’t.  If you don’t know what you’re rebelling against though there’s a problem; you’re just whistling in the dark.

I was working in the garden in front of the L’abri main house in Massachusetts a few months ago.  While cutting squares of grass out of one of the garden beds I accidentally cut right into a red ant colony.  Red ants are fighters; hard workers too.  I remember I was taking a trip down to Florida with my family years ago.  My brothers and I found this giant red-ant mound and we decided to get rid of it with some fire crackers we bought the other day.  The explosion didn’t do too much damage, it just made a hole in the side of the mound and the little red soldiers came pouring out in the hundreds.  We left the mound alone to go eat dinner.  The next day we came back and the hole was gone, it looked like nothing had happened to it.  Red ants work harder than most people I know; and if someone decides to blow a hole in their home they don’t flinch, they rebuild and keep going with their lives.  The fiercest rebels I’ve ever seen.

As I lifted up the square of grass I felt a biting pain on my forearm.  It stung like a sharp thorn.  I put down the grass and there clinging on to all he was worth was a little red commando.  Now hold on, I’m the big person with the shovel that broke into this ants home and here’s this little ant biting, gripping, and fighting me.  Have you ever heard of a fight between a man and an ant?  It makes the story of David and Goliath sound boring.  I have the power so I have the law as far as this little fellow went and he was the rebel.

That same night my brother gave me a call and we talked for a couple hours.  He told me what he had been up to the past days, he had recently moved to Nebraska for an internship with a TV show called Footnote.  Half way through our talk my brother starts telling me a story.  He used to work at Market Basket in Tilton, New Hampshire.  He didn’t like his job very much; actually I think he hated it.  Liked a lot of the people though.  He set up a couple concerts for local artists: musicians, photographers, singers.  A lot of these artists were working at Market Basket and came out because of my brother’s invitation.  They would all come out and play; for the nights I saw it was beautiful.

I guess my brother had a friend who was getting picked on at work.  It got so bad his friend decided to quit.  He was called names, talked down to, ridiculed.  For someone else this would have been just a part of the big joke and routine of life; the weak are trampled on, the big man, the law, ends up on top and we all go about our business, not for my brother.  The three guys that bullied this kid were checking out of the store one of the last nights he was working.  He saw a chance so he took it; he talked to his assistant manager so that he could have a reason to go outside, going out to get carts.

Jacob caught these three before they left.  One of them was walking to the car to meet the other two when Jacob started asking him if he made fun of his friend.  The guy didn’t stop, didn’t even make eye contact, just kept walking and denied he did anything.  So Jake walked over to the car and asked who made fun of his friend who quit.  Still no eye contact, still denial, from a bunch of twenty-three year olds.  My brother said it was like talking to a bunch of children.  Even though they denied it Jake knew they did it; the kid had told him.  He said, “Why wouldn’t you treat someone with dignity?  Wouldn’t you want to be respected as a person?”

One of the guys said Jacob was wasting his time he said, “Why are you even out here?  How is this any of your business?”

Jacob told him the guy they had treated like dirt was his friend, that made it his business.  He said that the kid they picked on was one of the nicest workers at Market Basket.  Once he said that one of the guys who was sitting in the car let out a laugh and spit on the ground.  Jake knew this was the one he came out for.  After asking the one in the car if he was responsible Jacob got angry.  Called them a bunch of bastards who didn’t respect a person for the fact they’re a person.  He had enough, none of them were taking responsibility for what they did, that was probably making my brother feel sick.  Jacob walked inside, the guy in the car got out and started coming after him.  It was too late, the doors were locked.

Jacob didn’t go out there to pick a fight; what he did was a bit more ambiguous than that.  He went out to tell three people what they did to someone was wrong.  Jacob wasn’t condemning them, he was calling them to a standard they just decided to ignore.  Jake’s a rebel.

I get excited when I think about this story.  It makes me think that there could be change.  Injustice uncovered and confronted, the weak defended, the tyrant shamed.

As my brother told me this story though I couldn’t help but compare him to the ant that was biting me earlier.  Both of their causes seemed pointless, never completed.  Sure we can rebel against nature, how things are, but in the end what good does it do?

I started to ask myself what if there is a God though?  What if the man Jesus was in fact who he claimed to be?  ”The son of Man”  ”The way” “God’s son” The story of the ant is easy enough to forget but who could say what Jacob did was pointless and for nothing?  Didn’t Jesus do something similar when he said, “You without sin cast the first stone.”?