Thank you, reader, for taking this short journey through my thoughts. Writing is cathartic but not like knowing that I'm being heard and possibly even understood. Life from inside my skull has been frighteningly lonely all my life, so much so that I've barely been able to face my feelings of loneliness until recent years. Most of my life, I've run from my own thoughts and feelings. I've run from myself. I've turned on the television, made myself a snack, tended to the people around me, sought connection and validation through sex and intimacy. I've also bored, and possibly entertained, countless listeners with my monologues, mostly performed to keep from having to sit, alone, with myself. When you read these words, part of a bridge has been made.
With the Holidays upon us, and being a survivor of severe abuse in a home where Jesus was "Lord," my thoughts turn to the idea of "God." I'm always thinking about God
Yesterday, I tried to have a conversation with a pastor. For a short while, years ago, I attended his church with my family. When I saw him, I thought it would be nice to say "hello" and reconnect, another of my methods for staving off the unbearable loneliness of being. So, we talked for a bit, and the talking turned to theology. He seemed intent on making the point that thinking about God was not as valuable as "knowing" God. My regular readers can probably guess that I disagree completely, but I didn't fight with this man. Of course, now that I'm here alone with my computer but cherishing the time-lapse connection I share with you, my reader, I would like to go ahead and make my counterpoint to his argument.
Compared with dubious claims of "knowing" God, I prefer thinking about God, conceptually. As a for instance, consider whether you know anyone who claims that God is their god but lives in a way that almost makes it look more like money is their god. In my mind, whatever drive has the most influence on my behavior is my god. If we think of "god" as a word or, metaphorically, as a position of hierarchy in any given set of ideas, then we can more easily evaluate what kind of relationship we actually have with "him."
I used to know God. That's what I told people. "It's not a religion; it's a relationship." Right? You've heard this before? Yeah, me too. My pastor/friend would surely agree. He seemed to think that knowing God was more important than knowing about God. To me, relationships must grow past insisting that we truly love and know a person to a deeper level, actually finding out about them and also about ourselves. Ironically, while insisting that knowing God was more important than knowing ABOUT God, my friend was not so concerned with what I thought as he was with telling me what to think. While claiming, when it came to God, that he was about knowing above knowing about, when it came to his relationship with me, this man was ironically more concerned with informing me than knowing me. In all the talk about relationship over religion, have people just made a religion of the concept of relationship?
I don't mean to pick on my friend the pastor, but he doesn't really know me. Do any of us know each other? However well we think we know each other, truthfully, we all live in our own distinct worlds of memory, thought, and belief. To prove this to yourself, think of a romantic relationship in which you were surprised at some point, long after those glorious moments of knowing and being known, to find that you didn't really know the person at all. I was married for 12 years to the mother of my four children. We've been separated for seven years now, and in the last few of those, I have, again and again, been shocked by simple discoveries about her mental experience which had previously been unknown to me. How could I have missed these things? I live in my own mental world. Knowing another is no simple feat. How can anyone say with confidence "I know God?"
Hey Christians, I get it. I've always preferred to serve my own mental comfort and banish indecision about God and the meaning of it all. For most of my life, it was comforting to find answers to my questions and settle on more definite ideas about who God is, what God wants, and, most importantly, what choices I should be making at any given moment. Mystery is uncomfortable.
If I hadn't had a complete mental crisis over memories from childhood and their effect on my present-day life, I never would have dared to entertain my doubts. So, I'm not bragging or trying to insult believers. There's nothing extra-special about me. I just got desperate enough to admit that my imaginary relationship with God, along with all the corporate Christian thought connected to it, was just another exercise in distraction from the fearful truth that I don't know which door to open next.
Maybe I'm allergic to claims of a close relationship with God, because my dad claimed to be God's right-hand man in the dirty work of handing out vengeance to evil-doers. He believed that a super-being created this planet with humans in mind and was in complete control of our days as well as the moments of our deaths. It seemed like sound Biblical theology when he would assert these things. He reasoned that if God brought someone into his life, it was for judgment. If the almighty creator wanted that person corrected, He would allow them to anger my dad. If God wanted that person dead, He would allow my dad to kill them. As a kid, reading Bible stories of an angry, jealous God who wiped out ungrateful non-believers in mass groups without apology or regret, it was easy to see how my dad came to these conclusions.
I didn't know how to make sense of God killing people, but I didn't like the idea of my dad killing anyone, whether or not God approved. Somewhere opposite of selfish anger and murder, I learned to value connection and love. Thank you for allowing me to build a bridge and exorcise my memories and demons. If you don't mind sharing these alarming moments of pain, I would like to lay them out over the ravine between us and join you, Dear Reader, in the land of the living. Perhaps together, we can leave the simple judgments and answers behind and learn to discover one another in the light of love.
