Many things have been on my mind lately. I have been reading a lot, which I love. Recently I’ve been reading a lot of books by Ted Dekker. Ted Dekker is a fantastic author who has very refreshing views of our relationship with God.
One of the things that I find myself constantly checking is whether a belief or understanding of a topic in my relationship with God is because of experience or because of denominational or a “religious” teaching that I accepted as truth at some earlier point in my life.
Even now, as I talk to friends, as I work through thoughts and ideas, I find that at times I can hit a “wall” with them. At times, I find that I am debating against their upbringing, acceptance of religious ideas or denominational teachings in some way. I have had others encourage me to not try to figure things out but to just accept that God is bigger than me. While there is no doubt the later is true, I find that the wall they are throwing up is one of a couple of things. One, it could be because they would rather not be talking about whatever the topic is (highly possible, I can get pretty boring). Two, because they have been taught not to question and to just accept. I think this obviously has it’s place when we hit the limit of our understanding. Three, some people aren’t wired so that they have a drive to understand things. Four, I’ve found that some things that I challenge can leave my relationship with God feeling naked. I think for the most part questions of this nature leave people feeling scared and would often rather stay away because they have no certainty about where they will end up. It can be like getting ready to go to the mall, striping off my dirty clothes, putting nothing else on and walking into the crowded place with nothing covering my insecurities about what I believe, leaving me feeling incredibly vulnerable.
I think the fourth idea about uncertainty and vulnerability is as common as any other. I’ve been down this road a number of times only to discover that it has left me with a shaky relationship with God at best. Each of the times I choose to take that road it is always very painful spiritually and emotionally. There was a period during one of these times that I found myself doubting God seriously because of information that someone had given me. I questioned and researched this information for about 2 years (maybe a little less). By the time I exhausted my time, energy and my relationship with my wife to all of my questioning I had digested thousands of pages of information. I found myself questioning of some previous beliefs. In the end I found the journey to be an exhausted path with nothing but endless what ifs to this information that a friend had passed on to me. But that was all there was, no facts, just endless assumption. There was only God to turn to and saw me through it and brought me back around to a point of faith and eventially my faith stronger than when I started.
It seems to me that God stripped me of the structure of my faith down to the foundation so that He could rebuild it. In some ways I still feel like I’m recovering from that one, still reforming ideas and different understandings in many of the areas of my relationship with God. Like I said it can be a very painful path, but so far, God has helped me find my way through. I’m not sure that it is good, for some it even seems wrong, to me it just seems to be a bit different, but this process is probably very common in concept to what most Christians go through I think.
I can’t help but to feel like anything that I have gone through has done anything but strengthen my relationship with God. That statement may sound like an empty sentiment in an effort to justify, but I have been fortunate enough to be able to see and find understanding in almost everything that God has put me through to this point. I am not naive enough to think that he wont put me through more things that I am not able to see reasoning for though.
In the coming weeks I’ll be blogging about some of the things I am still processing or feel that I have come to conclusion on.
Filed under: Unbound Thought | Tagged: God, trouble, understanding
