A Precarious Balance

Sacred music plays, and I am struck with this resonating inside me. I am a Christian. I love the sacred. It’s been too big a part of me for too long to throw away.

What I have to do is I have to find the place where what I have believed, or the culture of the religion I have been within, has been destructive to me and pull that part out.

The moment I say, “I am a Christian” the surety I have found in myself in the last two weeks begins to weaken. For, on a fundamental level, what I have done is shut down access to my interior--to my heart, to my soul—from religion. 

My self-conversation has been more positive. More sure. More strong. More action oriented. Less self abusing, degrading, and damaging.

Any openness to this idea, “I am a Christian” brings the flood of insecurity back.

I can’t have it. Won’t have it.

Where is the balance? Is there a the definition that brings peace and strength?

My inclination is to stay in this place, to continue, with "I am done with it." I will establish the patterns and habits within this new paradigm. Then deal with this question, or perhaps it will integrate organically and settle itself.

Connection, Lost. Confidence, Found.

What I want to say at this point, after yesterday’s post, is please don’t use my words as anything but markers for your own faith. In the comments below, on earlier posts, people said the hunger I felt echoed their own. That hunger and desire for God, and more from your religion and your leaders is the heart cry that causes change—especially when lifted up in prayer.

The point in my journey I have chosen to share is my reaction to a very specific thought, that I am done with my religion. I don’t understand fully what this means for me, but I wanted to write down my experience. Perhaps at the end, I will find a way in which what I am experiencing meets with my faith, or a faith. What I can say is I have been a Christian for decades, and it is strange to consider stepping outside of it. (Though, at this moment is more than a consideration, it is a reality. I am done with it.)

Most of my thinking about spiritual matters is in those quiet moments when I lay down, before going to sleep. Those were the times of my prayers, and in recent years, the place I wrestled with my walk. Where I wrestled in general.

Laying down last night what I felt was disconnection. Absence. It was an odd feeling. The first time I have felt it … in my memory. Regardless of my struggle, I always felt there was a foundation there. A place that was listening, observing (from a distance, if I was in sin), and waiting if I was in pain, waiting for me to come back.

Last night there was nothing. It took me a moment to calibrate. Then confidence rose in my chest. As with all of my encounters thus far, it was a surprise. Someone once told me she didn’t believe in God, that there was no one out there, and I said, “That sounds lonely.” Because, to me it did. In the darkness, though I didn’t feel lonely. I felt sure. And then I felt afraid.

I felt a tinge of fear, and I started to pray, but then I stopped. Who was listening now? I recognized the fear though. It was the tiny one, a constant companion since I was child. Nameless. Always present. I would counter it with prayer or a word from the Bible. “No,” I said. “I am not afraid.” Then I wasn’t. I wasn't afraid. It was gone. I realized I've been doing this dance of fear and prayer, fear and prayer. They each perpetuated the other. Perhaps, what is faith without fear? Without faith, sure, there is fear, but the companion fear, the one faith is an answer to …. No faith. No fear?

Alone. In the dark. Covers at my feet as I stared at the ceiling and listened to the familiar hum of my fan. Not accompanied. But not afraid. Confident in a way I have never felt. In a way I have never been. Perhaps it is because it is now all on me. I am not reaching outside of myself to access strength--a strength I do not have access to because I have not been walking with God. The strength now is my strength. Is my ability. I am a unit. I am the whole.

The Unexpected Freedom of "I am done with it"

I haven’t stopped by to say much here. I haven’t had much to say. However, today, I have something to share.

For the first time, I consider “leaving my religion.” There is an unexpected shift coming from that consideration.

I’ve always thought of myself as just alienated from it, intending to return. But l must face it. in the last decade I have been a Christian not in name, nor in witness, nor in my inward life.

After reading this article last night about a man who left his religion all together, and his experience now … well, I’d never considered just leaving and saying, “That’s it.” I’ve always said, “I miss it.” (I’d said it the very night before, sitting with friends around a fire.) But never, “I am done with it.”

I notice, however, an interesting shift in myself on the other side of “I am done with it.” Habits that are not good for me, that are in the Christian parlance sin, that are destructive to my heart and my time, are today unpalatable. 

Not because, as it has been most of my life, I am letting someone down—God—but because I am bringing destruction on myself. I am hard wired to please people, and living as I have—this last decade--knowing I am not pleasing the most fundamental person in my life, again God, has created this inner battle that has brought not only depression but also inaction and indecision.

I didn’t expect this shift. I had no idea it would occur. The whole point of the gospel is freedom from self and the “desires of the flesh” (whether it be lust or laziness, etc) but what I encountered instead in this time—and perhaps all of my Christian life—is this inability to satisfy God.

I recognize (and confessed for years) that it is the blood of Christ, the working of the Spirit, and the grace of God that are to empower me. That it’s not my work or efforts, but the daily renewal of Christ within me that is bringing the changes and the fruit. At the end of the day, however, I was always consumed with “I am not enough” and “I will always fall short” and, again, as I am wired, I could only thrive in my Christian life in the brief moments I was living in victory over my cyclical battles.

I have always hungered for purity. For a clean heart. (Again, not only with lust, but with jealousy, with hate, with all of the parts of my “fallen nature.”) I desired it, pushed for it. As I grew, I labeled my Christianity not merely, cultural, but “devotional”—a life that was spent reading, studying, and praying; that had a closer adherence to the scripture, that "vital connection to the vine." This is how I lived because it is what my nature required. (Today I look at many of those around me who call themselves Christians and what I see is no fruit. Drunkenness. Foul language. Men who are married, not honoring their wives in thought or speech. This is not to call out some set of rules they should be adhering to. It's that the words "I am a Christian" should really mean something, that the encounter with Christ should change you.)

Which brings to me to what began my battle with my Christianity in the first place. I do not trust man any more. I do not trust (many) spiritual leaders, having been not only bent, but completely broken by them.** I tried it on my own, to live a life aside from the church, but what I found was, again, cyclical. Excited about the Bible and returning, and then wandering. Losing it and then feeling bad about it. It’s not worth it. It’s destructive to who I am.

My world view has been (since I was 13, and before) shaped by the Bible. My rights and wrongs, my understanding of mercy and compassion come from there too. What I find (now) is that there is morality outside of Christianity. That these concepts apply. And now that I am accountable to myself, and not some other being, that morality is somehow more authentic.*

“I am done with it.” The release of pressure is astonishing.

But what I know is that my heart has, for so long a place, for Christ that I cannot say I am done with Christianity. I am done with religion. I am done with this accountability I cannot satisfy. (This paragraph is filled with contradictory statements).

This is all new, and again, surprising. Now I will see how I live on the other side of it. See if I can live on the other side of it.

*I read that sentiment in the article above and I thought it ridiculous. "Living your life accountable to 'you?' That's dumb." What I find is that living my life to my convictions is more true than living my life to someone else's code--regardless of how fundamental that code was to forming those convictions. I was drawn to Christianity because of a call in my heart. The call was there. Christianity echoed it. It is not chicken and the egg. The truths resided in my heart before.

**There are lots of good people doing good things from pure places in their hearts.